U, V, W and Bloat

Yes. We ate stuffed vine leaves from a can. You have to understand, my husband was born in Bulgaria. Vine leaves, aren’t just part of our eating the alphabet adventure. They’re part of our family culture. If my mother-in-law knew about this, she’d have fit. (Ah, we miss you, Nadka.) She could make beautiful sirme, taking care to fill each vine leaf with the same amount of delicious filling, shaping it perfectly. I don’t have that kind of time on a work day. I also don’t have access to the quality, farm grown ingredients Nadka did.

I also, I have to confess, haven’t been feeling so well. Introducing so much more fiber to my diet so quickly has left me feeling really, really bloated. When I was losing a lot of weght, I used to eat a high-fiber diet all the time. Losing weight wasn’t my only goal. I also am deeply concerned about cancer prevention because I am a cancer survivor. At the time, though, I walked almost everywhere and exercised in the gym for about 2 hours 4 days a week. I just don’t have that kind of time and, when you eat a high-fiber diet, you have to keep moving to keep the fiber moving!
So, I couldn’t face the idea of my original plan for W. We would have had white bean soup, another typical Bulgarian dish, if I could face the idea of more fiber!

Food does and should, link us to our culture, to our families and traditions. A piece of fruit, picked very green and shipped from Jamaica, really doesn’t do anything for my sensory memory. The canned vine leaves just made us mourn Nadka as if we lost her last week instead of last year. While trying the ugli fruit was interesting, it’s not something I want to eat all the time.

So, we each had a small triangle of water melon for dessert. It was awful, out of season, expensive stuff. Maybe we should have taken a month for the eat the alphabet challenge?