Food and Sex

I have caught a cold since the beginning of the week, the coughing is still unbearable. It is official that I am getting older :-(. In the past, whenever, I get a cold, I just let it be for two days or so and all returns back to the normal state. Now, I cough, my nose runs and the nights seem get worse with body temperature slightly goes up. I also need to take vitamin C at a high dose.

The last few months of last year, I had some minor issues with my health, it made me feel vulnerable and a bit depressed. It is like that is the only thing that you can't control. I don't usually eat junk and I am conscious of whatever I eat. Every year this seems to be a bit more serious, I wonder whether it's because of mom? In any cases, this is for the better of course, I have no complains. I am happy that a glass of wine at dinner with friends is now possible after several of months strictly restricted :-).

Anyway, I cook more often. I have recently cooked Mexican and then African dishes for friends. My intention is to cook more Italians in the coming weeks, the reason is that I plan to cook as many dishes as possible from the cookbook of Jamie Oliver. One of my friends asked why didn't I buy an Italian cookbook from an Italian chef, that to him makes more sense, maybe for my dear friend :-), yes, but not for me :-). I believe that if I don't know Italian foods, it is better to start learning it from a chef who- like me- is not Italian. When you have to learn something that is not what you usually do, the best is to seek answers/instructions from someone who have learnt and become expert on that. They will list out what they have learnt and what was neccesary in the process since they have gone through that. I have always cooked real good pasta or soup like minestrone...etc but this time I would like to dig deeper in pizza, and other dishes. My last year trip to the south of France has helped with knowing a bit more on good quality olive oil (yeah, went olive tasting, GREAT!). I think good cooking begin with good ingredients. In two weeks time, I will be in Tuscany, there will be more tasting to do :-), this time, wine, oil, cheese, hams YUMMMM. Can't wait!

Sex? :-) No, not about my sex life, it's something else although that subject comes up often these last days. On TV, they talked about sex-education to teenagers remains important, how the girls are afraid, how the boys turn to pornography to learn about sex, how girls are afraid that boys ask them to do stuffs that they do not want...etc. I or my generation or those before did not have any sex-education (I don't think my cousin has received any either, she is in her teen). The only thing I think was a sex-education was a session about the use of condoms when AIDS is a made-known in Vietnam as pandemic, an incurable disease. Even that was not well explained. Nobody talks about sex but adults make jokes related to it (they think teenagers would not understand, honestly!). My male colleagues told me that here they even had a Q&A session that made unanimously, that is brilliant! Well, of course, then because they go to Catholic school here that the questions they asked were " did Marie did it with something with the animal? how come she was pregnant without doing it?" ...etc (I wonder if they told me the truth or they were joking). I did receive a lot of info on contraceptives though from this bunch of men though :-).

Next time, maybe my discussion would be about Aphrodisiac foods :-), how exciting!