I’m going to be away for a week or so, and the next update here on The Office Diet will be a round up of some of the blog’s 2008 highlights as we head into the new year.

I wanted to wish all of you a very merry Christmas: wherever you are with your healthy living goals, be proud of what you’ve achieved, and of what you have planned for 2009. Have a very happy time, however you’re celebrating, and you have my wholehearted permission to completely forget about calories, diets, nutrition and everything else Office-Diety on Christmas day (I know I’ll be tucking into chocolate as soon as I’ve opened my stocking… )

Merry Christmas!

Resist the urge to stock up on bags of crisps (chips), boxes of cookies and tubs of chocolates: if you’ve got them in the house, you’re likely to end up digging into them – even if you’re supposedly saving them for when guests come round, or for when you need a hostess gift.

Instead, look out for some yummy and healthy snacks, to enjoy yourself during December, or to serve at holiday parties.

A few great ones are:

Olives – much healthier than crisps, and lower in calories than nuts. They contain monounsaturated fat, which is great for your heart. The strong flavour means you won’t munch them like other snack foods. Buy stoned varieties to slow your eating even more.

Shelled nuts – although nuts are good for you, they’re high in calories so you should only eat small portions. This is easier said than done (especially when faced with a bowl of cashews). Try buying shelled nuts, like pistachios; these take much longer to eat since you’ll need to remove the shell from each and every one…

Spicy foods – another trick for slower snacking is to buy spicy nibbles, as it’s hard to eat too many of these without feeling like you’re breathing fire! Spicy Bombay mix is often a good one, as it contains healthy ingredients like lentils, split peas, peanuts and dried fruit.

Dark chocolate – if you must have chocolate, go for some rich, dark chocolate; the flavour is intense enough that you’ll be satisfied with just a small piece. For a low-calorie alternative to after-dinner chocs, try serving Amoretti biscuits or biscotti with coffee.

Satsumas – I love the sweet, juicy flavour of Satsumas, which are in season here in the UK, and on offer in most supermarkets. They make a palate-cleansing alternative to richer snacks, and look nice presented as part of a table centre-piece, perhaps with other seasonal fruits too.

Are you one of the lucky few who’s having a Christmas party at work this year? Maybe you wish you weren’t: many employers have cancelled company-paid-for events, in the current economic climate, and you might have been hoping that yours would be amongst them.

There’s plenty of advice on how to avoid making an idiot of yourself at the office party (which pretty much boils down to “don’t get hideously drunk”) – but how can you survive the office Christmas party with your diet reasonably intact?

Formal meal: make sensible choices

If the Christmas event at work is a formal meal out, you’ll almost certainly be asked for your food choices well ahead of time. This makes it easy for you to choose the healthier options.

• Go for a salad or soup as a starter (studies show that eating soup at the start of a meal means you’ll consume fewer calories overall).
• Choose a fish or vegetable heavy main course, rather than one involving large amounts of meat, cheese and/or cream.
• Look for fruit-based options for dessert, or something light like meringue, instead of cheesecake, chocolate mousse or Christmas pud.

On the night itself, don’t feel obliged to clear your plate at each course. I find that chatting to my neighbour helps me to slow down my eating speed, and engaging people in conversation outside the workplace is a great way to get to know them better. You might find you’ve got more in common than you thought!

Buffet meal: fill up on proper foods

Buffet spreads nowadays tend to involve at least some vegetables and healthier options like breadsticks, hummous, wholegrain sandwiches etc – rather than just being a spread of crisps (chips to US readers), creamy dips, slices of quiche and so on.

Try to fill up on items that are “proper foods” – by that, I mean ones which would constitute a decent meal. Piling your plate with snacky foods makes it very easy to wolf down a lot of calories without filling up. Go for at least a couple of servings of vegetables, and try to get some lean protein too - if you just eat carbs, you’ll be hungry again well before the end of the night.

The main advantage to buffets from a dieting perspective is that you can choose whatever foods you want without anyone commenting on what you aren’t eating: trickier at a sit-down meal. And from the point of view of enjoying your work party, buffets are nice because you can circulate and chat to lots of different people – you won’t get stuck next to the office bore for a full three courses.

