Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A night of exceptions


Last week I went out with Juliana, my roommate, and Paul, my paragliding instructor. We went to COMIDA & CIA, a small restaurant in Florianópolis that serves a lot of international food, and I could not imagine how things could get so messy. 

Our first problem in the restaurant that night was that Juliana is lactose intolerant. To be lactose intolerant means that she can not metabolize lactose, because of a lack of the required enzyme lactase in the digestive system. One curiosity: It is estimated that 75% of adults worldwide show some decrease in lactase activity during adulthood. Therefore, Juliana had to order all her dishes without milk, butter and other ingredients that contain lactose. OK! I already knew about her being lactose intolerant since we have been living together for some time.

However, to my surprise, Paul is vegetarian! It means that he follows a plant-based diet including fruits, vegetables, cereal grains, nuts, and seeds. A vegetarian does not eat meat, including: red meat, game, poultry, fish, and shellfish. In addition, some vegetarians do not eat dairy products and eggs, but Paul does. So, pleasing Paul was our second problem that night.


Try to picture us choosing the dishes to please the three of us together. After discussing for more than 15 minutes we ended up deciding that each of us would have to choose our own menu and luckily COMIDA & CIA have a lot of options.

Here is a brief description of what each one of us had that night for dinner:

After that night I started considering Paul a nice date for Juliana and not for me anymore! Just kidding!!!

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When talking about food, here are some of my favorite websites. 

Take a look at them:

* You are what you eat! (questions and answers form a riddle thematically relating a person and some agreeable element in their diet)

* Glossary
 - Vegetables (pictures and audio)
 - Fruits (pictures and audio)
 - Ways of cooking (verbs)
 - Ways of eating (verbs)

* Does your mouth water when you look at this?

* Food dictionary (pictures, ingredients, definitions): Epicurus and BBC

* Food Timeline

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

I CAN’T STAND ONE MORE NIGHT LIKE THIS…


Hey guys! Today’s post is going to be very short. I have loads of things to do but I couldn’t avoid stopping by to say hello!

You won’t believe that I am having the worst week of insomnia ever! And this is totally weird because I am really tired of studying for all the papers and exams which are scheduled for this week, but when I lay down in my bed I simply can’t sleep!!! Well, it may be because when I go to bed I can’t stop thinking…

Oh! Do you remember that last holiday I went paragliding? For sure you remember! My mind is so messy today!!! Well, the adventure was wonderful to help me relax a bit, unfortunately the relaxing sensation was over as soon as I stepped foot on Praia Mole. Wow! I almost forgot to tell you that the beach looks even more wonderful from up there. And I also have to confess that the paragliding instructor Paul is a very handsome and nice guy! ;)

By the way, I have some really bad news. Fluff is sick… He went out Saturday night to date the neighbors’ cat and got the flu or something like that. Can anyone help me find a good and cheap Vet for him? Meanwhile what can I do? He looks so miserable…

Well, I guess I’m stopping by here. I have to write the introduction for my monograph for next week and don’t have any ideas so far. Can anyone help me, pleeeease!

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Just for fun I’ll leave you with one of my favorite ads. This definitely reminds me that I have to keep an eye on Fluff! ;)