By far-- by FAR-- my most-accessed post ever is this one, which discusses the nutritional value and potential toxicity of eggplant.  This post has been read by dozens of folk (that's a lot, for me!) literally all over the world, in places like Dubai, India, the Phillipines, and Japan.  I guess everywhere that people eat a lot of eggplant.  

And the weirdness of the Internet is: the more people read something, the more people read something.  So most of this blog goes unnoticed while the eggplant post gets more and more widely disseminated.

There was also a brief burst of hits to this post, when Buzzfeed decided to feature my photo of none-pizza-left-beef along with 36 other photos of none-pizza-left beef in this random posting last month.  Ah, fame!

Neither of these items represents the blog particularly well.  Meanwhile, as I post less and less, and get distracted writing mystery stories, the site gets more and more traffic (albeit mostly to the eggplant thing).  Isn't there any correlation at all between effort and payoff?  Apparently not.

April 25
Breakfast: lemon water, green tea, shake made from hemp milk, vanilla almond milk, hemp protein powder, cashew butter, strawberries, and spinach.

Lunch: sliced almonds, strawberries, blackberries, carrot sticks with cashew butter.

Shopping (Snider's): 6 single-serving Chobani Greek yogurts (assorted flavors), boneless chicken thighs, salmon filet, boneless beef short ribs, ground turkey, smoked trout, ground beef, frozen blueberries, lentil chips, broccoli, multigrain tortilla chips, pomegranate rooibos tea, jar of marinated artichoke hearts, spicy olives from the deli, kosher dill pickles from the deli, red leaf lettuce, grape tomatoes, 1/2 a red cabbage, 3 avocados, bag of sweet mini peppers, strawberries, Arnold wheat and oat bread, 3 lemons, dozen eggs. $98.  Note that my kid is not on the gut cleanse, and some of these items were for them.

Dinner: salad of spinach, red leaf lettuce, and shredded purple cabbage, with freeze-dried raspberries, blackberries, roasted broccoli, sliced almonds, and white-meat chicken, with red wine vinaigrette.  The colors in this were very pretty.

Warning: ​extremely boring gut cleanse data below.

April 21
Breakfast: lemon water, green tea, shake made of almond milk, hemp protein powder, avocado, almond butter, frozen blueberries, fresh strawberries, and kale.

Lunch: 2 boneless chicken thighs, dried blueberries, dried green beans.

In the late afternoon, I began feeling dizzy and exhausted again, much as I had this time last week.  I suspect the supplement that I reintroduced this morning, the yeast Saccharomyces boulardii.  Going to skip this one for a while, until I have introduced all the others.

Dinner: Salad of romaine lettuce, shredded cabbage, and tomato; topped with turkey tenderloin, boiled egg, avocado, and roasted brussels sprouts.  White wine vinaigrette dressing.  The heirloom tomato that I belatedly realized I'd paid $4 for turned out to be terrible, tasteless and mealy.

Snacks: 2 cups of green tea; 1/2 avocado; 1 cup rooibos tea with almond milk; carrot chips, handful of tamari almonds.
 
April 22
Breakfast: water with 1/2 lemon, green tea, shake made from almond milk, coconut water, hemp protein powder, avocado, sunflower seed butter, frozen strawberries, fresh strawberries, and mixed greens.

Lunch: Evolution green juice blended with coconut water and strawberries; 2 fried eggs; celery sticks with guacamole.

Dinner: salad of Power Greens mix, shredded carrot and shredded cabbage, topped with canned tuna and tamari almonds, with sesame vinaigrette dressing.  Small bowl of Moroccan lentil soup from Roots.  We ate dinner quite early, because we needed to go out to a theater performance directed by my stepson.

Snacks: 3 cups green tea, leftover turkey tenderloin, cup of rooibos tea with hemp milk, few carrot chips, small handful of raspberries.  Small bowl of curried split pea soup when we returned from the theater performance, 10:15 pm.  This is technically eating too late to be allowed on Clean Gut, but oh well.  I hate to go to bed hungry.
 
April 23
Breakfast: lemon water, green tea, shake made from coconut water, hemp protein powder, sunflower seed butter, frozen strawberries, fresh strawberries, and greens.  Did I mention I am allergic to sunflower seeds, and had an anaphylatic reaction to eating too many of them a couple of years ago?  So I am nervous about the sunflower butter, but we didn't have anything else in the house left to bulk up the shake, and I have a grueling 7-hour Saturday-brunch waitressing shift ahead.  However, it turns out fine.  I have never had any kind of allergic response to processed sunflower, for some reason.

Lunch (not until 3:30 pm): strawberries, celery sticks, carrot sticks, tomato wedges, dried blueberries, dried green beans, tamari almonds.

Shopping (Coop): frozen peas, lip balm, 2 cartons unsweetened vanilla almond milk, dried raspberries, cashew butter, lemon juice, can of cat food, 4 avocadoes, sliced almonds, blackberries, strawberries, organic spinach, 2 lb. bag carrots, garlic, white mushrooms. $65.

