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.

FRIDAY

Breakfast with Stephen King - bacon and scrambled eggs.

So, day one of eating no bread and absolutely no sandwiches!

I made bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast while the dogs ate theirs, and their stomachs could settle before their walk while I was eating. I would usually love a slice of toast with eggs and bacon, but I found that once I got started with my brekkie, I didn’t miss it that much.

Since I had no fruit (except a glass of OJ) at breakfast time, I had a banana on my morning break.

Lunch was very simple salmon roulades with a side salad. Again, I would usually have a slice of crisp bread or soda bread with something like this, so it felt a little insubstantial on its own, and I sneaked in a small Dairy Milk chocolate bar to keep me going.

Dinner was early because I had an agility class in the evening. I had rice porridge, which is a Finnish dish traditionally associated with Christmas and more of a dessert than a main course – unless you have rye bread and ham with it, which of course I didn’t. In the rest of the world, rice pudding is probably better known, but rice porridge is cooked on the hob and takes about an hour to make, so there was no way I was going to go to that trouble after the class.

After the class and giving the dogs their evening feed and walk, I was a little peckish again because I hadn’t had a heavy dinner. This was one of those times a cup of tea and some toast would just have done the trick, but instead, I had an ice cream followed by some tortilla chips and salsa with a gin and tonic (Gordon’s Pink, in case you’re interested) while watching Life after People. It's a fascinating documentary about what will happen to our planet after we're gone. I had seen it before, when it first came out, but I wanted to watch it again as research for a short story I'm writing. As for all the snacking, there's one thing you need to know about me: whenever I have ice cream, I need to have some crisps or something salty afterwards. It’s an odd thing, but hey, a bag of crisps never hurt anyone, except perhaps the weighing scales…