Today’s post is a food diary.

It turns out that a diary about food can be just as personally revealing as a normal diary. Perhaps even more so, because most of the time your mature women’s thoughts don’t reveal that you ate a whole box of crumbed chicken about 24 hours or that you ate practically no vegetables over a two-day period.

I started keeping it, not for dietary reasons, but more because I bloody love reading detailed lists about what people eat in magazines. I like to think that someone out there is as obsessed with my as I am and therefore is interested in what I eat. And since no publisher is silly enough to put what I eat in a magazine, I decided the overcrowded cesspit that is the Internet was the place for it to be.

So here it is, my weekend in food.

Bone apple tea.

I’ll start at Friday afternoon, when my pants were removed and my feet were no longer imprisoned by the constraints of footwear – because that’s when the weekend really begins.

Friday 

6pm – a cup of tea. I’d just been for a run and even went as far as taking out the rubbish and putting my dried clothes away, so I deserved a little treat. Some people would opt for a wine or a beer, but I feel as if I’m sad enough without being someone who drinks alone on a Friday night.

7.30pm – put a tray of 10 chicken goujons into the oven. Technically they’re called “chicken fingers” on the box, but the term “goujon” seems a little fancier. Plus, it’s really fun to say in an accentuated bogan accent. It was perhaps one of the best running jokes at the Clifton Courier when I worked there.

7.35pm – ate a pickle from a jar in the fridge and a slice of the free loaf of bread one of my housemates scored. I may have been waiting for my chicken nuggets to cook, but I drizzled the sourdough in olive oil because I’m a classy adult… who loves oil. I also had about 7mls of hummus (not sure how you measure hummus, because it’s not a liquid but that gooey gift from the gods is no solid either – perhaps weight is best?). I only had a tiny bit because it turns out this hummus was the kind of hummus that works best on a sandwich and not licked off a finger. Again, I’m totes a stable grown up.

7.45pm – had another pickle and a second wedge of bread because I was bloody starving and was trying to be sociable with the people my housemate had over for wines. Made a point of telling them that I was wearing pants under the oversized men’s shirt I was wearing – but my slutty boxers were actually shorter than the overhang of the shirt, so perhaps this did little to esteem me as someone who dresses respectfully. There’s something about saying “I’m wearing pants, but they’re just too short for you to see them” that just doesn’t sound overly decorous, hey?

8pm – put a bra on under my shirt and went back out to the kitchen to collect my goujons. Cut up two tomatoes to eat with them because I recall seeing diet advice from Snookie (yes, that tiny quaffed woman from Jersey Shore) telling me to “eat salad with every meal”. And look, who am I to dispute the advice of Snookie?

Saturday

9am – a cup of tea, drawn out for as long as possible before I went to put my sports bra and sneakers on

1pm – soft boiled eggs on toast with a cup of tea. I’d been to a gym class at 10am but after a particularly slow walk back up the hill following said class, returned home at about 11.45am. Of course when I returned, I flopped on my bed, scrolled through my phone and then forced myself to shower. This then resulted in at least 40 minutes of post-shower lazing/psyching myself up to put on clothes. Hence why breakfast was so late.

2.30pm – a chunk of this fantastic vegan hazelnut chocolate that cost me eight bucks but don’t regret at all. It’s called Vego and you get it at healthfood stores, so you feel really smug eating it. I needed a treat to dangle in front of my like the proverbial carrot before the donkey cart to motivate me to finish writing my column for the paper next week, but I ended up just eating it before I finished.

3.30pm – a nectarine bought from this weird fancy grocery store I just discovered was just up the road from my place. All the hummus in there was more than four bucks, except for some gear that was on special for $2.99. If you read my 7.35pm entry from Friday night, you’ll understand why. It needed more garlic or something, it just wasn’t right.

5pm – a piece of bread with a whoooole lot of olive oil, because I love myself. I’d just had a nap after burning one of the candles my dedicated sponsor sent me (thanks sweetheart). Life was good.

5.30pm – the bread was good, but not enough. I checked the ingredients of that hummus I talked about earlier – no mention of garlic. There’s your problem. I stirred in olive oil and heated up a tortilla in a sandwich press for dunking. Again, because I love myself.

8pm – lost track of time because Daylight Savings messes with everything. Put on more goujons, partly because I love myself, partly because I have barely anything else in the fridge. I mean, I have two eggs, but that’s for breakfast tomorrow. And I have Corn Flakes, but I can’t let my Saturday night treat be cereal again, I have standards. I mean, the bar is set extremely low (I’m saving a $4.50 bottle of sparkling wine in my fridge for the next big celebration in my life), but I’ve got to have more pride than that. Sooooo Saturday night goujons it is.

8.30pm – whatever spinach was leftover in the bottom of the crisper. I was again reminded of the wisdom of Snookie and forced myself to eat the saddest salad I’ve had in a while. It was just undressed, slightly wilty spinach that I shoved into my mouth in huge clumps to eat it as quickly as possible and get it out of the way. It took me back to my childhood days, when I would swallow my beans with a glass of milk as if they were Herron headache capsules. “I love myself”, I whispered to myself , but I didn’t believe it at this point.

8.35pm – Now that the salad component of my meal was done away with, I was free to enjoy the 10 chicken goujons and two pickles like the piece of shit I am.

Sunday

9.30am – one cup of tea, consumed while I caught up on my food diary. It makes me look much more profesh to have a laptop out with my cup of tea, so this is a bit of a luxury. It makes me feel like some kind of Insta entrepreneur who lives a well-dressed, glamorous but busy life but prioritises self care. I long for that kind of atheistic lifestyle.

10am – another cuppa and two soft-boiled eggs on toast. I tried to eat this in a way that would look as if I were a social media influencer, but I really don’t have the table manners or the self-restraint for that. I used the last of my butter on that piece of toast, there was no way I was letting it get cold.

2.15pm – a falafel plate at a trendy Redfern café, washed down with 1.2 pomegranate mojitos. I was supposed to meet my friend for a classic hot-chook-and-bread-rolls lunch, but I’m not complaining about the change of plans. I thoroughly recommend a pommmojito, which is a name the café didn’t use, for the record.

4.30pm – a cup of tea and two spoonfuls of Greek yogurt. I was going to have a bigger serve of yog, but as you may have read in the earlier post, I got far too deep to go another.

8pm – a bowl of yoghurt with chopped walnuts and a drizzle of honey. Because enough time had passed for me to recognise that I was empty in two ways now, not just one.