More Food for Thought

Blogging is hard.  I dabbled a bit last year with Shivani and her website www.shivspix.com  I’m going to be posting some blogs on her website again this year.  Shivani took a leave of absence from the 2010 World Championships, but is making a comeback this year in Bled.  We will all be excited to see her and you should be too!  Her pictures are amazing and definitely let supporters at home get a feel for what is going on at the regatta.  Anyway, back to my point.  Blogging is hard and I am finding it difficult to come up with things to write about.  The lesson I’ve learned so far is not to search for it too much.  The ideas will come at the most random time, when you don’t have a pen or computer to write it down.  I swear, I had an awesome idea yesterday, but forgot it.  So today I was walking around the shopping center across from the hotel and thought of another idiosyncrasy to tell you about.  I rushed my shopping a bit to type it out on the computer.  Again, amazingly, it is about food.  

When I was a plebe at the Naval Academy I would buy a snickers bar NEARLY EVERY DAY.  I guess I felt like I earned it.  I was in college, rowing and getting paid (barely… $100/month).  As I have gotten older and wiser I have learned to savor the gift of chocolate.  Also of note, if I ate a snickers every day 10 years after being a freshman in college I would not be a lightweight!  Therefore I try to get the most bang for my buck and only purchase nice chocolate.  You could say I’m spoiled.  Not that I couldn’t eat a snickers bar, they are delicious, but I really try to eat nice chocolate.  Think of Seattlites in coffee shops; I am a chocolate snob as they are coffee snobs. 

Well Slovenia is a gift to my madness.  I’ve only been here for 4 days and I’m on my 2^nd bar.  They have Lindt chocolate here, but I can get that in the States so I try to stay away.  Besides, my wife is from Exeter, NH which is very close to where the USA Lindt factory is.  We try to hoard some when we visit family, so I try to go for the local delicacies when away.  I just bought a milk chocolate bar made with honey and am eating it as I type this.  It is delicious and some of the best chocolate I’ve had.  I usually try to stay away from milk chocolate, considering myself a dark chocolate fan, but I am a huge honey fan and couldn’t resist.  The best thing about this piece of chocolate is it does not have a brand name.  It just says honey on the front.  For those of you looking to get in to great food, those are usually the best. 

We are about 10 days out from our race for lanes at the World Championships so I have to start watching what I eat.  I try to stay away from dairy and sugars.  Chocolate, honey and jam are about the only sweet things I continue to ingest.  The thoughts that go through my mind are, “you’re not going to get to eat a lot of it, so eat the good stuff.”  Well Slovenia is definitely providing some good stuff and I’m sure I’ll find more. 

Another sense of food snobbery comes in the form of bread.  Read about it at www.shivspix.com

- Jimmy