What other people have been doing

[lnr]

I've had a very quiet weekend. Yesterday I stayed in and geeked and read and watched From Dusk Til Dawn while Richard went to London with Kirsten and Benedict, and then joined them for dinner before going to the gig at the Boat Race. Today I geeked and cooked while he went out for a long walk with Thomas and Emily, Becky, Rachel and Tony. Though they did come over and join me for dinner after their walk which was nice. Doing a proper (veggie) chilli with all the extras (rice, tacos, potato wedges, sour cream/fromage frais, cheese, lettuce, salsa) makes dinner so much more fun than just having the chilli with rice alone.

I had a bottle of alcohol free chardonnay to go with it, as an experiment. Dieting and being on pills means I really should try not to drink much if anything at all, and this seemed like a good way to enjoy a drink anyway, since I like a nice glass of wine. Unfortunately after taking the alcohol out they added lots of fructose back in. Possibly this is because it would otherwise taste horrible, but it just made it far too sweet for me. They seem to have more or less got the hang of alcohol free lager which isn't all that much worse than the real thing, shame they don't seem to have managed it with wine or real beer.

We had dinner really early, since they were tired and hungry, and I'd only had a small lunch, so now it feels very much later than it actually is. Hopefully that will mean we can get an early night tonight though. I'm really not looking forward to work next week, but hey I have a whole week without any appointments with anyone, which is cool.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The dinner was really nice!

[rmc28]

Indeed :) Thanks again.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Sounds a good weekend.

[lnr]

Just what I needed really. Nice to just not do anything much at all for a while and catch up on rest.

[teleute.livejournal.com]

i imagine that alcohol-free ale would be really hard since most of the flavour comes from the hops, and isn't that where the alcohol is too? I admit that I've not come across nice alcohol-free wine although out here they sell dry grape juice, which is fairly similar, although not as tannin rich as a red wine would be (which suits me, since I don't like the tannin anyway). Perhaps have a look in the fruit-juice section and see if the UK is selling dry grape juice too?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

The alcohol doesn't come from the hops - I would imagine that one could extract the flavouring from the hops without the use of alcohol (or with alcohol which is then removed).

[vatine]

The alcohol helps develop the flavour. One can buy decent extremely-low alcohol lager in Sweden (the "same" lager tastes undescribably foul with alcohol, unless left alone in a warm cupboard for a year or so, to develop a more ale/bitter flavour) that is designed to taste like a decent beer, while still having "less than 0.2% ABV". I'd imagine the normal methods to extract the ethanol would damage the flavour, unfortunately.

[acronym.livejournal.com]

They seem to have more or less got the hang of alcohol free lager which isn't all that much worse than the real thing, shame they don't seem to have managed it with wine or real beer.

Tell me about it. I actually like(d) the taste of both wine and beer; I just found the effects were making me even *more* paranoid about my behaviour than I normally am, which given I'm fairly jumpy at the best of times wasn't very much fun for either myself or anyone else... (The only way I found to get over that was to drink more; that has its own set of problems, though.)

Anyway, though: there's very few good non-sweet soft drinks, I've found. Cranberry juice is nice; grapefruit too sour for me (at least, as a regular thing), and if I start drinking Coke or whatever, either the caffeine or the sugar is going to make me hyper (Diet Coke just gives me murderous headaches). I think this is a clearcase of There Should Be A Website For... but I don't know of one. Anyone got any ideas?

[lnr-at-work.livejournal.com]

Yeah, IKWYM. I like grapefruit juice myself, but even that has enough sugar in to be not so diet-friendly as I'd like. It more or less rules out any fruit juice other than lemon or lime, and they're a bit sharp really! Thankfully artificial sweeteners don't seem to give me headaches, and I've more or less got used to the fact they taste horrid and don't notice it so much. Lemon squash is pretty nice, without being too sickly sweet.