DC does... veganism

You read that correctly. I, Dave Crole, dedicated and unapologetic carnivore, went vegan. For a whole bloody month. Or a month that was not in any way bloody, as it goes.

I took a photo of my last steak because it was an emotional moment for me.

For those that are somehow unaware of veganism and have not heard it from the horse's mouth, they literally eat only plants. Much like horses. That means no animal flesh, no dairy, no eggs, no honey, no gelatin, no anything that may be pleasurable to consume and give you the satisfaction of existing at the top of the food pyramid. However, vegans get the warm glow of knowing that they aren't contributing to animal suffering and have a reduced carbon footprint so therefore are better than other people.

Although the level of smug emitted by vegans may be an environmental hazard in itself.

The health effects of vegan diets are often advertised, with proponents claiming an array of health benefits and detractors claiming a multitude of nutritional shortfalls and inadequacies. To some extent they are both correct, many vegans would have you believe that eliminating animal products is a panacea that will cure all ills, whilst that is demonstrably not true, there are generally some health benefits of switching to veganism. 

Calories from animal products will generally be replaced with grains, beans, fruits and vegetables, which means vegans generally have higher intakes of fibre, antioxidants and nutrients such as potassium, magnesium and vitamins A, C and E. Vegan diets tend to make people feel full at lower calorie intakes, with vegans also tending to have lower body weight, blood sugar levels and diabetes risk than non-vegans, perhaps due to the high fibre intake of the diet. There is likely also cancer protection properties; there is debated data over red meat and dairy both raising the risk of some cancers and consensus data on vegetables and legumes reducing the risk of some cancers, therefore replacing the former with the latter will likely lead to reduced cancer risks. The previous sentence also holds true if 'cancer' is replaced with 'heart disease and strokes'. So, there are demonstrably some positive effects associated with the elimination of animal products and/or eating more vegetables and legumes, but is it all one way traffic?

This is unambiguously good for you.

No. Here's why eating some animals is still good. Vegans are very commonly deficient in a number of important nutrients when compared to omnivores, these include vitamin B12, iron, vitamin D3, zinc and omega 3 fats. Going into detail on the roles of each of these would take quite some text, but suffice to say they play important roles in the healthy functioning of the body including development of red blood cells, nerve function, brain development, mitochondrial function and most importantly by far, muscle function and growth. Deficiencies in these nutrients will lead to reduced physical and mental performance, and chronic deficiency could lead to diseases such as Alzheimer's, heart disease, anemia and osteoporosis. You will find all of these nutrients in ample quantities in animal products and in the case of B12, heme iron (the easily absorbed kind) and long chain omega 3 fats, you will almost exclusively find them in animal products. There are ways of making up for these deficiencies on a vegan diet, if synthetic versions are available, supplementation is an obvious choice, but there is also the odd (stupidly expensive) plant food from a far flung place that contains a given nutrient in small amounts such as nori seaweed for B12 or microalgae oil for omega 3 acids.

This isn't necessarily bad for you.

Discussions on the philosophy and ethics of eating animals can be a very interesting, they also have been done to death by people far more invested in the subject than I, so I'll keep it brief. These sorts of discussions can also be an absolute minefield as people can get quite dogmatic over the issue. It's easy to get a load of information from some partisan website, convince yourself that your position is the unambiguously correct one and stay safely in your echo chamber. I'm not pointing fingers at either side, or saying that I am some even handed ethical arbiter, I've been as guilty as any of adopting a position (in this case "just eat some meat and have a shower you dirty hippie") and ignoring any counter arguments.

Sometimes, this was the correct position.

That being said, here are some basic questions and thoughts on the subject to have a little ponder on:

• Do we have the right to contribute to the suffering of and/or kill animals when we can demonstrably survive (but arguably thrive) without animal products?
• The eating of animals (and the dense source of calories and micro nutrients therein) was arguably a catalyst for the evolution of the human brain, is the total elimination of animal products form the diet a good idea?
• Eliminating animal products will greatly reduce one's environmental impact (mainly through reducing the inefficient land, energy and water use of meat farming), with a study showing that meat eaters contribute approximately 2.5 times as much carbon dioxide as vegans. However, there are many things we can do to reduce environmental impact, but don't due to inconvenience. We could walk everywhere, we could plant trees everyday, we could not heat our homes, use electrical devices or bathe, to go to the most extreme, we could just kill ourselves. To what point is it feasible to reduce our pleasure in life to benefit the environment?
• Are all feed stock animals' lives a net negative experience? If we buy ethically sourced, high welfare meat (and to a greater extent eggs), it may be the case that this animal, which may not even exist otherwise, has lived a net positive life. If an animal is freely roaming and eating, but with protection from predators and little to no stressors until the moment of slaughter, is the entire process tantamount to animal cruelty or benevolence?

Exhibit A: Happy cow

• At what point is it rational to draw the line on animal consumption? Most recoil at the prospect of eating dogs or dolphins (or cannibalism), yet eat cows and pigs. Do we rank by intelligence? Ability to feel pain? Cuteness? Similar can apply to vegans, how small is too small to care about? Most vegans won't eat insects, but also likely won't go to extreme Jainist levels of sweeping the path in front of themselves in case they were to step on one or worry about the insects that were inevitably killed in the harvesting of crops.

More vegan than you.

I'm not pretending to have answers on any of this. Extending universal ethics to all animals is a nice idea, but so is eating steak.

Anyway, on to my actual experiences of eating vegan. I've detailed my usual eating habits in a previous post; essentially lots of animal products and vegetables, some grains and fruit and a bit of junk when my sweet tooth needs a fix. This generally works out as a high protein, moderate carb, moderate fat intake (somewhere around 30:30:40 P:F:C) and I've found it works pretty well for maintaining physique and performance whilst providing satiety and ability to eat a flexible range of foods.

I still can't believe I survived a whole month on this sort of thing.

Cue veganism. Cue a large calorie, protein and fat deficit. Chief of concern among these is protein, which tends to be the main worry amongst active people considering a vegan diet. Vegan protein sources that don't come coupled with a significant portion of carbs or fat are relatively few, so analogously replacing meat with a direct macro-nutrient equivalent isn't always possible, but such sources do exist:

• Tofu and tempeh - I limited these due to the non conclusive evidence on soy's feminising effects and my current state of quite enjoying being a man.
• Seitan - essentially wheat meat, not good if you are gluten sensitive, but great otherwise, albeit hard to get hold of.
• Rice, pea and hemp powders - I had a big bag of pea protein that a friend rejected due to it tasting like a dusty barn, so I used this in small amounts throughout the month. Pea protein is among the cheapest protein powders and has a very high leucine content, which is arguably the most important amino acid to signal anabolism, so this might just be the vegan athlete's saviour.

