I tossed a couple of carrot sticks to each dog before grabbing a couple for myself, then dashed out the door. Late for work, as usual. I surveyed my lunch - four sardines, gravlax, leftover duck curry, Brown Cow cherry vanilla yogurt, green salad, more carrots. Around 10am my downfall announced itself by the familiar waft of grease as it drives by my office window. "No SunChips for me today" I say, and I resolutely munch a carrot stick and eat the last of the the homemade yogurt I left in the refrigerator last Friday.Two hours and two pints of water later, my back teeth are swimming and there is no one to watch the lobby. I take a chance and sprint towards the back when I hear the front door open - but I'm on a mission and continue down the hall. I return to find one of my co-workers had returned with lunch from MickeyD's. The smell of grease is overwhelming so I politely excuse myself and retreat to the lunch room.1pm finds me I eating the sardines while heating up the leftover duck curry my mom gave me. The curry smells good, too bad there wasn't any rice to go with it. Didn't matter - I ate it anyway. For dessert I had a few spoonfuls of Brown Cow brand yogurt. I passed on the gravlax, green salad and carrots. I can always eat those tomorrow since I'm pretty full right now. But my co-worker temps me with some sliced apples. I had a piece. Yummm ...I munched on a few more carrot sticks dipped into hummus. For dinner? I didn't feel like shopping so we raided the pantry and came up with musubi ... basically SPAM sushi. A mound of sushi rice topped with a slice of fried SPAM and wrapped in a sheet of seaweed.
Good stuff.
My husband left today for a ten day meditation retreat. He'll be back on the 13th and I won't have a chance to speak to him until then. There are so many things that happened today that I would normally tell him, but now I will have to wait. I suppose I can catalog everything down until he's back.
First thing's first. I got a call from a friend who told me of a job opening in her company - an executive assistant for their HR department. When she heard about it she immediately thought of me. It's even closer to home that my current job is. A little too far to walk, but I could be home in five minutes - instead of ten.
I've been with my present company for over six years so, hmmm ... I'll have to think about this.
It helps that I am in league with the butcher from the local market. For Thanksgiving, it was roast turkey on the Weber. The day before Christmas Eve, my husband came home with a Honeybaked Ham - courtesy of the company he works for. Christmas Eve, I couldn't resist preparing a 3-rib prime rib roast for us and a couple of friends. My contribution to Christmas Day dinner at my cousin's was a 7-rib ribeye roast cooked perfectly rare for 25 people. We gave our kitchen a break for New Year's eve and dined at a local italian restaurant on the water and indulged in a five course dinner that included rack of lamb for him and mahi-mahi for me. Three hours later, over creme brulee and port, we watched fireworks from our table.The meat is long gone - the ham bone went into a split pea soup and the Christmas Eve ribs went to our dogs. It is time to find my way back to tofu, eggplant, cauliflower, broccoli, and delve into the world of vegetarianism. The transition will not be too hard - I was once a vegetarian. I also have an incentive. My stepdaughter came to live with us a little over a week ago. She is a vegetarian. She wasn't always, it happened when she came back from a meditation retreat almost two and a half years ago. Now and again, she misses some of the foods she used to eat. A couple of favorites were pork chops grilled with rosemary branches smoking over mesquite coals, served with the the most wonderful roasted white corn salsa. And breaded pork chops that Dad cooked to perfection.The other night it was a layered vegetable casserole - eggplant, red bell peppers, zucchini, onion, garlic, tofu, mushrooms, swiss chard - topped with a marinara sauce spiked with sundried tomatoes. The night before that it was stuffed shells filled with a mixture of ricotta, spinach, onions, garlic and egg. Another night it was a Thai green vegetable curry served with basmati rice.At least my family knows our meals will not be boring.
