The yesterday that was Wednesday, the fourth day of June.

Reading this, you might think I'm a chubbywubkins. Well, I am, kind of. I'm fat for a Japanese guy. I'm about 20 lbs. heavier than I was in Japan, actually. I think that has a lot to do with portion sizing. It's disheartening to see how quickly I fell back into the gluttonous American meal-metering after developing much healthier habits in Japan.

So without being too blunt about it, I'm gonna try to rein in the gorge machine. To that end, the morning's breakfast burritos lost the "s" at the end, and dropped down to just one slice of bacon. If you cut the bacon into pieces and fry everything in the grease, you get a pretty thorough penetration of baconosity. I'm going to fry everything in the grease anyway, mottainai yo, don't waste shit, but this cuts the baconborne fat by half on average.

I also stuffed the whole egg mess into one tortilla. I am not advocating that anti-carb garbage, but it does significantly reduce the cost and carbon footprint per breakfast. Packaging can change our world, waistline and bottom line.

Why do I sound like Rachel Ray? Needs me an MRI or a Haffenreffer or something.

The great thing about breakfast was also the great thing about dinner and probably about lunch on Thursday. Morels. I came back from West PA with quite a haul. As I was frying the bacon, I threw in some of the smaller ones, cut into rings and a thin spear of asparagus cut into lil' slices. I would have liked to have had a more buttery, subtle cheese, but all I had to work with was a pre-shredded Monterrey jack and cheddar mix. I used it sparingly so as not to bury the subtle nutty edges of the morels. This was just to whet my morel appetite, though. I would be digging into them in earnest that evening.

But first, a reasonable lunch. The benefit of the pepperoni rolls made from sandwich roll dough is that they develop a large cavity inside and give very easily for further stuffing. I had two pepperoni rolls stuffed with lettuce, red onion and a hefty wedge of one of Uncle Jack's tomatoes, dusted with some Adobo seasoning. The tomatoes are huge, though, and after stuffing the pepperoni rolls, I still had 2/3rds of the half I had cut for the purpose. I ate the rest of the half as a side, and that was a full lunch. The other half had a different fate decided not by myself, but by my vegetarian roommate before dinner.

And it was a great dinner. I started with a recipe for fettuccine with asparagus and morels in cream sauce. Not a bad recipe, but I had to dance around the chicken stock. I wanted to use fresh morels, but that wouldn't provide me with water infused with the morel flavor to use as the extra fluid in the recipe. Instead, I boiled the fettuccine in just a little more water than was needed to cover, about 4 cups, and added a few of the dried morels, about 5, a tsp of Adobo seasoning, half a very small onion and about a Tbsp. of garlic juice from the jar of pre-diced garlic in the back of the fridge. After reserving the fettuccine, I used this "stock" for the extra fluid in the sauce.

The results were thoroughly satisfying and completely vegetarian. Who needs that pesky chicken stock anyway? I'm just supposed to keep the stuff laying around on the off chance that some wacky recipe requires it? Are they going to provide me with some convenient means of storage for this presumably ubiquitous kitchen need?

Damn the man!

Reduce your carbon foot print!

Boycott Rachel Ray!

I also had a slice of 3-cheese Texas toast.