Sources of protein which come bundled with a hefty whack of fat include:

The supermodel of the plant food world

• Nuts, seeds and nut butters - These are tasty and many contain beneficial micro-nutrients in addition to protein and fat, however too much consumption can be detrimental due to the high omega 6 content. Too much omega 6 can block omega 3 metabolism pathways and therefore lead to the same effects as omega 3 deficiency, which is already a potential issue on the vegan diet.
• Chia seeds - darling of Instagramistas world over, these little black seeds provide a decent amount of protein and nutrients but importantly also omega 3 fatty acids that are regularly lacking in a vegan diet.
• Flax seeds - These are chia's less glamorous cousins, slightly less nutritious but they do a good enough job.

Finally, sources of protein that come in a nice carby package include:

I don't think I can stress just how many of these goddamn things I ate over the past month.

• Lentils, beans and legumes - probably the most important food to vegans. Beans made up the bulk of my intake during this month due to their protein content, decent micro-nutrients, versatility, high fibre and low cost. If you want to eliminate meat from your diet, get friendly with beans.
• Grains - Though we generally think of grains as carb sources, many have a nice little bit of protein tucked away. Oats are about 17% protein when dry, wheat flour is about 10%, buckwheat 14% and if you want to get fancy, quinoa is about 15% protein. 
• Vegetables - okay, they are a crap source of protein in terms of density, however in terms of macro-nutrient ratios, vegetables like peas, bean sprouts, broccoli and green beans are pretty favourable as they are also low carb and practically zero fat. They aren't going to be a majority contributor to your protein needs, but the grams add up when you are getting your veggies in.

This list may lead you to the first realisation I had when eating vegan, that protein comes in small amounts from a large variety of sources. When eating an omnivorous diet, meal planning and tailoring of macro nutrients is easy: cook a lump of meat, that's protein sorted (and fat depending on choice). Add grains/potatoes for carbs. Add more fats if necessary. Add veggies for micro-nutrients and fibre. It's kids play. Tailoring macro-nutrients on a vegan diet is advanced algebra in comparison.

...Fuck it, just eat more beans

Firstly, unless only vegetables and nuts is appealing to you, a vegan diet is necessarily a high carbohydrate diet, as most readily available protein sources fall under the 'protein with carb' heading. When eating a high carbohydrate diet, in general we then want to bring fats down. Some fat is necessary for hormone synthesis (including the omega 3s that I have been banging on about at many points in this article), but in a high carb diet where there is sufficient fuel for the body, ingested fats are the most facile macro nutrient for the body to store as fat (perhaps unsurprisingly).

I decided to aim for a classic high carbohydrate macro nutrient split of approximately 25% Protein, 15% Fat, 60% Carbs, which for my maintenance calories ends up somewhere around 200 g protein, 55 g fat and 480 g carbs. I also tried to eat an almost entirely 'wholefood' diet, avoiding processed foods and limiting protein powders, which seems to be doing vegan on hard mode. This article is already running long, so here is a list of my thoughts, take-aways, general musings and advice to anyone thinking of trying a vegan diet:

• When eating vegan (albeit for only 30 days) I didn't feel any magical energy boost or alertness or ascend to a godly level of karmic bliss that many converts seem to talk of. However, I also didn't feel tired or weak like many avowed anti-vegans will talk of. I think a decent diet can come in a variety of forms. Try to eat a variety of whole foods, a good volume of vegetables and keep protein fairly high and you can't go too far wrong.
• A mechanism by which I think veganism helps people lose weight is also a mechanism by which I think no carb diets can help people lose weight. It's not a physiological one, but a psychological one. When entire families of foods are off limits, one has to think about almost everything that goes into their mouth. This promotes a mindfulness about what you are eating; quickly after "can I eat this?" come "should I eat this?", resulting in a more thoroughly thought out diet.
• It's hell of a lot of carbs. I'm fairly large, but a vegan diet will necessarily contain a lot of carbs for everyone. If you want to take in 0.5% of your body weight of carbs each day, its going to take some effort in both cooking and eating.
• This is especially true when those carbs need to encompass as much protein as possible and therefore also tend to contain a load of fibre. This meant the carbs came mainly in the form of various beans and lentils, buckwheat and whole wheat breads (I can't eat oats). Prepare for a lot of jaw work to get it in, and a lot of toilet time to get it back out.

The authentic vegan experience.

• I regularly undershot protein and total calories due to the sheer volume of food I had to eat. Sometimes I also went higher on the fat (in the form of nuts) to hit my calorie/protein goals with a much lower volume of food. Therefore it seems that 'long term' vegans with higher calorie requirements may have to opt for eating some more calorie dense foods and supplementing with protein shakes to avoid permanently eating.
• This leads to the second mechanism by which I think many people will lose weight on a vegan diet. Most unprocessed plant foods are full of fibre, this means the volume and satiety per calorie is huge, so when they make up the vast majority of your diet, prepare to be very full from not that many calories.
• If not supplementing with protein shakes, there is not a lot of room for 'junk' on a vegan diet if you are conscious of hitting protein targets. Various biscuits, crisps and sugary breakfast cereals are vegan, but eating these gives you carbs, possibly fat and not much else. That leaves protein (and micro nutrients) found wanting. As you don't have the option to eat a chicken breast and call it bulking like an average gym bro, filling up on junk calories can mean either overshooting daily calories to fulfil protein requirements, or undershooting protein.

Crap can be vegan too

• Vegan food requires planning unless you want to eat a plate of misery. Most of the best foods that I had fell in the family of bean stews, curries, chilli and the like. Meals like this can be incredibly tasty, satisfying and nutritionally complete. They also tend to take at least a few hours to make.
• In a pinch, some variant of hummus/bean dip made by blitzing 2 cans of chickpeas/butter beans with a load of spices and eating it by scooping it up with vegetables and pittas was a go-to meal for me. The macros are good (somewhere in the region of 60 g carbs and 30 g protein for 2 cans of butter beans) and pureeing the beans makes eating them a lot less effort. 
• I ate barely any soy and no Quorn during my month, making the whole thing much harder for myself. If you are a female or a male who doesn't mind rolling the dice on your ball health, have at it with the soy. If you like eating sponges posing as meat, get the Quorn in.

Yummmm.....

• Chia seed pudding is possibly the most wanky hipster food on the planet. It's also pretty awesome. As mentioned above, chia seeds are nutritional powerhouses. Soak them in some almond milk with stevia and add whatever else you feel like (cocoa, berries, nuts, granola), put it your prettiest jar, place it in the best lighting with a manicured background, take 18 photos, put the best one on Instagram and watch the likes roll in. Oh, also eat it.
• Soy sauce, miso, marmite, smoked paprika, sundried tomatoes and sesame oil can all give an umami flavour or 'meatiness' to your food; they are your friends.

