Lady Lunchalot

The other day O stepped off the bathroom scales and sadly announced that he has gained 8kg since we met 18 months ago.

It’s all my fault. I take full responsibility.

You see, I have the unfortunate habit of showing my affection for people through food. So when O and I met I went into major cooking mode. He likes to eat, I like to cook - we’re a match made in heaven!

But it wasn’t just O who suffered. My waistline had a pretty bad blow-out of its own. I was 57kg when we met in April and had billowed up to 65kg within ten months. It was just all too easy to get carried away in cupid’s culinary wonderland of cosy dinners for two.

Eventually my old jeans were relegated to the back of the wardrobe and all I could fit into were my fat pants. You know, these were the jeans I previously saved for events like seafood buffets on the Gold Coast with my mum, or consoling a girlfriend over a breakup and eating my own body weight in icecream. They were my post-Christmas-lunch pants. My feeling-bloated-PMT-pants. My no-one’s-looking-so-I’m-going-to- eat-all-the-leftover-chocolate-pudding- straight-out of-the-pan pants.

It got so bad that any time I wore a vaguely low-cut top my friend Stuart started saying things like “Taking the puppies out for a walk tonight, are we?”. I explained my dilemma. O and I were both stacking on the pounds because I have the nasty habit of expressing my love through food, and let’s face it, I had fallen in love big time.

Stu told me not to worry. He said it was just happy fat, and that the extra couple of inches muffin-topping over the waistband of my jeans were more than offset by the happy glow of being in L-O-V-E.

That sounded pretty good to me. “Happy fat” became my new mantra as I dressed every morning, so I went with that theory until it dawned on me that Stuart had barely weighed more than 70kgs in his life and knew NOTHING about how it felt to be… cuddly. He would even go as far as to pinch the skin on his hip into a teensy fold and complain about his love handles. Ergh.

So I tried to be good, and eat more salads and soups instead of casseroles and stews. I’d be a saint for a week and then we’d invite friends around for dinner on the weekend, and before you knew it I’d whipped up a roast rack of pork with apple sauce, crackling and creme brulee for dessert, and any thought of watching my waistline had flown out the window.

And then, O unwittingly came up with the only thing that could possibly motivate me to shed those kilos of happy fat.

A diamond ring and a wedding date!

Within a few days I had rented an exercise bike.

Within a week I had unearthed my weight watchers recipe books.

And within a month I had lost 4kgs!

I’ve still got a few more to go, but at least the puppies don’t get taken for walks like they used to.

So much for cheap website hosting. My server crashed and burned, and I have been blogless and emailless for a few days. It’s strange how cut off from the world I felt, with my communication being restricted to just a mobile phone, landline, two other email accounts, Australia Post, the rest of the internet, and a good old-fashioned fax machine. I don’t know how I managed to survive.

But the time away from the blog gave me a chance to… you guessed it… do some cooking!

Last Friday I became fixated on roasting a chicken. Roast chicken is the best soul food I can think of. And I don’t mean pork ‘n chitterlings style soul food, I mean food that nourishes your soul when you cook it as much as it does when you eat it.

I never fail to be moved by the sight of a whole chicken dressed and ready for the oven. I think it’s one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. Chicken must have been a pretty strong symbol of satisfaction throughout history. Even Henry IV, the King of France in the 1500s, promised a chicken in every peasant’s pot each Sunday as proof of France’s prosperity.

There are so many ways to roast a chicken and I love them all, but my favourite way is on the rotisserie in my oven. I chop a lemon into quarters and pop it in the cavity with a few fresh herbs. Or you can also mix some herbs (tarragon, parsley etc) with butter, make a pocket between the breast and the skin with the underside of a teaspoon and spread it inside. As it roasts on the rotisserie the butter spreads all through the chicken, basting the skin and making it go all crispy, herby and juicy. That’s the great thing about a rotisserie - it ensures that all the juices are spread throughout the meat, and evenly bastes the meat as it turns.

If you are using a rotisserie for the chicken, make sure you string up your chook properly otherwise you’ll end up with dry wings and legs. The first time I used my rotisserie I didn’t use any string and it looked like my chicken was doing the YMCA every time it turned on its side. The aim is to try and make the bird into a compact, even shape, so you string the ends of the legs together and tie the wings in nice and close to ensure the bird cooks evenly.