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

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