Am I Lost?: Yoghurt Fail!

As you know I love good food. Not any food, but food whose sole purpose is to nourish my body, not fill with it with empty calories. My morning starts with homemade sprouted muesli full of oats, non-sulphured apricots, raisins, an assortment of nuts and seeds topped with either natural yoghurt or milk. Washed down with peppermint tea to aid digestion. My pantry is full with every type of lentil, seed, nut and grain. There is more yoghurt in my fridge than in a grocery store and I have yet to find a fridge that can hold all the fresh fruit and veg we go through on a daily basis. That's not to say we don't indulge too. My day is rounded off with a thick piece of dark Belgium chocolate which is slowly nibble while watching Breaking Bad. Bryan Cranston you are an acting god! So you can imagine, (plus the fact I may have already mentioned),that I love cookbooks, food blogs and food books. The trouble is sometimes my food dreams come crashing down around me and make me feel like I should have been smarter when a recipe is so obviously not all it's touting itself to be.

Sweet potatoes are my veg du jour and we had the most delicious lunch on Monday which I shared with Red Bird to nourish her precious body during her time of illness. Veggie and Egg Tower of Power (http://mynewroots.blogspot.ca/2012/02/veggie-egg-tower-of-power.html) is one of those meals whose component parts are so simple, but put together are so fantastic. Having acquired a taste for sweet potatoes I decided to try another simple recipe that seemed like a winner. Sweet Potato Cakes with a Herbed Yoghurt dressing.

Veggie and Egg Tower of Power a recipe definitely worth making!

(photo from http://mynewroots.blogspot.ca/)

Now it could have been the fact that I made a major error, a real gaff of the embarrassing kind when I served this meal with a rather unique version of herbed yoghurt dressing. When you have a fridge full of myriad yoghurt containers it's easy to grab the wrong one and our dressing was of the sweet vanilla persuasion! But that aside I could have saved myself the trouble and the extra flour (thank goodness I used oat and not regular AP) and fat for frying , by just mashing those orange puppies and throwing in some caramelized leeks and garlic.

I'm mentioning this today because I think it's funny how such things can really turn your day. We had a lovely afternoon hiking the Galloping Goose trail near Sooke, a small town west of Victoria. The Galloping Goose was an old railway line which wound through the stunning forests and ocean side paths from Victoria to the north of Sooke. Converted now to a 55 km bike and hiking trial we joined the path just shy of Sooke Potholes Provincial Park and trekked our way past stunning scenery, the biggest maple leaves we have ever seen, huge Rhododendrons which will only increase this walkways beauty come spring and over an old wooden trestle bridge, hard to believe it could hold the weight of a mighty engine and it's train. I don't remember what we talked about but we covered many subjects, laughed, became grossed out by the enormous slugs lazily traversing our path and shook the fog and cobwebs from our minds. We returned home happy and content to a handful of nuts and seeds, a gin and tonic and a moment of peace before I headed to the kitchen. Actually I was already in the kitchen, you're always in the kitchen in this tin can! As I followed the recipe for Sweet Potato Cakes, the fog slowly returned and my mood headed south as with each step I came to realize these were not going to live up to expectation. They tasted fine, but were limp and not worth the effort. So my mood sank last night and here I am today writing about it. The failure of the day is stuck in my mind and the success although a happy memory is already filled away. I wonder is this just me or are we humans the weirdest bunch of creatures in that we are programmed to focus on our failures. I understand why, it pushes us to try again and succeed, we didn't get to the top of the food chain on looks alone, but still it's a bit depressing really. To be the numero uno species we must focus on the negative to flourish. How strange we are!