SUMMARY

Going a week without sandwiches was not at all difficult. Going a week without bread was slightly more so, but not too hard. Going a week without anything even remotely bread-like was tough, particularly for someone who snacks as much as I do. Please let me remind you at this point that not all my snacking is because I have a sweet tooth or a craving for something; it’s because my IBS is best kept under control by eating something approximately every three hours.

What was wonderful about this past week was realising how many options I have. These alternatives to sandwiches and bread don’t even need to be expensive or time-consuming to make. Yes, the shopping for this week cost a bit more than it normally would, but that’s because I had to buy things I don’t usually keep at home. You know, everything is geared towards those daily sandwiches, and when suddenly they’re off the menu and you have to get inventive, you need to buy those replacements.

Some of my favourites this week were strawberries, stuffed tomatoes and lettuce wraps, none of which took long to make, cost a lot or were particularly unhealthy. I’m also happy to report that my IBS was well under control this week, and I confess that I was a little worried about it to begin with. Many IBS patients need more fibre in their diet, and I wasn’t sure if I would get enough from fruit and vegetables alone without bread, but I had more fruit and veg than I probably normally would, and I had cereal and porridge instead. This is certainly something to remember in the future.

Come Friday morning, I had my first slices of bread in a week. It was wholegrain toast, and it was nice, but I can’t claim to have missed it in the seven days I was off bread. While I’m not going to swear off bread, biscuits and pizza completely in the future, I feel I am much better equipped in my battle against sandwiches.

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.

WEDNESDAY

I thought I was going to eat lots of cereal for breakfast as a substitute for toast, but this was the first day I had a bowl of it in the morning. It was good, and I had an apple with it.

I had a protein bar as a mid-morning snack. It was oats based and gluten free, so it qualified for this experiment.

I had another stuffed tomato for lunch with a side salad. I had a half a Tupla for dessert. Tupla is one of the Finnish delicacies the world is missing out on – it’s possibly my favourite chocolate bar in the whole world! It’s also excellent for sharing, just like the name hints at – tupla is Finnish for ‘double’.

Mandarin and pineapple slices with cream on a cheery, rainy day.

I had more mandarin and pineapple slices in the afternoon with some whipped cream.

The rest of the vegetable stir-fry with noodles did for dinner. This is something I always aim for with my dinners – make it one day and re-heat it another day. It saves time and buying new ingredients each day. For dessert, I had an ice cream even though it had been lashing down and stormy all day. It was a Cornetto though. (If you’re not familiar with the Cornetto trilogy, you should watch it.)

I was a little hungry before bedtime, so I had another bowl of cereal and a small bag of crisps just to keep me going.

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.

MONDAY

I was working from home, and as my partner was still away, I had to get up earlier than I usually would to take care of the dogs. I started my day with some natural yoghurt and the rest of the strawberries.

At breaktime, I sat down to write – as is my habit on the days I work from home – and had two more of those banana, peanut butter and oat cookies. I’m making good use of them!

There was some salad left over from the gathering of agility folks the day before, so I finished the greens with some bacon and egg thrown in. A couple of pieces of that dark chocolate went nicely with the cup of tea I had afterwards. My current lunchtime watch is season seven of Cold Feet.

Afternoon snack was one of Whitworth’s Shots. No, I’m not drinking on the job. These have become a particular favourite of mine as they come in several flavours, are quick, easy and tidy to eat and offer a healthier option to snack on than crisps, biscuits or chocolate. A welcome option when you’re feeling a little peckish.

Dinner was a vegetable stir-fry with noodles that I put together in a matter of minutes – what I usually want at the end of a working day. Dessert was a chocolate-toffee one straight out of the fridge.

Dinner - vegetable stir-fry. The laptop is out because I decided to watch my favourite Finnish talk show, Enbuske Veitola & Salminen, while eating.

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!

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.

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…

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…