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New tastes/old favourites

9/3/2013

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In my “Comfort Food” blog a couple of weeks ago I declared that I was going to attempt to try something new every week for a year. Trying to break old habits and neglect old favourites is presenting me with a few challenges! I must confess that there are some things that even a self-confessed “change agent” finds hard to shift away from. Take pasta for example, well pasta is a creamy, lemony, pale colour when it is cooked – isn't it? Sure it comes in all shapes and sizes and designs….. Granted …… I am of Italian heritage, so a bowl of pasta is cooked ‘al dente’ tossed with some olive oil and then the tomato sauce that the meat for the main course has been cooked in is tossed around the pasta, grate some Parmesan or Pecorino and there is the bowl of pasta to kick of the meal. Really, pasta is not purple, black, orange or striped…….or is it? So for the first time – hard to believe – but yes, for the first time in my life, I ate black – seaweed pasta, in the form of ravioli stuffed with a prawn filling. 

Now another thing people who know me have heard me say millions of times – I like my food to be “WET”. So this serving of two very large (almost the size of my fist) ravioli sitting on a slice of char-grilled capsicum, with octopus tentacles draped over the top was rather dry by my standards!! Also not the way I normally eat pasta. Did I like it?  It was OK! I would have altered the filling to give it a bit more wetness, I would have removed one or two tentacles so that I did not have the whole octopus on the plate and I would have provided a little sauce of some description. But, it was palatable. Who was the chef? – I don’t really know – I was the guest at a lunch and I don’t really know who was responsible for the menu. The main course was grilled fish, followed by a fig and frangipane tart – very satisfying. Albeit all a bit dry! BUT week one of my challenge has kicked off.

Share with me new tastes you have enjoyed lately.

In week two – just gone – the new tastes were salts, and I mean many, many, varieties of salt. I will tell you more in an upcoming blog ……but French Lavender salt on hot chips…….SENSATIONAL, Tahitian vanilla salt on ice cream…..DIVINE!!  DC xx

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Food, health, profession, Social Media (SoMe), lifestyle, wellbeing - how it all became one

3/3/2013

8 Comments

 
Yesterday I went off to a conference that was billed to be for Bloggers in Health. Of course my “professional glasses” read that to mean that is was for the health care sector and health care professionals. Given that my new role as CEO at MSA (one of my lives) is utilising much of SoMe, it made sense to attend. Of course, I am very smitten with the SoMe use for Plough Creek Homestead and the Cooking School (another of my lives). My Consulting work around SoMe use by health professionals is quietly percolating along (the 3rd life) and Facebook keeps me connected everywhere ……. So really it was a no brainer that I should attend. Well how foggy my “glasses” actually were and how clever Kathie Melocco obviously is. 

A program that interwove, health and wellbeing, with health care and health professionals, food and nutrition, blogging and social media, lifestyle and real people with real stories, is quite an accomplishment. After nearly four decades of attendances at conferences, meetings, networking events, seminars, workshops (and being responsible for organising and delivering many of them along the way), it is so refreshing to be blown away by a one day event that combined all the things I am so into. What a well-paced and inspiring day. It moved quickly – that appeals to the attention deficit tendencies I have. I met amazing people; which of course is always so stimulating to me – I always love copious amounts of social intercourse. Heard amazing stories told in so many ways and by incredible story tellers & that enthralled a story teller like me -who is known to spin a yarn that extra foot or two! Met people who are really into the food/life/travel and shared table experience which is the philosophy we are building PCH on. Felt the range of emotions from belly laughter, to palpable despair, to uplifting hope, tissue reaching sadness and pure pleasure as a flash crowd stood and did an amazing rendition of “Oh happy days”. I learnt heaps, felt much and reflected plenty. Gotta love a day that stretches you in all directions!

FAR OUT & FUNKY – what a great day!! Healthivate – well done and really looking forward to next year’s event ….DC


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