Dinner: salad of power greens, basil, and tomato, topped with sliced NY strip steak, roasted mushrooms, roasted carrots, sliced almonds, and avocado, with a mustard vinaigrette dressing.  Very small bowl of curried split pea soup on the side.  This salad was so filling that I left about a third of it to eat later.

Snacks: cup of wild berry zinger tea; 2 scrambled eggs at work; cup of green tea; cup of rooibos tea with hemp milk.  The rest of my dinner salad about an hour and a half later, while watching TV with my husband.
 
April 24
Breakfast: lemon water, green tea, shake made from coconut water, hemp milk, hemp protein powder, avocado, frozen strawberries, and fresh strawberries.  This was good and thick (lots of avocado, and the hemp milk seems thick) and actually pink in color instead of brown or sickly green, a nice change.

Lunch: We went to the restaurant where I work to eat "Sunday brunch," since one very good thing about the place is a willingness to indulge dietary restrictions and make substitutions.  I had a "southwestern" omelet with no cheese or sour cream, and sliced tomatoes and cold broccoli on the side, as well as green tea and a strawberry-cucumber-lemon juice.

My husband and I are getting very tired of this diet, and fantasize together about baked goods and coffee.

Dinner: salad of power greens and shredded carrots, topped with canned tuna, 2 hard-boiled eggs, cooked peas, and artichoke hearts, with a lemon-olive oil dressing.  Small bowl of minted green pea soup from Roots.
​
Snacks: cup of green tea, cup of rooibos tea with hemp milk, carrot chips.

Breakfast: glass of water with lemon juice; green tea; shake consisting of almond milk, canned coconut milk, hemp protein powder, frozen blueberries, and fresh strawberries.

Lunch: Evolution Essential Greens with Lime juice, with strawberries and frozen blueberries added to try and render it palatable (only partially successful).  Celery sticks with almond butter.  Cherry tomatoes.

After lunch, I could definitely feel the impact of the new probiotics I'm taking-- a period of quite remarkable belching, as well as a roiling sensation in the stomach.  It wasn't intolerable, just odd.  And then it stopped and I felt okay the rest of the day.

My kid needed to be picked up at school, so we decided to take a trip together afterwards to visit an old friend.  Roots Market, up in Olney, MD, was a favorite destination a few years ago when we regularly went to Olney to have kid's foot warts treated by a podiatrist there.  The wart treatment turned out to be a massive waste of time, as well as painful, but the discovery of Roots (plus the weekly drive to Olney together, sometimes singing in the car) made the entire experience more joyful than unpleasant.  We ended up with fond memories.  And a store we can visit when we've got a couple extra hours and are craving some novelty in our diet.

I told my kid they could get whatever they wanted (although they just can't break the lifelong habit of saying "is it okay if I get..." about every single item); the inventory below reflects this.  It also reflects that my kid has great taste in food and reasonably healthy inclinations.  Things of which I am so proud.

Shopping (Roots): Olivia's Power Blend salad greens, 3 portobello mushrooms, organic strawberries, heirloom tomatoes, organic orange bell pepper, organic lemons, 4 organic avocados, carrot chips [kid], dried green beans [kid], mixed vegetable chips [kid], tamari roasted almonds, 2 individual goat milk yogurts [kid], raspberry kefir [kid], organic whole milk, frozen strawberries, 100-bag box of green tea, freeze-dried blueberries, coconut water, hemp milk, dish soap, 2 cans tuna, single-serving maple water [kid], lingonberry jam, Effie's nutcakes [kid], peppered goat cheese [kid], turkey tenderloin, salmon fillet, baguette [kid], 3 quarts of housemade soup (moroccan lentil, curried split pea, minted green pea), "ocean combo" sushi [kid], cilantro and roasted garlic hummus [kid], Ricola herb cough drops [kid].  $200.  Yes, certain items I regretted once looking over the receipt (e.g., the two! heirloom tomatoes I bought for the low, low price of $7.09).  But there are so many things available at this grocery that I don't find anywhere else, it is worth the occasional special trip.  And the quality of everything is always excellent.  Great baked goods, not that I can enjoy those right now.  Great sushi.  Great cheese section.  Great, though limited, hot bar, salad, and soups.  Amazing bulk/snack section.

Dinner: salad of romaine lettuce and green cabbage, with shredded carrot and orange peppers; topped with roasted cauliflower, quinoa, and two boneless chicken thighs.  Apple cider vinaigrette dressing.  This was so filling that I was quite stuffed, and then overstuffed when I ate all my kid's uneaten roasted cauliflower so that it would not go to waste.  I guess there are worse things to binge on than roasted cauliflower, though.

