An interesting food-related thing happened to me yesterday.

Responsible Roommate introduced me to the magic that is adding coconut milk to curry sauces, so yesterday I found myself looking at a can of coconut milk in our kitchen. And I noticed it had two versions of the nutrition information. I think the purpose was to have one using metric measurements and one using imperial, but. The metric one, instead of listing a number of “calories” (even though the unit of measurement is still calories) said ENERGY.

(“Calories are what give you energy and keep you alive” is something I have been known to harp on, and I think the negative connotations that the word calories has for a lot of people is a very bad thing and an example of how fucked up our culture is about food.)

And then Responsible Roommate came in and saw me gaping in joy at the coconut milk, which was somewhat awkward.

Nov 10. Today in things that really make me sad:

Otherwise delicious food that’s too spicy for me to eat.

Let me tell you a thing (that I learned because of a research project): What makes chili peppers spicy is a chemical called capsaicin. It interacts with some types of nerve cells in your tongue (or other parts of your body) that normally sense heat and pain, and convinces them they’re being burned. Wikipedia doesn’t say this, but according to one of the papers I read, too much exposure to capsaicin actually kills off the cells that react to it.

My point is it’s something you can build up a tolerance to (by not having as many cells that react to it.)

Occasionally I see people talking about how ridiculously bland [British/Nordic/European in general] food is, and I just feel sad and tired. I’m not being a wimp, nor is not liking chiles a weird inexplicable white-person thing. People who don’t eat them on a regular basis are more sensitive to them. I would like to be able to eat spicier food. But I’d also like to be able to eat without feeling like my mouth has been scrubbed out with steel wool.

Recently in Minty’s kitchen

This recipe for dairy-free pumpkin pie is indeed just as delicious if not more so than the traditional condensed-milk version. (Although I left out the ginger. I just don’t like it in pumpkin pie. It was reasonably spicy/savory even without it.) I bought pre-made crusts and the fact that they came in a box of two is just too tempting– I’m going to be making another.

This flourless chocolate cake was as delicious as ever. I got my chocolate from Trader Joe’s (I think it was 73% cacao or some similarly odd number.) It has a really rich, almost fruity flavor which was not what I was expecting but it’s very good in the cake. Based on previous experience, this cake will be okay with a wide variety of types of chocolate– even with completely unsweetened baker’s chocolate like the recipe says not to use. It just depends on how dark you like your chocolatey things. The unsweetened-chocolate one that I made, without anything to serve it with, still just seemed about “extra-dark chocolate bar” level to me. There’s plenty of sugar in the recipe.

I made Oreo truffles (one package of crushed Oreos–just the cookies, not the frosting– mixed with 8 oz of cream cheese, rolled into balls, dipped in chocolate). I have two notes based on this and past experiences with them:

The chocolate I had from the cake is too different from the Oreos and too distracting to be a good coating for the truffles. I think I should have bought some cheap semi-sweet chocolate or something. Or maybe even white chocolate.

Off-brand chocolate sandwich cookies are not as good. They don’t have as rich of a chocolate flavor and it’s just disappointing.

I just had a wonderful (food-related) idea and I want to share it with you all.

Do you like pumpkin pie? I really love pumpkin pie. But it takes a lot of work to make.

I just discovered, though, that if you put pumpking-pie spices on a baked sweet potato, it tastes just as good and takes very little effort. Here’s how it goes:

Obtain a sweet potato/yam/whatever they call them where you are. They’re pretty cheap at my grocery store. Like $1-$2 per pound.
Wash it. It probably has a little dirt on it.
Poke it with a fork a few times, just enough to put holes in the skin.
Put it in the microwave on high for about 5 minutes, or until it’s soft all the way through.
Make a shallow cut down it the long way, and peel the skin back a bit, so that you can work on the inside.
Break up the inside a little with a fork.
Add ~~some~~ plenty of sugar (I like brown sugar), and a light sprinkle of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
Stir it in. The sweet potato should be moist enough and hot enough that the sugar will just dissolve into sweet syrupy goodness.
WAIT until it cools down some or you’ll burn your tongue.

That’s four ingredients, one dirty dish, one dirty utensil, and maybe ten minutes total for sweet orange deliciousness.

