​Mar 21
Breakfast (7:30, before work): Leftover curry from the night before (it is better simply eaten as a stew, without rice); Liberte lemon yogurt.

Lunch (after work, 2:15): mandarin orange, 2 hard-boiled eggs, small bowl of raisin bran with milk.  Hardly anything in the house to eat.

Shopping (Co-op-- it's been weeks since I did a proper grocery shopping trip): french baguette, Cascadian Farms Purely O's cereal, low-carb bran bread, Equal Exchange French Roast decaf, sliced black forest ham, cage-free brown eggs, 6 individual Chobani Greek yogurts, blackberries, 2 avocados, yellow plum tomatoes, 1 pink lady apple.  $50.

Dinner: baguette sandwiches (buttered in the French style!) with ham, brie, and apple (vegetarian kid did not get ham); a slaw I made from grated carrots and radishes, with slivered sweet bell peppers, and an olive oil/white wine vinegar/honey dressing; a few spare slices of apple and a few blackberries apiece.  These were pretty, colorful plates and I felt very French and wholesome.

​Mar 18
Breakfast: leftover muffin, mandarin orange, toasted challah roll with butter, fried egg.  As I was eating breakfast, my boss called and asked me if I could come in (in about 40 minutes) to cover another employee's shift.  I said I wasn't feeling well and would prefer not to, if she could find somebody else.  I would come in if nobody else was available.  She found someone else.  Yay!

Lunch: mandarin orange; small bowl of raisin bran; egg scrambled with feta cheese, except I accidentally dumped in a LOT of feta and ended up with what I'd hoped might be a kind of toasty cheese pancake, but was actually a sticky, salty mess.  I ate it.  It was horrible.

Shopping (Co-op-- I was really hoping not to have to shop again today, but my ex-husband is sicker than I am and my kid needs to go over there for the weekend, so I am bringing him/them some grocery supplies.  The following are the things I bought for my own household while I was there): challah bread, Glutino sea salt crackers, Brie, 6 individual Liberte yogurts, radishes, organic lactose-free 1% milk, organic mini sweet peppers, yellow plum tomatoes, coffee, Cascadian Farms Hearty Morning cereal, cat treats. $58.

At the normal time that we would have dinner, I met my husband at the movies (we saw Rain the Color Blue with a Little Red in It, which was every bit as formulaic as the original, but sort of culturally fascinating).  I had a cup of peppermint tea (which I would rarely order if not sick) and a peanut butter cookie (which I also would rarely order if not sick; I'm normally candy all the way!).

Dinner (more of a snack, at home afterwards): Glutino crackers, Brie cheese, yellow plum tomatoes (these were surprisingly delicious in March), a little white bean pate.

Snacks, besides movie snacks above: 3 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 1 decaf, with half and half.  One cup of Pero with half and half and honey.  I've been using my Wonder Woman mug  quite a lot the last couple of days.  It is really big. 

Mar 19
Breakfast (before work, 6:30 am): leftover muffin; slice of challah toast with butter and jam; mandarin orange; 1 egg.

Lunch (brought home from the restaurant, 3:15 pm): kimchi cheeseburger with fries & coleslaw.  I also brought a burger home for my husband.  I wasn't so crazy about the kimchi on the burger and wished I had just gotten a regular cheeseburger.

Dinner: we were pretty full from mid-afternoon cheeseburgers and just had solo mini-meals late in the evening.  I had a Liberte yogurt (caramel flavor, which is the best), a slice of challah, and a mandarin orange.

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  A few swallows of pineapple-strawberry juice at work.  An entire small-sized carrot-grapefruit juice that I made myself at work when I started to hit a wall/feel shaky and sick again around 2 pm.  The juice helped.
 
