This Week’s Nutrition Adventures
What a week, what a week!
I hit the big 3-0 this week and so far, so good 🙂 I’ve been either in an airport or on the road for 5 out of 7 days so I’m looking forward to this weekend and staying put in Nashville!
On Sunday and Monday, I was in Jackson, Mississippi for a culinary & media workshop with the Southeast United Dairy Association. It was such a wonderful experience and I met some pretty awesome people. The event kicked off with an incredible meal at Seafood R’evolution, owned by Chef John Folse, who thankfully was able to join us for dinner! Before dinner, we took a tour around the restaurant and Chef Folse shared the story behind each decorative element—a lot of thought and attention to detail went into designing this restaurant! This oyster shell tree located in the wine room is made up of the first 100 oysters sold at the restaurant in Jackson. So cool!
Since the workshop was focused on educating us about lactose intolerance facts and also sponsored by the Southeast United Dairy Association, each component of our meal included some type of dairy product. It really is incredible to think about how many foods I eat on a daily basis that include dairy—I often don’t even think about it! The meal started with a meat & cheese plate and then we had the most flavorful salad of grilled raddichio, candied walnuts, cow’s milk triple cream cheese, and shallot dressing.
For dinner, we had a choice of two entrees: Petite Filet Mignon or Pecan-encrusted Redfish. I love seafood and I know this is a seafood restaurant but I couldn’t resist filet mignon! It was cooked to perfection and topped with microbasil, and served with the creamiest mashed potatoes and asparagus. Wishing this could become a weekly routine 🙂
Dessert was this Golden Caramel Pie with crème fraîche, sea salt, and apple slices. I loved the addition of apple slices because I started dipping it into the caramel. It was delicious but I could only eat about half of it since so many incredible dishes came before it!
Monday was our workshop day and I learned so much in such a short period of time. I’ll be sharing some of what I learned in the near future! I walked away with new knowledge about lactose intolerance and helpful tips to help those who might be experiencing symptoms.
For our lunch break, we joined Chef John Folse again at his restaurant for grilled cheese & soup. Not just any soup and grilled cheese though! We had a Tomato Basil Bisque and our sandwich was made with sweet sorghum ham, green apple, and white cheddar cheese, then topped with pickled okra. I wish I could have had pickled okra inside the grilled cheese because it was SO good. I’m jotting down pickled okra on my grocery list now 🙂
Dessert was a super chocolate-y Hot Fudge Brownie served with lactose-free vanilla ice cream. I had no idea the ice cream was lactose-free until one of the ladies with the Dairy Council told me afterwards!
We finished the day with a couple training sessions and then it was off to the Jackson airport. After some travel delays, I made it back to Nashville on my birthday, just in time to go to dinner with some friends at Barcelona Wine & Tapas.
This place has quickly become one of my favorites because the food is consistently delicious and the service is always spectacular. We ordered so many things from the tapas menu but a few of my favorites were the calamari (seriously the best ever), the albondigas (meatballs), and the patatas bravas (potatoes with a salsa brava + garlic aioli). For dessert, we ordered the churros which are no longer on the dessert menu but they were kind enough to make them for us 🙂 Our server also brought out their chocolate mousse with a candle in it as my birthday dessert. See…I told you they were pretty great at Barcelona!
So basically, there has been a lot of dessert this week!
To wrap up This Week’s Nutrition Adventures, I have a couple questions for you:
- Have you been to either of the restaurants I mentioned in this post? Barcelona has several locations in the U.S.!
- Do you have any questions about lactose intolerance? If so, leave a comment or shoot me an email at karman@thenutritionadventure.com.
- What’s your favorite dessert?
