Running Snacks

As those among us who unfortunately find ourselves living in Europe would know, Saturday’s sunshine was a fluke. For someone who was born along the equator, I find it almost impossible to believe that I’m outdoors running in a thin cotton T-shirt one day, and watching flurries of snow outside the window a short 48 hours later. So it was back on the treadmill yesterday for a 9mi (14.4km) run that was over before I knew it.

The returning cold and disappearance of light does several things to me, the worst of it feeling like I have no energy. I can only keep my fingers tightly crossed that we will see sun on race day, or else my engine may fail to start. On the other hand, it could also be because my lunches have been looking mostly like this:

Delicious…

But not exactly balanced.

During the medical check-up to get my clearance for the race, after going through my usual diet, the doctor advised me to eat less leafy vegetables. I thought my ears were deceiving me; surely I must be the first person in the world to be told this? She went on to elaborate that switching to starchy root vegetables and pulses will deliver the same vitamins and minerals, but also give me more energy, and reduce digestive distress which running can sometimes create.

I’m not in denial; I take enough photos of my meals to have all the evidence before me that I do indeed eat quite a diabolical amount of vegetables, and it does concern me what may happen on race day. I’m not willing to give up my favourite meal completely, but I am willing to tweak its contents to be more runner-friendly. This is a simple trick I’ve learnt that will help people lose or gain weight. It’s not about cutting out something completely, but making small changes to existing habits that will add up over the long run.

In this meantime, this runner’s been busy getting the energy from elsewhere…

Drink your food, eat your drinks

Earl Grey Muffins

150g flour
100g brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg 100ml milk
50ml earl grey tea, brewed and cooled (save teabag)
4 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).
Mix dry ingredients in one bowl.
Mix wet ingredients in another bowl.
Snip open the earl grey teabag and add leaves into the wet ingredients.Yes, they’re edible. No, you won’t die.
Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour wet ingredients in, and fold. Don’t overmix.
Spoon into muffin pans, pop into oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

When I was in my early teens and had just picked up running, I recall eating a lot of bars. Energy bars, granola bars, trail bars, basically anything with the word “bar” in it. I realize now that it’s just mostly processed carbs glued together with a lot of corn syrup and sorely overpriced. If I’m going to be eating refined flours, I might as well eat a fresh homemade version of it, instead of something that’s wrapped in foil and been sitting on a supermarket shelf for the last 8 months.

Now if only someone can enlighten me on how to make muffins portable during a long run…

Running with DOMS

I’m a dreamer. The problem is, I do the wrong kind of dreaming. My daydreams are limited due to a complete lack of imagination, but night-time dreaming is a totally different story. When I dream at night, it’s like my mind enters the Twilight Zone without permission from my consciousness, and they all feel so real. Recurring dreams are the worst. I get this one dream where I am wandering through a zoo/amusement park, see a delightful water fountain feature, and then I turn into a penguin and waddle into it like it’s the most natural thing in the world to happen. That’s a happy recurring dream; I also get recurring nightmares. They usually involve my sitting a national exam for some subject I haven’t done in the last 10 years (that would be physics), in a language I cannot possibly do it in (fine, it’s Chinese, OK?) I thank the Ministry of Education of Singapore for everlasting mental scars. Always the same dreams, always the same panic, always waking up glad to return to reality.

Except last night’s nightmare was not exam-related. It was running-related. In it, I had to run as fast as I could because I was being hunted by werewolves. Through the streets of Prague. It was an exhausting dream, especially after yesterday’s real running. Finally, I concluded to myself in the dream that it would be stupid to keep running. Here I was, the hunted, having to outrun the hunter. Why not get attacked by one of those beasts, and turn into the hunter instead? Hey, I’ve turned into penguins, bats and a Power Ranger in my dreams, why not a werewolf too?

When I woke up, however, the nightmare continued. Even after clocking in 10 hours of rest, my muscles remembered yesterday’s run. I was sore. Not the pain-in-specific-areas soreness I had before, but a general dull ache from a hard run. I had a 5mi (8km) session today, so I hopped online to see how I ought to proceed. I found this.

