sweetness and light.

Have you ever tried to quit smoking? Have you ever tried to quit drinking? Have you ever tried to quit smoking and quit drinking at the same time?

Prevailing wisdom has it that someone in this unenviable position might crave sweets. From my own experience I can verify this to be true.

As someone who is also trying to lose weight, this whole sweets business is an unpleasant obstacle. I guess the easiest answer would be to just ignore the craving as you would every other craving you're ignoring.

And yet...sometimes it's better to pacify a craving safely than to let it grow into an unmanageable bulge that will finally need to be released (?). You know what I mean.

So I'm going to take a moment to jot down some relatively harmless sweet little pacifiers here. Today's cavalry arrived in the form of a rojak, an Indonesian or Malaysian fruit salad with several additional sour and salty elements. Mine consisted of mango, pineapple, cucumber, tamarind, lime, fish sauce, coconut vinegar, a little palm sugar, peanuts, and cilantro. You're supposed to serve it at room temperature, but I like mine cold, quite cold. Cold Rojak I like.

Bulge Status: Managed.

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Something else I saw recently that I want to carry in my Emergency Kit is a "chocolate ice cream" made from two ingredients: ripe bananas and cocoa powder. Only problem is, our freezer's not big enough to accommodate our ice cream maker. Dilemma.

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Something that I do not get at all is kwark. I mention it here because it's occasionally referred to as a "diet food" in this country (then again, so is roast beef). I've tried to like it, but its charms continue to elude me. It's been a challenge to figure out what an American equivalent might be, but the latest research indicates that it's probably easiest to think of it as a Dutch variant of fromage frais: a fresh cheese. Here's an article that elaborates in detail. And provides a couple of curiosity-arousing recipes. Maaaybe we'll give kwark a chance to prove itself in the kitchen. It is a diet food, after all.

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