I have bronchitis and I can't exercise.

I hate being sick. I just hate it!
As it happens, I have gotten bronchitis and it hurts to breathe in the cold air outside.
I drink a lot of water every day, but I need solid food too. Unfortunately, nothing tastes good these days. It's like my mouth has dried up and my taste buds went numb. It's a food bloggers nightmare!



I spent today at a university and we had lunch at the univerity cafeteria. First I bought pasta with a spicy tomato sauce, but then it turned out the tomato sauce had sausages in it. I was hungry so I moved the sausages to one end of the plate and tasted the pasta with just the spicy tomato sauce on top, but the sauce was so spicy it set my mouth on fire.

So I switched to a salad with falafel. The falafel tasted great, and that was fortunate because they didn't have any vinagrettes and I can't stand the creamy stuff - so I ate my salad bare.
The salad itself tasted nothing. I guess my numb palate couldn't pick up the flavors from the shredded carrots, the corn, cherry tomatoes and cucumber, but the falafel itself rocked. I guess garlic is the cold curing spice for a reason.

I can't wait to be over the bronhitis and getting back to my normal cook-and-eat mode.

Day 24 - The meat experiment

My vegetarian friends outside are thriving on seeds and nuts thesee days. The weather has been good, and I need to fill the bird feeders once a day. These small creatures sure eat a lot!
I have been good so far, or until last night, that is.

I went to a party last night. I hadn't told the hostess about my vegetarian project in advance, I was a little curious about what we would be served.
When they announced that we'd have Spanish tapas, I thought all was well for a minute, but that was soon to change.

The tapas bar offered Manchego cheese drizzled with honey, green leaf salad, prawns (which I'm allergic to), meatballs, ham, beef stew (is that really tapas-food?) and fried onion rings.
My problem was, I hadn't eaten in 10 hours, and I was literally starving. I love cheese, but cheese drizzled with honey is more of a dessert food than dinner in my book.

I had a lot of green leaf salad and I had two servings of bread.
It didn't help, so I decided to have four meatballs. I dis this for two reasons: I was at a party and I was not about to ruin my hostess' night by not eating what she was serving us. Second, I was curious to see how my body would react to meat after a month off meat (except the fish accident last weeken).

The meatballs tasted okay. They were served in a really spicy tomato sauce, so I didn't really taste the meat. But they made me fuller than I have been in a long time. It felt like I was carrying a stone in my gut.
I don't know if this incident can be related to the meatballs, but later in the evening it was almost like I had gotten a stomach bug. My stomach got really upset, and it was very uncomfortable.

I am a lot better today, thankfully, and I started my day with freshly squeezed orange juice, a cup of tea and a toasted bagel with creme cheese. A perfect Sunday vegetarian lunch if you ask me.

Bummer!!!

I unintentionally ate fish yesterday.

Yes, you read that right.
This is what happened:

I woke up - dead tired as usual because I'm always tired in the morning. I went down to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea and toasted a bagel.
In the meantime, The Husband cut up some smoked salmon and cut up onion rings.
We brought our breakfast (uhm...brunch) out to the living room and ate while we watched a movie.
Out of habit, I piled smoked salmon and onion rings onto my bagel and ate it!
But the worst is, it didn't hit me until eight hours later that I had actually eaten fish!

I'm shocked. I'm speechless. I have no excuse, but I promise I will do better.
If I am to break my own project rules, it should at least be intentionally, right?

Restaurant food

I had dinner out on Thursday night.
The occasion was a seminar I was at, so the food was pre-ordered for our arrival.
I called in the day before and changed my order to vegetarian, which the restaurant was okay with.
And they did a great job too. I love it when the kitchen makes an effort to make vegetarian dishes tasty and good, like a true food experience.
First, we all got a cup of cauliflower soup as a starter. It was thick and creamy, just like cauliflower soup should be.

While the others got fish, I had pickled mushrooms with cauliflower puree and dill. The sweetness of the puree worked very well with the acidity of the pickled mushrooms. The presentation was nice too:



The main dish this night was grilled eggplant with a sun dried and capers sauce, served with a fondant potato (baked first, then fried in fat).
I ate all the eggplant, but the potato was a little bit too much. Also, I was getting a little full at this point.


I think the chef did a great job. I felt that he (- or she) did make an effort to please me, and I really appreciate that.

No meat so far

I'm almost two weeks into the new year, and I've had no meat so far.
You could say that twoo weeks isn't much to brag about, and so far it's been pretty easy since I've had most meals at home. But it takes more planning since we are one meat eater and one vegetarian in this house. The meat eater has made it very clear that he has no intentions of giving up meat.
Yesterday I had lunch with two co-workers at a restaurant. The menu offered two vegetarian options: Classic french onion soup (au gratin), and a ratatouille on a bed of mushroom risotto. I chose the latter, and it was very good and tasty. But all the other dishes either contained meat, fish or shellfish.

I had completely forgotten that I have a two day seminar coming up. We're starting tomorrow, and we will be staying at a hotel for two days. I called the hotel today and asked if I could pre-order a vegetarian dish for lunch and dinner, and they were very okay with it. That was such a relief. Now I don't have to think about planning any meals for two days. The next meal I need to cook is dinner on Friday. I haven't decided what to make yet, but I have a couple of pounds of red beets in the fridge that I need to use soon. I think I'll start there, and work them into a meal. Somehow! ;-)

My vegetarian adventure

I've decided to go vegetarian for the next 365 days!

As it is, I actually started on April 1st.
One of my friends thought it was an April Fools Day joke, but I was a few days short of my Easter vacation and it seemed like a good idea to start. Besides it's spring; A lot of fresh vegetables will show up on the market in the next few weeks, and I will have a lot of delicious ingredients to choose from.

The idea to become a vegetarian didn't come to me overnight. First, I love vegetables. Second, I have grown more and more sceptical towards modern farming as the animals live on restricted diets and they are given minimal space to live on. Modern breeding have turned many animals into meat producing giants - with large bodies and feet that struggle to carry the weight. I asked myself, will I continue to support this business?

A vegetarian diet is also supposed to be healthy, but expensive and time consuming.
I am curious to see if this is true.
In this house hold we spend $1000 on food and grocery items every month. I hope my project won't add to an already bulging food budget.

In the weeks prior to my adventure, I spent many hours on the Internet, searching for vegetarian recipes and nutrition. I also started a subscription on Vegetarian Times - a magazine dedicated to vegetarian cooking.

I live a fairly busy life. I won't have time to cook time consuming meals every day. I eat out several times a month, and vegetarian menu charts are few and far between here. I think the restaurant business will give me a hard time in the months to come, but I'm crossing my fingers.

Actually, I met my first 'wall' during my Easter holiday. I was starving, and dropped by a nice lunch restaurant. As a meat eater, I have loved the place and eaten there many times in the past. I have seen vegetarian dishes on the menu, so I thought it was a safe place to start.
Not so. On this day the chef was out, and the temp chef had made two dishes: Meat balls or smoked salmon.

I told the waiter I don't eat meat.
'You'll have fish then', she said and that was that!

I found three restaurants that offered vegetarian dishes during my holiday, but the menu was repeated every day and to be honest, it will probably take a while until I eat mushroom risotto, vegetarian lasagna (which contained too much salt, by the way) or broccoli and gnocchi in cheese sauce again. Two weeks on this diet took the fun out of dining out.

I hope my holiday just turned out to be a small bump in the road.
I'm still excited about my project and I can't wait to try some of the new vegetarian recipes I have found.

Stay tuned!