Fat Shake

This looks yummy, right?

While at the library last week I picked up a cookbook from the “New Books” shelf, because Alan and I have recently agreed that all of our regular meals are boring and uninspiring and that we need to find new recipes (taste.com.au Sundays didn’t survive the move last year). We’d had the all-our-meals-are-boring conversation only the day before my library visit, where I found myself face-to-cover with a "phenomenal bestseller" of a cookbook; this seemed too much like a sign from heaven, so I borrowed it with nary a second thought. It was when I opened it at home that I discovered it was a Banting cookbook, which seems to be a diet fairly similar to the Paleo one, in that sugar is the devil and there’s an awful lot of bacon-consumption involved. Not one to be deterred (I do love bacon), I decided to try out one of the earlier recipes, because the picture looked very much like the chocolate frappés of which I’m a giant fan, and it had coconut cream in it. Mmmm, coconut cream. I ignored the name (“Chocolate Fat Shake”), and went out and bought the ingredients we didn’t already have, then came home, followed the recipe, whizzed everything up, and took my first sip. My initial thought was Weirdly salty, but okay!

 

Hazel took her first sip. This was also her last sip.

My second thought was, This is actually nothing at all like those frappés of which I’m a giant fan. And my last few thoughts before finishing it were, This is actually quite foul, and Would it be more of a waste if I tipped the rest out or if I forced myself to drink it and then vomited it up instead? and Why is this happening to meeeeee? 

The drink wasn’t really “weirdly” salty, given I had put salt into it, as the recipe had asked me to; why the recipe required salt in the first place was/is weird. I had assumed the amount of salt it asked for must be below the tasteable threshold, like in cookies, but no. That was not, in fact, the case. Salt and caramel? Yes. Salt plus milk, coconut and cocoa? No. No, no no nono. No. That combination’s never going to be a good idea. You know what would have been a good idea? Sugar. Sugar would have been a far more appropriate addition, and most certainly would not have made me gag.

I won’t be making that one again, although a full six hours passed before I felt any form of hunger again, so… No, I don’t even know what point I’m making here, I’m definitely not drinking that thing again no matter how satiating it may be. My stomach was probably too scared to signal its need for food in case I sent more Fat Shake its way.

Tomorrow’s experiment: Cauli-rice! Probably with bacon! (Perhaps I should have chosen a different cookbook.)