Blessed flavour saviours.

• I don't think a vegan diet is ideal for athletes, especially those who weight train. Higher protein and calorie requirements are most easily met by animal products. A vegan diet can be done, but be prepared to spend a lot of time cooking and eating and make sure that you plan meals/supplements to cover potential gaps in micro nutrient intakes.
• For a more sedentary person or those who do light aerobic exercise, a vegan diet with a few additional supplements (B12, omega 3 and an iron/zinc would be a good idea) is definitely a feasible long term solution. Occasional blood tests and a monitoring of body weight would probably both be good ideas just to make sure that red blood cell counts and muscle mass stay at a healthy level.
• Ethically, it's very difficult not to concede that not eating meat beats eating meat in most cases. The 'happy cows' argument may have some merit, but outside of eating a small amount of very high welfare meat, just not eating meat is close to unarguably kinder. This led me to a bit of thinking and researching on the most ethical and environmentally friendly animal products to eat, for one who wishes to eat sustainably, but cover all the gaps that can arise in a vegan diet: 
• Number 1 would be high welfare, local eggs. Eggs are laid routinely by modern day chicken breeds and those from high welfare farms are likely to have a superior quality of life when compared to the majority of animals.
• Number 2 would be bivalves, including mussels, clams and oysters. There is debate in the vegan community on whether these can be eaten, because the extent of their central nervous system is such that they very likely cannot feel pain and they are arguably not even sentient. The farming of bivalves also has extremely low environmental impact compared to large animal farming. To top it all off, they are super nutritious and will plug all the gaps in a vegan diet incredibly well.

They have literally no idea what is going on.

• Number 3 would be small fish such as sardines, sprats and mackerel. These are some of the most nutritious animals you can eat, notably containing very high amounts of omega 3 fats. These are sentient animals that likely feel pain, however, they are very far down on the intelligence scale, highly abundant and can be fished with relatively low environmental impact.
• Bonus entry: When insects become a feasible food stock, I am all for them. If we collectively stop being squeamish little children and accept that a locusts are basically little flying shrimp, then we may be ready for the next food revolution. Insects such as crickets, meal worms and grasshoppers rival beef in terms of nutrition, but are some of the most efficient forms of animal protein to produce, requiring orders of magnitude less resource input than beef. Currently, farmed insects are pretty expensive due to low scales of operation and us still figuring out how best to farm a bunch of tiny flying things, but look for this to change in the not too distant future.
• One could essentially go on, ranking each animal product from most to least ethical based on research and the values that are most important to them, and this may be an interesting intellectual exercise for some. These are 3 of what I see as the least harmful animal products to welfare and the eco-system, but you may come up with a different order. Thinking about such things is probably a good first step.
• I am not going to completely give up animal products and I likely never will, however I think I will incorporate some of what I learned in this month.
• Beans are a great source of plant protein, fibre and nutrients and we should all probably be eating more of them.
• Getting 200 g of protein a day from plant sources was a struggle, but getting around 100 g is relatively easy (for me). Therefore I will try to start thinking of meat as more of a supplement and less of a cornerstone of my diet.
• I'll try replace a portion of intensively farmed meat in my diet with either the 3 foods listed above or higher welfare meat. On a PhD salary, cost is a concern here, as it is for many people, it would be nice to eat only cows that have roamed free on green pastures and been treated like gods, but we don't all have £30 for a ribeye everyday.

We can all dream.

• I'll replace some of the whey/casein protein I use with rice and pea proteins. The dairy industry is certainly not a shiny beacon of ethics and environmentalism so reducing demand there is a positive. Sure, rice and pea proteins taste like an old sandal, but with a bit of clever cooking they can be well hidden in savoury baked goods, stews and curries to add some nutrition without adding any unwanted funk.

That's my thoughts on the vegan diet for now. I'm sure I could keep going but this stream-of-consciousness ramble has gone on long enough, get in contact if you are a meat eater wanting to tell me I sound like a pussy, a vegan wanting to tell me I'm totally wrong and still an uncouth savage, or anyone else wanting a chat.

Do you smell what DC is cooking? pt. 3 - Vegetables that don't cause you to hate life

You should probably eat more vegetables. Yes, you. Unless you are a vegetarian, then you should probably eat more meat.

Vegetables provide almost the entire spectrum of essential vitamins and minerals that your body needs to function optimally. I'm sure you don't need to be told that vegetables are healthy, but just in case you believe man can live on bread alone, here is some evidence I found from a quick search of academic journals. Increased vegetable consumption is associated with:

Not being fat

Dying later in general

Decreased risk of type 2 diabetes

Decreased risk of heart disease

Decreased risk of stroke

Reduced risk of most cancers (breast, prostate, oral, gastric, bladder...)

Improved brain health

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. If you don't then you in fact may be a vegetable.

Additional benefit: salad is evidently hilarious

The problem is that generally vegetables aren't all that fun to eat. At best they still tend to pale in comparison to sweet, fatty or sugary foods which light up all our brain's more primitive reward centres (this why candied bacon is so bizarrely delicious); at worst they literally taste like farts.

As such, here are some of my go-to vegetable variations and preparations to make eating your 5-a-day a bit less shit:

Coleslaw for people who aren't fat

Mayo is pretty gross. The wobbly white goop contains very little that you want to be putting in your body, but take mayo away and coleslaw is damn near a superfood.
Cabbage ranks pretty high up there on the list of the best vegetables to be putting in your face, with loads of vitamin C and K, potassium and manganese as well as some pretty interesting anti-carcinogenic compounds called glucosinolates. I eat this coleslaw pretty much every day and don't have cancer; what more evidence could you want? Carrots are also one of the best things you can eat, giving you tons of vitamin A and a decent amount of B vitamins for a vegetable. Finely shred them together and you are making music.

Basic Slaw:

• 3 parts cabbage (standard white or a mix of red and white works best), finely shredded
• 1 part carrot, grated

Basic Dressing:

• 1 part oil (Extra virgin olive, avocado, walnut, macadamia, hemp seed)
• 1-3 parts acid (Apple cider vinegar, red/white wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar, lemon juice)
• Sweetener (I use Stevia tabs) to taste

Variations:

• Add thinly sliced apple or bell peppers for extra crunch and sweetness, add raw onion if you hate yourself and everyone that you plan to talk to for the next few hours, add kale if you think you are better than everyone else.
• For a less obnoxious onion flavour, you can add some fresh chopped chives or spring onions and parsley. 
• Really any vegetable that is good to eat raw can be chucked in, but you should probably avoid anything too watery (I'm looking at you tomato and cucumber). Some surprisingly good additions that might otherwise end up in the bin are grated broccoli stalk or shredded cauliflower leaves, both under-utilised parts of their respective veg. 
• Throw in a handful of nuts or dried fruits if you want to add some calorie density.
• Use any oil with apple cider vinegar or lemon juice and add mustard for a classic sweet mustard slaw.
• Add finely chopped fresh chillies or a splash of hot sauce for an added zing. 
• Use a neutral tasting oil (eg. walnut) and swap half for toasted sesame oil, then add rice vinegar, soy sauce, ginger and garlic for a savoury Asian slaw.

