Flavor

I decided years ago I wouldn't eat food just to get by. I would only eat awesome foods. If I want ice cream, I'm going to eat ice cream, with a genuine creamy mouth feel and some strong, good taste (and preferable big chunks of good dark chocolate). If I'm having a salad, it's going to be good fresh ingredients and a tasty dressing with real extra-virgin olive oil, not some cornstarch low calorie version. I want my food to be tasty, and I want it to feel special. 

But in that context, I still would like to weigh less than I do now. So I'm on a perpetual quest to find flavorful things to eat that satisfy my senses, beyond filling me up. And, I'm fundamentally lazy so I want easy things, not things that require many ingredients and a lot of work. 

I've got two winners now!

My friends turned me on to nut butters and apples. It's very much apple season now, and I can go to farmer's market and buy a dozen different varieties of apple, to have a different one every day. But I don't keep track of them by name, all apples go in the same bag, so I can't figure out my favorites. So far, they are all good, but I am figuring out what I like in terms of sweetness (medium, not tart) and texture (crisp, not grainy or soft). I don't like biting into an apple - maybe a residual effect from the long ago days of wearing braces? So I have an apple slicer - a plastic and metal thing you put on top of the apple and force it down over the whole fruit. Mine yields 16 2-bite slices and separates out the core. 

But it's the nut butters that elevate apples to fancy special snacks. Based on tips from friends, I got a sampler pack of a half dozen 3 ounce jars from Big Spoon Roasters. Each jar works for three apples. All I have to do is stir it up and dip right in. Here are my ratings:

1. Pistachio crunch
2. Cashew butter
3. Bourbon pecan
4. Fiji ginger
5. Chai spice
6. Lum lum Thai curry

I was surprised that these have fairly big lumps in them - big pieces of pecans, or pistachios, or crystalized ginger. I would definitely buy any of the first four in bigger jars. The Chai spice is interesting and may grow on me, but the Thai curry has too much bite for me, and I won't be getting it again. There are several other flavors I want to try - I'm especially intrigued by the toasted coconut. There are additional flavors they only have in big jars. 

Another special treat I've found is La Fermiere yogurt. It's a whole milk very creamy French-style yogurt, and they are more dessert than breakfast to me. Each not-quite 5 ounce serving is 190 calories, and comes in a terra cotta pot. Sadly, the foil top is hard to remove, but once it's off I sit down with a tiny spoon and eat it slowly, savoring it melting on my tongue. Not probably any healthier than ice cream, but automatic portion control and active live cultures, at least. They have exotic flavors, florals and tropicals. My favorites are the prosaic vanilla bean and pressed lemon. I'm not generally a fan of tropicals. I've had some of the florals, jasmine and rose, and they are just faintly flavored, but sadly the floral taste ends up reminding me of soap. 

 

One consequence of these new indulgences is a plethora of small containers around. The little nut butter jars turn out to be a nice size for shaking up a small portion of a vinaigrette, enough for 2-3 salad servings. They would also be good sizes for pesto and other fresh herbs - I often mush up my herbs in a food processor with a little oil and then freeze in smaller portions. These glass jars would work well, I think, freeze with top off and then seal it when frozen. The little terra cotta yogurt jars are very cute, and come in a number of different muted colors, blue and green and brown. (They also come in glass, but I haven't bought any of those yet because the flavors don't tempt me.)  They are really small, too small for most plants, though I think they would make really cute little table vases with tiny daisies in them. It also turns out you can buy third party tops to them, on Etsy or Amazon, silicon or bamboo, if I want to use them for storage.