Underwear, Spinach, and Sausage Gravy

We leave this morning for a long drive to Mississippi. I'm frankly dreading it. Once we get there, we'll have a lovely time with my sister, her children (including the wee niece I haven't met yet), my father and stepmother, and all my father's family. They're a delight, let me tell you.

We spent most of yesterday and last night getting ready. I think I washed, dried, folded, and put away (or packed) at least five loads of laundry. That's six loads more than I really wanted to do. I also ran out to the maternity store because certain of my few remaining non-maternity clothes felt rather uncomfortable. Turns out that my, um, girls have grown about 4 sizes. The store doesn't carry anything close to my band size in the appropriate cup size, so we had to go up TWO band sizes and buy the largest cup in that size, then fasten it on the tightest clip. We're barely hanging in here. Now I understand why I've felt so uncomfortable.

I also bought a pair of maternity spanx. I don't know what they're actually called, but whatever. I have a couple of really cute maternity dresses, but wearing any dress or skirt without shorts or something underneath is for the birds. And I bought a couple of belly bands (some of the maternity pants are too big, and none of my non-maternity jeans are comfortable) and an adorable navy blue sweater dress with a white color.

The upside is that compared to the same bunch of purchases in a normal store, maternity clothes are pretty cheap. Bra was half what I expected, dress was $15, belly bands were less than half-price; only the spanx really cost what I expected.

Anyway, yesterday ended on a very productive note. I slept like the dead for once, truly exhausted, and woke as usual at 4:30 this morning cursing my body for waking me.

And a story to underscore that I am definitely pregnant:

This morning, my tummy started rumbling, so I walked down to the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat to tide me over. The table of offering looked less than thrilling, so I ordered a sausage biscuit with gravy. The man served it to me in the to-go container, but before passing it over the counter to me, asked, "Anything else?"

I said, "Well, only if you have some spinach."

"No," he laughed, "Well, actually, I do have some in the back. Do you want some?"

"Is it cooked?" I asked, because cooked spinach is re. volt. ing.

It must have shown on my face, because he said it was raw and ran off to fetch what turned out to be about a half-pound of spinach leaves.

Thus I find myself at my desk this morning facing a styrofoam tray of spinach, gravy, and a biscuit with sausage. I don't want to like the spinach; I really don’t. But I want it.

A Love Note

Dear God,

I know that strawberries aren't a new invention or anything, but I have to say that after eating fresh berries for a week and then making ice cream with them, I've decided you're a genius. You know, I think the way to this woman's heart might just be through my stomach. So what else am I missing, huh? Are you holding out on me? Are fresh peaches this palatable? Because I always thought they were kinda gross. Like strawberries.

Love,

Ms. Lilly

Ice Cream

I hate that I'm posting so sporadically. I'm beset by a pretty harsh apathy lately; I think it's the result of coming home to This Mundane Life after the week of vacation. I've resisted laundry, wanted only to nap in the afternoons and sleep in every morning, and I hope against hope that my love of the kitchen will snap me out of it.

Tonight I marshaled my resources for a second attempt at strawberry ice cream.  Last night's attempts ended in failure when I didn't read the directions carefully enough. I ended up with an expensive, lumpy mess that noone would eat. I fed it to the dog.

Tonight I started over. I had to supplement the cream with some from Kroger; I knew my cream was richer, yellower, and generally better, but it was like looking at the difference between an egg white and an egg yolk.

That's how I feel lately about all the foodstuff in the grocery store. It feels like our Science and Sanitation culture has taken over, and everything should be Properly Sanitized, Whitened, Homogenized. All the eggs in a carton must be brown or white. None of the beautiful blue-green ones I get from my coworker. The cream - heavy cream - was thin, white, and tasteless. I'm bummed that I had to use it in my ice cream.

I won't go off on that rant though. We've been doing pretty well with our home eating. We're still working on the chicken that I roasted Sunday morning with carrots and potatoes and served with the leeks, kale, and mustards. Monday we had black bean burritos, and for lunch, Burgundy and I had the leftover kale/mustard concoction. Last night, I made leek and potato soup, and tonight we had salad (Mark bartered some of his garden herbs for two lettuces on Saturday) and black bean burritos. Mark and I added chicken to ours.

I invited my family over for Easter, but I don't know whether they'll come over or not. Mom said something about going somewhere with Dad for the three-day weekend. I want to try boeuf bourgignon again, this time with the dog firmly locked in his kennel.

