Tapas and Intolerances...

So for the last week or so a very strange thing has happened to me... I have gone off cooking!! This has been due to a very upset tummy. I have suspected for a while that I have some kind of food intolerance and after some blood tests that confirmed I am not Coeliac, and some tinkering with my diet, I am suspecting a self diagnosis of dairy intolerance is looming on the horizon.

After being in agony a couple of days last week, I am now three days dairy free and feeling 'normal' for the first time in weeks. After some research, I have discovered that food intolerances can often go un-noticed throughout life until they surface for random periods when you are stressed or run-down sporadically. So perhaps due to this being my first year of teaching and feeling run-down, a dairy or lactose intolerance has popped up!

I thought I would be more upset about eliminating dairy from my diet, as I love yogurt and cheese and cream. However, with soy milk and soy yogurt, I think I will be just fine and lose weight in the process. I think I will have to put up with a bit of pain to still eat pizza and fetta on special occasions though. Thank god for fruit based gelati, I have been enjoying that as a treat in this hot weather considering ice-cream is off the cards for now.

Thank god for dairy-free icecream as big as my head!!! =)

Stay tuned for some dairy-free recipes to feature on here soon, and if any of you out there in blog-world have experienced intolerances and want to share some information or recipes with me- please do. I would love to hear from you. For those family and friends that are reading, you can comment on my post too by the way--- just click the '0 comments' or 'comments' link at the bottom and leave your name and a message.

On a more positive note, I ate some very yummy (dairy free!) tapas whilst on a visit to Sorrento on this beautifiul hot weekend we have just had. The restaurant was called 'Three Palms' and was a fab little find on Ocean Beach Rd. We had a trusty Entertainment voucher that saved us 25%. Mum and I enjoyed salt and pepper calamari, some beautiful red curry gyoza's (which of course, I am planning to replicated at home) and some duck spring rolls.

Red Curry Gyoza

Duck Spring-rolls

I love tapas as I am the type of person who always looks at other people's meals in longing, so the idea of sharing lots of little bites is very appealing. I thoroughly enjoyed our lunch at Three Palms, and recommend it when you visit the Peninsula. I am planning to go there again in the near future, but in the evening when caramalised pork belly features on the menu--- we all know how I feel about pork belly! ;)


Until my next adventure,
L x