THURSDAY

This was the final day of my Anti-Sandwich Experiment, and I started it off in style with sausages and eggs for breakfast.

Making lettuce wraps.

My breakfast was so filling that I wasn’t particularly hungry at break time, but I had some natural yoghurt with pineapple slices.

Lunch was a little messy today, for many reasons. Thanks to scheduling conflicts, I had recorded my next episode of Cold Feet on the digi box in our spare bedroom, which meant I had to eat lunch there too. With, say, a sandwich, that would have been alright, but I had lettuce wraps. There was mince and salsa everywhere, and I had to ward off the dogs, who were keen to get a bit of the mince – probably not the lettuce. After I washed my hands of the mess I had created – which was really tasty – I had a cup of tea and the rest of that dark chocolate I have been snacking on all week.

I had another Whitworth’s Shot in the afternoon as those wraps were surprisingly filling.

My partner surprised me with another Chinese takeaway this evening, so I had sweet and sour chicken with boiled rice. I don’t usually eat takeaways twice a week, but hey, if someone brings it home, am I going to say no? We watched Paddington 2 like proper grown-ups, and I topped the meal off with another Dairy Milk bar.

SATURDAY

It was one of those rare days when I had no schedules and could do everything at my own pace – wahey!

Breakfast was my favourite porridge with cinnamon, apple and natural yoghurt. It takes longer to make than the average bowl of porridge, which is why I rarely make it during the week, but it’s well worth it. You can find the recipe here. Because I always try to get my five a day, I also had a mandarin.

I was preparing to host a course walking workshop for the agility club on Sunday, so I made some banana, peanut butter and oat cookies, which I tested out as a snack. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that either as this recipe is vegan friendly and gluten free, so I broke none of my own rules!

Lunch was a stuffed tomato with a side salad, tortilla chips and hummus. One of my pet hates is food waste, so I wanted to make the most of those tortilla chips, and they were a nice addition to this meal.

Because I got up late, lunch was late and so I skipped straight to dinner. I treated myself to a Chinese. The only takeaway in the village where I live is a Chinese, but I have no complaints as their food is absolutely divine! I went for my favourite, crispy shredded chicken in sweet chilli sauce with boiled rice. I had prawn crackers, of course, which I don’t think break my rules either as they’re more like crisps. My dogs would have been disappointed had there been no prawn crackers – they always get a prawn cracker to share between them.

Dinner: Crispy shredded chicken in sweet chilli sauce with boiled rice. Yep, I still buy and watch DVDs!

I enjoyed my dinner in front of the TV while watching my favourite Finnish film of recent years, Teit meistä kauniin. Before I moved to Ireland, I wouldn’t have dreamed of watching a Finnish film, but they have vastly improved in the last couple of decades, and this particular film follows the early days of one of our biggest rock bands, Apulanta, who I’m a fan of.

I was quite full after dinner, but after my stomach settled a little, I had a cup of tea with a couple of squares of dark chocolate with sea salted caramel – yummy! – which just slaked the craving for something sweet.

THE ANTI-SANDWICH EXPERIMENT - an introduction

I just want to make a few things clear to begin with. I’m not about to start blogging, and I’m definitely not about to start blogging about food. Plenty of people already do that, and they do it much better than I could. I also can’t see my friends, readers and followers interested in a food blog by yours truly. 

I do, however, have to eat every day, in fact several times a day, like the rest of the human population. The western world in particular seems to be obsessed with sandwiches. Let’s face it: we have sandwiches for breakfast, for lunch and even for dinner. If you’re on the go or in a hurry, you’ll tell your friends or workmates that you’ll just grab a quick sandwich. 

All of this is fine. What I have problem with is having a sandwich every single day, sometimes more than once a day, because it’s the easiest, quickest, cheapest or only option. It really is. I often travel with my sister, who is a coeliac, and for her, grabbing a quick sandwich is almost never an option because she can’t have those ordinary sandwiches sold at every petrol station containing such lovely fillings as ham cheese, chicken and stuffing or cheese ploughman’s. The thing is, because I can eat sandwiches, I feel like I should eat them when I'm travelling. 

After 36 years on this earth, I must have had hundreds if not thousands of sandwiches. I’m sick of them. It’s time to do something about it. I have looked up alternatives to sandwiches, and they are still very bread based. I don’t really care if I put the same stuff between two slices of bread or inside a wrap; it’s more or less the same thing. 

I’m not saying that I have a problem with sandwiches in particular. I love pizza, but if I had to eat pizza every single day of my life, I’d get pretty sick of that too. Likewise, I enjoy Chinese food and Mexican food, but I don’t want to eat them all the time either. Variety is the spice of life.  

For the next week, I’m going to go breadless. I will have no bread products or nothing resembling bread. That includes pizza, biscuits, pastries, buns and bread rolls - you get the idea. There are no hard and fast rules in this, but if it contains flour, some raising against and has been baked, I probably won’t eat it during the week. 

I'm not doing this for health reasons or as a diet. I have no special dietary requirements. I have no food allergies or intolerances. I’m not vegan or vegetarian, and I mostly eat anything and everything. Eating is just something that I get on with. The only factor that limits my eating is my irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which is fairly easy to live with, if occasionally a pain in the bowels. The main thing with my IBS is to eat regularly, so I snack a lot and try to eat something approximately every three hours. 

This week happens to be one where I’m primarily at home and by myself while my partner – a fierce defender of sandwiches – is away. This gives me the freedom to experiment with meals that aren’t sandwiches. I’m sure there will be lots of salads – at the end of the day, a sandwich without bread is a salad, isn’t it? – but I’ll try to mix it up. I want to find those alternatives so that after this experiment, I will be in a better position to avoid sandwiches. 

I will keep track right here of what I eat every day so that anybody else interested in giving up on or reducing the number of sandwiches can get some ideas. 

For all you sandwich lovers out there – do not be insulted. There is still a place for sandwiches in this world. It’s just not on my plate – not every single day. 

Finally, if anybody out there is in a band that’s still looking for a name, I think The Anti-Sandwich Experiment would be a pretty cool name. Just let me know when you’re playing at a venue near me…