I just realised I am now eating to live. And predominantly in our society we live to eat. Which I don’t have a problem about. I like food and enjoy experimenting, savouring and sharing the experience of good food.

However, now that food is more than a bit repetitive, has to be eked out and includes no real treats, I’m becoming aware how much more than physical sustenance food has always been in my head – comfort, reward, healing, social interaction, social belonging, reassurance, substitute – to name but a few! When you think that most people in the world have no choice but to eat purely to live, and don’t have the choices in what they eat that I have even during this fast – well, you have to wonder. Someone sent a comment advertising a weight loss programme – do you know what I’m thinking, it’s no wonder so many of us need to lose weight when we are using food to do so many jobs for us! What do you think?

I did have a lovely salad yesterday – the last half beetroot, half a potato and an apple, with pickled ash keys, roasted hazelnuts and a variety of weed leaves, garnished with Calendula  (marigold) petals (I’ve had some flowering away in the greenhouse all winter). Some nice garlic mustard coming up on the edge of the car park at Perth College, which went in. Back to chicken and spinach for dinner!

Second batch of curd cheese much better than the first; but the sap has stopped rising in the sycamore because its uncompromisingly cold still. Negotiating with one of my students who’s a keen fisherman for a fish in return for the ruff feather from a cockerel (for fly-tying). Starting to hate herbal teas with a vengeance! TINY little shoots appearing on my white peppermint – hurry up! it might not be rooibos, but I can live with it…

Predominantly spinch soup for lunch. Hmmm. Well it was OK for Popeye.