The timer's just gone off, telling me I should check in again on my ice cream. I still had 5 pounds of strawberries left, so I've been eating them with my granola. Last night I pureed and strained a couple of pints of them, and tonight I took my second stab at adapting the recipe for raspberry ice cream from Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Fruits. Lord, please let it be good.

The Fruits of Our Labor

Tonight the arches of my feet ache so deeply I can nearly taste it. The ache leaves a tang in the back of my mouth. My calves burn, a deep, low smolder echoed in my lower back and shoulders. My neck muscles remain tight, ready for me to find one more thing to do, one more little task.

Mark crawled out of bed at 7:00. Yes, you read that right; my husband the night owl clambered out of bed as the sun himself protested with me to crawl back between the warm sheets. He spent the better part of the next three hours outside in his little garden trimming, clipping, and snipping his herbs into shape.

At 10 he took Burgundy to tutor her student, and I began to gather my wits for the day's to-do list. By 11, Mark had amassed a sorted pile of excess herbs and greens ranging from arugula to lemongrass, and he bagged them all and drove to the farmers' market. By then, I already had cash in hand and waited patiently to pick up my fresh milk and chicken. I have never bought chicken through this person before, and I'm eager to see whether this chicken lives up to Michael Pollan's hype on free-range, local, well-fed chicken.

Next I gathered Marie, who wanted to join Burgundy and me on our day's outing. Burgundy had loaded her typewriter into the car, and after relieving her student of Burgundy's company, we headed downtown to Dromgoole's, a tiny, mom-and-pop, pen and stationary store in Houston's Rice Village. So we began our foray with retail therapy. I bought a beautiful new fountain pen, deep navy and mostly metal with a bladder for ink instead of only a cartridge option. I also bought more notebooks, beautiful notebooks with heavy, thick smooth paper designed for fountain pens and writing. Burgundy left with a new red and black ink cartridge in her [likely] 40's vintage corona typewriter.

From there, we went to a tiny chocolaterie where we spent a really inexcusable amount on truffles. And not the French mushroom kind. No, we spent twelve dollars on four pieces of chocolate. We ate lunch at Star Pizza and proceeded from there to Froberg's Market in Alvin.

I'm so glad we went. We arrived to find scores of people in the fields with their families plucking red, juicy strawberries from row upon row of plants, so we picked up four little buckets and spent the next hour stooped over in the fields abandoning first dignity, then shoes and socks for as many of the berries as we could fit in our buckets. We found that the walking rows in one end of the field were waterlogged and muddy, and into these clearly uninhabitable reaches, less stalwart folk had failed to wander. Thus we plucked nearly 20 pounds of ripe berries without covering more than three planted rows.

We visited with my mother and friends of hers who had come into town to visit briefly for a few minutes before discovering we were late for my father-in-law's birthday dinner. We called to ask for a later start time, which was granted with good grace, and the girls and I left for home.

By the time we bought my FIL's gift (a copy each of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, books he will love perhaps too much), wrapped it, met them at the restaurant, stopped by Half-Price Books (where I snagged What to Eat by Marion Nestle for $4, thank you very much), we were verging on 9:00 PM.

Back at the house, Burgundy began her studies, Mark showed his parents the latest in his garden, and Marie and I began washing and coring berries. We finished 10 pounds, and I froze 11 pints of sliced and quartered strawberries. By 11 PM, we had 5 remaining berries, so we poured ourselves a bowl each of my homemade vanilla granola, sliced in the strawberries, covered it all with milk, and enjoyed the most decadent midnight snack I could imagine. At that moment, I felt so grateful to the earth for her fruit, to God for his genius design, and to genetics for making sure Burgundy did not want any part of our strawberries.

Now it's half past midnight. Mark's catalogued his garden's contents for me, and he's perusing a large picture book on organic gardening. We each have a glass of Haak Winery's Syrah, and I feel alive, accomplished, and utterly spent.

Can We Live Locally?

Yesterday put hair on my chest.

I finished The Omnivore's Dilemma last night, and it has had a real impact on our eating. We started buying our milk and beef locally over a year ago, though finding a reliable dairy source has been spotty. About three months ago, we found a local woman who makes the three-hour trip to the best dairy I've found: Stryk's Dairy. We buy from her when we can't get out there ourselves.

