iscah meal log 052117

 

 

May. 21st, 2017 09:30 am = Skillful Sunday! ♥

Breakfast= vanilla soymilk, vanilla Ensure (told you I'd try! ♥), a fresh fruit cup (grapes, pineapple, honeydew, cantaloupe), cream cheese, a cheese omelette, & an English muffin! Oh, and jasmine green tea! I apologize; my brain is exhausted this morning & I'm quite sleepy, but in a good "Sunday rest" way. Still, it makes it tough to review data clearly. BUT! I have GREAT news for data collection-- Vanilla Ensure? It tastes like PUDDING! ♥ Really, the color should've given me a hint! But in truth, what made me "get it" today was-- again!-- Laurie asking me to describe it-- by COMPARISON! Does it taste like vanilla ice cream? Cake? Cookie cream? And what's the difference in the soymilk? Well, I did that last one first, & noticed that there's a vaguely salty touch to the Ensure? Whereas the soymilk has a "flatter" base, very matte-white & papery simple, with a delicate golden-vanilla kiss to its aftertone? Again, cold it's so hard to tell-- but we get a second chance at dinner today! ♥ So I'll clarify it then. However! That surprisingly "warm" vanilla tone (difficult to place under the blueness of the temperature, & how it mixes with the ever-so-minutely blue-leaning base neutral-white!), and the unusually "salt"-like buttery tone (THAT'S the word! almost, at least!) of the Ensure in comparison, is what made my mind-- after mentally comparing the other vanilla-tones (I NEED to make a list!), -- land solidly on "pudding!!" So we FINALLY have a taste anchor! ♥ Plus, we get TWO extra chances to deepen our data today; thank You God! Now, the other big goal for today was the fruit cup. However! We have an unexpected obstacle to pure data-- the fruits are all sitting in mostly PINEAPPLE JUICE! And that tartness is masking the other flavors! But I still did my best to be attentive to all of it. The grapes were softer & therefore sweeter, less tart, and therefore actually closer in taste to raisins! And this time I got SKIN data-- tough & tart, solid in "fiber" like an onion skin, and a tad bitter-- like a grape seed is! But with that added wine-bite to give it that color edge. The honeydew was still cool & dew-fresh & so light in flavor & color-- it's mostly water! But it has that delicate round "melon sweetness" to it-- a docile sweet, curved & gently happy, bright like summer pastel hues. Same with the cantaloupe & its vermilion-leaning fullness of that fragile hue, widening that smile to feel like a beach ball in your hands? Kind of? It's round & wider, but still so light! And its softness is a much easier "give"-- no resistance at all, just smooth teeth-sink, almost like a child's happy hug-- whereas honeydew has the slightest cucumber-y briskness to its texture-- otherwise, it's FAR lighter than cantaloupe, which has a soft "density" to its flash; honeydew is, again, spaced clearly with rain-taste! It has a tiny resistant firmness, but once that is acknowledged, the rest is like a drink, practically! It's lovely. And yes, I LOVE 'EM BOTH-- and I had the oddly strong feeling that Iridicel is the one who really likes cantaloupe-- it fits her personality well, giving MORE awesome support to yesterday's idea!-- and although Unidome isn't predisposed to liking it, he still says it's HIS favorite because she loves it so. ♥ That's such devotion to harmony & love... and, beautifully, so is exactly what WE are striving for, here, in ALL foods, for ALL love. ♥ And on that note? The pineapple. Let me say it plainly= when I, through Christ, recognize how much I LOVE my family, and how much I LOVE my friends in SLC, notably Jacob-- then, I recognize that they only ever wanted, so badly, for me TO love this fruit WITH them... THAT'S why they kept giving it to me! Their hearts were just aching to further share their joy with mine, in mutual happy appreciation of life, of tart-acid yet deep-sweet bright yellow exuberance, held so strongly like sunlight in the juicy, fibrous-stringed, water-fresh but flavor-brilliant fruit I was FINALLY able to eat WITH and IN that love today!! I was scared of pineapple back then, falsely, not recognizing it as God's pure & benevolent, harmless gift of Goodness-- but now? I see that even back then, it was Good, and so were (are!! ♥) those beloved souls whose generous, hopeful offerings of service & community gave me the beloved, sweet wounds that now allowed for DEEPEST healing. ♥ And so it is. As for my fave foods? The muffin bitterness has a BLUE/ SWISS CHEESE tone?? Like mold on bread??? But NOT BAD! That's the wonder of fermentation-- more transmutation of death & decay into LIFE-GIVING LIFE! ♥ And of course it was soft & sweet & so good... ESPECIALLY with the CREAM CHEESE (♥!), which is THICK & salty and yet soured-milk-cheesy & a tad sweet?? And with a density like heavy cheese WITHOUT tackiness or mouth-stickiness, although it DOES have that "teeth-sucking" heavy pull! I LOVE it. As for my dear omelette? The egg is naturally light in flavor but kissed by butter's warmth & crisp oil and the cheese's mellow sweet-salt amber, it sings in perfect fluffy-light airy harmony, its literal texture exactly so blessed-- softly spongy & slightly sweet and so, so simply pure delicious. ♥ What a gift from God this breakfast was-- the tea, too! ♥

