taal is zeg maar echt niet mijn ding.

Good god, I'm in some kind of very unexciting time warp. It feels like days since I've posted. Something is afoot.

Perhaps it's the intense cleanliness of my mind and spirit. I am a whirring and clanking productivity machine, or at least I am a twitching bundle of energy. Or nerves. I quit smoking 6 days ago, and drinking, and eating gluten, and yeah, sleeping. I'm also not eating mmm, carbohydrates really anymore. And not much sugar. I think about food quite a bit. I'm not even sure what you call this diet other than DOOMSDAY REHAB (cue strobe, bluish fog).

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Studying continues. Some things are annoyingly complicated to memorize, lots and lots of acronyms. But in the department of Weeding Out Religious Fundamentalists Things I Already Know And Therefore Do Not Have to Memorize, there's this actual sample test question (translated by me):

35. A new colleague asks if you can help him with something. You know that he is homosexual. What do you do?

a) you go to the boss and ask to be transferred to another department
b) you tell your colleague that you are opposed to same-sex marriage
c) you explain to your colleague as thoroughly as possible what it is he needs to know

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Ended up reading a little about this paleo shit, but haven't got to the part where they explain how a caveman diet is a good idea when cavemen only lived until they were 33 or so.

Whatever, if it gets people to eat less processed food I guess it's a good thing. I think doing without salt and sugar for a while (which the diet advocates) would also be a reality-shifting experience if you could manage to do it for say 3 months or so and then go back to normal 21st century eating. Imagine your first Dorito. Your mind would explode. Or one of Hilly's brownies. Goodbye Earth.

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Back at VDuck HQ, the kitchen is suffused with the intoxicating aroma of failure. Multiple failures. First, I thought I'd make a Surinamese version of an escabeche since I've been loving them so much lately, and since I can eat all the onions I want cause I'm not leaving the house, and since they're on the DR diet, and since, and since, etc. No such thing in Suriname, but a little research revealed that Jamaica is pretty much the only Scotch Bonnet-y culture to have its own version, and it's called escovitch. Great. Irie.

Only thing I didn't notice is that escovitch is served hot, not cold. I made one, and...turns out there's a reason you can't think of a cold dish that uses Scotch Bonnets: it's just not quite right. I mean it was OK. I'm eating it. But I wouldn't serve it I don't think. I'll probably try it again though, cos frankly I didn't have all the ingredients, and cos it seems like it should work, and oh yeah: b-cuz I'm STOOPIT (also, I found a better-looking recipe, here, one that says it can be served cold).

Second failure: sayur lodeh. I just should've realized that I don't ever really love this anyway when Indonesian people make it. It was...bleeeccch. And the cabbage really fucked up my stomach. I ended up drinking some of the broth and just eating a piece of turmeric by itself. Boooooo.

The best thing I've eaten all week other than those pancakes has been back on Tuesday or something, four slimline pikante merguez sausages from the very nice Moroccan butcher across the street on top of a pile of sauteed spinach with a spoonful of yoghurt on top. If I could eat that every day I would.

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