this is not a food blog

sorry, no pics, a bunch of words — BORING

at the end of today, it will have been a week since i’ve given up dairy.  on the side, i am typing up (why do we ‘type up’ when we ‘write down’?) everything that i put in my mouth with the intention of digesting, so i can analyze my food trends

in the first five days, i stated to people that i did not think i was lactose intolerant because i did not feel any different.  i have always wondered if i had latent lactose problems, but it seems (still) that i do not. we will see

what i do notice is that my coffee has more power. i will not say it is the lack of dairy until i know for sure. especially since it has coincied with a stint of sunny days (still, brrr~) 

i think that eliminating dairy has eliminated a good percentage of the fat i had been eating.  granted, i still use olive oil, and i do not bother with leaner meats, but that is the same — i have made sure it has not increased to replace the cheese and butter that i have eliminated. haha — just yesterday, i saw an ad on Hulu for margarine and realized “oh, i could have replaced butter with margarine [instead of eating my toast dry]??” but i will not

i will admit that i eat more food, larger quantities (to my standard), because i am not so easily satiated with what i used to eat.  i do miss butter, i look at my hunk of parm with some longing, and i am sad that i cannot enjoy the creamy textures i used to eat 3 times a day, but i am enjoying the experience of eating other things probably healthier for me

and nothing will take me away from my mayo

sometimes i just browse tastespotting.com to see what people are making and eating.  this recipe for mini fish tacos caught my eye a few days ago and remains an open tab in my web browser currently

additionally, yesterday a fave of mine told me she and her beau were going to have taco night on thursday in celebration of her paper completion

fish tacos on the brain, and sam’s club cod in the freezer from when my brother and mother were here last fall (i checked: fish are good until Aug 2012. weird, right?), and tortillas lying around always, i decided to succumb to my craving instantly, rather than eat my brown bag lunch

i cooked the cod in my cast iron skillet which has merguez drippings in it (post to come), i made a quick slaw with red cabbage, lime juice, sliced white and green onion (yah, it was too onion-y), half a garlic clove minced, 1/3 serrano pepper minced, and about 1/2 tbsp of mayo

i heated the tortillas on my egg pan for a few seconds on each side, and voila — lunch!

this week, for lunch, i will be eating saag dahl: an Indian-inspired curry with lots of spinach, lentils, some tomato, a spice blend, and creamy coconut milk

for starters, i ate lentils with toast and half an avocado. satisfying enough and wonderfully filling!

one of my favorite things to eat is tom kha gai, a delightful aromatic soup. when i go to the only authentically awesome place in town (which happens to be a thai restaurant), i do not bother ordering a main course — i just get a large tom kha soup and sometimes a crunchy appetizer. the soup comes in a giant bowl, steaming a complex aroma of lemongrass, coconut milk, and peppery spices in your face

a classmate well-versed in thai cooking directed me to a good, standard recipe. from there, i added bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, cilantro, chili oil, and rice noodles to make it a heartier meal

now that i know how easy it is, like meatballs, this will definitely be a mainstay

funny anecdote: when i was in high school, my dude friends used to refer to pornography as ‘thai chicken’, because hen-tai is japanese for sexually explicit material. get it?

and this soup is definitely sexy. yummmmmm

or how to properly spend a Friday

greet friend with brunch (eggs scrambled with mushrooms and sage) and sides of cocktail & coffee

walk around the lake and admire the ice sculptures made out of construction tubing

attend a local beer tasting, in which the beer guy states “you’re weird” and “you can stay” in the same breath. (in all fairness, i did say that the beer had notes of “cheese rind,” finally pinpointing that it was similar to humboldt fog cheese which he thankfully knew about)

rinse and repeat (except instead of harriet’s beer, we went to a bike shop opening w pbr!)

for Lent, i am giving up any and all dairy products. this means that i must freeze the cheese i have in my fridge (because i eat that much cheese that i have at least 20 oz of cheese always), and devour the remainder of this month’s pint of sour cream (no lies)

even explaining to my friend how much dairy i eat, i am astounded at the amount

me: i don’t drink milk
but i purchase probably a quart a month to make mac n cheese and other things that use bechamel
and then i eat like at least a 4-cup bag of cheddar a month in my morning omelet, or chili, or anything really
then i go through about a pint of sour cream per month and sometimes a large container of yogurt as well
that doesn’t include the extraneous cheese i buy for general snacking, probably 4-8 oz of that too
oh and all my snacks involve cheese: pirate’s booty cheese puffs and these cheese crackers that grammar intro-ed me to that i make

Em:  damn. how do you have any room for non cheese foods?

i do not actually finish the quart of milk before it goes bad — therein lies a problem of waste.  so, it’s been decided. no more dairy for Lent, and we will see how i do from there!

how do i resist theeeee?

i spoke to J* about lasagna eating on thursday, i think it was. i must have looked up more than a dozen lasagna recipes via Tastespotting to figure out how i wanted to make it, and J* and i probably discussed around four or five variations

i really wanted to do a mushroom lasagna, and J* got spinach stuck in my head, and i could not, forthelifeofme, decide whether i wanted tomato sauce in it or not. yes, my life is very difficult. i KNOW

this recipe showed a tomato sauce bottom and then bechamel the rest, so i thought — neat! perfect-o!

the french would cringe at the way i make bechamel.  i soaked my dried mushrooms in hot water, squeezed out mushroom water (and set aside), chopped up mushrooms and put that, diced onion, garlic, and more mushrooms (oyster, portabello) into a pot to sautè.  i added some mushroom water to really get the pungent mushroom aroma going. when the liquid cooked out, i added a chunk of butter and a ladle of flour, and then added a bay leaf, nutmeg and milk. when it thickened, i added two clearly healthy, heaping spoons of marscapone

yes, the frenchies would not let me cook in their kitchen… however„,

et voila!

it was eaten with some “power greens” from whole foods (spinach, baby chard, baby kale) tossed in blood orange vinaigrette

and now i have lunch for the week! yayyyy~