Sweet Enough Already

Remember when you were a kid, and your mum tried to make you eat Weet-Bix or Rice Bubbles without any sugar on top, and you whinged and whined and squirmed because it wasn't sweet enough and it was borrrrrrrrrring, even if it had chopped banana on top? (or was that just me? I loved nothing better than sprinkling heaps of sugar on my Rice Bubbles so that it formed a bit of a sugary, crusty raft, adrift in a sea of milk... no prizes for guessing why I was porky!).

Well anyway, the point I wish to make is that, at some point in relatively recent history (the last 3-4 years), my tastebuds have changed quite dramatically. For starters, I eat olives now. Yep, I do. It's true. I used to hate them with a passion, but now - provided they're the good quality ones, of course - I will scoff them down with reckless abandon. And I will also quite happily chow down on a bowl of steamed vegies and a serving of lean protein, and feel the most odd sensation of... well, I don't quite know what it is. It could be my body responding well to a food that is not high in fats or sugars or things that it has to really battle to process. It could be that I enjoy the taste. Or it could also be a liberal serving of Smug.

Similarly, a couple of years ago I realised that Weet-Bix with a wee sprinkling of All-Bran, served with either chopped banana or a spoonful of sultanas, was actually quite naturally sweet. And something about it pleased me and made me very happy of a morning. Perhaps it was the feeling of virtue for having made a healthy start to my day. Perhaps it was that my blood sugar wasn't all over the place, or knowing that it would be a good few hours before the urge to snack reared its ugly head. Who knows. But at around the same time I began to recognise that the natural sweetness of fruits and spices is actually enough to balance the sourness of natural (in this case, home-made goat's milk) yoghurt.

And that's how I used my yoghurt. The first two serves were with grated apple, a few sultanas and a sprinkling of each of cinnamon and ground cloves. What can I say - I'm a sucker for the ol' apple-cinnamon-cloves combination. If I were on Death Row, I would want steaming hot apple crumble with a crunchy top as my final meal, served with a liberal helping of vanilla icecream. And while we're at it, also some double cream. Because Death Row calories don't count! Actually, it would be my final dessert of my final meal, because I would also need to eat corned beef one last time before passing into the Hereafter. With mashed potato, of course.

That wasn't weird at all, was it.

And this most recent serve included chopped apple (because I didn't feel like cleaning the grater again!), pear and banana, topped with my goat-ghurt and the aforementioned spices. The sweetness of the fruit was enough for me. I guess I really am all grown up!

Note - this was my Sunday breakfast in bed, as evidenced by the background, and took it as an afterthought using my new iPhone (squee!). And the book upon which my breakfast rests is 50 Shades of Grey. No, I didn't purchase it myself (I'm still wading through my pile of unread books as part of my 101 Things challenge so I'm not allowed to buy new books) but yes, I'm having a bit of trouble putting it down. I'm not sure exactly how I will go about reviewing it, considering the content is fairly graphic and involves SPOILER ALERT some fairly k!inky stuff (the ! is so this site isn't blocked by your workplace's firewall!), but it's... I dunno, a little bit Twilight, in that it's not that well written but if you accept it for what it is then it's not so bad. Let's just say that it may surprise you!

Returning from that segue, you should definitely try grated apple and sultanas with natural yoghurt and a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg on top. I first tried it in a hostel in Austria, and initially I was horrified by the fact I had apparently inadvertently served myself a whopping bowl of unsweetened natural yoghurt, but then my tongue acclimatised and registered the apple juice and all was well in the world :)