Thursday

I tried to set a goal for myself, to get these posts under 800 words a day. That's mostly because internet attention spans are deplorable. I don't expect for this to get syndicated, but at the same time, writing 3,000+ word entries are punishing, even just to write them
But, as a possible side effect, I just haven't been eating very much worth talking about for most of my caloric intake, and then basking in one great investment of energy a day.

This Thursday, for example, I had my Jeno's for breakfast, and a bag of pop corn for lunch. My officemate asked, when I brought the pop corn into the office, if that was all I was eating for lunch. "No." I said. I didn't think I was lying at the time, I just got lazy and filled up on pop corn. Around 4PM I had one of those ice cream sandwiches made from chocolate chip cookies with chocolate chips embedded in the ice cream around the edges. Very healthy, lots of calcium, and corn is a vegetable, right?

Ah, but the main event. I starved myself into creativity. There was another variation on the Korean salad and a great lentil soup that I made up as I went.

For the salad this time I played with the dressing elements. I used soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, sesame oil and mirin this time. As for dry spices, I kept it simple with chili powder and the sesame seeds. For greens I used romaine hearts and I added some red peppers on there mostly because i thought it would look good. I was right.

The lentil soup started out like your basic curry. In hot olive oil with a little butter I sautéed ginger paste, garlic, a dash of Grammy's Spicy Tomato Soup and spices, here chili powder, some cumin seed, a little mace and a very liberal dose of Adobo. I then added red skin potatoes and put a nice brown on one side. After flipping them and getting the other side started to brown, I added an onion, halved and then sliced.

I added a drizzle of sesame oil as the onions cooked, and once they started to take on a little brown themselves, I added the beans, juices and all, as well as a few sprigs from my lemon basil plant.

It was one of those dishes that feel like shoveling satisfaction into your gaping mouth.
This is one I'll be coming back to, but maybe not till the weather cools off a little.