almost two months...

Last Updated on August 25, 2008
I am such a putz. But now, by incessant demand, I shall resume my quest to exhaustively chronicle my eats, from the inane to the insane.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Caloric intake for the day started with a Jeno's frozen pizza, which I had heated up the night before, eaten three bites out of, and then wrapped up in a ziploc sandwich bag. I had every intention of reheating it in our office's toaster oven, but when the time came to start feeding the genius machine, I just couldn't hold out for the toaster oven's slow-loving touch. I had that gibbus moon of sausage, pepperoni, "cheese," sauce and starch cold, soggy and folded in half. It was a terrible thing I did in the name of food, and I loved every bite of it.
Then came an amazingly decadent surprise. A co-worker brought in some indulgently decadent baked goods to share with the office. They were mini-loaves of ginger cake with a honey and cream cheese icing and sliced candied ginger on top. She'd gone for apple sauce instead of oil for the ginger cake which made them very dense and moist. Even for my butter-mad palate, the icing more than made up for any oil that might have been missing from the cake and the candied ginger was surpirsingly moist as well, making for a warm, creamy hug of a breakfast-ender.
Lunch time was time for leftovers, although with soup, really, the left-overs can be the main event. The soup du jour was actually the soup du last Thursday, an Italian wedding soup I made in the burgeoning throes of romance. Emotional context infused the layers of this eclectic take on the traditional Italian layers. The soup started with an onion, celery and green and red pepper "trinity" that soon folded around garlic, chantrelles, zucchini, and red, white and blue potatoes. The whole mess stewed in a blend of beef and chicken stock and then we finished the soup with green beans, frozen meat balls and whole wheat rotini. A little cheating in the name of expediency here and there, but the results were grandly satisfying, even days later.
I also snuck a piece or two of WholeFoods' brown rice salmon roll and a few bites of barley soup from my lunch partner, because, honestly, why else do you eat with other people if not to steal their food?
Then, as so often happens at my office, just when you get back from lunch, you are informed of a room full of leftovers from some faculty luncheon or another, and you make your way dutifully down to bond with your fellow scavengers. I had a grilled chicken wrap with roasted vegetables inside. The veggies were mushy, the chicken was, bite to bite, possibly very dry and uninviting, and yet somehow I ate all of it. I also availed myself of some tortelini antipasta and some macaroni salad, not to mention a handful of cookies, of course. The antipasta was good, but already very picked over when I got there so there wasn't much actual tortelini left in the bowl. The macaroni salad was tolerable, though cloying. Mayonaise dressings with a lot of sugar in them can be downright unsettling. The caterer would have done a lot better to cut back on the goop and add more fresh veggies to compete with the syrupy oversaturation of eggs, oil and geuh.
Free samples! In the ridiculously long line at Trader Joe's, thankfully accompanied by the most pleasant company I could think of, we threw back some jerk chicken. Mine was gone in two bites, seconds after we picked up our little pleated paper cups, prompting my companion to comment on the disparity between our portions. Not one to take credit for chivalry unintended, I didn't so much pass on the lion's share as I wolfed down the sizable portion I took for myself. As much as I can remember tasting it, it was pretty darn good.
Dinner, when it finally came, was an old stand-by come back to visit: Pork Gyoza, fried, then steamed, then fried again. I prepared a dipping bowl of ponzu (soy sauce and vinegar flavored with yuzu, a citrus similar to grapefruit) and chili oil, that about a dozen of the wrinkly little bags of awesome, fried a crispy brown on one side, slid through on their way into my welcoming gob. What iconic perfection. I managed to hold myself off at a dozen by suplementing the dinner with a large crisp corn tortilla as I was cooking and then a flour tortilla, fried and then smeared with goat cheese and wildflower honey as a desert. As awesome as you might think that desert might be, I have to admit that I did not have actual butter on hand in my kitchen (oh, the horror) and had to instead fry the tortilla smeared in SmartBalance. Geuh. Still, it wasn't a bad finish and there was no mistake in my stomach that caloric intake had reached a fitting end for the day.
It was time to wash it all down with several tall glasses of water and start thinking about breakfast...