Beans, bread and the happiness of habit

Today I did two things that I don't normally do:

- I ran for an extra 15 minutes;
- I had peanut butter on toast for my lunch

While these may appear incredibly mundane to everyone else (actually, I'll include myself in that one), I am noting this as it somewhat of a personal breakthrough.

I am a creature of habit. This probably teeters on the edge of obsessiveness but I think habit sounds more quirky and cute whereas obsessive sounds rather disturbing and unnerving and I think its probably best not to add that to my list of foibles at present as the list that has emerged through various blog entries is slightly unsettling to myself (apparently not to my friends who already were perfectly aware of my oddness).

My habits extend to all areas of my life, but the most prominent is my diet.

Put aside the fact that I am mildly obsessive about the weight/food/exercise triangle that I am constantly trying to battle and disregard the rather limited ability of my stomach to digest foods of any taste/texture - while these may well play a part in the poorly rated musical that is set on the stage of my digestive walls, they are by all means not the reason that, if given a choice, I will eat from a very limited selection of food.

I like bread. No, if I'm honest, I love bread. I could not honestly tell you that there has been a day this year where I possibly didn't consume at least some bread related product. If I did, I would probably be lying just to make me look a little less unhinged.

And then there's beans. Heinz beans.

There have been others, mere players in the heated haricot war but few have come close. Marks and Spencer are a strong competitor, as are the newly introduced Branston Bean (although I'm not sure whether its just the novelty value, I'm waiting to see whether they stand the test of time and manage to force themselves under the lid and into the sealed tupperwear box that is the part of my mind devoted to beans - of which I'm slightly embarrassed to admit there is quite a lot of real estate set aside).

This isn't to say I always eat Heinz Beans. You would have thought, with the limited diet that I adhere to, that I'd allow myself to splash out on the 'posh stuff'. But no. The reason being that I actually eat so many of the damn things that I can't really justify buying Heinz all the time. I've tried Morrisons (oversized bland bean; thin, tasteless juice), Sainsburys (slightly sweet, could do with a little more taste), Tesco (pleasing persona but a little too sweet) and a variety of own brand examples (never the Value Bean though, I have some standards).

The natural combination of these two ingredients makes me very, very happy. I will attempt to plan other meals but, if I'm the only one involved in the meal equation, then beans on toast it will be. I will have soup only if a. I'm feeling guilty about the fact I've bought lots of tins of low fat soup in the cupboard and have blatantly ignored them whilst continuing to buy more by pretending at the supermarket that I really do need more in my trolley than a 4 pack of beans or b. I've eaten beans on toast for the previous meal (I'd like to point out that both of these can easily be overrided by the prominence of the bean tupperware that is situated in my brain).

Not that I've ever eaten beans on toast at work. I could manage it: there's a microwave and a toaster. There's nothing to stop me, its all there, waiting. But I never will.

The reason is quite simple: I don't want to ruin one of my favourite parts of the day by eating my beans on toast in the oppressive environment that is my office. And I'd probably get juice over my laptop (I went through the whole of last week with marmite on my trousers, my last keyboard has jam and crumbs hidden in all manner of crevices, and I once briefly owned a laptop which after just two weeks I managed to destroy effortlessly and swiftly with a full cup of black coffee, the screen fizzling to a halt, thick black liquid bubbling out of the parallel ports).

I plan my food carefully, I manage to draw myself unwittingly through the day by the promise of certain foods. I come into work in the morning solely due to the promise of jam on toast. Then there's lunch: my cucumber and marmite sandwich - not particularly emotive but reasonably satisfying and vaguely fulfilling, and then, then, when 3 o'clock hits, my down time, my personal dark place, I can start to think about the possibilities of tea.

But I have a small confession to make:

- My run was 15 minutes longer not because I wanted to push myself or break the boundaries of my ability but was solely due to the fact that I could not bear being in the office and was trying to put off my return for as long as possible;
- I ate peanut butter on toast instead of my marmite sandwich because my bread was stale and I didn't have a cucumber and couldn't cope with the supermarket on a Monday morning (anything to keep my stress levels at bay, trust me they can rear their ugly head with worrying ease)

But still, its progress of sorts. And no, I'm not having beans for tea. But that's only because I'm going out for dinner and I don't think I can ask for that in an Italian.