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is hardly the worst thing a runner can suffer through. Heck, my armpit chafe hurts worse than this does. On the page it also says runners can train through DOMS as long as it’s an easy run. That was exactly what I did. I have decided that instead of my regular hills on Thursdays and speed on Saturdays, I will now do easy runs on Thursdays, and alternate hills one Saturday and speed the next, simply because I am running 50% more each week now, and it’s counter-productive to push so hard.

Don’t expect more from someone who lives by this as a Bible.

Easy runs. As I said yesterday, hard on everything else but the heart and the lungs. Yet, I found myself really enjoying it. My only complain during the run was – and it’s never happened before – I felt so darn hungry. It was a “short” run so I didn’t prepare anything to eat/drink besides water. I didn’t want to cut the run short, nor did I want to speed up and risk hurting myself, so I just endured the hunger like it was some running-related pain.

Today’s lunch was similar to yesterday’s, only bigger in volume, so no pictures on that. Here’s last night’s dinner though:

That glass does not contain water.

That’s a mushroom and bacon frittata, served with an endive salad and black bread. And a gin-based aperitif on the side, since it is a universal fact that ethanol is required to produce bio fuel.

Endive Salad

2 endives
1 apple
Walnuts
Blue cheese

Wash and chop endives and apple.
Crumble in walnuts and blue cheese.
Dress with lemon juice, olive oil and sea salt.

I’m a huge salad eater, but this is starting to pose a couple of problems for me. Firstly, it means I have to add lots of stuff to make up the calories I need. Secondly, we all know what fun fibre can have on the digestive tracks during a long run. There are many types of nightmares I am willing to endure, but runner’s trots during a race is definitely NOT one of them.

Recipe for Mardi Gras

France is a lot more Catholic than it would like to admit. My arrival here a year ago was marked by Ash Wednesday (Mercredi des Cendres), the beginning of Lent (Carême), the name for the 4o days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday (Pâques). I think it’s supposed to mark the 40 day period of the J-Man wandering in the desert. So you see, any day that requires an explanation with this many religious terminology can only mean that the Republic is not as secular as the Enlightenment period would have hoped.

At any rate, Mardi Gras is not only celebrated in France, and it goes by many other names in other countries. In Australia, I remember it was called Pancake Tuesday, which truly removed all religious connotations to the point where I had to stop someone and ask “why pancakes? why not flapjacks or crêpes?” He naturally had no answer, he was busy chewing his pancake. In Australia, the name Mardi Gras is also used for another festival, one which would truly give French Catholics a fit if they knew about it.

So, the name Mardi Gras in English translates literally to Fat Tuesday, because you’re supposed to empty the larders of all fat, flour, and foods one is meant to give up for the next 40 days. Nothing like a diet to feel solidarity with Christ. It goes by the name Shrove Tuesday too, which comes from the word “shrive”, which means to confess.

So what would Mardi Gras be, without pancakes? (For the LGBTs in Australia, it’s a rhethorical question, no need to answer. I know what you’re going to say.)

Protein Pancake

1 tablespoon vanilla whey
3 tablespoons oat bran
1 egg
1/2 pot (60g) fruit-flavoured yogurt
2 tablespoons peanut butter (topping)

Mix all the ingredients until you get a smooth batter. If it’s too thick, add a bit more yogurt or milk.
Heat some butter in pan.
Pour batter into pan and cook on medium heat for 2 minutes.
Shake the pan. If the batter is now half solidified and moving freely, you can flip the pancake very easily.
Cook for another minute or two.
Serve with peanut butter or the remaining fruit yogurt.

Hardly fattening enough for Fat Tuesday

The only confession I am making is how I am alternating between reading the news of the Pope’s retirement and Richard Dawkins at the same time, and how doing so makes this pancake a gabazillion times tastier.

Runner’s Dilemma – Eating Before or After?

Disclaimer: What is written here is not designed as medical advice of any sort. Feel free to disagree with my M.O, since it flies in the face of most conventional practices, but it works for me and I make no apologies. Now we may proceed…

I fuel my runs with a strong cup of coffee with milk. Indeed, this means I do not eat “breakfast” on days that I run. I used to, until I found it led to many problems. The food would sit in my stomach like a rock, weighing me down so I could barely shuffle, let alone run. When I exerted myself, the food rises up my throat and I feel like I am about to be sick. If I eat something light, like yogurt and fruit, it does exactly the same, but worse, I now have the taste of sour dairy curdling in my throat. I could feel the food sloshing inside my stomach; hell, I could hear it.

