Brown Rice Spaghetti

I've been on a healthy eating/exercise kick since the very last week of December, when I realized how much excess 'love' I had accumulated around my belly. I quit drinking all together, since I realized that my drinking was contributing calories in many, many ways. Yes, alcohol is empty calories, but boy, it's the friends Mr. Wine and Ms. Beer bring along to the table that really hurts me. I was eating more than I needed to and what I was eating was not the best foods to be eating in the amounts I was eating. For example, Tanto, a Japanese izakaya-style restaurant in San Jose serves up delicious fried goods. One fried treat is OK, but boy, those fried goods go so well with the chilled junmai sake, I had seconds, and thirds, and fourths... Once, my friend, John, who is over ~6 inches taller than me and ~ 80 lbs heavier than me told me we probably ate the same amount of food. And I think he was right!!!

So, back to where I was... When I noticed the excess 'love' on me, I decided it was time to change my eating and drinking habits. I switched my nightly consumption of a bottle of wine to a bottle of sparkling water, and pledge to eat more whole grain foods. Fortunately, I'd already had my lesson in learning to like vegetables - it's quite easy to do so when I can get tasty organic veggies, thanks to places like Trader Joe's. I learned to like fruit, and proceeded to live mainly on fruits as my main food source for a while.

As a part of my re-designing my food intake, I decided to give the brown rice pasta at Trader Joe's a try. And my impression is... it's interesting. It somehow reminds me of Japanese udon noodles, since it produces a lot of starchy substance as it boils. It loses its firmness very quickly, so unless one eats it very quickly, it gets kinda mushy by the end. (As part of my "re-building Alice" plan, I vowed to eat more slowly, and have been doing this successfully.) It is much more difficult to cook al dente compared to the regular spaghetti, since it seems to be too firm, too firm, too firm, and then too soft in a split second (lichty split? This is where I need Mark!! How do I spell that????). I made a quick seafood sauce, which being Japanese, I fearlessly called Pescatore. I say that I am Japanese as an excuse, because in Japan, they serve Spam on rye bread and call it a rueben, and they serve spaghetti with ketchup and call it 'Napolitan'. One time when I was a teenager in Japan, sitting in a coffee shop that served one of these Napolitan spaghetti, I asked the waitress what exactly Spaghetti Napolitan was - she told me it was a Napoli-style spaghetti. I am assuming that's Napoli as in Naples, but she had no idea. I wonder what spaghetti in Naples is like...

But I am digressing again. I am totally procrastinating - I just don't seem to want to pack for France...

Yes, so I called my dish tonight Spaghetti Pescatore. For the sauce, I used canned Trader Joe's Organic Marinara (I am all about easy cooking these days...), spiked up with olive oil-toasted garlic, celery, onion, prawns, a can of crab meat, and a can of clams. It was pretty yummy, but the noodles got gummy (heehee, I rhymed!), and I couldn't quite finish my serving... I have learned recently that when food that tastes good in the beginning starts to taste less exciting, it's time to call it a day. It'll be good again as left overs tomorrow...

But of course tomorrow, I will be on my way to Paris for more epicurean excitement! I froze the left overs and threw the dishes (I had lunch dishes too) in the dish washer, and decided it was time to pack - except that I have not packed yet. And it is almost 11:30 PM... I better get crackin'!!!