For beef, we have used Law Ranch in the past, but they only produce beef. Georgia's Ranch meat is available to us, but they are very expensive, I think even more so than Law or Jolie Vue, the only other local meat source of which I know. Yesterday I signed us up for JV's every-other-month meat delivery program, and I'm excited to get our first shipment in April.

Reading TOD opened my eyes to just how spoiled and ignorant I am about food. I did not know meats were seasonal. I still don't know which fruits and vegetables are in season at what times, but I'm starting to educate myself.

And I'm getting really fired up to live only locally. That means living according to the seasons, learning to cook a lot of food that I previously wouldn't deign to cook, much less eat, and learning to be creative in the face of seasonal limits. We eat tomatoes year round; therefore, I will spend the better part of tomato season canning and putting away all forms of tomatoes for all the months that I can't buy them locally. This also means living locally in other ways, too: shopping family owned for office supplies, clothes, and other basics fits right into the same value system.

Yesterday I wanted to serve fish for dinner, so I found a local fish market and bought a pound of beheaded, deveined shrimp for dinner. I supported a local merchant and ate locally. Win!

Meanwhile, kale and leeks are in season, and I have wild mustards growing in the back yard. I wanted to saute these together in olive oil and finish them with white wine. Obviously, olive oil isn't local. However, just 20 or so miles from here, in Santa Fe, Texas, Haak Winery produces a very tasty, very palatable range of wines. I picked up a bottle of white table wine and a bottle of their Syrah. I think that's the first time I've ever volunteered for a second glass of white wine. I haven't tried the Syrah yet. Again, I supported a local merchant (family-owned, Houston-based liquour store Spec's) and a local grower (the winery), and I ate delicious local food.

So I came home with my bounty; Mark picked the mustards, and I washed them and the kale together. I used my new pasta machine to make fettucine (new lesson: if you think it's thin enough, think again), and I chopped the leeks and sauteed them in olive oil, then deglazed the pot with a splash of wine. With the water still clinging to their leaves, I tore in the kale and mustards, poured in the remainder of a cup of wine, then left them to simmer for a few minutes. Simplest, most delicious greens routine EVER.

During a few down moments, I'd chopped a bell pepper with some onion and garlic, and I sauteed these together with the half-pound of shrimp Mark had just finished peeling. I added a couple of cups of chopped tomatoes and a handful of fresh basil and oregano from Mark's garden.

I threw the pasta into a pot full of boiling water, and I let everything meld together for five or six minutes. Finally, I mixed the cooked pasta with the tomato-shrimp saute and served it next to the brilliant, sweet, sharp kale and mustards for the most local meal I've ever made. We washed it down with Haak's excellent white, sweet table wine, and Burgundy pronounced it one of the best meals I've ever made.

Can you tell I'm just beaming with pride?

This Week, I Want to be a Chef When I Grow Up

Holy cow, how did I make it to Wednesday without posting? Clearly, this isn't my day job.

We made good time on the trip home from Hill Country. We stopped outside of Schulenberg at Stryk's Dairy for more raw milk. I found cream and buttermilk, too, so I'm delighted about that. I have a little under a gallon and a half of raw milk, plus a half-gallon of buttermilk and a quart of cream. I have been waiting a while to pick up enough extra milk to process into cream cheese and yogurt. I'm not sure what to do with the buttermilk. I honestly picked it up mostly because it was $3 for a half-gallon, and I figured I could find something to do with it, even if I just used it for pies.

So if the world out there has any good buttermilk recipes, let me know!

While on vacation, I also picked up a small pasta machine and a frittata pan set. I made a frittata Sunday night using onions and red and green peppers we had in the refrigerator along with parsley, basil, chives, and marjoram from Mark's garden, and I augmented the eggs with a bit of the abundance of raw milk in our refrigerator.

I made another frittata last night, this time attempting to use up some of the kale that my friend Hannah picked up for us at the farmer's market. It's in season right now along with mustards, leeks, brussels sprouts, and lots of other noms. Eighty cents for a HUGE bunch of kale. Anyway, I made the frittata with onions, garlic, marjoram, and some of Stryk's local cheddar cheese. I wanted to add another local, small dairy's goat cheese to it, but it's a spreading more than crumbling cheese, so I left it out.

Tonight I want to use the pasta machine. I figure I'll master the "art" of pasta making using the called-for unbleached all purpose flour first, and once I have it down, I'll begin the trial and error process of converting to my self-ground whole wheat flour. I'll get there, slowly but surely.

Anybody want to guess what book I'm reading right now?

Nommy Nom Nom

Food, oh food.

