I have a deep admiration of women who are comfortable in their own bodies. I have never been. Self-Esteem and Ego have been slugging it out for as long as I can remember. Always a pointless and exhausting state of affairs, having children caused the whole thing to spiral out of control. My pelvic bones spread (as I suppose happens when you force a child through them), my rib cage was pushed up and out to make room, my breasts turned into behemoths and stayed that way, never to experience the post breastfeeding shrinkage I was promised. Then of course came the exhaustion and the sugar hits and the quick meals and finishing whatever the kids left on their plates and the absolutely no time or energy to do anything for myself. Size 12 became a size 14, 14 started to trend towards 16. Things were looking grim. Self-Esteem was waging a highly successful guerrilla campaign that was destroying my self-confidence, Ego was busily placating me with self-righteousness and lollies.

But across the border, in a more distant part of my psyche, a third party had been planning a campaign to take control of my body. Reason had for some time been amassing notes and now it had compiled a complete dossier. The notes concerned the many health risks associated with being overweight: heart disease, stroke, a wide variety of cancers, Alzheimers, Diabetes and other delights. It attached these notes to pictures of my children and reminded me of a good friend from Primary School whose mum had dropped dead of a heart attack in front of her. Not yet a teenager, she’d had to go live with the father from whom she had long been estranged. Reason also reminded me that the greatest indicator of obesity in children is having obese parents. Reason had of course attempted sorties previously but with limited troops behind it had quickly been pushed aside by far more experienced adversaries.

Suddenly and unexpectedly Reason found an Army. My mind had been taking more notice of Reason since a First Aid Course had put the fear into me about what I was doing to myself. It was with wonderful timing, then, that I came across my masseur down the street. He was looking great and I told him so. He told me about a diet that he and his naturopath wife had been on and Reason seized advantage. Now is the time, it said, and immediately booked an appointment. In no time at all, Reason had assembled an army and crossed the Rubicon. No turning back, in 3 short weeks it has shaved close to 7kgs off the territory previously held by Self-Esteem and Ego. An extreme diet, 500 calories a day from extremely limited food groups for 23 days. There have been civilian casualties: my poor husband and children who have borne the brunt of my out of control rage, my ability to speak in properly formed sentences and my singing voice. But it will be over soon. When I finish this phase, I spend another 23 days on a normal calorie intake but free from carbs and sugar to stabilise my weight. I am dreaming of scrambled eggs, bacon and avocado. There will be spoils of war, however. I plan to write an eBook of very low calorie recipes because, despite the battle raging around me, I have still managed to eat really delicious food. Here’s a taste.

Chinese – style chicken, tomato and chilli soup

This is a really satisfying and delicious soup and so very simple to make. I suspect it will become standard repertoire for me. In case you’re interested, it contains about 170 calories. 

• 100 gm chicken breast
• 2-3 cups fat free Asian-style chicken stock (see below)
• 1 tablespoon julienned ginger
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 300 gms tomatoes, each tomato cut into about 8 pieces
• 1 tablespoon finely minced fresh coriander
• Dried chili flakes

Place the chicken breast in a pan with the stock, ginger and garlic. Bring gently to the boil and then remove from the heat for about 20 minutes. Remove the chicken and shred finely. Return the pan to the heat, return to the boil and again remove the pan from heat. Add the chicken, soy sauce, coriander and tomatoes.  Sprinkle with chili flakes to taste.

To make the Chicken stock, trim the fat off some chicken chops and throw them in a stock pot with a stack of slices of fresh ginger, a couple of roughly chopped onions, some crushed garlic and about 6 peppercorns. Don’t be exacting about quantities, just make us much as you like. Bring gently to the boil and let simmer for 2 hours. Strain the stock and place the liquid in the fridge. As it cools, the fat will float to the surface and be easy to scrape off.

Secondly, its insanely cheap to make. For many people who have managed to pull off a largely more mature adult lifestyle and possess such things as homes and proper cars this won’t matter much but for me, it’s really important. As a family comprising a self employed student and a community-sector worker, when the Dreaded Global Financial Crisis hit my first fear was that my family would be able to afford nothing other than bad white bread and cheap carbs. Then I remembered the brown lentil soup. And, yes, the Dreaded Global Financial Crisis did hit us hard and, yes, the brown lentil soup was with us and is with us still. If you make this from scratch it will probably put you about $10.00 out of pocket but I nearly always have some or all of the ingredients floating around. Its smell-of-an oily-rag health food. Yay for brown lentil soup!