The real key to good slaw that makes eating your vegetables a joy is fine shredding of the cabbage. For all its benefits, raw cabbage is a tough bugger and the jaw workout that you get munching through chunky cut raw cabbage may be more than you bargained for. The best tools for shredding are either a mandoline (watch your fingertips... trust me on that one), or a food processor with a shredder attachment; go as thin as possible on either and grate the carrot to a similar size.

When it comes to the dressing, there is loads of room for play, so experiment away. The classic recommendation for salad dressings is 3 parts oil to 1 part acid because it will hold an emulsion, here we don't care about that as everything will be intimately mixed anyway, so we've dropped the oil content right down to save calories and up the tang factor. I personally have a killer sweet tooth, so the couple of Stevia tabs are ever present, you my not find this to be the case, but I'd bet that once you have had low calorie, sweet, tangy slaw you will be a convert.

Picture absolutely not relevant. Just keeping the guys and lesbians interested.

Ratatouille is more than just an adorable movie

A staple of the (French) Mediterranean diet, this dish of stewed tomato, peppers, onions, courgette, aubergine, garlic, herbs and whatever else is hanging around is delicious, easy and full of good stuff. How good, you ask? Well, you'll get butt loads of vitamin C from the tomatoes, peppers and courgette, good amounts of potassium and manganese from peppers, courgette and aubergine, a whole smorgasbord of antioxidants and some super interesting compounds like allicin in garlic which has been shown to improve immune function.

If anyone can make anything as beautiful as the above video, I want to be your friend.

Expert French chefs argue over the correct way to make ratatouille; does one sauté each vegetable separately? Does one pre-sauté some vegetables and then layer and bake the whole mixture? Does one chuck it all in the slow cooker (with a cursory sauté if I'm feeling fancy)? Probably not. But that is easy. And easy is what I'm about (...ladies).

Ratatouille:

• 2 onions
• At least 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 aubergines
• 2-4 courgettes
• 2-3 peppers of any colour
• 2 tins of good quality tomatoes and (optional) a tube of tomato puree 
• Fresh or dried basil, thyme, marjoram and bay leaf
• Butter and/or Extra virgin olive oil 

First, chop everything. Keep it fairly chunky for everything except the onions and garlic. Sauté (that means fry in a bit of fat) the onions until they are softened and a bit brown, adding the chopped garlic for a couple of minutes at the end. Whack it in the slow cooker. If you are feeling lazy, put everything else in, switch to low and cook for about 4 hours or until everything is tender. If you are inclined to be a flashy bastard, keep your skillet hot and sauté the peppers until slightly blistered and browned and likewise with the aubergines and courgettes. This will give added flavour, but also added hassle, your call. When its all cooked, give it a taste, add some fresh herbs if you have them, a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. You now have a pile of vegetables that are actually pleasant to eat and you get to pretend you know about French food. Tres fancy.

Picture absolutely not relevant. Just keeping the girls and gays interested.

Harness the umami

If you are asking 'What the hell is an umami?', you bout to get learned fool. Umami is one of the basic tastes (the others being sweet, salty, bitter, sour), literally translated from Japanese it means "delicious taste", but refers to the pleasant savoury flavours found in meats, fish and cheeses. The main compounds responsible for the tasty umami are called glutamates, guanylates and inosinates; fortunately we can find these compounds in other places, so my recommendation here isn't just to add meat or cheese to your veg (although that works as well).

Some vegetables such as tomatoes and mushrooms already have a decent level of umami, which is a large part of why cooked tomato based dishes are usually more pleasant to eat than a plate of spinach, however we can also use condiments to up the umami and make our vegetables a bit more tasty. Chief among these condiments is soy sauce (or other fermented soy products like miso), in fact soy sauce was reportedly originally made by Chinese monks who ate it to replace the flavour (and to some extent nutrition) of meat, which they were prohibited from eating. Some other foods and condiments which deliver an umami whack are fish sauce, smoked paprika, toasted sesame oil, sun dried tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, dried mushrooms and Marmite.

"Oooommmmmmmmmushrooms with soy sauce for dinner"

If you are making any sort of sauce, soup or stew that can do with a bit of 'beefing up' in the flavour department, adding any combination of the soy sauce, fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce or Marmite will definitely help. Otherwise, to any boiled/steamed/roasted/sautéd/stir-fried veg add one or more of the above as part of a dressing to dramatically up the enjoyment of eating them. Some ideas:

• Mix 2 parts soy and 1 part Worcestershire sauce and lightly coat cooked cruciferous veg such as cabbage, broccoli or sprouts. Extra tasty points (although maybe not for everyday eating) if you cook them using a high heat and get a bit of char. This will form compounds like pyrroles, pyrazines and furans via the Maillard reaction, these compounds and similar are found in seared meat, toast and roasted coffee giving roasty, nutty flavours.
• Mix 2 parts soy sauce, 1 part toasted sesame oil, and 1 part vinegar and use as a stir fry sauce that tastes far more complex than it is. Optional, but recommended extras: Garlic, ginger and chilli (or even better a fermented chilli condiment like Gojuchang or Sriracha).
• Cook mushrooms with Marmite for a vegetable side dish that might as well just be meat. Add smoked paprika for this to pretty much taste like bacon. When I attempt to go vegan (stay tuned) this will likely be a large part of my diet.
• Roast a whole head of cauliflower (other brassicas work, but cauli works best) with some salt and a generous covering of smoked paprika. Extra spices like cumin, coriander, garlic powder and chilli can add a bit of fun, but the smoked paprika is the real star here.

Forget everything you know about cauliflower. Actually, remember most of it. But also remember that this is good way to cook it.

Fermented foods are delicious hippy shit

I have always loved sour foods, so I find the tang of fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi and classic style pickled cucumbers God-damn delicious. Feel free to skip this section if the mention of pickled or fermented foods makes you a little queasy, although I think you should reconsider. They likely won't make up a huge part of your diet, but lacto-fermented veg are basically on steroids when it comes to nutritional punch. Not only does fermentation make many nutrients more bio-available by pre-digestion (including aforementioned glucosinolates), digest anti-nutrients and in some cases create new nutrients (such as B vitamins - important for veggies and vegans), if the ferments are eaten uncooked, they provide live lactic acid bacteria, which can have profound positive effects of gut micro-fauna and as such, overall health.