With the part-time stay-at-home thing happening, I've really been able to get into the kitchen and cook. I've been making blueberry muffins every weekend that last well into the week. This takes care of our breakfast.

I've made a menu the last two weeks that, while not a straightjacket, has kept us fairly on track with eating well and out of the restaurants. We ate an entire box of raw spinach and another giant box of field greens last week. This is a huge stride forward for our family.

Last Sunday, I made a phenomenal butternut squash soup. I first made it for Thanksgiving dinner, and I think it is becoming a family staple. It's very simple:

Peel, seed, and dice one butternut squash (about 6 cups). Finely chop and saute in olive oil one small, yellow onion. Add the squash, 3 cups of water, 1/2 a teaspoon of marjoram, some red and black pepper, and 4 cubes of vegetable (or chicken) bouillon.

You boil that for about 20 minutes, then I use a stick blender to puree it into a thick soup with a block and a half of cream cheese. It's incredibly filling between the protein (cheese), fiber (squash), and fat (cheese again). One bowl will take care of you. We've been munching on yesterday's for three meals now, and it's still there.

This week, I have one cooking mission: I want to use a jar of the sauce I made last weekend, modify my pizza crust recipe to be a little more usable, and make pizza pockets for my family. I had the idea last time I made pizza, but it seemed a bit daunting what with the pizza dough and all. But I made pitas over the weekend (a post for another time), and that process gave me some good ideas.

Eating Well at Home

I've been wanting to can spaghetti sauce for two or three weeks; I even bought a bunch of fresh tomatoes recently to use in it. Because I am a master (mistress) procrastinator, I let them go too long, and I had to cut off several bad spots to work with them.

All the same, I did it, and this morning I put 8 pints of spaghetti sauce into the pantry. This will keep us set for about eight weeks, by which time we should be getting close to harvesting more tomatoes from our own garden, which we're about to plant.

With the impending NASA layoffs, it's imperative that we eat in and save as much money as possible. So it's my new mission to do it up right for the family so that we won't be tempted to eat out (like I want to do right now).  I've noticed that we do better about eating at home when we have quick, easy foods to eat. With the spaghetti sauce pre-made, I can make dinner in about 15 minutes. I already have meatballs made and frozen in single-serving portions.

We have several other quick meals that work well as leftovers: lentil soup, cheese quiche and spinach quiche, anything pasta, etc.

The greatest challenge that I face right now is having vegetarians in the house. All our favorite go-to dishes are meat-filled or meat-dependent. Some things are obvious; for example, I substitute vegetable bouillon for chicken broth. Others frustrate me endlessly. Chili is a great example. It's my favorite meal, and I make it with lots of beef. I also make it fast; chili is a 30-minute meal here, and it can feed us for a couple of days at least. I haven't made chili since Julia arrived, though, because it seems kinda pointless. Only Mark and I will eat it, and I'd still have to make a separate meal for the girls. Yeah, sure, I could learn to make vegetarian chili, but I don't want veg chili. Gross.

I want hearty, drippy, chewy meat. Grr.

For now, for this week, our menu is thus:

Sunday lunch and dinner: Lentil soup and rice
Monday lunch for Mark and Mel: Lentil soup and rice
Monday dinner: Baked salmon and salad (yes, the girls will eat fish)
Tuesday lunch: leftover salmon with broccoli and carrots (salad's too much trouble for work)
Tuesday dinner: Girls will have mac & cheese with salad or broccoli; Mark and I are going to an investment seminar and will eat there.
Wednesday lunch: Tuna salad sandwiches
Wednesday dinner: Black bean lasagna
Thursday lunch: Black bean lasagna with any leftover veggies around the house
Thursday dinner: leftovers night; also, Julia has a play performance
Friday lunch: leftovers - just clean out the fridge
Friday dinner: Fish tacos (Julia has a play performance again)
Saturday lunch: I'm going to try The Atheist Homemaker's chickpea cutlets served over a bed of fettucini with alfredo sauce and served with steamed, lightly buttered broccoli. This will be my adventure in cooking for the week.
Saturday dinner: If I get the chance (and succeed) at making pie crust, I'll make cheese quiche.
Sundays are always either for eating out or catch as catch can.

Time to Make the Donuts

I have about 15 minutes for a post here this morning. I know, a Proper Blogger would have a backlog of entries prepared for publication on a day like today. I'd have plans and stuff. Of course, I do have plans, and I also have an appalling lack of follow-through. It's broken.