Go easy on the alcohol

My first response to office parties is often “ooh, free booze!” but this is not the healthiest way to approach such events…

Try to focus on the social aspects of the party – celebrating the year’s achievements alongside your colleagues, and having the chance to chat and enjoy yourself outside work. By all means indulge in the alcohol, but remember that it contains calories: about 100 in a small glass of wine, and over 200 in a pint of beer. Spirits and “lite” mixers are your best option, if available.

Alcohol also weakens your willpower and resolve, and makes you hungrier: not a great combination! Be particularly wary of snacking on salty foods like nuts, as these will make you thirstier and more likely to down that drink too fast.

Enjoy your office party! For more tips about dieting during December, make sure you’re getting free RSS updates – or just pop your email address in the box on the top right.

In the US tomorrow, it’ll be Thanksgiving, and although I’m in the UK, I think having a day focused on gratitude is a great idea.

Whether or not you’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, it’s worth taking a few minutes to think about what you’re grateful for – especially when it comes to your body, your physical health and your diet.

These are just a few areas you might like to think about:

Being thankful for your health

I don’t know what your personal circumstances are. You may be reading The Office Diet because you have a medical condition that predisposes you to being overweight. You may be suffering from stress or depression, or you may have severe food allergies. But I imagine that, on the whole, you readers are a pretty healthy bunch. You have access to medical care, you get sufficient nutrients from what you eat to keep you well, and you’re knowledgeable enough to know how to take care of your body (even if, like me, you sometimes slip up in practice!)

Even if you’re not currently as healthy as you’d like to be, be thankful for what you do have – and be thankful that you have the power and self-awareness to take positive steps to improve your health.

Being thankful for your physical ability and strength

If you’re like me, with two left feet and a distinct lack of co-ordination, you might feel rather a long way from being the world’s best sportsman/woman. Notice the way your body feels after exercise, though: do you have a satisfying glow of strength and achievement? You might not be as fit, strong or active as you’d like – but your body is an amazing piece of equipment, resilient and with an impressive ability to get fit and strong through a moderate amount of exercise.

What activities can you do now that you perhaps couldn’t do, through lack of physical ability, a year, or two years ago? I’m certainly not claiming any great prowess in the gym, but compared to myself a few years ago, I’m a lot fitter and stronger!

Being thankful for your job

One of the focuses of The Office Diet over the past year has been on the “office” part – I know that many of you are employees in 8-4 or 9-5 type jobs. As a former full-time office worker myself, I know that it’s sometimes hard to be thankful for your job! You might feel that without the stress, or the long hours, or the boredom of your job, you’d be much better placed to suceed in your diet.

Thanksgiving is a great time to focus on the positive aspects of your job. That could be simply the fact that you have a job, in the current economic climate.
But if you can, go further, and list some of the things (however small) that you enjoy about your work day.

Being thankful that you’re self-aware

Something I know about everyone reading this is that you’re interested in living a healthy lifestyle that nurtures your mind and body – good for you! You’re not succumbing to the junk-food and sloth-like habits that many people adopt without even bothering to question them. Even if your health, your fitness and your weight aren’t yet what you want, you’re on the right path.

Be thankful that you’ve got this self-awareness, and that along with it, you’ve got the willingness to change. The fact that you’re reading this says a lot about you: you’re someone who cares about your health and who knows that a few lifestyle tweaks are enough to pay dividends for years to com.

What are you thankful for?

Try to find just five minutes this week (maybe during a dull meeting, in your lunch hour, or on a coffee break) to scribble a list of things you’re thankful for. Make sure you include at least one thing about your body, at least one thing about your eating habits, and at least one thing about your exercise. They don’t have to be big (“I’m thankful that I can now walk up a flight of stairs without being out of breath” is fine), but do try to find something for all these aspects of your healthy living journey.

If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, I hope you have a wonderful, joy-filled day. And you hereby have my permission to enjoy yourself without thinking once about calories – one day won’t ruin your diet (just get straight back on the wagon on Friday).

Don’t forget that you can get email updates from The Office Diet straight to your inbox. Just pop your email address in the box on the top right of this page.

That little candy bar on the right looks innocent and innocuous, doesn’t it? But it just might be the scariest thing you have to face this Hallowe’en…

We’re getting into that time of year where all sorts of excuses for overindulgence are just round the corner. Hallowe’en is the first biggie; it’s almost synonymous with chocolate and sweets (candy) in many people’s minds, with ghosts and ghouls relegated to second place.

