Day 27 - Starch Solution

Today’s stats:

Relatively quiet day today. Even though it was a Saturday, I was up at a reasonable time (for once) so I was able to have a McDougall oatmeal pot. This time I only put in half the dose of the sugar and it was much more palatable. Very tasty too. I didn’t get around to having lunch for some reason (not entirely sure why) but I ended up just having an iced lemon water around 4pm. I was avoiding “afternoon tea” (something of an institution in Hong Kong) as we were going out for dinner at a nice restaurant for my mother in law’s birthday.

Dinner went quite well, although it was really hard to get across the idea that I wanted the dishes cooked without oil. I had taken the opportunity to call up the restaurant to check in advance whether or not they could meet my needs and they assured me it would be fine - I just had to inform the waiter before ordering what dishes I wanted without oil. Unfortunately the waiter I got was hard to convince, and it was vital to do so because in Hong Kong “tiny bit of oil” means covering the bottom of the pan in most cases. Much of Cantonese food is cooked this way, and trying to get them to cook it differently, or even think about it differently is hard.

In any case I was not to enjoy the stir fried veggies with cashew nuts, as they insisted they couldn’t do that without oil. I said I’d be quite happy to take part in that experiment, but they were adamant that it couldn’t be done and wouldn’t sir like some steamed tofu with soy sauce instead. I ended up with a tasty sweetcorn soup (very starchy) which had no oil in it, the aforementioned tofu with soy sauce and a crock pot of steamed vegetables, all without oil. I also had a small side dish of rice, which I thought was quite amusing - even in Hong Kong, the capital of Cantonese cuisine, the rice is now being treated like a side dish!

I also took the opportunity to enjoy (shock horror) an ice cold beer. I fancied one and as I mentioned before I have no specific ban on either alcohol or caffeine (coffee / tea) and that I am merely looking to minimise it. Maybe in the end I just won’t bother drinking it, but for now I didn’t want to rule it out. I haven’t had a beer in nearly a month and the taste was quite interesting. It felt very thick with a strong taste, which was odd because I remember this particular beer (Tsing Dao) being very light. I suspect this is because I have now adapted to sparkling water which is pretty much the lightest and cleanest (bubbly) drink that you can get your hands on. So this was really interesting for me because soda and beer which were mainstays of my diet before, now are interesting diversions (well, I would certainly avoid soft drinks wherever possible) rather than something to live on, and soda water is doing great for me as my primary drink of choice.

For dessert I’d really been gunning for a sorbet or something similar but alas, the only thing they had that was guaranteed compatible was an expensive and somewhat anaemic looking fruit platter. To be fair the fruit was pretty tasty but there wasn’t a huge amount of it.

Overall not a terrible experience, but not an easy one either. I might have to look at starting up a little scheme whereby restaurants can show that they support starch based foods and vegan dishes cooked without oil. For many of those dishes, it’s an easy change to make, or just a slight change in cooking style. Maybe a web app or something I should put together…