I left the light off this morning for my coffee and blueberry muffin. I'm sitting at my computer in the dark kitchen, searching in vain for the motivation to begin my day. Surfing the web is so much easier than living.

We had Marathon Project Weekend. Aside from the waffles Saturday morning, I made pizza Saturday night and blueberry muffins on Sunday morning. We ate out only once the whole weekend. This is huge.

I did about 72 loads of laundry including double-bleaching my nasty white bedspread, and Mark vacuumed and swept most of the house. I did dishes over and over and over. My hands are chapped; that's how many dishes I did.

Our biggest accomplishment? We finished building the gadget Burgundy needs to finish her science fair project. This thing took all our ingenuity, a circular saw, a skill saw, a dremel tool, and a sander. And sawhorses. We had to mount it on a ladder, and now she has to find 100 people to test. She got 10 last night.

Okay, that's it. Time to get ready for work.

Good Weekend

Oh Saturday, I do love you. I slept until 8:30 this morning. Three decadent hours past my weekday wake time. And noone had to be anywhere until 10:00, so I spent a decadent hour making waffles the old fashioned way.

I do love waffles, especially with real butter and fresh, hot, real maple syrup.  Everyone else loved them too, and I put the leftovers in the freezer for the girls to toast and eat on school mornings for breakfast.



Burgundy's tutoring today at 10, and Mark and I need to build the apparatus for Burgundy's science fair project. It's due on January 20 (the project, not the apparatus).

Meanwhile, Houston's enjoying (ha!) a terrible cold snap, and Mark has rigged up some unused, icicle-style Christmas lights to save our gardens. He arranged the main lines of the lights around the inner perimeter of the garden, then pulled the icicles through the plants in the garden. The heat of the lights alone won't provide sufficient heat to save the plants, but when paired with the standard blankets-draped-over-the-garden approach, it's effectively a tiny tendril heater. Nice, isn't it?

 

So How'd It Go?

Well, we have no idea yet. She said she thinks she did okay. I'm oddly reassured by this, as when she comes home with a chipper, "I did GREAT! I ACED it!" That generally means that she did quite the opposite. So we're on standby with the test; we'll see what gives.

Last night I made a roasted sweet potato and garlic custard from Steve Raichlen's High-Flavor, Low-Fat Italian Cooking. I bought this cookbook a few years ago when I still believed in the mystical powers of not eating fat. It's a surprisingly good cookbook, and has given me, among other things, my present skillz with asparagus. And they are skillz; it's our family's favorite food. For her birthday dinner, my daughter requested pizza, mac & cheese, and asparagus.

Overall, the custards were very good. It called for 1 medium head of roasted garlic. I used half a large head,  and they tasted a bit too much of garlic. Next time I'll put in four-five bulbs and call it even. I think I will make it again, but not for a while. I spent hours on it, and when the family came to the table, their reaction was, "that's it?"

The good news is that while it's time-consuming, it's simple. Roast a couple of large sweet potatoes and 4 - 8 cloves of garlic at 400F. Garlic should take about 20 minutes; sweet potatoes take about an hour.

Remove skin from sweet potatoes and squeeze garlic from its casing. I mashed these together (no food processor; I know! I, the queen of gadgetry here recently, don't have a food processor.

Put it in a blender with a couple of tablespoons of fresh parsley, some salt and pepper, and a little nutmeg. Slowly add a couple of beaten eggs and blend until it's smooth.

I baked for 30 minutes at 350 it in 8 half-cup ramekins lined with parchment paper and smeared with olive oil. In retrospect, this was just for show. The paper and oil allowed you to dump the custards with the form intact. I think it would have been just as cute to eat the custard straight from the ramekin. Next time I won't bother with the parchment paper.

The kids are off to school now, and I need to shower and finish this coffee.

This is a TEST

Right now, Burgundy is 22 minutes into her Algebra II Chapter 5 exam. She has worked so hard and invested so much time and energy in this class; if she passes this test, she'll bring her nine week grade up to passing. If she doesn't, everything will rest on the semester exam. She has studied frantically for the last four weeks, sometimes for hours a day, and we began to see the payoff in her quiz and homework grades at the end of December.

We prayed together last night for peace and a calm spirit, for confidence and care, and for her mind to call forth the correct equations and formulas for each problem. We did it again this morning, and I told her to pray anytime during the exam. When she felt panic, fear, anything. I'm considering checking her out of school at lunch to come home and rest, but she still has the rest of her classes to prepare for semester exam. So I'll probably leave her there.

