I know I said this blog will be about beauty and it will. I know that most people are not interested in my latest weight loss scheme and quite frankly it's not very glamorous either. But I thought it will be fun to address a common problem that one may face we they change country: the food!
Most Flemish are creatures of habit. They eat something very small for breakfast or they don't eat at all, a sandwich for lunch (to be fair though the sandwiches here are soooo good!), and then they switch it up a bit for supper. I'm the opposite, I need to switch it up all the time, because I get bored very easily.
The groceries here (not all of them of course) seriously lack variety. I think I already bought every single item in the japanese section in my grocery. I'm also trying to eat better and I no longer eat pork and red meat at home. Fish and poultry can easily get tired. I'm also a huge fan of asian food in general, thai, corean, chinese, indian and vietnamese mostly. The main problem I have is that as much as I like a good coco curry or a lemongrass chicken, I'm not a very big fan of rice. Rice also doesn't have much fiber, yes even the brown one. What I do now most of the time is replacing rice with bulgur, it's loaded with fiber, it tastes delicious and it is easily accessible here because of the big middle eastern population in Europe in general.
Going fusion can also be a solution for the lack of certain ingredients here. Yesterday it was another rainy day in Belgium and I found myself craving some fajitas. I went in the tex mex section of the grocery and I found some fajitas cooking sauce (which was surprisingly good by the way) and tortillas, but once I was in the cheese isle, I realised that I could not get the right cheese. So I improved and made some fusion French-Mexican food with comté cheese (only 2 euros for a pack of that awesome cheese, isn't Europe great?) and roquette lettuce. I think when you are looking for a certain recipe overseas you have to keep an open mind and be ready to trade some ingredients for something local.
The last reason for switching some of your favorite ingredients for some more readily available in the country where you are is of course the price. When I was living in Montreal I kept seeing some poor very chocked French people who were ruining themselves buying French cheese and wine.
Part of the excitement of moving away is experimenting with new ingredients.
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