New foods in 2018

One of the things that Hillary and I were starting to be able to do more of again as Paige moved out of toddlerhood was experimenting with new meals. Shortly after Hillary was diagnosed with cancer, she changed her diet pretty substantially.

These two things meant we tried a bunch of new meals in late 2017 and through 2018. Of those, three stand out in my mind as things we ate that we both felt could really become part of our regular plans.

The noodle soup and noodle bowl I really enjoyed. Hillary was not a huge fan, but it wasn't a dislike or anything. It was merely an okay one. Ultimately she felt these were good meals that made it easy to eat noodles and a lot of vegetables. This was a win in her books. I liked using the miso broth to make it into something vaguely like ramen. Hillary preferred just the cold noodle salad with a good dressing.

The quinoa bowl with an orange miso dressing from the Oh She Glows cookbook became a no question favourite of hers. Structurally it ended up being pretty similar to the noodle bowls. Lots of fresh veggies and herbs piled on top of quinoa. I'm guessing it was mostly the dressing that we would make for this that she really appreciated. Anything is good with the right dressing, or so I've been told.

The last fully new thing we tried out in the past year or so was salad rolls wrapped in rice paper. These were always a favourite and a staple of any Vietnamese food orders we made. More that once, on our way home from the Burnaby Hospital if Hillary had been there for an oncology appointment, CT Scan, or something else, she'd have me stop at the Vietnamese place at Lougheed and Willingdon to pick up a couple of salad rolls.

Anyway, sometime in the spring of 2018, I decided to give making these a shot.

As with the other two things I mentioned here, there was a lot of shredding and finely chopped fruits and vegetables. And the actual construction of the rolls required some serious practice.

The kids didn't like them all that much.

But Hillary did. I think we did it two or three times between May and September. That's actually quite a few for a dinner that the kids weren't huge fans of in our house.

I don't think I'll make them again anytime soon. That was one meal I built for her and it made me so very happy to have learned a new meal that she enjoyed so much.

I wish I had attempted the salad rolls earlier in our relationship. They could have become staples for us. I only got to make them for Hillary two or three times. I wish I could have done it dozens of times.

Such is life.