Breakfast (before work, 6:30 am): more cooked fava beans; leftover roasted broccoli; blood orange; little packet of mustard peas.

Lunch (from the restaurant after work, 3:15 pm): Grilled dill havarti cheese sandwich with tomato, on multigrain bread; side of broccoli. 

Dinner: I cooked cheeseburgers as described in the October issue of Bon Appetit, in the "editor's letter," no less: the low-class/super-hipster way, with American cheese, crappy buns, iceberg lettuce, greasy meat.  You know what?  They were delicious.  Like fast-food burgers, but fresh!  Oven-fried french fries on the side.  Everything with ketchup, plus I also had mayonnaise and pickles on my burger, as recommended.  Also.  It has been a long time since I have made a burger without mixing various additions into the meat, forming patties, etc. etc.  These instructions told you to basically grab a handful of meat, smash it onto the pan, and then salt it right in the pan.  Do not disturb.  Flip.  Salt other side.  They were good this way.  I kept thinking of the scene in Parks and Recreation where Ron Swanson and Chris Traeger taste-test Ron's "Meat. On a bun." burger against Chris's gourmet turkey burger.  Ron's wins, hands down.

Before and during cooking dinner, I was also starting some prep for having guests tomorrow.  I invited them for "tea," with the caveat that there would basically be enough food to count as an early supper.  Menu: chicken salad and egg salad finger sandwiches.  Deb Perelman's morning bread pudding.  Deb Perelman's brownies.  Tipsy Baker's Indianers (which I think of as "cream puffs").  Fruit brought by guests.  Coffee, tea, milk.  So, this evening beforehand, I made the chicken salad (chopped Whole Foods cooked chicken breasts, dried cherries, sliced almonds, minced scallions, mayo, salt & pepper) and the egg salad (boiled egg, chopped celery, whole-grain mustard, mayo, salt & pepper).  I also assembled the bread pudding, which needs to soak overnight and get all eggy before being baked at the last minute.

Snacks: A number of spoonfuls of different milkshake flavors at work.  Started drinking a mini-cup of ginger chai at work, but then thought better of it (too much milk gives me a stomachache, also: random calories).  4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  A certain amount of necessary tasting of the chicken and egg salads.  Sherry after dinner.

Breakfast (eaten at 8:30 am, all unawares that I was about to be called in to work): I cooked the remainder of the fava beans with some onion, salt and lemon juice, and had some of these for breakfast along with a habanero-lime tortilla, a whole wheat pita, and carrot sticks.

Lunch (from the restaurant, at 2:30 after I got home from covering a co-worker's shift-- his brother was dying, so I was glad to do it): vegetable fried rice.

Shopping (Whole Foods): heavy cream, hand lotion, two prepared grilled chicken breasts from the deli, whole milk, challah, 2 mini-baguettes, sugar, herb mix salad greens, dried cherries, 2 dozen brown cage-free eggs, 6 individual Fage Greek yogurts (assorted flavors), Ghiradelli unsweetened chocolate, Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate, white bakery bread, celery, scallions, garlic, sliced almonds. $78.

Dinner: I made Donald Link's Spaghetti with Pork Jowls and Fried Eggs, plus roasted broccoli on the side.  I am suddenly really into roasting broccoli.  Okay, so my main problem with this recipe was that I really don't know what pork jowls are.  I went to my usual international grocery store with all its unusual (to Americans) cuts of meat, hoping I might find pork jowl, clearly marked, but no such luck.  And I'm thinking that probably I just should have gone with pork belly-- or pancetta for God's sake-- but instead I choked and bought some generic "stew pork" that was obviously not right.  So, my spaghetti had a really delicious cream sauce that featured random bits of chewy pork floating in it.  I'm sure something fattier was intended.  That said, the deep-fried eggs (poached first, then chilled, then breaded and fried) were, if labor-intensive, quite wonderful.  And the pasta overall was rich and tasty.  I would make it again, if I didn't mind risking heart attacks for everyone at the table.  This dish is heavy.

And this, belatedly, is what pork jowl is like.  Looks like a) this is an American food, and I would have been better off in an American-style grocery store, b) bacon would have been a reasonable substitution, and c) yeah, the pork belly would have been better than the choice I made (did you know that bacon is smoked pork belly?  Boy, am I ignorant).

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  Half a cup of homemade ginger-jujube tea given to me by one of the Korean cooks at work.  Sherry in the evening.  

Breakfast (early in morning, before appointment): one packet of mustard peas.  (After appointment, also after getting gas and stopping for prescriptions at the CVS... hungry!!): Habanero-lime tortilla with sliced hard-boiled egg, melted cheddar cheese, and salsa; carrot sticks.

Lunch: 2 scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, also salsa and a little green onion and cilantro on top.  Very small bowl of Trader Joe's granola (all that remained) with whole milk.  How is there no food in the house when I just did a major grocery shopping trip two days ago?  The eggs are great, though.