Red and pink kraut, sweet and hot cucumber pickles, pickled radishes and aubergines. Don't worry, I haven't gone full hippy, I still shower and think communism is a terrible idea.

Going into depth about fermentation and fermented foods is a book in itself (and if you want to read that book, I highly recommend 'The Art of Fermentation' by Sandor Katz), instead I will share the most basic rules of thumb for fermenting vegetables and some suggestions of where to go from there.

How to ferment vegetables:

• Chop or grate the veg. Generally the harder the veg, the finer you will want to go.
• Dry salt method:

• Add 0.75-1.5% of the weight of the veg in salt. Use your taste to guide you (Adding salt also makes the environment less hospitable for moulds, but more hospitable for lactic acid bacteria, so we are giving the good guys a head start here). Get your hands involved and squish the veg to release some water from the cells.
• Pack the veg and resulting liquid into a jar or pot and squish them down tightly, making sure the veg is submerged beneath the liquid.
• Brine method:

• Alternatively make a 5% weight brine (i.e. 5g salt per 100ml water) optionally with a splash of vinegar to create an acidic environment, pack fresh chopped veg into a jar and pour over the brine.

• Leave for at least a couple of days, up to a couple of weeks. Have a look at the veg and taste regularly after a day or 2. There should be no signs of mould but there should be bubbles as the bacteria break carbohydrates down into lactic acid and carbon dioxide. The veg will develop a pleasant tangy acidity, once this is at a point you are happy with, put the whole thing in the fridge to slow any further fermentation.
• Enjoy

Rainbow kraut making my barbecued pork sandwich a thing of beauty.

Some ideas:

• Classic kraut - Finely shred white cabbage. Dry salt. Add mustard or caraway seeds for flavour. Ferment as above.
• Rainbow kraut - As above, but get some variety in there, adding a bit of red cabbage tastes pretty much the same but turns the whole thing pink, carrots or bell peppers add sweetness, radishes add a peppery bite, celery will add a savoury crunch. You can even add fruit. Go wild, experiment.
• Simplified kimchi - Chop Chinese cabbage (use bok choi or inner leaves of Savoy cabbage if you can't find Chinese). Dry salt, using less salt than usual. Add lots of chopped garlic and chilli, some ginger and spring onions, a good splash of fish sauce and a bit of sugar (this is art, not science). Ferment.
• Simple cucumber pickles - Use small pickling cucumbers whole if you have them, otherwise chop cucumber into chucks. Make a 5% brine with an added splash of vinegar and don't be afraid to get some extra flavour in there in the form of peppercorns, mustard seeds, dill, coriander seeds, chilli, garlic. Ferment for a few days as cucumber can go mushy if left for longer periods.

Eat your vegetables, kids.

Or just eat meat, take a fibre supplement and multi-vitamin, I'm not your Dad.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself: Part 1 -Warm-ups, mobility and flexibility

Let's sort one thing right from the off - I am hideously under-qualified to give specific injury or recovery advice. I am no sort of medical doctor, physiotherapist, osteopath or any other professionally certified muscle-knowing-person. If you have a genuine joint/muscle/tendon etc issue, you should go to see one of the aforementioned professionals, you should not look for answers from a guy who very occasionally likes to write silly/helpful shit on the internet in his spare time.

Ideally this medical professional

However, my body is a wonky, injury prone mess that feels like it was thrown together from left over parts that don't quite fit together right, so to keep myself somewhat functional and pain free, I've had to learn a little bit about how to keep one's body in something approaching good working order. As I seem to find myself noting in every article, to explore every aspect of this subject would require far more than one small article, this is simply my attempt at providing a bit of an overview and a few tips that hopefully you find useful.

Warm-ups

The Venn diagram of warm-ups, mobility and flexibility exercises overlaps largely, but I will attempt some distinction. Warm-ups are movements that are performed before a workout to prepare the muscles, joint and nervous system for exercise; while specific warm-ups where one performs a few sets of a given training exercise with successively heavier weights are encouraged by almost everyone in the S&C field, that is not what I'm covering here, rather more general warm-ups which can be performed first in a session to get one moving well. A general warm-up does not need to take a long time (and can in fact be worked in between sets of specific warm-ups) and will generally pay dividends in allowing for range of motion and quality of movement.

The ways in which you can warm up are myriad, google the phrase and you will see thousands of articles with the 'ultimate' warm up routine, so I will not try to add too much to the noise, below I will simply list some of what I have found to be the best bang-for-your-buck warm-up movements to get you maximally moving in a minimum of time.

This doesn't really show form, but it does show butt.

Deep lunges - get the legs and butt working and dynamically stretch the hip flexors all in one sexy movement.
You know how this works: with both feet pointing forward and your torso upright, step forward, then slowly lower your rear knee to the floor, keeping your front knee directly over your foot.  Add a slow twist of the torso towards the front leg in the bottom position and/or a forward lean for a greater stretch of the rear hip musculature. Push back to the start position and go again with the other foot, repeat as you see fit, try not to make eye contact with others.

Cossack squats - is there a better warm up for the entire leg musculature that also serves as a great groin and ankle stretch? is is it okay to call them that? no and probably not.
Get in a wide sumo stance with your hands held in front of your chest. Squat down towards one side, keeping that foot flat on the ground, whilst keeping the other leg straight, with the heel in contact with the floor. Try to keep the knee of the squatting leg in line with the toes, but let it move forward over the toes or you will likely fall backwards. If this is too difficult, keep your hands on the floor to maintain balance and make the movement easier or if you are a true Cossack warrior, hold your arms directly overhead for additional demands on the upper back and core. Descend as far as you can then reverse the motion and repeat on the opposite side. Feel the connection to your Eastern European brethren.

According to my scientific Google searching, this is a Cossack. Become the Cossack. 

Glute bridges - If you sit for most of the day, your glutes will likely need some activation for optimal athletic performance. I've talked about glute bridges before, refer there for more information, or watch the handy video provided. Basically, lie on your back with your legs bent, push through your heels, bridge up, squeeze butt. Repeat. If you are strong you can do alternating single leg bridges. Maintain eye contact with an attractive member of the opposite sex at all times.