So I changed my strategy, and eat myself stupid at dinners, which I find helps me sleep incredibly well. This way, I’m not ravenous when I wake up, and coffee with milk will suffice. It made a world of difference to my runs. I felt lighter, ran faster, finished stronger, and worked up a fantastic appetite for my breakfast (generally lunchtime).

There is only one small issue with this incredibly smart solution – sometimes I wake up hungry anyway. Last night for instance, I skimped out on the carbs because we had split pea purée with grilled pork chops and cabbage stir-fry, and as far as I am concerned, purée is a non-food for the miserable moment when I only have my gums left and have to suck my food. Coincidentally, “purée” is also a French interjection of surprise and/or dismay. So yes, purée to purée, and bollocks to all who disagree. I sulked out dinner on chocolate, which is very tasty but not very good at keeping one sated overnight.

Fortunately, today was a short 4mi (6.4km) hills run, so after deliberating whether I wanted to eat something and risk regurgitation on my toughest run of each week, or let my hunger push me to run a wee bit faster, I decided it was a no-brainer. I only needed to sweeten the deal, because delayed gratification deserves reward, right? Right? RIGHT?

Right. And I faithfully await the day I am blissfully reunited with my fellow Pastafarians in the juicy meatballs of the FSM. And it will be worth the wait.

After a mushroom and cheese omelette sandwich of monstrous proportions, I was still hungry. I had switched gears from give-me-a-hot-and-heavy-meal-famished to need-the-repetitive-hand-to-mouth-action-peckish. I ought to start numbering my types of hunger, but I fear I will run out of integers before I am done.

Snack for Hunger #37

Dried whole figs
Strong cheese (I used Munster but gorgonzola works too)
Walnuts

Chop. Layer. Serve.

It makes a good party nibble too, now that I think about it. I had a Frenchman decry cheese-and-fruit pairing as sacrilege, until he found a pear and goat’s cheese crepe, prompting him to swiftly change his opinion. So, don’t diss it till you’ve tried it. Change the stupid name and serve it up at a snooty party if you cannot be bothered to use more than 3 ingredients for dessert.

Dilemma solved. I think I’ll stick to my post-run big meals, especially when I can round it off like this.

A Runner’s Splurge Dinner

Food is a funny topic. The saying goes, that one man’s meat is another man’s poison (I don’t see how this is necessarily mutually exclusive, by the way). I say, one man’s splurge is another man’s staple. Coffee, chocolate, cheese… these are daily staples in my book. Stand between me and a jar of trail mix, and watch me turn into The Hulk. When I browse for recipes in the media, I am occasionally irked by the language used to describe ordinary foods, such as “splurge on these decadent [insert boring, normal food]”. Splurges are food items I would love to eat more often, but do not, purely for financial reasons. That said, I understand splurging from a calorie-bank is probably what they’re implying, in which case I say splurge on tiramisu, not a sodding bran muffin.

What’s a splurge item for this runner, then? Prawns. So much tastier than tuna, so much more expensive too…

Prawn and kiwi salad in cocktail glasses… because don’t tell me you haven’t eaten cereal out of your coffee mugs.

But oh so versatile.

Pasta. Of course. Splurge for some, necessity for runners.

Due to geography, seafood is exorbitantly expensive and usually not so fresh, since there is nary an ocean’s scent in the north-east of France. Actually, meat and seafood generally costs a lot more in France than it does in Australia. I speak from personal experience as the average supermarkets-and-farmer’s-markets shopper. In a previous post, I had written about going vegetarian once in a while simply because it costs less to make a meat-free meal. Well, those few occasions of foregoing has entitled me to one awesome meal where I well and truly splurged.

Prawn Pasta

Wholemeal pasta
Prawns
Broccoli
Mushrooms
Garlic
Onion
Olives
Tomato purée
Herbes de Provence
Salt
Pepper

Boil the prawns. Save the water when draining, and boil pasta in it.
Shell the prawns, set aside.
Chop all the vegetables and sauté till soft. (Mushrooms soften faster than broccoli, so you know which one to cook first.)
Season vegetables with herbes de Provence, salt and pepper. Add prawns to reheat.
Stir through tomato purée, and simmer.
Serve up with bruschetta, or garlic bread, or cheese sticks, or whatever the magazines are calling “splurge-y”.