And now for something completely different:

Last night I made the most delicious meatballs I've ever made. I used pork sausage and local, pasture-raised ground beef. I modified a recipe from cooks.com, and I really liked the results. They were flavorful and juicy and just plain wonderful. The recipe made a fair amount, so I froze three meals' worth for future use.

I cooked the ziti and spaghetti sauce that Tabby gave us for Christmas, and it was delicious. The girls scarfed it down without the meatballs, and Mark and I savored every bite with meatballs.

Meanwhile, the blender attachment for my Bosch mixer finally arrived last night, and I made milkshakes for me and the girls.

This is a boring post. I'm really distracted about Burgundy.

Home Repair Updates

I slept in this morning and hauled myself out of bed at 9:15. I washed the last of the dishes from last night's dinner and made myself a cup of coffee, then surfed Ravelry for a few minutes. I've just finished wiping down the stove. I am not a fan of cleaning, but it's satisfying to have a pristine stove or sink.

Mark and JB finished putting in the new front door last night, and JB also finished installing a new porch light. From the inside, it feels like an entirely new house; we bought a fiberglass door (tax credit) with an oval leaded glass insert. It allows so much light into the house that the foyer looks about a foot wider than it is.

Remaining to do today is more mudding in the master bathroom, installing the casing outside and inside the new front door, and packing up to go to San Antonio.

That's right, we went to Austin, came home for one day, installed a new front door, and are leaving again forthwith. Assuming the car is fixed.

That's the other thing. The car's battery light came on again. I called the mechanic, and he told me to bring it on out, but I told him no. I told him I was going to get a couple of second opinions, and I'd call him back and let him know what they said. He didn't answer when I called back. I'm sad because I've used this guy for over 10 years and really like him, but he really blew it on this repair. I told him it was more than just a loose belt, but he didn't listen. His loss.

The two mechanics I've talked with said it's either a bad/loose bolt on the alternator itself that shakes loose with the vibration of the car or it's a bad harmonic balancer. The mechanic we left it with said he'd look at it this morning and let us know the final answer. He couldn't guarantee that it would be fixed today, so we might have to rent a car for the trip to San Antonio. Not ideal, but do-able.

With the bit of day I have left to me before the packing and preparations begin, I'm going to take a shower. In my newly installed bathroom shower.

Friday's Food

Really quick - I don't want to spend a lot of my attention or yours on these posts:

Breakfast: Slice of homemade bread (no butter; I was in a big hurry), teaspoon of homemade chocolate ganache (I licked the spoon [a couple of times], so this is an estimate), cup of coffee (I always have this with brown sugar. I haven't been saying so previously, so it should be understood).

Lunch: The new team is planning to go to Cullen's Restaurant for the division Christmas luncheon. I'm really excited about this, because earlier this year, in the April - May timeframe, I tried really hard to arrange for some of the pre-meetings for the Orion PDR to be held there. It sounds really wasteful, but Cullen's had the space, and noone else really had it. Even more surprising, of those groups that did have the space, Cullen's was far and away the cheapest option. By like $40K. Regardless, we didn't have the event there, and their food looks SOOOO good. I'm really looking forward to it. For the record, since people really worry about stuff like this, the meetings eventually were held at the contractor's facility in Denver, CO.

Snack: I didn't bring one to work today. I plan to bail after the Christmas luncheon, and I still have my lunch here from a couple of days ago (when we went out to Perry's), so I'll probably just munch on that. For the record, it's a vegetarian bean filling for tortillas (somewhere north of "taco" and south of "enchilada").

Dinner: It's Burgundy's birthday. I forgot to ask her what she wanted me to cook. I'm planning to make this Buttermilk Chocolate Cake for her and our family.

Thursday's Food

Breakfast: slice of buttered toast using bread from the batch I baked last night. Mmmm! Oh, and I use real butter. It's SOOOOOO good.

Morning snack: three slices of tomato-basil bread from the mini-loaf still here at work.

Lunch: Wendy's crispy chicken sandwich, mayo only (and there's almost no mayo on here; ::pout::) with medium fries and Dr. Pepper.

Snack: Munched on batter and chocolate as I made cupcakes for Burgundy's 14th birthday.

Dinner: Um . . . potato chips with ranch dip. Two beers (St. Arnold's Christmas Ale again). Small glass of wine. A couple of cookies. Some caramel popcorn.