If people are already starting to bring packets of “spooky cupcakes” and “scary cookies” into the office, or if you’re tempted to stock up on packs of fun-sized bars well in advance of the big day, read on…

Don’t buy treats until the 30th

You really don’t need to buy mini chocolate bars a couple of weeks in advance. Wait until nearer the time; that way, the goodies are more likely to end up going to trick-or-treaters than going into your stomach…

Keep treats well out of reach

If you’ve already taken advantage of the supermarket offers on Hallowe’en snacks – or if you really do need to buy in advance – then keep the treats well out of reach. Leaving them lying around in the kitchen won’t do much to boost your willpower.

(This works for chocolates at all seasons, not just Hallowe’en! You might want to read one of The Office Diet’s earliest posts, Out of sight, out of mind, out of reach.)

Be ready to say “no thanks”

If your colleagues are constantly bringing in treats for the office, learn to say “no”. Yes, it’s hard if you feel like you’re missing out – but if you leave your share for someone else, they’ll probably enjoy it more (and without the guilt)! If you’re worried about offending someone, read How to refuse a cookie.

Beware of fun-sized bars

Of course, one teeny tiny little chocolate bar isn’t going to hurt your diet. Why, it doesn’t even have 100 calories. So it can’t really count …

This is dangerous thinking! I know from experience that those multi-bags of mini chocolate bars are likely to do more harm than one proper-sized bar from the corner shop. If you scoff four or five mini bars (which is easy to do), you’ve eaten far more chocolate than if you had one “real” bar.

If you’re staying in…

When you’re home on Hallowe’en, you’ll probably be expecting trick-or-treaters. Try to find something that occupies you, without being so absorbing that you can’t interrupt it to answer the doorbell to a gaggle of witches and ghosts. If you’re sitting around watching television, that basket of chocolate bars near the door will look all the more tempting.

One word of warning: although you might be tempted to give out something healthier (fruit, or home-baked non-additive-packed goodies), parents are very cautious about what their children accept from strangers. Pre-wrapped treats are always best.

If you’re going out…

For those attending a Hallowe’en party for adults, you’ll probably find that the fare on offer includes at least some healthy options, so follow the same guidelines you’d use at any buffet. Look out for seasonal non-chocolate treats like pumpkin soup. Go easy on Hallowe’en drinks – it’s hard to tell how strong punch is.

Have a great Hallowe’en – without anything scary happening to your diet! And make sure you continue getting tips from The Office Diet by adding our RSS feed to your reader, or by simply entering your email address on the top right of this page.

(Image above by TheTruthAbout…)

Today is Blog Action Day 2008, and The Office Diet is taking part. The theme is “poverty”.

How much do you spend on groceries, in the average week? Here in the UK, the average couple easily spends £50 ($90) per week … and that’s not counting meals out, Starbucks, takeaways, alcoholic drinks.

Even if you think you’re hard up, you’re spending a lot on food compared with billions of people in the world. 80% of the world’s population live on less than $10 a day. And 10% live on less than $1.

Feeling rich now?

Many people don’t have the luxury of being overweight

I spent a week in Madagascar in summer 2007, seeing the work of Mission Aviation Fellowship out in the field. (It was a family trip to witness first-hand the work of a charity which my parents have been supporting for many years.)

One thing which struck me was that I never saw a fat child or adult. Not a single one. I was relieved that none of the children we came across (even in very remote communities out in the bush, accessible by plane) looked seriously malnourished – but they were all thin.

Being overweight – consuming more food than your body needs – is a luxury. Sometimes, it seems like an unnecessary and even distasteful one in a world where millions of children go to bed hungry every day.

What can you do?

It’s so easy to throw our hands up in the air and say, “But what can we do?” Despite what your mother may have said, you know that the food on your plate can’t go to feed starving children in Africa.

But there are plenty of practical ways you can help. The ones which require least effort deliver least impact, but if you need to, start small and work your way up. I’ve tried to make all of these somewhat office-dieter related!

The Hunger Site – donate food by clicking (the site is sponsored by the advertisers whose banners you see after the click). What better use of those idle moments at work?

Donate to charity – choose a reputable charity that’s in alignment with your principles, and which works to alleviate poverty. Try giving up your daily latte, or taking lunch into work from home (it doesn’t have to be a boring sandwich), and donating the money you save to charity – you’ll be boosting your dieting success too!

