The consomme of my food lust

Since birth I have had an anaphylactic allergy to milk protein. The skinny of this is, if I consume any form of milk/milk derivative, my throat will close and I will die. Morbid, but in practice manageable. There are only so many years you can live with such an ailment and not start cooking for yourself. Again, there are only so many years you can cook for yourself without experimenting with "gourmet" dishes. From the time I was 12 I was cooking for myself. By the time I reached college, I was making intricate reductions and personally butchered rabbit casseroles. Let me be clear, I do NOT consider myself a gourmet chef. At BEST, I am a better than average cook for my age. That being said, I cook an average of five nights a week and it is rare that the food could ever be labeled as bland. The purpose of that little ramble was to state that even if a dish may be simple, look in your spice drawer, your condiment section, or even your liquor cabinet and think what might be a nice addition. If you don't have an imagination bring it over to the pot, smell the pot, then smell the item, if they don't both sit well in your nose, then they certainly won't on your palate. Whatever you eat, don't over eat it. I am all for hedonism, but if you're 5'10" and 210lbs maybe cut back on you consomme intake. Personally, I allow myself one "bad for you" meal a week, the other 166hours I spend eating healthy, well flavored meals. To paraphrase Julia Child, don't be afraid of using butter, be afraid of eating too much of it. Well in my case I just need to be afraid of butter, but that's missing the point.