For folks who scoff at the “luxury” of prawns because you eat your lobsters rolled in gold dust, consider this. Prawns are a low-fat source of protein and Vitamin B12. So consider it a caloric saving, and splurge on something else. Something good. Not bran muffins.

Keeping Warm with Soup

Nothing beats a steaming bowl of soup on a cold winter’s night. Soup was a dish I came to familiarise myself with during my brief stint into vegetarianism. As a typical student, I was much more concerned with studying (and partying) than cooking, so time spent in the kitchen was 50% coffee-brewing, 20% searching for bottle openers, 20% opening and closing the fridge door repeatedly while hoping for food to magically appear, and 10% throwing things together into a pot and hoping for the best.

It was literally that. If it took more than one pot to cook it in, I wasn’t eating it. Pasta and breakfast cereal got boring fast, and one day in the supermarket I stumbled upon one of man’s greatest inventions – soup mix. I don’t mean the powder packets which you add water in, to form an emulsion only fit for toothless geriatrics, but a lovely mix of split peas, lentils, and various beans. All I had to do was boil that with stock powder, throw in frozen mix vegetables and I got a meal that looked after itself while I read sci-fi novels my lecture notes.

However, this is not a vegetarian dish. It’s a childhood reminisce.

Pork Rib & Cabbage Soup

1 onion
Chinese cabbage
2 carrots
Pork ribs
White beans, soaked overnight and boiled
Stock powder
2 star anise
2 green cardamom pods
Cloves

Wash and chop vegetables.
Fill a pot with enough water to just cover vegetables.
Bring to boil, then add the stock powder and spices.
At some stage, throw in the pork ribs.
Add the white beans right before serving.

What is this alchemy, I hear you roar. I don’t know, I was feeling creative. Also, this is what happens when you read a novel in one hand, while absent-mindedly reaching for spices with the other. I thought the cardamom was black pepper. It turned out beautifully, if I may say so. Not quite like the pork rib, peanut and lotus root soup I had in mind, and not at all like the bak kut teh some readers may have assumed.

This is not one of grandma’s recipes. I’m sure she’d eat it if she could though.

It’s a broth-based soup, so it tends to be on the lighter side, but with enough pork ribs and vegetables it’s a complete meal that cooks in one pot, and that’s the way I like it.

Staying In, Eating “Out”

Friday night heralds the weekend, so Friday night dinners are supposed to be fun. Much to my dismay, I found myself staring at an almost-empty fridge where the only fun item was beer. There were too many jars of condiments, half a tomato, two halves of a lemon that refused to be reconciled, a couple of mince patties, and this monster cabbage I bought almost two weeks ago that would not stop mocking me. I’ve made two soups and two stir-frys with this 99c terror, and I know we’re supposed to eat seasonally and yadda yadda, but nobody tells you that when vegetables grow to King Kongish proportions, you better have a family to cook for.

I don’t have a family to cook for. When I have jazz playing on the loud speakers of the apartment, the flyer in my mailbox that advertises delivery pizza starts to look very attractive. I even entertained the thought of getting sushi delivered, but the prices on the website put me off. I recalled my resolution of eating out less in 2013, and eating in doesn’t count if the food came from outside.

It was the beer and mince patties that gave me inspiration in the end. I was chatting to my best friend earlier, who is sweltering in the Australian heat, and I would do anything to swap our miserable winter for a little bit of summer right now. The chilled beer, the barbecue, the beach…

Summer in a bowl

If I had known right from the start it would have taken me over an hour to prepare it, I wouldn’t have bothered. Fortunately, I was completely ignorant of that fact, and started hacking the cabbage with glee and determination to finish it once and for all. Of course with my kind of luck, I would have no grater for the carrot, nor mayonnaise for the coleslaw for that matter. That’s why a ten-minute recipe took me an hour to create.

Mayonnaise is not hard to make from scratch, it turns out. An egg yolk, a teaspoon of mustard, a squeeze of lemon juice, salt, pepper and a-third of a cup of oil are all it takes. I’ve seen recipes calling for more or less of those ingredients, but I am a firm believer of disregarding instructions. And what do you know? The dressing for coleslaw repeats those ingredients anyway. I like it when a recipe is lazier than I am.