Lunch= a medium salad (w/ iceberg lettuce, 2 grape tomatoes, 3 cucumber slices, & bits of julienned carrot & purple cabbage + turkey strips, half an egg, & Swiss cheese, too!! ♥), golden Italian dressing, apple juice, apple pie, a dinner roll, a butter pat, and vanilla Ensure. I compared the juice to the pie, pairing bites with sips, and WHOA! The juice is a crisp, bright, tart, fresh clear amber-- literally too, no surprise!-- but the pie filling has no bite, instead tasting a warm amber, sweet & soft but spongy and still a bit crisp, and so mellow & richly round, with the smallest hint of tart deep down! It was a sunny autumn day, and a brisk autumn night by the fire. Sun & warm-glow, fresh-outdoors & comforting-indoors, and both so solidly apple-rich in their own unique ways! ♥ It was a joy. Also! I DIDN'T DECONSTRUCT THE PIE! ♥ And paired with that soft-buttery-crumb, lard-oiled (the only fitting quality!) crust, wonderfully textured AND just as surprisingly "quiet" in flavor as the Fig Newtons-- although this crust DID have the fat-kissed golden-brushed tone over its warm light brown base, just a hint of salted cream?-- matched with that childhood-familiar simple doughy taste & texture of neutral flour touched with amber-brown, that richer amber SOARS in its embracing sweet glow! Unity prevails in beauty again! ♥ Same with the salad-- the amber (again!)-vivid bite, leaning yellow, of the dressing, with its little harmonies of garlic & red pepper, is this brilliantly piquant wake-up zip to the mild, high-tint, cool & delicate freshness of the lettuce & cucumber, a similar nip to the cabbage while balancing its violet expansive-power taste perfectly, a welcome neighbor to the sweet orange carrots, also leaning towards yellow in their lightness-- and I unfortunately don't know how it'd sing with the tomatoes because I ate those alone and they are like VEGETABLE GRAPES!!! So even though they probably are cherry tomatoes, I will now think of them as siblings to today's purple breakfast fruit! SAME skin texture, or almost-- tomatoes have a tad more plasticity, a tad less tightness? Hard to word! But grapeskin is tougher, & tomato skin more tearable BUT less chewable? In your mouth it stays more together. But yes! The jellylike insides, too, are close-- but grapes are more gel, more solid, and tomatoes are more water-filled, bits of "gel" loosely held and leaking out easily. Grapes "pop" but tomatoes "burst!" It's all the water inside. But oh man, discovering their similarities was SO COOL. ♥ I'd love to have them together, one day. See? A tomato CAN fit perfectly into a fruit salad!! ♥ As well as a turkey chef one! On that note, I don't know how they prepare the salad turkey but it is SO sweet & moist & soft!! And yet, being meat, it still has that tacky-texture on your teeth when you chew it! Oh, and there was FAT in it, too-- lovely clear long bits like in the chicken tenders! I never thought I'd enjoy fat this much, but here we are. ♥ Hey, my body NEEDS it to live! And fat is a Good thing! ♥ So I treasure it too. Turkey also has a unique taste undertone that I can only describe as sour? Like lunchmeat? But no salt! And at least this turkey does, I can't speak for the fresh kind yet! Next, the egg-- each part separately today, for the sake of grasping its unique aspects better. The yolk ISN'T tacky, but it has almost the SAME chew-texture as chicken, or the turkey, just a little softer in feel. It's VERY unique! It has a super-dry crumb BUT it's MOIST, and it actually has VERY LITTLE flavor intensity-- like four, it too can be easily used as a unitive agent,and so it-- AND the whites!-- have very little flavor strength of their own. The yolk has a slight dry-mellow yellow (like a butter yellow, leaning amber?) taste, but it's actually not color-saturated as one might assume! Same with the white; it has a lovely milky blueish white taste, but it's VERY mild, AND it matches its texture? Smooth, glossy/ rubbery, but soft-breaking into solid pieces. It's nice!! You know what ELSE is nice? THE SWISS CHEESE. It still has that uniquely "thick stiff cream" mouthfeel, and it DOES have a notably milky taste, compared to the saltiness of oranger cheeses-- but, thanks to this morning, what stood out the most today was that "good mold" overtone that the English muffin also had! I need to be able to describe it better; I need to discover more foods prepared similarly! As you probably guessed, considering my odd taste-preference for cultured/ fermented foods. But yes, I really appreciate & enjoy the unusual taste qualities of Swiss cheese now-- good, because I plan on visiting their native country one day! ♥ And lastly, while we're on the topic of dairy products & fermentation, how about that ROLL & BUTTER? ♥ They are always so nice. The rolls are always fluffy & airy, but when compressed they become doughy but still soft enough to be easily torn, and in the mouth they are so bready-sweet and enjoyable... and, to save that last delicious bite to pair perfectly with the sweet-cream, salt-kissed brightness of butter? Dude if I could chew that one bite for ten minutes I would! It's LOVELY. Thank God for creating such lovely things!! ♥ I've really grown to treasure this lunch & the special "Sabbath serenity" feeling it also brings. It's just so simple & beautiful & peaceful & nice. ♥ Thank God for Sunday-- literally!!

