Daniel went away on his first school camping trip this week. It’s the first time he’s ever spent a night away from us and we were a bit nervous about how he’d manage. It turns out he managed splendidly and it was me who struggled. I missed him so much and am already dreading the kids moving out of home.
They went to Dalguise, in Perthshire, to the place Beatrix Potter went for her summer holidays a child. They had a very full itinerary with a challenge course, a giant swing, a zip wire, wall climbing, orienteering, raft-building, a trapeze, a sensory trail, abseiling and I think that’s it. He had a fab time but I think he’s pleased to be home.
We went out for dinner to Wagamama tonight in celebration of Ben winning an award at the University for best personal tutor. I love Wagamama because they have so many vegan choices. Tonight I tried a new vegan dish called avant gard’n. I took a photo of it:
This is a vegan dish so obviously that’s not a real egg. It’s looks like an egg but it doesn’t taste like an egg. Instead it’s made from coconut and sriracha. It was delicious and complemented the rest of the dish well.
The only downside to the whole meal was they accidentally brought me the chicken version of the starter I ordered and I didn’t realise until I ate some of it and realised something didn’t taste right. It has been nearly 20 years since I’ve eaten chicken so I was not happy about mistakenly eating some. I only realised because it didn’t taste very nice which confirms to me what I already thought about human taste – our tastes change depending on what we eat. I used to like the taste of chicken but after 20 years without I now prefer the flavours of plants. Indeed most of flavours in the food we eat comes from plants – garlic, herbs, onion, spices. The plant version of the dish I ordered contains coriander, mushroom, and aubergine. Without the coriander the chicken version was pretty bland. They were very apologetic about the mistake and brought me the right dish and didn’t charge us for it.
For dessert I had this amazing vegan cake with lovely tart raspberries and a delicious sponge.
I feel very stuffed now. Thank goodness we don’t have a car and got to walk home afterwards.
rachel.blog 
Sounds like a delicious dinner in spite of the goof up by the kitchen. I had a similar experience where I was accidentally served a salad with bits of grilled chicken and bacon in it. I haven’t eaten meat in 20 years, and I was surprised at how unpleasant the flavor of the chicken was. (The bacon just tasted like bits of salt.) I was also a little sick afterwards; apparently my digestive system has changed to the point where I really can’t eat meat anymore. The friend whom I was eating with teased me about starving to death if all the plant life on the planet disappeared; I replied that if we lose all of our plants, we’ll all be dead anyway, not to mention chickens and pigs!
Yeah, we’d all die without plants since most of the animals we consume eat plants.
I did feel a little ill on Friday night but I ate a lot, probably too much. Plus I wondered whether it was just psychosomatic but maybe my body really can’t digest that food now. One thing I noticed when I went veggie is how you don’t get that really full sickly feeling after a meal like you do with meat. Meat is really heavy and you can fill sickly full on it. But vegan meals don’t do that.
I’ve gone off milk and milky drinks recently but I was a bit bored and thirsty this week so I started drinking them again and some very funny stuff happened to my digestion. I read that our bodies stop producing the enzymes to digest foods we don’t eat hence your body would know the chicken wasn’t right.
Congratulations to Ben on his award! He has some very lucky students, and research can be given so much more kudos than looking after students by the university community that it is nice to know that his are well looked after.
Interesting! I did feel a bit sickly full after my meal but I thought it was just psychosomatic. Maybe there’s something more to it!
Agree that often the teaching component of academic work is forgotten in favour of research. It is great to be acknowledged for the teaching, especially when that acknowledgement comes from the students.
The vegan egg looks cute! I’ve only successfully made the yolk so far with the help of a dash of kala namak.