Coleslaw

Chopped cabbage
Grated carrots
Raisins – soaked in water to soften, then drained
½ cup mayonnaise
Squeeze of lemon juice
1 teaspoon mustard
2 teaspoons vinegar
¼ cup milk
Sugar
Salt
Pepper

Mix the first three ingredients in a large bowl.
Mix the rest in a dressing bowl.
Pour dressing over and toss.
Serve with sweet chili and goat’s cheese hamburgers (optional), chips (optional) and beer (mandatory).

Best served with [insert your favourite beer].

Rest Day Baking

Talk about being prescient – yesterday I wrote about injuries and today I woke up with my left ankle threatening to disown me. It was a screaming kind of pain, and my mind went blind with panic as I Googled what I should do. In the end I popped an ibuprofen and sulked through my breakfast. My 8km (5 miles) run yesterday in 48mins made me feel like the king of the mountain; now I am backing off from today’s 5km hills.

Without a run, my day feels a little bit too long. To make matters worse, it’s one of those days when the sun attempts to punch through the iron clouds, to no avail. Yesterday was as dreary, and tomorrow promises to be the same. In an attempt to not lose my mind, I decided to amuse myself with kitchen chemistry.

Not long ago, some well-meaning person handed me this upon hearing about my running:

What IS this stuff?

I tried it once on its own, and la vache! it is vile. I don’t mean to say all protein shakes are disgusting, this one just happens to taste like… well, find a dog, lick its arse and you get an idea of what it’s like. Thankfully, as I was about to throw it away, my sister shared with me a pretty nifty secret. Bake it into cookies and it’s suddenly not as bad. I took an oatmeal raisin cookie recipe that was lying around somewhere, swapped out half the flour for this protein powder, cut out half the sugar since there is sugar in this, cut out the raisins completely, and swapped the ground cinnamon for cocoa powder. This was the result:

Mocha oatmeal cookies, with added protein for muscle.

They came out soft after 10 minutes in the oven at 180°C (350°F) but hardened up on the cooling rack.

I also got this from the same well-meaning person:

WHY would you?

Something died a little inside me when I saw French words on a Knorr soup sachet. France! What is happening to you? Since when did you become a nation of Just-Add-Water, or Ready-In-Five-Minutes? This packet lived with its brothers and sisters in my pantry until today, while waiting for the protein cookies to be spawned, I decided one of two things must happen. Either I surrender to this Culture Bastard, or I will make it bow down to me.

I won.

Savoury herbed muffins with pesto, because everything tastes good with pesto. Here is an approximate recipe; I had to add a little more flour when the batter didn’t look right.

Easy Savoury Muffins

112g packet soup mix (choose a cream-of-something that says just add water or milk)
80g flour
40g wheat bran
1 tablespoon herbes de Provence (or whatever dried herbs you want)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
4 tablespoons oil
180ml skim milk
Pesto

Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F).
In one bowl, mix dry ingredients. In another, mix wet ingredients.
Add wet ingredients to dry ones, don’t overmix unless you want rocks. If it looks too liquidy, add in a little more flour.
Spoon into muffin pans, top with pesto, and throw it into the oven for 25 minutes.
Stick a knife through the muffins; if it comes out clean, they’re done. If not, back in the oven for another 5 minutes, Brutus.
Cool on rack and Bob’s your uncle.

I’m still sulking about my sore ankle, but now I’m off to have a delicious sulk with fresh muffins and cookies.

Sunday Late and Lazy Lunch

On Sundays, time freezes up, swirls into sludge and smears itself around me. This is especially true in France on a winter’s morning, when nothing except the churches and the bakeries are open, both rivaling for visitors with their tolling bells and tasty bread rolls. On Sundays, my mandatory cup of morning coffee actually becomes a real pleasure to drink, and lunch becomes a distant worry.

Here was what I managed to rustle up though, when I finally overcame my inertia. It’s not really the right season to be having salad, but if I can still find lettuce and tomatoes, then it’s always a good time to eat them.

Eat your greens! Why wouldn’t you? They’re delicious.