Donate clothing to charity shops – I bet you’ve got good-quality clothes lurking in the wardrobe that you’re now too slim for (or clothes which you bought in a fit of overoptimism, and which you know you’ll never fit into!) I had a big clear out the other week and managed to take a huge bag of clothes to the local charity shop, all things that I’d not worn in months or even years.

Sponsored event –why not undertake a sponsored slim, sponsored run or similar, in order to raise money for charity? If you can get enough people on board to sponsor you, it could be a much greater sum than one you could donate single-handedly.

Help Make Poverty History – the campaign to Make Poverty History has been running since 2005, incorporating Drop the Debt and Trade Justice campaigns. Of course suffering should be alleviated by giving food aid – but we also need to tackle the deeper causes of famine and poverty.

With famines across the globe, in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Latin America, North Korea and other countries, this is a time to focus on our over-consumption in the West, and on what we can do to help men, women and children around the world.

It’s easy to reach 5pm on Friday, breath a long sigh of relief, and switch straight into “weekend mode” – which often means forgetting about pesky little details like healthy eating plans. And when it’s the weekend, we’re around friends and family, and want to enjoy ourselves, which can sometimes mean eating all the wrong things.

If your weekend typically (or all too often) consists of: post-work drinks, and post-drinks greasy junk food, on a Friday; a late hung-over sausage-bacon-fried-bread brunch on Saturday; a big meal out Saturday evening; a traditional roast with all the trimmings on Sunday … you’re not doing your diet any favours.

So how can you improve your diet at the weekend without becoming a miserable hermit, nibbling on ryvitas whilst everyone else is tucking into a family meal?

Eat more fruit and vegetables

If you’re managing to get five-a-day at the weekends, good for you – but you could still eat more! (And if you’re not regularly hitting that five-a-day, make it your next goal.) Eating more fruit and vegetables is an easy way to make your weekend healthier. It might mean:

• Having a salad or soup as a starter when you’re out
• Making a big fruit salad or fruit platter for breakfast at the weekend
• Enjoying in-season fruit for dessert, instead of cake or ice-cream
• Cooking twice as much veg – and half as many potatoes – for Sunday lunch

Keep up with your food diary

Sometimes, when I’m keeping a food diary, Monday – Friday is filled in perfectly … then there’s a bit of a gap! If you find yourself snacking unhealthily or eating too much at meal times at the weekend, try writing down everything you eat this Saturady and Sunday. It’s a great way to keep yourself accountable and to see exactly what you’re putting in your mouth.

Try to eat regularly

It’s easy to end up grazing on food at the weekend – if you’re out shopping or visiting local attractions on Saturday or Sunday, regular meals might be abandoned in favour of a succession of snacks. The problem with this sort of eating is that it tends to involve all the worst types of foods – chips, chocolate, ice-creams, doughnuts, pastries ….

If you’re going to be out most of the day, plan to eat lunch at a sensible time, and order a meal (ideally containing protein to keep you full for longer, and some veg) rather than a few snacks. You might also want to take some cereal bars or fruit out with you for the day, so that you have something healthy to munch on if hunger does strike.

When you’re at home, don’t let the day revolve around your next snack! Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, and keep busy in between so that you don’t find yourself constantly raiding the fridge.

Make healthy meals for the whole family

Weekends are a great chance for busy working couples and families to find time to enjoy a meal together. But if your favourite weekend meals are things like plates of nachos, big bowls of creamy pasta, or curries from the nearest Indian take-away – followed by huge ice-cream sundaes or stodgy puddings – you might want to make some changes. Don’t feel guilty about shifting the family away from their usual choices: you want them to be healthy, too. Of course, you don’t need to cut out everything which is a bit “naughty” – just make a few changes.