Notes:

If you don’t have a microwave, the cooking will take a lot longer (more like an hour, at 400 degrees F.) You can make it take less time and still be yummy by slicing the sweet potato up, putting melted butter on it, and stirring it around occasionally. A naked sweet potato slice (I’ve learned from experience) goes all withered and sad-looking when you bake it, and doesn’t have as nice a texture, but is still edible.

Real yams are giant and not related to sweet potatoes at all.

A completely plain baked sweet potato is still pretty delicious, and would make a three-step recipe (wash, poke, bake) for those of you who have trouble with long recipes.

Nutrition-wise, sweet potatoes have a decent amount of Vitamin C and a perfectly ridiculous amount of Vitamin A.

Dear people who I go out to dinner with:

I really like salads. I love cucumbers, and I love vinaigrette dressing, and I love croutons, and I love crunchy lettuce. For a while last year I ate a small salad with almost every meal.

I eat salads because I really like them. I’m not trying to be healthy. I’m not trying to avoid fat. I would still eat salads even if they didn’t have vitamins and minerals. Since I eat my salads with lots of oily dressing, they aren’t terribly low-fat, anyway.

Sometimes I decide not to get a salad, even though I’d like one, because I don’t want to get you all started on how healthy salads are and how unhealthy your food is. Because I don’t believe that, and I wish none of you did either.

Is there any chance we could agree to not talk like this about food? I just want to eat my salad.

Things I have eaten today:

This is for my own benefit, because I haven’t been eating as much as I should lately. There wasn’t really any way for me to not be terribly stressed over Boundary Girl having stomach flu. But now that she’s been over it for a few days and it’s fairly clear I’m not going to catch it, it’d be really nice if I could get rid of the stress and the heartburn and the not-eating. I’m pretty sure now that it goes like this:

Eating smaller portions is easier, so I basically had two small lunches today, one at noon and one now, at 3.

A coffee cup worth of Cheerios (well, store brand cheerio lookalikes.)
A chocolate chip cookie
A handful or so of chocolate eggs

I really should have either had some sort of breakfast before leaving in the morning, or had a big proper meal when I got back and was hungry, but instead I didn’t eat until I got back and then had candy. Something to remember tomorrow.

Half a chicken club sandwich (leftover from dinner yesterday)
A small bag of potato chips (same)
A smallish bowl of beef chow fun (left over from dinner two days ago)
And at least two big glasses of water (not sure how many times I refilled it exactly)
(Edited to add:)
Another small bowl of cheerios
A decent-sized bowl of macaroni and cheese

So I did basically get a good breakfast, lunch and dinner, just spread out. That’s good.

I’m the thinnest I’ve ever been, and I don’t like it.

Last spring, during my senior year of college, I developed a bunch of stomach problems. I had heartburn, I mostly lost my appetite, I felt nauseous at irregular intervals for no discernible reason. I was constantly afraid that I would throw up during class. I lost some weight, because I wasn’t eating well. In February I weighed about 125 pounds, which is normal for me; in May I weighed 115. Pretty much the highlight of the experience was that the nurse from the student health service, which was famous for assuming female students to be pregnant until proven otherwise, never brought up the possibility with me. After the semester ended, I got to see my regular doctor, took Prilosec for a while, and got myself to a much better place stress-wise. Things have been pretty good since August or so. The problem is, I still haven’t gained any weight back. As of two weeks ago, I weigh 111 pounds. I haven’t weighed this little since I was in middle school.

Partly, I’m worried that this might mean there’s something more serious wrong with me. Four months of feeling pretty good and eating as much as I was hungry for should have let me gain some weight, or at least not lose more. At minimum, my sense of how much I need to eat seems to be pretty messed up.

But mainly it bothers me because I don’t like how my body looks now. It’s not normal for me. I know I look more like I’m supposed to want to (and I do sort of like how my waist looks) but mostly I don’t like it. My collarbones aren’t supposed to stick out this much. My hipbones definitely aren’t. I miss my stomach being a little bit round. I miss the fat on my hips. My thighs look a bit more like “normal” instead of “fat”, but they don’t look like my thighs anymore.

So, I’m making an effort to eat more, as well as to get better nutrition, this year.