Something for the upper back - another area that tends to get screwed over by sitting and working all day is the upper and mid back, also known as a thoracic or T-spine, correct hunched posture and improve performance by using the upper back muscles. As you can see, I've been super specific with my recommendations here as there are loads of possibilities, quadrupled t-spine rotation, band pull aparts, LYTPs and light row shrugs are all good ways to go about this, but to hit everything with one move, I find the face pull hard to beat. Grab a cable rope attachment/2 D-handles/a resistance band at shoulder height. Pull slowly towards the face (hence face pulls) keeping the elbows paralell to the floor or higher, externally rotate the arms and extend through the upper back, hold and reverse the motion. This exercise should be felt all through the upper back and rear delts, while also providing a bit of a stretch to the pecs.

Shoulder dislocations - these prepare the shoulder joints, surrounding muscles and scapulae for all of upper body movements. Personally, since putting these into most workouts, my shitty shoulders feel and move significantly better. To perform, grab a broomstick/PVC pipe/resistance band with an overhand grip at about twice shoulder width, more if you are made of wood, less if you are limber like a Russian gymnast. With your arms remaining straight throughout, move the broom/pipe/band in a controlled motion from in front of you in an arc over your head until it touches your back. Repeat, slowly moving the hands in if your flexibility allows it.

Push ups - an absolute bloody classic, warm up the arms, pecs, shoulders, serratus and core in one move. I'm not really sure how you managed to get here if you don't know what a push up is, but there are a few finer points to get the most out of them. Set up so your upper arms are at an approximately 45 degree angle to your torso in the bottom position, if viewed from above, you should look like an ↑, not a T; this allows for better utilisation of chest musculature and chance of shoulder discomfort. When performing push-ups, make sure the hips don't sag which will cause the lumbar spine to fall into a bad position, tense the abs and glutes as if you were doing a plank to maintain full body tension. Finally for added serratus activation and scapular movement, when the arms are locked at the top of the rep try to push your upper back further from the floor by 'sliding' the scapular and shoulders forward.

Mobility and flexibility

Onto mobility and flexibility exercises, which really overlap, but generally refer to movements which allow you to move comfortably through a normal range of motion (generally called mobility) and increase the available range of motion for a joint or series of joints (generally called flexibility). Splitting hairs and discussing semantics won't actually achieve anything so I'll just plow on with things that I find useful for mobility/flexibility and probably use the two terms interchangeably.

There is regularly confusion over when, relative to a training session, one should perform various mobility and flexibility movements; do you foam roll before a workout? what about static stretching? Whilst there isn't perfect agreement on this issue, most of the experts (and namely Dr. Kelly Starrett, the expertise of whom I will be calling upon throughout this section) agree that before a workout, some dynamic stretching, as in many of the above warm-up exercises, and maybe a small amount of myofacial release massage, is appropriate. Longer massage, myofacial release and static stretching sessions are best left to after a workout, or an entirely separate session on their own, ideally late at night as they will active the parasympathetic nervous system, putting you in a relaxed state.

For your flexibility and mobility practice, there are a few things tips that will help you get the most of it.

• Post workout massage of the muscle groups trained in a workout may have a small positive effect on recovery and reduction of muscle soreness, don't expect any miracles here though. 10 minutes of broad foam rolling of the muscle belly should be enough if you are eager to (maybe) experience a little less DOMS after leg day.
• When it comes to more specific mobility exercises, don't feel like you have to massage and stretch every single muscle in your body. After a while, you will likely know which of your joints get stiff or muscles get tight and knotted up, so need some TLC; focus on a few of these and don't waste your time on areas where you have good mobility.
• When stretching or performing myofacial release breathe deeply and slowly to further active the parasympathetic nervous system and facilitate relaxation of the muscles.
• If something feels tight or a little painful when you are massaging it, it likely means it needs attention. As cliche as it sounds, listen to your body, if something doesn't feel right, see to it. If you experience real pain (not just a bit of discomfort, don't be pusillanimous), stop what you are doing and see an expert.
• If you are doing a static stretch, it needs to be held for a long time to be of any use. No more quick counts to 10 and waltzing off like you achieved something - you didn't. 30 seconds is the minimum for stretches, 1-2 minutes is ideal.
• Mobility and flexibility are probably the most boring part of training, but try to work them in little and often, 15 minutes 3 times a week is probably better than an hour once a week.

Here are some of the movements that I have witnessed yield the greatest benefit for both myself an others:

Lacrosse/Hockey/Golf ball mashing - The smaller, yet meaner companion of the foam roller. The small size lets a ball hit some areas that a large roller can't and put an awful lot of pressure through your tissues and work out any knots or tightness in the muscles. Top places usually in need of some mashing are the glutes (in particular the piriformis, or the muscle that is underneath the side-ass dimple), upper back (everything around and and on top of your shoulder blades), chest (especially up near the shoulder) and feet.
As far as technique goes there isn't too much to say: get yourself in a position where the ball is between your muscle and a floor/wall. Support some of your weight with muscles that aren't being mashed (eg. if you are mashing your right pec, try to support yourself with your legs and left arm only) and put as much of your weight through the ball/muscle as is comfortable. Slowly move your body to lengthen/shorted the muscle being mashed as well as moving yourself around the ball to hit different areas of the muscle. Breathe deeply, try to relax, swear loudly as necessary.

Couch stretch - A Kelly Starret classic and probably the best way to balance out the ill-effects of sitting on hip mobility and leg muscle flexibility. Tight hip flexors are one of the biggest road block to optimal lifting performance; this should take care of that. It was called the couch stretch by Starrett but all you need is a floor and wall/chair/sofa at a right angle; get in a lunge and put you back foot up against the wall, get your knee right in the corner then move your butt back as close as you can to your foot (just look at the picture).
Now, it is crucial that you don't flex in the lower back, this isn't the time for booty popping; instead you should be flexing the abs and glutes hard to force posterior pelvic tilt and increase the stretch in your quads and hips of the back foot.

Hip capsule stretch - This one is a weird one, but everyone that I get to try it sees immediate improvement in their hip function. Our aim here is to give the ball and socket hip joint a little more wiggle room (technical term) so it can achieve greater range of motion and clear up and impingement which may be occurring. To perform, get on all fours (hey now), hands directly below shoulders, knees directly below hips. Now direct your weight entirely through one knee, leaning to that side and taking the weight off the other knee. You want the line of force to give you the somewhat grisly visual of the ball of your femur being forced back through your butt cheek, which should give you a nice deep stretch in the hip and piriformis. Move the shin of the leg being stretched across your body to further stretch the hip in external rotation. Repeat on the other side. Stand up and feel the amazement at how good your hips feel in a full squat. Write me adoring fan mail.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

Gymnast's/Wrestler's bridge - This one is a bit more of an isometric strength move than a stretch/mobility exercise per se, but it is an isometric strength move that will pay dividends in mobility benefits. Got that? Good. The bridge is a classic, also referred to as the crab by some, it essentially involves a tight back bend while supporting your weight on your hands and feet (gymnast's) or head and feet (wrestler's). To assume the gymnast's position, lie on your back, bring your feet towards your butt, keeping them flat on the floor and put your palms on the floor next to your head, fingers pointing to your shoulders and elbows up. Now push with your hands and feet, squeeze the glutes and upper back and pop yourself up. Walk your feet closer to your butt if it all feels a bit too easy and push your chest as high and towards your head as you can to really work your thoracic extension and open up the chest. You can simply hold the bridge at full extension for as long as possible, knock out inverted push ups from this position, or lower yourself onto your head and rock back and forth for the wrestler's bridge which will build up the neck muscles. WWE here I come.