Chicken and Pumpkin Salad

3 cups cubed pumpkin
2 fillets of chicken, cubed
Salad
Tomatoes
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Dried herbs to season (I used chili flakes, basil, oregano, salt and flecks of dried mushrooms)

Salads are easy. Wash and chop the vegetables.
Roast the pumpkin in the oven at 200°C (400°F) until soft. To avoid burning, toss lightly in some oil before placing on pan.
Sauté the chicken in a pan with a little butter and the dried herbs. Cook the meat through, salmonella-induced food poisoning is not fun.
When everything is ready, toss them all in a bowl with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I love this recipe. I dare anyone tell me it’s not healthy and indulgent all at once. Could you eat this on a (insert name of diet du jour) plan? Sure you can! If not, change your diet plan. If you’re not on a diet, fantastic. Nothing helps a Sunday lunch go down better than a glass of chilled white wine. We even had a bit of sunshine at the right moment, and were fooled into believing it could almost be summertime soon…

A Flexitarian Runner’s Dinner

Not long ago when my sister came to visit, I was faced with an interesting, but not entirely new, dilemma. What to cook for dinner? She had recently gone vegetarian, and after 15 months of experiencing France, I have found a grand total of – wait for it – one vegetarian restaurant. That was my first day in this crazy land, and that fantastic meal created a first impression of vegetarian dining in this country that it subsequently could not live up to. Of course, regular restaurants offer up vegetarian options, but they’re always added as an afterthought. More to the point, how do I introduce her to the delights of French cuisine when she wouldn’t touch a well-done steak, let alone escargots in herbed butter, foie gras on pain d’epices and blood sausages with mashed potato and applesauce?

End of sibling torment.

I will come clean and admit that I had my own stint with vegetarianism many moons ago, when it was easier to do so as I lived in Adelaide and knew of quite a few vegetarian places that served up great tucker. Since my favourite food group is booze, I did not miss meat at all (except salmon sashimi; there were moments I could kill for it, and walking past sushi places meant averting my eyes and counting to ten). Then, I started training for my second 12km City to Bay after not exercising in longer than I had been vegetarian by that stage. It was then I could no longer get away with eating whatever-as-long-as-it’s-not-meat. I had to be very attentive to macronutrients and micronutrients, much more than I cared for it. I was at a crossroads, do I stop running and continue being vegetarian, or keep training and eat meat again?

Not a hard choice, since I’m one to take the path of least resistance. I’d made my point well enough by then, and raised awareness among my friends (who were by and large not vegetarians) that they could enjoy decent meat-free meals, save some money, and reduce the environmental pressures by having a couple of vegetarian meals a week (basically, whenever they ate with me). I also did it out of curiosity as to how long I would last at it, and over a year was longer than I fancied I could manage. Thus, I bade farewell to my vegetarian days with salmon and avocado maki.

Note, I do not mean to say that runners cannot be vegetarians. I know of many runners with race times that make me wonder if we are even the same species, who are vegetarian or even vegan. I find their genetics/discipline most remarkable. All I am saying is that I personally have no interest/ability to commit both to running and to being strictly vegetarian.

I do, however, continue to enjoy meat-free meals when I cook at home. One of my resolutions for 2013 is to eat out only once or twice a month, and cook the rest of my meals. Dining out is expensive, often too salty, and even in France they sometimes come in obscene quantities.

I found Italian Rose Beans in the supermarket a few days ago, and bought a bag because their mottled appearance fascinated me.

Beautiful, in a freakish way. Will eating this give me leprosy?

Tonight’s dinner, without further ado:

The Flexitarian Runner’s Pasta

200g Italian rose beans, soaked overnight and simmered till soft
200g wholemeal spaghetti
150g spinach
1 large onion, chopped
Black olives
Olive oil
Chicken stock cube (vegetable stock cube’s good too)
Oregano
Salt
Pepper

Directions

Boil pasta. Drain and set aside.
In a large skillet, sauté the onion in some butter.
In the same skillet, add the spinach.
To help the spinach wilt, add half a cup of water with a stock cube dissolved in it. This also helps cut the oil required.
In a large bowl, add the pasta, spinach, onion, beans and olives. Toss.
Drizzle with olive oil until it’s not so dry, then add the oregano, salt and pepper.

I think I have earned this, along with some Roquefort on bread and a glass of red wine, after my 5km hills waddle today.