Mar 20
Breakfast: my husband and I returned to the Fenton Cafe, as promised, to try their crepes.  I had an avocado, tomato, and cheese crepe, followed by sharing a sweet crepe (banana, almond, and honey) with my husband for "dessert."  The crepes had a delicious flavor, although they were a little chewier than I thought the ideal crepe texture should be.  And I especially appreciated that the avocado in my savory crepe was perfect.  So many restaurants simply serve you whatever avocado they have on hand, even if it's completely unripe or spotty or any of the myriad things that can go wrong with avocados.  I got the feeling that Fenton Cafe really cares about how their crepes taste.  The bananas and honey crepe was a little sweet for me (I have a limited tolerance for honey), but I'm the one who ordered it, so not their fault!  And, on a busier morning, the service was a lot friendlier than the last time I was there.  Decaf coffee... though one of my sole complaints about this place is that they offer only non-dairy creamer for coffee!  (They do have regular milk if you ask.)

After breakfast, my husband and I walked around the residential neighborhood in back of the restaurant and looked at houses.  My husband likes to look at houses and I like to walk around.

Lunch: I didn't really eat lunch, but I did have a small bowl of raspberry granola in the midafternoon.  It had come from a bulk bin at the co-op and tasted somewhat stale and dusty.

Shopping (Co-op): Seventh Generation paper towels, organic lactose-free 1% milk, organic whole milk, Seventh Generation toilet paper, can of organic chick peas, can of coconut milk, yellow bell pepper, green bell pepper, organic raisins, 1 lb. bag carrots, 2 yukon gold potatoes, frozen green beans, brussels sprouts. $36.

Dinner: I made a stab at a Thai-esque vegetarian coconut curry with brown rice.  (However, I realized belatedly that a lot of my ingredients-- chick peas?-- would have lent themselves better to a  coconut milk curry with Indian spicing instead of Thai.  Oh well.)  I used onions, garlic, green chili, potatoes, carrots, brussels sprouts, chick peas, frozen green beans, bell peppers, scallions, and yellow tomato.  The sauce was composed of vegetable broth, coconut milk, Thai chili paste, a little fish sauce, ginger, salt, and lemon juice (because I didn't have lime, or lemongrass).  While it tasted okay, it was a little too soupy and didn't pack quite enough punch with the rice.  I have to go very easy on the fish sauce and Thai chili paste because my husband hates fishy flavors, but Thai cooking gets so much of its umami flavor from fermented fish that-- without lemongrass, galangal, or mushrooms-- there just wasn't enough there there.  Definitely should have gone the Indian route with this, and doused it with spices.
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Snacks: 2 other cups of coffee, both regular, with half and half.  1 cup Pero with half and half and honey.  ​

Well, drat.  Maybe all that low-appetite and crappy feeling and exhaustion after work last night and so forth was because I was getting sick.  Not much doubt about it now.  Still hanging in there, though; it's not too serious as yet.

Breakfast: kid's leftover half-sandwich from last night (white bean pate, cheese, pea shoots, on rye).  Additional slice of rye toast with butter and jam.

Lunch: open-faced sandwich (because I only had one slice of bread left) of ham, melted gouda, and pickles; 2 mandarin oranges.

Shopping (Co-op, when I decide my headache is better and I feel well enough to walk over there; this was a mistake): pint of Fage whole milk Greek yogurt, half & half, raspberry & cream bulk granola, package of 6 challah rolls, 2 cans cat food, maple syrup, blackberries, strawberries, cage-free white eggs.  $46 (what? the challah rolls cost $8.69?).

Dinner: banana-peach muffins in the Amy Dacyczyn pattern, bowls of plain Greek yogurt with berries, maple syrup, and granola.  I have never really had Greek yogurt served this way before (my household is partial to the little flavored cups), and it is surprisingly delicious.  So much creamier, so much less tart than a low-fat plain yogurt.  It would probably even taste good without sweetening it with maple syrup.  A revelation.  Except, another revelation: I feel queasy after eating it.  Too much dairy again.  Better in small quantities.  Or maybe I am just sick.

