Food Poisoning Friday and the Weekend

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that despite my intending support for this vegan food challenge, we had another un-vegan night on Friday.  Eating out is always a bit of a challenge for us.  There is one truly vegan place we found in Wellington that is awesome, and we usually have good luck with a lot of the Asian places in town, but we can get pretty tired of the same old, same old…so there are days we just loosen up on the strict vegan thing and eat vegetarian instead.  We got some Indian curries to take away (which, I’m certain had a lot of butter and cream in them) and enjoyed a night of not-cooking, which is always a treat after a long week.  Unfortunately, we felt a little punished for it the next day (Saturday), as both of us experienced some upset tummies.  I went through my little spell in the afternoon, feeling quite nauseous and ill, but bounced back fairly quickly after downing some digestive enzymes.  Mark, on the other hand, went through his later that night and it was downright severe.  He was praying to the porcelain god until 7am this morning, poor baby.  We were supposed to go to a vegan potluck this afternoon but we canceled as neither of us got much sleep.

The rest of the weekend was pretty boring food-wise.  Saturday I nibbled on toast throughout the day (because of my upset tummy) and dinner was some noodles with broccoli (made hastily after a night out) which Mark promptly threw up.  Today (Sunday),  was another lazy cooking day due to little sleep from the night before (Mark was sick and I was up worrying and taking care of him), so we had Okayu, which is a Japanese porridge of rice and water.  My mother always made me Okayu when I was sick, and I still crave it when I am feeling unwell.  My mother always flavored it with miso and seaweed stock, which I do as well, and for a little more flavor and nutrients, I tear up some nori seaweed into it as well.  We both ate this at about 5pm, then had some more rice in Ochazuke form a little later.  This is another Japanese dish where you pour green tea over your rice and flavor it with a salty Ochazuke seasoning, often made from wakame seaweed and various other ingredients.  I happened to have some shiso-wakame seasoning so we sprinkled that on our rice and dropped a pickled umeboshi plum in the middle.  Comfort food–Japanese style.