When pressed for an answer to this, I usually say that my favourite food is ice cream. When I was pregnant, I had been a vegetarian for 5 years. In spite of carefully calculated meals of complementary proteins as laid out by the old vegetarian classic, Diet for a Small Planet and a first-year Nutritional Food Science course at U of T, I found that I seemed to be lacking certain nutrients and got sick more often.

I feel that what constitutes a healthy diet is quite individual and also depends on activity level.  I had a hard time gaining weight when I was pregnant and at around the 5 month period, began to crave meat.   To boost my calorie intake I would eat tubs of Haagen Daz ice cream although I found it less pleasurable because of the prescriptive nature of the endeavour.  Who would have thought that eating Haagen Daz would seem something of a chore.  My favourite ice cream flavours are coffee and Ben and Jerry’s, Chunky Monkey.  Chunky Monkey is banana flavoured with walnuts and chocolate chunks.

Tonight I had dinner  at the Pickle Barrel.  One of my favourite indulgences is a super-size smoked meat sandwich.  At the Pickle Barrel you get the choice of lean, medium or fatty.  I love a fatty smoked meat sandwich.  To offset the fat factor, I chose a garden salad instead of the fries.  The waitress forgot my order and the sandwich arrived with the fries.  It took great willpower to resist the fries, left on my plate, once the salad arrived.

Anyhow, on a generally healthier note, here is a photo of one of my favourite recipes in Diet for a Small Planet (Frances Moore Lappe), Spanish Bulgur.  I have eaten a whole lot of this over the past 3 decades.  I sometimes return to it when I am in tapering mode for a marathon.  My special tabouli recipe is an adaptation from this cookbook, merged with an Anne Lindsay recipe.  And, it is something that I tend to make in the weeks preceding a marathon.  I’ll publish my secret recipe when I get to that phase of my training.  It is another of my all-time favourite foods, and my very favourite healthy food.

Incidentally the book pictured here is my husband’s copy.  I finally had to get rid of mine.  There was a time when many of our generation owned this book, referred to at times as a “hippie” classic, for whatever that’s worth.

Bon appetit!