Snacks: 3 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 1 decaf, with half and half.  Cup of Echinacea Plus tea mid-morning.  Cup of Pero with honey and half & half in late morning, and another one in the mid-afternoon.  I'm not exactly pushing fluids on purpose, but it is working out that way.  A mandarin orange while making dinner, because I was on the phone a long time with a friend and started dinner late and I am starving.

​Mar 14
My husband has been nicotine-free for 1 year today.  Congratulations, honey.  In Nicotine Anonymous, which he tried (mostly unsuccessfully) for a while before eventually quitting cold turkey all by his lonesome, they call this "smobreity."  (An even better word is "smober."  I enjoy saying it whenever possible.)

Other than this, March 14 kind of sucked.  Daylight savings.  Stomachache.  Allergies.  Neighbors yelling at each other and stressing me out.  This perfect storm of morning blech turned into an entire day of inertia.  On the up side, I didn't feel as though inertia needed to be paired with jellybeans.  I was, still, not very hungry.
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Breakfast: last bit of spinach with sorrel; half an avocado; strawberries (I put some sugar on them this time); mandarin orange; piece of rye toast with butter and black currant jam; peanuts.
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Lunch: mixture of peanuts and almonds; dried pineapple rings.

In the late afternoon, I roused myself to go over to Capital City Cheesecake and buy some little individual cheesecakes in celebration of my husband's non-smoking accomplishment.  One each seemed too little, while two seemed too much.  I went with too much, of course: two plain mini-cheesecakes, two chocolate, and two salted caramel.
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Dinner, on the other hand, was entirely utilitarian: eggs scrambled with colby cheese and sour cream; mixed fruit (mango, strawberries, and mandarin orange again, this time with some sugar and lemon juice to salvage the bad strawberries); soda bread made from white flour, wheat germ, and cornmeal, which I ate with butter and honey.

For dessert, we had the mini-cheesecakes.  Kid and I brought them in with candles, singing "Happy birthday, [husband's] Smobriety..."  We each had two flavors.  As the mom (or just as myself?), I am by definition last to choose flavors, but I got what I would have chosen anyway!: a salted caramel, and a plain cheesecake.  The salted caramel cheesecake was fresh and fantastic, the plain cheesecake was a little stale and tasted kind of off.  You can't win them all.  Meanwhile, we watched The Great British Baking Show, which I wasn't aware of until I read about it on Bon Appetempt.  Thanks, Bon Appetempt!  It is great!  And the people really are all nice!
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Snacks: four cups of coffee, two regular, two decaf, with half and half or heavy cream.
 
Mar 15
Breakfast: soda bread with butter and honey, a few cashews, fried egg, strawberries.

Lunch: colby cheese and pickle sandwich on rye bread, additional slice of rye toast with butter and jam.

Shopping (Co-op): organic lactose-free 1% milk, organic whole milk, Nature's Path blueberry flax cereal, quart of Brown Cow vanilla nonfat yogurt, 2 individual Liberte yogurts, Mrs. Meyer lemon verbena dish soap (I always forget I don't like the smell of this), swiss chard, organic flame raisins, scallions, frozen peas, long-grain organic brown rice, 1 lb. bag carrots, crimini mushrooms, sweet pea shoots, bag of mandarin oranges, bananas. $53.

Dinner: after late-afternoon yoga class and a couple of consecutive days of not over-eating (except the cheesecake), I finally felt hungry!  I'd bought a lot of vegetables and brown rice, though, to make a light stir-fry.  I didn't even buy meat, tofu, or eggs-- just high-protein vegetables.  So we had stir-fried carrots, mushrooms, peas, scallions, chard, and pea shoots, with garlic and ginger, and a sauce made from soy sauce, mirin, thai chili paste, sugar, and sesame oil-- thinned with water-- a bit of a cultural mishmash.  Served over the brown rice, which I managed to burn somehow.  It was not blackened, just brown and crunchy, in a somewhat-more-than-ideal-Persian fashion.  We ate it anyway.  The meal was good, but I was hungry again later.