How about:

• Ditching nachos in favour of a few tortilla chips and salsa, followed by prawn tortilla wraps and crudites.
• Swapping a creamy pasta sauce for a tomato-based one. Try my Pasta with tomato, turkey rasher & veg sauce for a kid-friendly recipe, or Pasta with prawns, olives and vegetable sauce for adults and teens who’ll eat prawns (that’s shrimp to our US readers) and olives.
• Buying a supermarket curry pack to cook at home, instead of getting a take-away. Yes, it’s better to cook curry from scratch – but that can be more of a hassle than you want on a Friday night. The supermarket versions can be quite high-calorie, but not so bad as take-aways.
• Having sorbet or frozen yoghurt for dessert, instead of your usual ice-cream. For a really fun option (though this requires some fore-planning) layer different coloured jellies and fruit pieces in sundae glasses and top with a blob of low-fat squirty cream when serving.
• Making a light sponge cake with jam and icing sugar, rather than a gooey chocolate fudge cake or a cheesecake. Again, it’s not perfect – but it’ll slash the calories to about a third!

(Image above from Flickr by the food pornographer.)

Have a great, healthy-eating-friendly weekend – and head back to The Office Diet on Monday for some thoughts on the Ideal Dieting Office … if you don’t want to miss out, make sure you add The Office Diet to your RSS reader now, or get every post straight to your email for free (fill in your email address on the top right).

Once you’re into a healthy routine at the office, getting your five-a-day isn’t hard: perhaps you’ve established the habit of snacking on apples and eating a big salad at lunch time, or you always have a handful of dried fruit on your breakfast cereal.

But what about when you’re on holiday, enjoying a much-needed vacation? If you’re anything like me, sometimes you’ll get to dinner time and realise that your entire fruit and veg intake for the day has consisted of a small salad garnish…

Here’s five great ways to make sure you keep on hitting that five-a-day target whilst on holiday:

1. Take fresh fruit with you while travelling

If you’re heading off in a car or train, take some fresh fruit with you to munch on the journey. Apples, satsumas, bananas, pears and grapes can all work well – just be careful to pack them securely so they don’t get rattled around and bruised.

Service stations often don’t have anywhere selling fruit, and if they do, it tends to be overpriced (often in the form of pre-sliced apples or small pots of fruit salad).

2. Drink fruit juice at breakfast time

Whatever sort of breakfast you’re served, full English or Continental, it’s very likely that fruit juice will be on offer. Grab a small glass – it counts as one of your five-a-day. Just remember not to glug it down like water: juice is high in sugar.

3. Have soup for your lunch

Sandwiches are often an easy on-the-go lunch from a café – but many little eateries offer bowls of soup, and these can be a surprisingly good way to sample some cheap and healthy local dishes (such as onion soup in France, gazpacho in Spain, borscht in Russia.)

4. Buy dried fruit to snack on

Depending on where you’re holidaying, fresh fruit and vegetables might not be safe to eat. If you’re in the First World, you’re fine – just rinse before eating as you would at home. In Third World countries, buy packets of dried fruit from a supermarket rather than risking the fresh fare on offer at street markets.

Dried fruit is also a great choice if you’re walking or camping, since it doesn’t take up much space.

5. Order a side salad (or vegetables) with dinner

Almost any restaurant will have side dishes including salads and seasonable vegetables – have a salad as a starter, or alongside your main course. The smear of tomato sauce on your pizza won’t count as a vegetable portion for the meal, but a mixed tomato and red onion side salad will.

And if you need more tips on getting your five-a-day during your normal work days, try
Seven quick ways to up your fruit and veg intake.

(Image above by HarlanH)

Hurrah! Lorna, artist and self-described foodaholic is back with another guest post. I’m hoping she’ll be serving some of the below goodies when I see her this weekend… (hint hint!)

It’s that time of year when we can celebrate having friends over for a lovely summer day or night and we would like to offer them something nice instead of the usual fare that often turns up at BBQ’s, gatherings or what not. Now I know for a fact that Ali has got this down pat (seriously, her Waldorf salad is to DIE for!), but some of us are simply uninspired and feel a limp lettuce is hardly a decent offering.

Here are a few tips that I can offer you, and what makes them great is that you can take any leftovers into the office and sit smugly as you nibble away whilst others wilt over limp sandwiches.

Nutty Nibbles

Now nibbly things can be fun AND inspiring, especially if we yoink some of the trendiest ideas that the Americans are using as bar snacks. Well seasoned and flavoured nuts have become a fad, and there is no reason to go out and spend all that money on a small packed of chilli flavoured cashews when you can do it yourself in about 10 minutes flat.

Simply toast the nuts (unsalted) in a dry hot frying pan until they begin to brown (watch them carefully as they will burn the moment you take your eyes off them), sprinkle with your favourite herbs (dried) or spices (they need a light dusting) whilst they are hot and serve in bowls.

