The 'What I Had For Dinner' Project Blog - Friday 19th September 2008

aka. Dark (Dinner) Times

There have been some good meals of late, I've perfected my rissotto technique a little (knocking up a very nice white wine flavour with chef-like ignorance), I had a fantastic vegetarian breakfast one evening (though the scrambled eggs were a bit runnier than usual) and I was very proud of the cold homemade pizza I took away with me.

We've had a few repeat appearances - which was inevitable, the question now is 'What will be my most repeated meal?' - and we've had one slight slip-up when I was too preoccupied to photograph one dinner and ultimately took a photo of my midnight snack. Well, I took a photo of a midnight pitta bread and salad, took one bite and then spat it into my bin. (I was camping at the End of the Road Festival and this salad and been prepared before I left, it had not aged well!) So, eventually that dinner entry was a bag of crisps I ate in my tent at midnight. I feel quite bad about this because what I had for dinner that night was very nice, it was a bourek from a regular festival-based eatery called Moorish Feast. Only the 'Rocket Special' pizza from the weekend trip made it onto the project, as most of my fancy food was purchased at lunchtime. Still, there will be an opportunity come next year's festival season to make up for these oversights!

The following week is going to be a very interesting (if worrying) one for this project as I have no money and won't be getting paid until the end of next week, so, expect some meals scraped from the bottom of the barrel!

Hope all's well with you.

Owain. x

The 'What I Had For Dinner' Project Blog - Sunday 7th September 2008

Afternoon all,

Those of you who are my Facebook friends may be aware of a photo gallery I have been updating daily called 'The 'What I Had For Dinner' Project'; it is, quite simply, a photo journal of what I have for dinner (aka. the post-afternoon meal) each day. I have the grand intention of keeping this food diary for one whole year, well, just over so I can end on the day I started, except in 2009, because otherwise I'd have time-travelled and, cool though that may be, it would just be odd and inconvenient and would mean I'd only been documenting my dinner for one day, yet I would have 366 photos... so it'd be exactly like the end of the film 'Contact'. Except with photos of my dinner. Other than that, EXACTLY like the end of the film 'Contact'.

I've decided to include this blog entry to try and lure outside people into the seedy world of my food photography (the gallery should be accessible to all by clicking on these words) and to give perhaps a little more 'insight' into my fears and paranoias relating to this foodblog, or flog, or waste of time (delete as appropriate).

I was recently told that the new issue of the New Scientist (the New New Scientist) featured an article about photographing ones meals, and I was both dismayed that someone had ripped me off but pleased that this kind of strange behavior was newsworthy in a positive sense. Anyway, for those who care the article can be read HERE. There are a number of differences between the food diaries reported about in the article and my own project, but it is true that I have become very conscious of what I am eating (but only at dinner time, I had two Double Deckers at lunch) and I am not looking forward to the moment when I eat something that I've already had before, it feels like a bit of a defeat and I fear that defeat may happen tonight. I am also aware that I've been a tad frivilous with my money and my budget for the following weeks pre-payday is going to be a lot stricter, and thus the repetition in my meals may increase as a result of laziness. This dramatic downsizing occurs because of a weekend trip that's eating up (no pun intended, but now accepted) my food budget.

Tonight marks 'Dee Suvun-teeen'* (as the Big Brother voiceover man would say) of the project and it is strange to look back at yesterday's photograph and think; 'That wasn't yesterday? Surely? That seems like forever ago! Yet where did today go?'

Right, I've got a few things to do before I embark upon the grand mission of dinner, hope you're well whatever you may be up to.

Owain. x

*Day Seventeen