Pike stretch - it's a classic for a reason. Hammies, calves and spinal erectors regularly get tight and short, this bad boy hits them all. You can do this seated or standing, I honestly don't know if one is inherently better, but I'd say probably only go for the standing version if you have decent flexibility and spinal health already. There isn't a lot to say for this one, sit/stand and reach for your toes in a controlled manner, be less shit than the people in the photo above. If you are standing, gravity does a lot of stretching work for you, otherwise, grab your feet or the backs of your legs and gentle pull yourself further into the stretch, if you are total weaksauce like the fella above, a rope or band around the bottom of the feet can be used to pull yourself towards a less shameful position.

Doorway stretch - The chest can get pretty tight on desk workers and the 'every-day-is-bench-day' brigade. If you fall into both then your chest is probably so tight that your knuckles face each other and you can't touch your own back. Open your chest up by standing in a doorway, holding your upper arm parallel to the floor and your elbow bent at 90 degrees and placing your forearm vertically along the frame. Pull your shoulder blades back and down to protect the shoulder and lean your weight forward, allowing the arm against the door to gently pull back on the pec, you can overdo this one so go easy. The stretch can be done on both sides at once, but that limits position; stretching one side at a time allows you more freedom to get the stretch hitting the right places, going single armed also allws you to turn your head away from the stretching side to increase the stretch. To bias the pec minor over the pec major, place your entire arm, shoulder to palm, down along the door frame and proceed in the same way, this has less of a stretching feeling, so take care not to force it.

Overhead lat stretch - Most people don't train back, so probably don't have to worry about the muscles being short, but for strange backwards people like me, lat smashing and stretches are a necessity to avoid tightness which leads to bad shoulder movement and anterior pelvic tilt (those aren't good). Anyway, the overhead lat stretch is a good 'un and is also pretty much unlimited in how you do it.
It basically works like this: grab something sturdy around shoulder height with one hand (a band also works nicely), keep your arms straight and hinge at the hips, sinking the torso down and leaning until you feel a stretch. You'll likely need to do some moving around to find the position in which the stretch is greatest, feel free to lean the hips towards the side being stretched and also rotate the torso to target different areas of those big bastards. Repeat for both sides. Stand straight and feel the amazement at how good your arms feel in overhead extension. Write me more adoring fan mail.

Do you smell what DC is cooking? - Part 2: Cow, pig, chicken and other delicious animals

The first instalment was a lot of fun, so let's just plough ahead with part 2.

This isn't even my final form

As I said in previously "what I'm going to give you in this mini-series is a not a how-to-cook guide, rather a bunch of recipes, preparation tips and ideas", combine this with the fact that meat generally tastes pretty good and therefore needs little to no fancy business and you probably shouldn't expect any huge revelations here. Anyway you might pick up a tip or two and you are probably just mindlessly browsing the internet in a perpetual state of 'what the hell am I doing with my life?', so why not waste your time here.

Salt your meat - if you don't, you are wrong.
Not only is salt incredibly important for those who train but salting meat (especially beef and lamb) properly can transform a so-so cut into a slice of meaty heaven. How do we salt a piece of meat 'properly'?

1. Weigh your meat (if bone-in, make an estimate of the weight sans bone)
2. Measure out 0.5-0.8% of the weight of your meat in salt (go to the higher end for tougher cuts or if you really like salt)
3. Rub the salt into the meat.
4. Rest for a minimum of 1 hr for small steaks, overnight or even multiple days for bigger cuts.
5. Stick in a sandwich bag and put in the fridge for longer rests (unless you have a suitable environment for dry ageing meat, which, if you are reading this, you likely don't).
6. Cook and enjoy

Yes, you have to do a little bit of maths. Here is 1.8 kg of topside and 13.5 g salt. No need to get the quantum calculator out. 

How is this in any way special, you may ask. Well, many people will salt meat before cooking, but not many home cooks will salt and rest meat, and this steakhouse secret is where the magic happens, and by magic, I mean science. Without getting too nerdy, this is what happens.

• Salt initially draws water out of the meat via osmosis.
• This water dissolves the salt, forming a concentrated brine on the meat.
• This brine permeates back into the meat, performing 2 actions.
• Firstly, the salt denatures some of the proteins in the meat, unwinding some of the tightly knit structures and allowing the meat to hold onto a greater percentage of moisture once cooked. This makes the meat more tender.
• Secondly, the salt is now distributed throughout the meat; salt is a flavour enhancer, so this seasoning of the entire cut of meat as opposed to just the surface makes for meatier tasting meat.

Cheap roasting beef + a bit of science = a not bad steak

This very small amount of time and effort can make inexpensive beef eat like a decent steak. Especially if you know how to cook it...speaking of.

Cook your beef like a fucking pro - Finish high, start low. That is the mantra to cooking a delicious chunk of cow. When applied to steaks this is usually called the 'reverse sear method', but the general principles can be expanded to a range of meats.

The idea behind the reverse sear is to bring the entirety of the meat to the required 'doneness' using a gentle heat that will create a very even cook and then finish with a quick blast of heat to trigger the Maillard reaction that adds hugely to the depth of flavour. Compare this to a piece of meat cooked for a shorter time at a consistent medium-high heat, generally the meat will have a gradient of 'doneness' when looking at a cross section, with a relatively overcooked at the outer comparative to the centre.

The really fancy way to do this (and the way many steakhouses do it) is to use 'sous vide' for the first step, which is a fancy way of saying vacuum pack the meat and put it in a water bath set at a precise temperature. For example a medium rare steak would go in a 52 °C water bath, equilibrate at this temperature  after an hour or 2, at which point a quick sear in a pan to form a nice golden crust makes for a perfect steak every time.

Sous vide is the reverse sear for restaurants and rich people, but this method can give you results that are almost as good.