The most popular nuts to use at the moment seem to be cashews, but you can use peanuts, macadamia nuts, almond. Any nut that is unsalted would work, or how about a mix of them! Some of my favourite flavour combinations are chilli and salt, Sage and black pepper, Garam Masala spice mix, Chinese five spice mix. Often you can use left-over herb and spices to create wonderful tastes.

Nacho Nibbles

Nachos are often a different change from just offering crisps and I have found a delicious way to spice them up and give them extra jazz. Just sprinkle a few tablespoons of tomato salsa over a layer of nachos on a baking tray, top with a light dose of grated cheese and pop under the grill till the cheese has melted. Slid it all onto a plate and serve. Warm yumminess.

Dull Dips?

Most gatherings seem to have the same solutions to dip needs: some blue cheese or dubious pink stuff in a plastic pot that turns a darker pink during the night as no one touches it. Banish those for good and have a good hunt around your local stores, the oddest things can make the most amazing dips.

The one I use the most consists of mayonnaise and an Indian garlic pickle that has whole cloves of garlic in. Its not as strong as you think I simply mix four tablespoons of mayonnaise with a tablespoon of the pickle and spoon into a bowl. People go crazy for it!

Try adding a can of drained tuna to four tablespoons of mayonnaise, some capers, salt and pepper and mix until smooth. Sprinkle with some chilli flakes or paprika once in a bowl, or even some diced onion. This one goes especially nice with those nachos.

The thing is to give it a try. You can make your own salsa, simply dice a red onion, tomatoes, add salt and pepper and a sprinkling of coriander and a squeeze of lemon and lime over the top and voila! Instant salsa that YOU made yourself!

Add curry powder or Garam Masala to mayonnaise to dip mini popadoms in, or even make a zesty lime mayonnaise with fresh lime juice. The choices are endless, and remember if mayonnaise is too fattening or strong for you, try crème fresh!

Let me know if you have had any party triumphs or offer tips or tricks, and we might be able to share them with The Office Diet community!

(Image above by tom likes clarks)

We had a great time in the Lake District; it was quite a novelty not to touch a computer for four days straight! The weather was perfect: sunny, but cool enough for plenty of walking. We perhaps sampled rather more of the local Cumbrian fare than was strictly necessary, but were active enough to balance out any overindulgence.

So, here’s a few post-holiday tips to add to Enjoying your holiday without ruining your diet:

• Don’t overdo the exercise on your first day

  We went on a very long walk on Monday … set out at nine thirty, and finally staggered into a pub for a cold drink at about three. Admittedly, a good hour or two of that time was spent window-shopping and getting the ferry across the lake, but it was still a fair bit of trekking along the beautiful lakeside and through the forest and meadows.The next day, we were both feeling a fair few aches and twinges in muscles protesting this sudden over-use. Even if you’re used to, say, cycling or working out in the gym, you may find that a very long walk or other forms of exercise you don’t normally do work usually dormant muscles!

• Try not to get over-hungry

  If you’re off on adventures for the day, make sure you’ve got a few snacks with you. In retrospect, we should have stocked up on fruit to keep us going, though we did have a few cereal bars. There were a couple of times when we over-ate at dinner because we’d not eaten for hours.

• Ask about portion sizes!

  As mentioned above, we enjoyed (lots of) Cumbrian food – but we were a little taken aback by the amount served at times! We went to a pub one evening where I had lasagne and The Boyfriend ordered the mixed grill: his meal would easily have fed both of us … If you’re eating somewhere unfamiliar, ask how big the portions are: you might well be able to split a large dish between two, perhaps ordering a side salad to go with it.

• Don’t forget the sun cream

  This one isn’t strictly diet related, but can certainly be bad for your health if ignored. Unfortunately, we went off walking without considering the fact that though the air wasn’t too warm, the sun was bright. Some after-sun helped, but it would have been better (both for comfort and for skin) to have applied sun lotion in the first place.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip, and we’d strongly recommend the very friendly Green Gables Guest House if you’re thinking of a stay in the Lake District, as well as a little Italian restaurant called Firenze, just round the corner from there (but watch the portion sizes at the Grey Walls Inn…)

(Image above by Ennor)