TUESDAY

I started off the day by finishing that rice porridge, along with a mandarin.

My mid-morning snack was mandarin and pineapple slices with a dollop of cream.

My partner returned from his festival trip while I was away on a hospital appointment (thanks to an ongoing foot pain), and he made a fry-up that I could eat quickly on my return before going back to work. Also known as the full Irish, mine wasn’t all that full as it consisted of bacon, sausages, a hash brown and half a tomato.

Making chicken-pesto pasta with pine nuts.

Thanks to a late and filling lunch, I wasn’t hungry in the afternoon, but I had two squares of dark chocolate with my cup of tea.

I made chicken-pesto pasta with pine nuts for dinner. This is one of my favourites as it’s quick and easy to make, requires so few ingredients and is super tasty. A winner!

I had to take some ibuprofen later to help with my foot pain (doctor’s orders), and as that has to be taken with food, I finished those tortilla chips from earlier in the week with some salsa.

SUNDAY

Busy day, so I made the most of getting up early and boiled some eggs in preparation for serving lunch later, and I had two of those for breakfast along with an apple.

Boiled eggs for breakfast.

I was hosting a course walking workshop for the dog agility club, so after we got through some of the presentation, we stopped for tea and coffee, and I had one more of those banana, peanut butter and oat cookies along with a square of dark chocolate.

Lunch was included in the workshop, so I had prepared a simple salad board to cater for all the different diets out there, including my breadfree week. Simple is best, and everybody was happy.

The workshop finished earlier than I had thought, so I sat down to do some odds and ends on my laptop while enjoying a few strawberries with whipped cream. I love strawberries; they’re one of my favourite things about summer. Irish strawberries are good, but nothing is as good as Finnish strawberries. They say that the nightless nights of the Nordic countries give strawberries the chance to develop an especially sweet taste. I can’t wait to get home next month and eat some of those!

Dinner was cold-smoked salmon, boiled potatoes and a side salad. This was the first day in my experiment when I sat down to have dinner as part of my usual routine which includes a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits as a plain dessert, but biscuits are off the menu this week. I made the most of the left-over rice porridge instead. I mixed in some whipped cream and canned mandarin slices, and voila – we have hedelmäriisi (fruity rice). Waste not, want not!

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…