Saturday, January 27, 2007

Cooking Mishaps

Yes, it's true. I'm a little bit pregnant. I'm just finally over being nauseous 14-hours a day. I'm starving almost ALL the time, which was especially annoying when I was naseous. I'm trying to eat well--my crazy, fat, holistic, Kaiser Permanente medical professional has told me she only wants me to gain 10 pounds. (Which from everything I've read is way, WAY underweight, but hey, maybe she sees a big fat woman and knows I'm not going to stay an a lowly 10 pounds.)

She's given me some directives:

  1. No sugar.
  2. Nothing with sugar or sweeteners.
  3. Nothing processed.
  4. Nothing that's white.
Yes, folks, that's right. I'm not supposed to eat anything that's white. No white bread, white flour, white tortillas, white rice, pasta, cream-based anything, butter, etc.

I've been trying to cook healthy or healthier foods, but my mojo is completely off. Here are some recent disasters:

Brown rice and stir-fry: I normally love brown rice. I had a mouthful of this and almost yaked. Mushy? Bland? Plasticy? I don't know. I kept trying but finally gave up.

Black bean soup: I was looking forward to trying the America's Test Kitchen Black Bean Soup, which seemed pretty easy and healthy. I didn't use "processed" canned beans. I soaked my beans overnight, then cooked them for 3 hours. The next night I made the soup. We finally had it on the third night because the beans were still CRUNCHY the second night. I just had the last of it for lunch today, and it was still pretty al dente. Which beans shouldn't be.

Florentine Pasta: Tonight I made a Florentine Pasta, which was about three pounds of organic spinach, onions, garlic in a saffron bechamel sauce (with saffron it was golden, not white!). Well, somehow I messed up the sauce and it was totally thin, so I tempered two egg yolks and added them. Perfect. Except five minutes later the sauce was broken, and we ended up with this wierd dish with a scrambled egg sauce. Tasted okay, but it sure wasn't what I'd planned. And I ended up adding a bunch of parmesan cheese (WHITE!!!!) to help pull it all together.

So, do I give up trying to cook at all for the next few months? Is it just mum-dum? Or an offshoot symptom?

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