I'm embarrassed. It's starting to look like I really AM one of those stereotypical fatties who lives on potato chips and soda. I even ate dinner in front of the TV. Granted it was a friend's TV, but still.

The great irony is that I ate all that horrible food (which was, I grant you, quite tasty) while watching Julie and Julia. This kinda cracks me up. Woo crack!

Oh, and About Food

In spite of my resolve to ignore my weight and just live a healthy life, I've been doing neither. I've been beating up on myself and stuffing my face with unadulterated crap.

Day before yesterday, my afternoon snack was a Jack in the Box hamburger with a Dr. Pepper and an Oreo milkshake. Yesterday, I had a Whataburger Jr. with small fries and Dr. Pepper. This is ridiculous. Not because "Oh woe is me, I'm a fatty fat fat" but because it's garbage. And I'm stuffing it into my body.

Meanwhile, I'm allowing my internal monologue to get way out of control with the self-deprecating diatribe. Yes, I'm a bit of a fatty, but I'm a cute fatty, thank you very much. It is ridiculous for me to entertain self-loathing. Not because I'm free to do whatever I want when I want, to stuff my face and act like the Fat Bastard, but because I'm beautifully made, and it's fitting and appropriate to honor that by taking care of myself and loving myself.

I'm not talking about losing weight. I'm talking about being healthy. I had a dream last night that I received an offer to have any unwanted fatty deposits zapped from my body. My first reaction, in the dream, was to be terribly offended. This is my fat, bub, so you'd best step back. I couldn't think of any fat that I wanted to have removed! Later I realized it would be nice to get rid of my "bye-bye arms" (you know, when your arm keeps waving after your hand has stopped?), and boy was I annoyed when I woke up and still had them!

Anyway, I woke up marvelling at the idea of being so okay with my fat that I wouldn't want it gone. Interesting idea.

So I plan to post each day what I eat for the day. This is simply to keep me accountable to myself. It's easy to go on a fast-food binge and wake up to discover it's been going on for a couple of weeks. It's not so easy if I'm blogging what I eat every day.

So for today, December 16, 2009:
Breakfast: Leftover vegetarian enchilada with onion, beans, garlic, corn, peppers, and enchilada sauce on a whole wheat tortilla. Washed down with gingerbread coffee, a gift from a swap partner for Christmas.

Lunch: Repeat of breakfast: just leftovers. In fact, I forgot about a planned company luncheon. We went to Perry's Grill, a phenomenal local restaurant that's very highly rated by whoever decides these things. Black tie sort of place. They have what they call a four-finger pork chop; they're famous for it. Guaranteed to be as thick as the width of your four fingers. On Wednesdays and Fridays, you can get it for $10.95 (very good price; next cheapest meal on the menu starts at $15). I had it with potatoes au gratin and applesauce. I resisted the call of the Dr. Pepper because I knew I only wanted it because I felt I should spend more money. Is that stupid or what? Anyway, the food. O! How delicious. I did require caffeine to stay awake in the afternoon, so . . .

Snack: I also had a cup of European sipping chocolate. I picked up some raw milk this past Saturday (another post on that later, whew!), so I heated a bit of it and made the sipping chocolate as instructed on the tin I received as a gift day before yesterday. It was phenomenal.

Snacks available: right now, I have a mini-loaf of tomato basil bread that I made on Sunday. I'll munch on it if I need to. We'll see. I did have a small slice of the mini-loaf, but nothing more.

Evening: Julia made vegetarian shepherd's pie - delicious, but not the real thing. You need real beef for that. I snacked on a couple of small pieces of chocolate and made sure to drink a couple of tall glasses of water. I had a wonderful St. Arnold Christmas Ale.

Small victories: Did not order the soda I didn't really want; did not stop for a fast food snack while out running errands with Mark in the evening; did not drink more coffee in the evening. And I wanted it. But it's bad for me, and I'm not doing it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Slept in today for the first time in a week. If the last two days hadn't been so hectic and overwhelming, I might feel more guilty about ignoring my blog throughout them. However, now I have my cup of coffee and my cinnamon roll (made from scratch Thursday morning), and I'm ready to write.

We hosted Thanksgiving Dinner this year. My parents moved to the area about seven months ago, so they joined Mark's parents and us. My little brother, Brian, and Sally married five months ago and had Thanksgiving lunch with her parents in north Houston, then joined us for desserts and games. All told, we had eight people for dinner and ten for desserts and games. For a little perspective on eight people eating at our house, here's our dining room.

