The HungrY-ness of the Long Distance Chef
NADIA SAWALHA ON A DOUBLE CREAM AND SYRUP REGIME FOR THE MARATHON
decided on HIS stripe colour whilst I'm still fretting. Believe me, before I was bitten by this insanity I couldn't even run for a bus without doing myself an injury. Making breakfast left me breathless, and hoovering would leave me in need of a stiff drink and a lie down in a dark room with ear plugs and sunglasses on. Six months ago I made the (some may say insane) decision to run the London Marathon. Since then me and my utterly brilliant personal trainer (hark at me!) Julia McCabe, have been pounding the streets of Crystal Palace, Streatham and Upper Norwood in an attempt to get me fit enough to cross the finishing line without the need for a resuscitation unit. I might add that most of our conversation and chit chat as we run hither and thither crisscrossing SE19, revolves around food and wine (I told you she was a brilliant trainer!) Conversation in my house, on the other hand, is mostly about timings, training patterns, running strategies, optimum daily distances, not to mention existential debates on whether it is nobler running for time or running for distance, through to the slightly more frivolous (though much more fun) business of whether I should have a pink or a purple stripe down the sides of my running pants. Before you ask, my husband Mark hasn’t threatened to leave me yet for being the most boring woman on earth. Rather cleverly he has gone for the ‘if you can’t beat 'em join 'em’ philosophy, and is now running the marathon too, though, unlike me, he has already
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But…..that was the bad old days. Now I am a fully paid up exercise freak. Whilst other mere mortals lounge in bed on a Sunday morning cuddling up to their loved ones and munching on croissants and perusing the Sunday papers, I choose (wind, rain or flaming hail), to pull on my battered trainers and haul my reluctant, though positively shrinking, body out on to the beautiful streets of South London. Now, without showing off, I must impress upon you that this is NOT the kind of leisurely Sunday jog most of us are familiar with. Oh, no. With just five weeks to go until the big day (my stomach just flipped with terror as I wrote that) my training programme demands that I ‘deposit many many miles into my marathon mileage account’; ten miles, fifteen, and this coming Sunday, a mind blowing TWENTY miles. As the starting line gets closer by the minute, I am so determined to achieve my goal that there is now no such thing as ‘downtime’. I can’t simply boil a kettle anymore. Instead, no sooner has Mark asked for a cuppa, than I fill the kettle, flick the switch, and suddenly hurl myself into a set of quite dramatic thigh lunges. ‘It's very aggressive isn't it?’ Mark often remarks.
A night in front of the telly is, these days, a perfect opportunity to work my abdominals. And, who needs a delivery curry when one can in fact run there to pick it up, and have it on the table before it’s cold? As I write I remember how, in the bad old days, I'd have read something like this and felt genuine pity for the person writing it. ‘What a nutter’ I'd have thought, or ‘What a saddo! Rather her than me’, and many other couch-potato put-downs would have passed through my mind. But, what I've always been totally oblivious to about ‘getting fit’, is the amount one can actually EAT, when you run and run and run!! You see, having been a foodie all my life has generally meant that I've always been something of a porker (say it as it is Nadia!).You know what it’s like; ‘low fat diets depress me whereas butter and sugar make me happy!’ Simple as that! But no.The biggest revelation about training for the marathon, is that I can eat much more than I ever thought I'd be allowed to, and it doesn't result in me getting any bigger - at all! All of which leads me seamlessly to this heavenly recipe for Kateaf: fabulously decadent Arabic pancakes served warm, with a rose scented syrup, sweet nuts, and clouds of cream. Enjoy, but if you ain’t running fifteen miles, maybe just have the one. In fact I'm thinking of getting my mother to hold a plate full of these delightful desserts for when I cross the finishing line ...
Nadia Sawalha