Category Archives: food & drink

antioxidant drinks

27 Monday Jul 2009

Posted by in cancer, change, food & drink, home, hope

≈ 10 Comments

my smoothie

Look what I found on Saturday!

I was actually looking for harissa paste in the gourmet shop at Corte Inglés (no luck) when I spotted these drinks in one of the coolers. One is mostly blueberry, the other acai berry. Have only tasted the former so far and it’s delicious. So I’m going to start alternating these with my blueberry & yoghurt smoothies in order to maintain a good daily level of antioxidants in my diet. Other diet changes will be coming in August, once I am done with the chemo. The drinks are kind of expensive, but so are fresh blueberries (cannot find frozen ones here at all).

blueberries

I reckon I’m worth it.  🙂

[photo updated to include pomegranate smoothie]

a taste of portugal

19 Sunday Jul 2009

Posted by in culture, food & drink, photos, portugal, sevilla, wine

≈ 5 Comments

portugal

I came across this wonderful Portuguese food shop quite by accident the other day when Nog & I were out for a walk and made a special trip back on Friday because I was told they have fresh Portuguese bread brought in that day. Memories of Lisbon and Tavira came flooding back after making a simple lunch of crusty bread, a selection of cheeses, black olive paste and salad.

Actually, that’s the typical starter in most Portuguese restaurants. I swear I could almost live on bread & cheese alone. Well, with a nice wine and some sort of fresh veg.  But they just don’t have good bread in Sevilla. I can’t remember what it was like when I lived in Salamanca, but in Barcelona the bread has a lot more character and flavour. Maybe it’s an Andalusian thing? White “cotton wool” tasteless pap with a pale and very uncrusty crust.  Bleh.

You can see more photos below (including lunch!) …

[also posted on azahar’s Sevilla]

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do-it-yourself doctor

16 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by in cancer, chemo, food & drink, friends, health & happiness, hospitals, tapas

≈ 10 Comments

diy doctor

Just call me Dr az.

I went to see the oncologist yesterday. Dr Ana is on holiday so I saw one of my original colon cancer oncs. As I mentioned in my summer holidays post, I’ve had very bad reactions to the last three infusions of Oxyplatin and so I decided that for the sixth and final round of chemo I’d just take the Xeloda chemo pills and forgo the infusion. When I told my friend/student/GP Agustín this the other day he went all doctory on me and said this wasn’t a decision I should make without the advice of my oncologist. So I gave that a shot and I’m not surprised at all how things went…

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twitter lunch

10 Friday Jul 2009

Posted by in food & drink, friends, internet, restaurants, sevilla, tapas, twitter

≈ 4 Comments

anna & pedro

The other day I met the lovely Anna on Twitter via a mutual acquaintance and, after tweeting back and forth a bit, I asked if she would like to meet up for a cold beer one day. And yesterday was the day. The plan was to meet for a pre-lunch beer and so I suggested Zaragoza 64 because they serve excellent Galician beer there, far superior to the pale and tasteless Cruz Campo, which is the bog standard lager sold in bars here. I’m not much of a beer drinker but I really like the taste of Galicia Estrella.

At the last minute Anna also invited her very charming Twitter friend Pedro to join us and – you guessed it – we ended up having lunch. A wonderful time was had by all. Very pleasant company, lots of laughs, including the very satisfying discovery that we are all “strong and bossy” types, which led to a few good anecdotes about those who feel the need to label decisive people “bossy”. We are also all a bit gadget crazy (who me?) and I couldn’t help but smile when Pedro took out his iPhone to send a few tweets. And also all expats – from Italy, Venezuela & Canada.

So, it was my first ever twitter lunch – hopefully the first of many.

(food pics below…)

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food porn

06 Monday Jul 2009

Posted by in cancer, food & drink, health & happiness, photos, restaurants, sevilla, spain, tapas

≈ 15 Comments

romero prawn nests

I don’t know how many calories these babies have and I don’t care.

After doing some Saturday morning errands and a bit of grocery shopping the other day, Nog & I stopped in for a tapa at one of our favourite bars, Bodeguita Romero. Everyone there knows about the cancer so, as I hadn’t been there in a few months, a full health update was required by the bar staff and Pedro Romero, the owner. After that was taken care of we tried something new on the menu – these really fabulous prawns wrapped in crispy fried potato threads. Then Pedro gave us a free sample of another new tapa they are trying out (see below). Little brie-filled pastries, kind of like spring rolls. The one on the left has spinach and the other one leeks. Also very nice.

All of this reminded me that I have been neglecting my Sevilla Tapas site, which still needs a lot of work done on it. So that is going to be one of my projects this week. In between yoga and breathing and walking and healing…

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