The basic premise is as follows:

1. Cook your meat in an oven that isn't far (10-20 °C) above the desired final serving temperature until the centre of the meat reaches said temperature (eg. 55-60 °C for a medium steak)
2. Whip it out of the oven, then either crank the oven to full heat, or get a pan raging hot.
3. Chuck your perfectly cooked meat in your smoking hot oven/pan for the shortest possible time to achieve a golden brown crust (patting the meat dry with a paper towel before searing helps)

If I can do it, so can you. Note the even finish on the interior and the deep golden brown crust.

The best way to monitor step 1 is with a meat thermometer (which I highly recommend), but with a bit of practice, the old poke and guess technique is usually good enough, and if in doubt a cut and peek won't necessarily ruin a steak. Any meat that is of a roughly homogeneous composition and you would want to keep at a precise temperature will benefit greatly from this method: beef roasts, lamb shanks, skin-on chicken breast; the limiting factor is really how much time you can be bothered to commit.

A 4 kg rump roast that was smoked for 6 hrs. Same rules apply regardless of cooking medium. 

Slow cooking is the lazy gourmet's panacea - any meat that is either somewhat fatty or has a significant amount of tough connective tissue can and should be cooked low and slow. This means whole chickens or and single cut that isn't the breast, any piece of beef that isn't a classic steak cut, and most lamb and pork (but especially shoulders).

Slow cooking may really be the most idiot proof of all cooking techniques:

1. Cut your meat to fit (if necessary), brown in a pan if desired (you can usually skip this)
2. Season generously, add herbs/spices/whatever else you think will taste good
3. Add some liquid (anything from a small splash to about 2/3 full); this can be just water or stock, beer, soda...
4. Put the lid on, set it to low (usually somewhere around 100 °C) for most things, high (usually somewhere around 140 °C) for if you are a bit more time pressed

I outlined a very hand-wavey recipe for my pulled pork cooking sauce in the last instalment, but I'll reprint it as I'm nice. So for step 1 above, get a few kilos of pork shoulder, then for steps 2 and 3, mix up the following (scaling up or down as necessary):

• 200 ml Diet Cherry Coke or Dr. Pepper
• 3-5 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 2 finely minced garlic cloves or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon black Pepper
• 2 teaspoons salt

In general pork does the best with sweetness and complex flavours in the cooking sauce, beef doesn't like sweet and generally doesn't need many extra flavours, if I'm slow cooking brisket in a similar way to the above, I'll just use salt, pepper and smoked paprika. Chicken is probably the most versatile meat, you can throw super flavourful marinades at it or just cook it in a brine and it will turn out pretty well. Just experiment, if something sounds like it would taste good, it probably will, if it sounds like an unholy union of disparate flavours, maybe give it a miss. If you are still unsure which flavours to opt for with each meat, below there is an extremely handy, if aesthetically displeasing chart for your consideration.

Two ways to roast a chicken (that are better than whatever you do now) - Most people don't roast whole chickens any more, but I have no idea why. Unless you are eating super-low fat (which would be a debatable strategy), whole chickens are regularly cheaper, offer a range of macro profiles depending on the cut you eat (breasts for low fat meals, legs for higher fat meals) and simply have so much more flavour than skinless, boneless breasts.

Roasting a chicken in the conventional manner isn't a particularly hard task, stick it on a baking tray and put it in the oven at somewhere around 190 °C for between 1 and 2 hours depending on whether you have a little baby or some roided up monstrosity. The problem is, simple roasting can regularly give you dried out breast meat or underdone legs. One option is the divide and conquer, get your butcher hat on and hack those birds up, then give the legs more time in the oven than the breasts, but ... hassle.

This idea 100% stolen from The Food Lab

Significantly easier (though admittedly still a bit of hassle) is to split those bad boys right down the back bone (or cut it out if you have some good shears)then press down hard on the breast bone to flatten the whole bird out. Whack the butterflied (or spatchcocked if you want to use a silly word) chicken on a flat tray and hammer it with heat (like 200-210 °C). Through the magic of an increased exposed surface area and thinner profile the chicken will cook much faster (under an hour, probably around 45 mins) and the smaller legs on the outside of the pan will cook even faster than the larger breast on the inside of the pan, which means everything ends up perfectly cooked all at once. Crispy skin all over and ease of carving are just added goodies.

The easiest of all (though a longer cook) is to keep the chicken whole and simply flip it over. This exposes the legs to and shields the beast from the high heats, and will do so even better with a bed of veg and a splash of water or stock in the pan. Cook it at around 160 °C for an hour or two (sorry for the hand wavy directions, cooking is more of an art than a science), when it seems done (even better, when the breast is above 65 °C and the legs 75 °C), take it out, flip it back over, whack the oven or grill as hot as it goes and chuck it back in for a 10 minute crisp up. Poultry perfection.

No fuss fish - Cooking fish can be a royal pain in the arse. It's easy to dry out in the oven and because it's delicate can stick and fall apart if cooked in a pan. To help with either problem, baking paper is a kitchen superhero. If you are cooking your fish in the oven, grab a rectangle of baking paper and fold your fish plus herbs/lemon/veg/whatever into a nice neat little parcel. This allows everything to steam and cook in it's own juices, so drying out or getting bland, diluted flavours aren't a worry. If you'd rather pan cook your fish, the most simple but game-changing technique: line your pan with baking paper. The paper has a super high heat tolerance and an incredibly non stick surface, so you can still crisp up the fish skin, get a nice sear and just slide it out of the pan. No sticking, no falling apart.

Perfect poached eggs, en mass - This one requires two of my favourite kitchen tools, a slow cooker and a meat thermometer, but if you have both, it is absolutely worth the minimal hassle (alternatively, if you have a fancy pants sous vide set up, this is absolute child's play). Eggs are super awesome in how versatile they are, depending on the time and temperature at which you boil and egg, can get any combination of textures from the yolk and white. This awesome egg calculator tool tells all and says it better than I could: "Want fudgy yolks and runny whites? Runny yolks and custard-like whites? Jammy yolks and tender whites? Whatever you're after, this tool can help you achieve it".

My go to 'slow poached egg' recipe is to hold the eggs at 75 °C for 15 min. This gives you runny yolks and just-holding-shape-but-still-pretty-soft whites. To do so, chuck as many eggs as you want in your slow cooker (but don't fill it much beyond half way), add boiling and cold water, fiddling around until you get the temperature right and the eggs covered, switch the slow cooker to low and bugger off for quarter of an hour, returning to find delicious slow poached eggs, conveniently still in their shell, ready to be cracked on top of/into any and every meal that you have.

You will be adding poached eggs to absolutely everything.

I hope this ramble through a few strung together cooking techniques helps somewhat; Delia Smith I am not. However, cooking is largely a game of experimentation and experimentation is just fucking around and making a note of what works... so go experiment.