Shopping (Co-op): organic 1% lactose-free milk, 2 cans cat food, Equal Exchange organic coffee, unbleached cone coffee filters, 2 boxes Cascadian Farms granola (1 maple-brown sugar, 1 chocolate almond), brown eggs, 3 blood oranges, bananas, $35.

Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's Broccoli Rabe Served on a Bed of Fava Beans, whole wheat pita.  The whole fava bean puree thing proved complicated.  First of all, it is difficult to find dried fava beans, and I was unable to find the skinned, split kind that cook quickly.  I did manage to buy the large dried beans with skins.  Then, for some reason, it did not occur to me to presoak and cook only part of the fairly large bag, so I ended up boiling a LOT of fava beans.  They did not take as long as I expected to become soft in the middle, so I drained and cooled them and then tried to shell the individual beans, as most recommend (although I seem to have missed the fact that most people shell them right after soaking).  This did not work-- the skins stuck to the beans and the insides crumbled and I decided they were "too done" to shell.  However, the skins were still a little chewy, so I added some more water and put them back on to cook a while longer, figuring we'd eat the beans whole.  After more cooking, when I drained the beans again, I discovered it was now possible to shell them.  So I shelled about five cups for the recipe, and put the remainder of the cooked beans in the refrigerator for later uses.  As it turned out, the mashed beans topped with very garlicky, oily broccoli rabe were okay, but not very exciting.  It wasn't really worth all the effort.  I have had fava bean puree in restaurants that was fantastic, but this wasn't that.

Dessert: Jennifer Reese's chocolate pudding.  Easy and not terribly sweet.  My husband and daughter really liked it.  I felt it needed a little more something.  Salt, perhaps.  And maybe sweeten the whipped cream more than I did.  And the recipe made 4 petite servings, so if I made it again I would probably double it.  But it would be really easy to make it again, so that's a plus.

Feb. 15
Breakfast: The portion of my half-eaten stuffed pork chop left over from Saturday night, leftover mashed potatoes also sent home by my sister-in-law in a Ziploc baggie. 

Shopping (Trader Joe's): crispy crunchy broccoli florets, Inner Peas, quart of half and half, can of organic black beans, almond-cashew-cranberry granola, 2% lactose-free milk, habanero lime tortillas, organic brown eggs, $21.

Lunch: The other half of my restaurant breakfast from yesterday: half a breakfast quesadilla and a few home fries, with salsa and sour cream.

Dinner: scrambled eggs with cheddar and a few slices of avocado, on habanero-lime tortillas.  Topped with salsa, sour cream, a little queso fresco, cilantro, and green onion.  Small side of white rice mixed with black beans (canned ones that I seasoned up a little).

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf.  The first cup of decaf had whole milk instead of half and half, because I ran out.  The second cup of regular came from Starbucks.  4 or 5 Godiva chocolates over the course of the day.  A few Trader Joe's crispy broccoli florets (yum!  Recommend!).
 
Feb. 16
Breakfast: the rest of my steak and the other half of my baked potato from Sunday night, with a few sauteed mushrooms and butter.

Lunch: half of my daughter's grilled cheese sandwich left over from Sunday night, leftover rice and beans with a little green onion and cilantro and salsa.

Shopping (New Grand Mart): ground beef, stew pork, panko bread crumbs, dried fava beans, rice vermicelli, hamburger rolls, dried plums, dried papaya, dish soap, sliced pickles, dried black mushrooms, broccoli, spaghetti, flat-leaf parsley, whole wheat pitas, olive oil, buttermilk, heavy cream, hot sauce, coffee-flavored mochi-covered ice cream treats, fried tofu, regular firm tofu, vegetable bouillon cubes, whole milk, carrots, american cheese slices, 2 packages shanghai bok choy, 2 russet potatoes, sugar snap peas, enoki mushrooms, iceberg lettuce, broccoli rabe, $78.

Dinner: Rice noodles prepared in the following way: green beans, sugar snap peas, carrots, enoki mushrooms , and fried tofu are stirfried and then simmered briefly in a sauce made with coconut milk, tamari, Thai garlic chili paste, onion powder, lots of ginger powder.  Meanwhile the rice noodles are softened in hot water.  When vegetables are tender, toss in the rice noodles and finish with cilantro and lime juice.  I added a little more tamari and cayenne pepper at the table and it was perfect.  The noodles really absorbed the sauce, so they were fairly dry, but the coconut milk made them filling.

Feb. 17
Breakfast, before work: leftover rice noodles, a few pieces of sharp cheddar cheese.

Lunch, after work at 2:30: habanero-lime tortilla with salsa for dipping; carrot sticks; mandarin orange; small dish of Trader Joe's almond-cashew-cranberry granola with whole milk.

Dinner (with husband-- daughter away at a school function; by candlelight, because the light bulbs in the dining room had burnt out): Madhur Jaffrey's Baby Bok Choy with Chinese Mushrooms; white rice; tofu baked in a marinade of tamari, mirin, oyster sauce, ginger powder and garlic powder.  All I wrote next to the bok choy recipe in my cookbook was "bland!"  Because it was.