…is there anything quite as satisfying as a meal on a mountain hut, after a long hike in the snow?
a month ago, we were walking the snow-covered mountains around bolzano, digging our borrowed boots in the freshest snow i’ve ever seen. the trip was an impromptu decision – but one that turned out perfect. breathing the cold air, catching the sun in our cheeks and laughing along with friends… we couldn’t have wished for a more perfect start for the year.
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(another) month of letters!
tomorrow starts february, which means it’s time for another month of letters! last year i managed about 20 and ended up a bit short… but this year i plan to do better and actually complete the challenge by writing at least one piece of mail every single day.
i really like the way the world slows down when i take the time to write and think things over – which i don’t do often enough these days. it’ll also be the perfect time to catch up with all the holiday letters that have been gathering dust in my desk these past few weeks!
last time, i asked if anyone wanted a letter, and ended up writing a few aerograms and postcards to random readers, which was quite refreshing. so this year, i thought i’d ask again… would you like a letter or postcard from me? if so, feel free to leave your address on my postable! it’ll be my pleasure. :)
bits and pieces of our rainy days in rome, earlier this month.
i feel like this blog (ergo, me) is in need of a swift kick in the butt, to set it back straight. there’s so much to tell you… let’s just get to it!
friends who stay with us often seem surprised to discover that i, miss meiadeleite, cannot stomach milk. it wasn’t always this way. i used to love drinking milk with everything, up until about 3 years ago.
but then, in early 2011 i stopped drinking milk, as part of our diet experiment. i didn’t really miss it, so i skipped it for months and promptly forgot about it. later that year, i received my 23andme dna test results and was a bit intrigued to see this:
“who, me? lactose intolerant? nonsense!”, i thought – i drank milk my whole life!
but then i started to think about it… and some things started making sense. in the last few years, every time we went back to portugal, we ate whatever our parents put in front of us – not wanting to burden them with too many rules and restrictions on our short time there. so we drank meiadeleites for breakfast and ate leite creme to our little heart’s content… and invariably, while we were there, i’d get stomach problems. i would write it off as the consequences of general unhealthy eating… but then it got me thinking… could it be that when i stopped drinking milk every day, my body just gave up on dealing with the lactose? (i imagine it doing it in a overly dramatic fashion, with a big sigh of relief…)
this was a valid hypothesis, so, as scientists that we are, we experimented. the results were quite… striking. a glass of milk? immediate disaster. a tiny yoghurt cup? disaster. cheese was ok in small doses, as was butter, but all the rest was off the table.
and this is how i found that i’ve made myself lactose intolerant. the name of this blog hasn’t made sense for quite a while now, but i don’t mind. i know i could probably re-introduce it in the diet if i wanted, but truth is, i just don’t miss it all that much – and when in doubt, there are usually lactase pills nearby! :)