More is less

We've slowly been rethinking our way of eating over the last month or two.

We have not been happy with the composition of our meals. In general we eat lovely food because Thomas is a great cook and he's taught the kids to cook so every night is like a restaurant meal but because things taste great we eat too large a portion too late in the day. So we've been analysing how to eat less in the evenings and come to the strange conclusion that we can do so by eating more!

Thomas spent a lot of his childhood in their family's Tuscan home so we tried turning our thoughts to a more Mediterranean diet. What if we had four courses every night instead of one? Tonight was typical. We started with maybe six or seven olives each. Next Thomas made a risotto for four and served it as a starter for seven (Marcel is away but mum took his place). Next we took a few spare ribs - maybe three or four each - and simply cooked them in the oven with a bucketload of fresh herbs from the garden and some tomatoes and finally a plate of strawberries. We tried something similar several times last week too. One day we had bruschetta with fresh basil from the garden, followed by three pieces of fresh ravioli each with tomato arrabbiata and then half a steak each with some lettuce. I think if we lumped everything on our plate at once we're probably eating only two thirds of what we used to eat with our meat intake cut by 60-70% but because we are eating it as separate courses it is taking a longer and things feel much lighter and more pleasant. Into the bargain it is cheaper! I hope we can keep it up because it is much nicer and you get to spend a lot of time together as a family, even more than we did in the old days despite our sitting down to at least two meals a day together always.

More is definitely the new less.