Eat Food, Day 8

It was a bad and disappointing day for Food.

The day began as most do with coffee, muesli and soy milk. I left the house early for shiatsu, then went to meet some friends for lunch and an informal meeting to discuss next year's Australia Day ball.

We were going to eat at a place I love in Hiroo but it was closed so my plans for a healthy steamed vegetable platter were dashed. The cafe where we ended up had no vegetarian selections and nothing without cheese. I ordered with a bagel, cream cheese, lox and lettuce of which I think only the lettuce was Food. I ate the bagel and the lox anyway, but I removed the cream cheese. The bagel was really plastic-y and sponge textured. It filled me up, but it wasn't very good.

After eating, I ordered a cardamom-infused Turkish coffee, but spilled 80% of it when I reached to prevent a jar of honey from tipping onto the floor. The sip left in my cup was delicious.

Things didn't get much better at dinner.

I had set some black chana to soaking and the sprouted. That was good. I reserved a few to plant them, the cooked rest into a dry curry with onions, caraway, black cardamom, peppercorns, garlic, ginger and chiles. It wasn't bad. Not as great as I had hoped, but it was good enough.

I also pressure-cooked some brown rice and tossed in a bit of coconut cream powder. I always forget that the ratio of water to rice is different in pressure cooking and as usual, I ended up with soupy rice. Not only was the texture poor, I ended up not liking the coconut flavor in combination with the curry. It was not horrid, it just flattened out the flavor of the curry and made everything taste sort of sweet.

After dinner, I wanted halva. We have some readymade, but it has artificial flavor in it, so it isn't Food. I decided to make some and found a recipe online. Sugar syrup and tahini. Easy! I cooked up the sugar syrup with some rosewater for flavor, and grabbed the old tahini jar from the back of the fridge. Only it wasn't tahini inside. It was spicy peanut sauce from last week. Peanut halva would be ok, but peanut/garlic/chili halva doesn't work.

Fortunately, I had a backup plan. It is cherry season and I'd bought a few today. I also had some dark chocolate in the pantry. So I made fresh chocolate covered cherries. They were delicious and satisfied my dessert craving.