gastronomic updates

Back a while ago, when I could barely swallow the mush that made it into my mouth, I loved yogurt w/ mashed bananas and yogurt w/ applesauce…both w/ cinnamon or nutmeg or pumpkin pie spice. Well, I’ve moved up in the chewability scale and I’m living the hard, rough-and-tumble life of cottage cheese. Yes! I can now eat cottage cheese! I remember when it was like grating sand against my palate, but I’m making myself actually “chew” and it’s been a good week. I’ve chewed cottage cheese, and tho most still end up in my braces or hidden under the brackets against the sides of my molars, it feels good…like I’m eating again! That said, I think I’m beginning to regain some weight…I don’t want to. I want to loose more, to be honest, but not in the unhealthy post-major-operation way. I wanted to loose about 10 lbs more (believe it or not, I’ll still be w/in a healthy/medically acceptable BMI range).
And I’ve been feeling lots more energy…still a tad bit down from before, but I’m working on it. This week I’m def. gonna force myself to do more exercise. I do have 9 dance classes I’ve paid for at the Lou Conte dance studio home of (Hubbard Street Dance) and I’m determined to take at least 2 classes per week! I also want to squeeze in regular floor barre classes at Giordano Dance Center, I miss Fury Gold and the ladies I’ve taken class w/ for the past 2+ years. Maybe w/ more exercise I’ll feel more energetic and less…‘buggy’…don’t ask me what I mean.
I continue to have digestion issues b/c I’m impatient and just swallow food I can’t chew. It can’t be good and I def. feel ill alot after such meals. But I’m such a little bugger.

I cooked today! I finally made the minestrone that my friend passed on as her mom’s recipe. It was supposed to be a veggie-only soup but it called for a veggie stock cube and I didn’t want to use anything w/ MSG or artificial flavoring so I used 3/8th lb of lean ground turkey to help flavor the soup. It turned out to be more of a veggie-heavy stew. Here’s the original recipe my friend Jessica L. sent me:
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 large stick of celery1 leek (use only the white part)2 carrots2 large potatoes1 lb. fresh green beans
2 zucchini1 vegetable stock cube (available in the Hispanic section of grocery stores)Heat the oil in a large pot. As it is heating up (keep it at medium heat), cut the fresh vegetables in roughly 1 inch pieces in this order and add each ingredient to the pot as soon as you are finished cutting: celery, leek, carrots, potatoes, green beans, zucchini. Stir in between veggie additions. Add the stock cube and enough water to just cover the vegetables completely. Let it simmer until the potatoes are tender. Salt and pepper to taste. Then just blend it and eat!
But I sautéed a little over a quarter pound of lean ground turkey in the olive oil and b/c I had no celery, I dumped in the remainder of my legendary beans-and-grains veggie sludge slow-cooked for days. [I think I figured out why it was so difficult to eat to begin with. It’s too heavy with the aromatics—onions, garlic, celery, carrots—it’s the best explanation I’ve come up w/ so far…the others were that it was brown and mushy, and it was too much root-vegetables.] I then chopped the pre-prepped veggies into about 1-cm pieces/cubes instead of the recommended inch-pieces. And I took my sweet time w/ it all so things cooked down while I chopped and added and stirred. I also added about 1/5th of a head of cabbage that was drying out in the vegetable box in the fridge. After I covered the veggies w/ water, I turned up the heat and walked away…and returned to stir every 10 mins for about an hour until I was sure all the veggies were mushy. It smelled pretty good. I made my brother eat a bowl.
I decided to freeze a couple quart-sized freezer bags of it. I added a cube of Korean curry-block to half the soup, not enough to be like a thick curry served on rice but just enough for a good, curry-spice flavor. Before it was a hearty and clean-tasting stew and now I have a bag of curry soup and a bag of what I’m calling Vegetarian Minestrone w/ (Ground) Turkey. I can’t possibly eat a large pot of stew by myself so the freezer will help me bring it back in a few weeks. I pureed a bit of the soup pre-curry, and it was good. But I think it can be “chewed” b/c all the veggies were cooked down so much. I’m still happy w/ the results. I learned that meat adds flavor as does oils/fats and cooking ingredients in certain orders adds/alters flavors too.
So now there’s mashed bananas w/ cottage cheese, papaya w/ cottage cheese, applesauce w/ cottage cheese and even oatmeal or cream of wheat w/ cottage cheese!

I also had ETHIOPIAN at Demera in Uptown, and I couldn’t eat the drumstick in the doro wot, but had bits of the egg and had some special kitfo (well-done, w/ home-made cottage cheese) even though it was hard to eat. The injera tasted so good and the texture was great and perfect for me! I also had my fill of kik alicha and tikkel gomen. I didn’t get any misir wot…b/c we chose a 2-veggie and 2-meat combo thing. I liked Demera, but I don’t know if it’s better than Queen of Sheba. I have to give it another go w/ more ppl and order more food when I can have some tibs.
That’s my gastronomic update.