And of course, most importantly, it is really delicious. It’s warm and wholesome and nourishing and deep. It’s easy to eat and it always makes me feel the love. This recipe has been adapted from Kurma Das. Remember Cooking with Kurma on SBS? Certainly the only Hare Krishna show on prime time and one of the few vegetarian cooking shows I’ve seen on TV. Apart from the whole replace-the-garlic-with-asafoetida thing (and I’ve made it clear before exactly how I feel about that), Kurma sure knew his way around vegetarian cooking. I’ve adapted this recipe over time, and so here it is:

Brown lentil soup

• 375g pack of brown or green lentils
• couple of potatoes, peeled and diced into about 1 cm cubes
• couple of sticks of celery, diced (include leaves if you’ve got them)
• couple of carrots, diced into about 1 cm cubes
• Couple of cloves of garlic, crushed or finely diced
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Handful of spinach (optional)
• Bunch of coriander, preferably with the roots on
• Half a teaspoon of tumeric powder
• 2 tablespoons ground coriander (yes, that is the correct amount)
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1-2 teaspoons salt
• 1 – 2 tablespoons of lemon juice

Put the lentils in a medium saucepan with plenty of water. I’m no good at quantities but fill half way up to begin with. If you have coriander roots, wash them well and add a  few now. Bring slowly to the boil and cook until  mostly softened – this will take around half an hour. In the meantime, heat some olive oil in a pan and when its hot throw in the black pepper and tumeric for a few seconds. Add the potato, carrots and celery and fry until the vegetables are starting to colour and soften. Add the vegies to the softened lentils and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cumin and coriander and simmer another 10 minutes. You’ll find you have to keep topping up the water. The cooking time isn’t critical – just make sure that the lentils are really starting to break down as the soup will be thicker and tastier like this. Finally, add the salt, lemon juice and spinach if using and wait a few more minutes before serving. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves, a drizzle of olive oil and some yoghurt or sour cream if you have any.

• A single whole chicken is a thing of joy and wonder
• The Wye River food store, whilst very pleasant and a great place to take the kids, is really not that great
• The secret of poaching eggs is not to let the bubbles break the surface of the water
• Fried bread should be mandatory on Sundays

Let me explain. A couple of weeks ago I poached a lovely free range chook for the purpose of making a chicken and leek pie. Once the carcass had been stripped of its flesh, I returned the bones to the stockpot with stacks of fresh herbs, leeks, garlic, tomatoes and lemon rind and proceeded to make a (if I may say so myself) completely bitching chicken stock. It sat in the fridge overnight to allow the fat and impurities to rise to the surface. When I scraped the scummy layer of fat off the top, a rich red brown broth was revealed beneath. I had inadvertently made a consomme to remember and it did not deserve to be wasted on, say, my standard chicken and vegetable soup. Performance anxiety kicked in.

That afternoon we set off down the Great Ocean Road to the Wye River Food Store. I like this place because you can sit inside a lovely building and eat cake while the kids play just outside where you can see them at all times. Prior to this trip I had eaten there only once and was hugely disappointed by the quality of the food and the service. But people here  rave about it so I figured it was worth a second chance. It wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong – the weather was great, the company fantastic and the ambiance,well…ambient. But the menu was uninspired and my pork was dry and boring (although I did very much fancy the salty roasted baby carrots). And the consomme was on my mind.

I remembered reading a recipe for Zuppa Pavese from Elizabeth David’s 1954 Italian Food. I consider myself to have no talent for (and to be quite honest, no particular interest in) Italian food but this book has really got under my skin. It’s full of incredibly simple recipes with very few ingredients and it has completely changed my understanding of Italian food. Anyway, Zuppa Pavese is basically consomme with a poached egg and Elizabeth David suggests serving it with bread fried in butter and covered with shaved Parmesan. I made a couple of changes to the recipe -  most significantly I couldn’t bring myself to fry the bread in butter and used olive oil instead. This probably stems from the residual guilt I still sometimes feel when I recall the quantities of white bread fried in bacon fat I ate as a child.

It was just the perfect Sunday night dinner.  I have been trying to figure out the art of poaching an egg for ages and finally I figured out that you need to get the water to the point where the bubbles are just about to break the surface of the water but don’t. Then, of course, you make the whirlpool and drop the egg in. I’m sure there are people who can do multiple eggs at one time like this but I am not one of them. Each bowl therefore got served up separately as the eggs were poached which meant that by the time it was my turn I was sitting at the table with my glass of wine, my bowl of soup and my plate of fried bread and cheese all on my own. Bliss! Such simple,simple food and so much better than the mediocre plate I had payed good money for earlier.

PS: For the kids, I cooked them up some penne and served it up with a poached egg and lashings of shaved parmesan – a very,verykid friendly meal!

Zuppa Pavese

• About 1 litre of good quality hot stock (any meat or vegetable stock would work)
• 1-2 fresh eggs per person – depending on how hungry you are
• Freshly picked leaves of flat leaf parsley
• 3 slices of ciabatta per person
• Olive oil for frying
• Shaved Parmesan

Bring a pan of water up to the point where the water is just about to boil but bubbles are not yet breaking the surface. Make a gentle whirlpool in the centre and carefully drop the egg in. Alternatively, use whatever poaching method works for you, unless its one of those evil aluminium poaching tins that turn eggs into bullets and gives you Alzheimer’s disease, in which case you ought to be ashamed of yourself. The egg only needs to be just, just set as it will continue cooking in the hot soup.

Sprinkle some parsley leaves in a soup bowl and ladle in some hot consomme. Season to taste. Carefully place 1-2 eggs in the soup.  Serve with the bread that has been fried until golden, removed from the pan and covered with shaved Parmesan.