We enjoyed a few firsts this year:

First time to smoke the turkey (somehow, we managed not to get any photos of the actual turkey in the actual smoker). Mark used lemongrass, rosemary, wood chips soaked in Jack Daniels, white wine, and pretty much anything else that sounded good. The turkey was juicy, flavorful, divine. Perfect.

First time to celebrate with my parents at our house; I think it's only the second Thanksgiving we've spent with my parents since we've been married.

First time to celebrate with my brother and sister-in-law, and first time to have them and my parents over at the same time.

Julia's first Thanksgiving; why yes, that is two vegetarians posing behind a turkey.

First time to make everything from scratch.

Mark insisted on putting a plastic "lid" on the turkey even though it was too small to really trap any heat and it looked like the turkey had enjoyed a particularly libatious time in the smoker. The salad placed front and center is not just adorned with flowers, either. Those are nasturtium, an entirely edible, slightly spicy flower that Mark grows in his garden specifically for salads.

That's right, everything. I made a batch of whole-wheat tomato-basil rolls and mini-loaves Wednesday afternoon. These have a crap-ton of basil in them, so they taste best after sitting for a day or so. They were divine by Thursday evening. Thursday morning, I woke early and made another batch of bread dough. I used half the dough to make cinnamon rolls (there's only one left, and the girls are asleep; I wonder if Mark wants to take care of it), and the other half to make whole wheat rolls. A little later, I taught Julia how to make a batch of bread, and we used half of that dough to make a spinach and feta roll-up (cinnamon roll style, but not sliced) with tomatoes, cream cheese, and walnuts. Julia used the other half to practice her bread-rolling technique and made four more mini-loaves of whole wheat bread. Even after sending everyone home with bread, we still have enough to last us a while.

In the midst of the bread-making, I also made a double batch of butternut squash soup. I had eaten butternut squash before, but never in soup. I worried that it would taste horrible, have a bad texture, rise up in anger and destroy us (I've always thought butternut squash looks like a little alien baby pod. Just saying'), etc. Obviously we have not been destroyed. The soup on the other hand . . . decimated. I think it was the most delicious thing I ever have put in my mouth. Well maybe not, but I love being delighted by new foods.

I peeled and boiled sweet potatoes, chopped nuts, and mixed up a batch of sweet potato casserole. Mark smoked the turkey (starting at 7:30 AM), Julia made red-skinned mashed potatoes, and I rounded it all off by making a chocolate chess pie, two buttermilk pies, and two lemon meringue pies.

I made sweet iced tea, southern style, to drink and asked family not to bring alcohol. After dinner, my brother and Sally arrived, and we sat down to play Curses. We almost didn't play because as I set it out, my mother said, "Oh honey, Brian still has to go to the storage shed and then back to San Antonio tonight; I don't know if we're gonna have time to play anything." As I started to put it away, Brian came into the room and said, "Curses? Sounds like my kinda game! Let's play! Will my time in the Navy give me an advantage?"

If you've never played Curses, go out and get the game right now. It's a very simple game with two decks of cards. One deck contains challenges such as, "You are an anchorman; predict the weather;" or "Sell insurance to the person sitting next to you." The other deck contains curses such as, "You are a leprechaun; whenever someone touches you, protect your cards and yell, 'You're always after my Lucky Charms!'" or "You are Count Dracula. Speak like a vampire: 'I want to suck your blood,' etc."

For each turn, the player first pulls a challenge card and performs the challenge. Then the player pulls a curse card and gives it to another player. That player must perform under the curse throughout the rest of the game including through his or her challenges, getting up to get a glass of water, breaks, etc. If a player breaks a curse and gets caught three times, the player is out of the game. Last person out of the game wins.

We played for about an hour; I had the vampire curse, the "speak like a french person" curse, and the "speak in a high-pitched falsetto" curse. It was hilarious. I also had to imitate everything my brother did (cause of great hilarity when he tried to kiss Sally), and Julia had to keep her wrists stuck to her chest all the time. Sally couldn't bend her elbows, but she had to pinch her nose whenever she spoke. So every time she wanted to talk, she'd jump up and run to my brother, who would hold her nose. And I had to imitate everything he did (poor Sally).

Eventually exhaustion and impending travel won out, and everyone departed. We had a lovely time though, and even after staying up late to clean up the house, we were in bed by midnight.