Dinner= SALMON SUNDAY! ♥ plus its friends: a baked potato, broccoli, a butter pat, vanilla soymilk, a vanilla magic cup, and vanilla Ensure! I put the butter on the WHOLE potato today! It really did help soften it, & enrichen its flavor. And the skin was slightly "tough" from baking, dark brown & peeling off in places, but it WASN'T BURNT and it tasted so good. ♥ About that!! The potato has a "DIRT" taste, not bad, just straight-up EARTH. It's actually nice! AND, when you really taste the center white, guess what? THERE'S THAT RAISIN-BANANA-FIG SOUR TASTE AGAIN! It's gotta be potassium, man; that's all I can figure! But THAT'S the "acrid" taste on the potato cod!! Mystery solved! ♥ But yes, I THOROUGHLY enjoyed every bite. ♥ The butter melted into it, by the way, so you couldn't taste its cream, BUT it did give that subtle warm-yellow wash of fat & salt, effectively making the white potato taste closer to an actual yellow one! ♥ Cool stuff, honestly. And also, next time I kind of want to try a bit of ketchup and/or hot sauce on it? Because it DOES taste so earthy in the literally "grounding" skin flavor, and the potato itself is a nicely neutral (but NOT "flavorless!") starch taste-- one which I DO need to clarify further, descriptively, as I do like potatoes-- such a warmer flavortone might work very well? Differently from fries, of course, as those have added oil-- AND different because I ate the potato WARM! And THAT affects the "taste song," too! ♥ I think neutral tastes benefit nicely & happily from warmth-- like the dinner roll & burgers!-- which is probably why baked goods are always tastier fresh out of the oven, of course! ♥ So many new discoveries to make; thank you God, our great & wondrous, Loving Creator!! ♥ So that's the potato. As for the vanilla trio? The Ensure & Magic Cup have rather similar flavor tones-- more buttery vanillas-- but the Ensure has added neutral tan colortones, making it more "even" than the rich "french vanilla" warmth of the Magic Cup, reminiscent of the smoothly silk-colored balance of the soymilk-- WHICH has a NOTABLE tofu flavor!! (duh, but THANKS LAURIE!)-- but still too notably colored to ever be so comparatively neutral. There IS a saltiness to it; I wish I knew how else to describe it than "yes it legit tastes like vanilla pudding"! Ah well. If I have to try again twice tomorrow, & compare it to the sundae this time, then I shall! But that's that for that for now! (What a tongue twister!) Last up, we have our beloved broccoli & special salmon. ♥ Salmon doesn't have a water-source taste?? And it isn't even that fishy in scent or taste? It's neat! I wonder if it's the pinkness? Because cod is MUCH lighter, & sweeter, & watery & lake!-tasting; Salmon is... denser, firmer, meatier? It's not very watery at all but... now that I think of it, I think there's a very bottom-tone fishy/ river taste? VERY low in the taste package, so to speak. I'll have to pay SUPER attention to it next week; I apologize! That and the broccoli-- the stems were EXTRA firm (hard to even cut!) and sweet today, tasting EXTRA green & bright with fresh water as a result-- but I can't remember how the crowns tasted. Or the Magic Cup, for that matter. I didn't give enough time to those to pay proper attention, and I'm sorry... but now, we can heal more deeply next Sunday. ♥

Snack= Three bags of good ol' plain Sun Chips! That was the only flavor left, but I love them, so it worked out lovely. ♥ To be honest with you? I'm probably going to have Sun Chips most nights! NuGos are good, but too much sugar too late-- ESPECIALLY chocolate-- makes my sleep rather uneasy. Which is understandable! They're innocent and I love them, truly; nighttime just isn't the optimal time for my body, who has to digest all that sugar, and can't properly do so when I take us to bed! But tea helps, and above all, God knows best, and He sent His Spirit to my soul, to tell my body and I the proper thing to do. I just need to lovingly, trustingly listen. ♥