After dinner, A. complained that I was using their name too often in order to avoid using pronouns (teenaged translation: "Pronouns do exist, you know!").  Perhaps this is so.  I've been slipping back into a almost-but-not-quite-thoughtless use of "she,"  because it is easier and less emotionally-confusing, and because A. said she, sorry, they didn't mind.  But I'd also figured that the use of a proper name was the least gender-loaded choice.  This discussion led to A. saying definitively for the first time that they would really prefer us to use "they" consistently.  Husband and I immediately switched.  More practice needed.  But it is good to have greater clarity in this area.
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Snacks: cup of rooibos tea with almond milk, 3 strawberries, celery sticks, carrot sticks. 2 cups of green tea.

Dear reader, I have failed you.  If there is any point at all to so navel-gazing a project, it is at least accuracy and thoroughness.  And yet this is a post about the times in life when things fall apart for no good reason.  Nobody died.  I didn't lose my job or my relationship or my mind.  And yet, for a solid 3 weeks (and I honestly thought it was more) I've been crawling along at the bare minimum of functionality, and the food diary, though not the first thing to go, ended up a casualty.  It's not a matter of being behind in arranging my notes and adding photos.  There are no notes, and (virtually) no photos.  I just stopped.
​
What happened, more or less, was this:

I continued to be sick and we did not drive to Massachusetts on Tuesday Mar. 29 as I had hoped.  The whole trip was canceled, a disappointment to everybody.  It was, however, the correct decision.  On Wednesday I went to the urgent care and was immediately diagnosed with strep throat.  I believe it was overnight Wednesday that I was awakened by my kid at 2 am.  They were freaking out.  They had had a sudden vomiting episode in the bathroom, made a mess, attempted to clean it up and made things worse.  And they were dizzy and half-asleep.  I, too, was dizzy and half-asleep, but after a few moments was able to mostly clean up and then go sit with the kid.  Thus began my dear kid's encounter with the same apparent stomach bug that my husband had had on Sunday.

It was strange: I had strep and they seemed to have some kind of GI thing, but none of us ended up catching what the others had.  I never started vomiting (to my great surprise and delight) and nobody else had much of a sore throat.  It didn't really make sense.  Can strep cause only vomiting and fever, with no throat or respiratory symptoms to speak of?  Internet research suggested this was unlikely, especially to occur in two people in a single household.

While we were home sick together all week long, my kid and I spent some quality time with each other.  We played Magic.  We watched TV.  We hung out side by side with our separate electronic devices or books.  When eventually my kid tired of spending all their time with Mom, and retired mostly to their room, I felt strangely bereft.  First of all, I discovered I was still capable of becoming just as obsessed with Magic as I was when I played with my foster son a dozen years ago.  Now kid didn't want to play anymore (and hasn't since)?  What a dork I am.  I am a 44-year-old mom.  WTF. 

Secondly, and more important: the awareness that there are only three more years before kid graduates from high school started hitting me hard.  I enjoy my kid's company so much.  I will miss them so, so much when they do not live with me anymore.  Yes, I know we will continue to have a close relationship, and matter to one another, and so on and so forth.  How often do I talk with my mother on the phone?-- somewhere between twice a week and once every three weeks, depending on circumstances.  How often do I see her?-- probably two or three times a year, on average.  There are little email exchanges, mostly prompted by her, to which I return replies remarkable mainly for their brevity.  Can I really expect much different from my kid?  That is not the same, at all, as living with someone and hanging out with them every day.  So shut up, you empty nesters who've already processed all this and say it will be fine.  It is not fine.  I have no idea who I will be when the day comes that I am no longer A.'s mom first and foremost.  That is painful and scary.

A beautiful post on the same topic from Jennifer Reese, who besides being the author of a frequently cited book, is also one of my favorite bloggers. 

The abovementioned emotions are likely why the ensuing two weeks also went all to hell, at least initially.  By April 6 or so, I was feeling pretty much completely recovered from my strep, but unable to shake the inertia and low energy state that had taken hold during a week of staying home and feeling sick and sad.  I did the things I absolutely had to do: went to work my two days/week, made box lunches and family dinner, washed the dishes, purchased food when necessary, drove my kid around to appointments and rehearsals.  My husband would probably point out that all this is not nothing.  I suppose it isn't.  But it felt like nothing.  For instance, on April 3, I cooked a real dinner for my family for the first time in over a week, and wrote the following in the diary (the only entry in those three weeks, presented in its entirety):

4/3
I'm finally back to doing my job.  But then I'm immediately struck with doubt.  Is it an important job?  Does anybody actually give a fuck?
​
In all the long, in-between stretches when I was doing none of these required things, I was holed up in my bed, playing Civilization on the computer or reading J.K. Rowling's (oops, I mean Robert Galbraith's) "new" Cormoran Strike detective series.  Well, they are new to me.  I love them.  Which should not be a surprise, since I love Rowling and I love mysteries, but it did come as a surprise.  What a treat to read that she plans to keep writing them "indefinitely!"

Oh, the other thing that I did was get my husband and I set up to start our Clean Gut diet.  We had to wait a week longer to get started than I had planned, because it seemed pointless to attempt gut biota repair while I was simultaneously taking antibiotics.  I finished the antibiotics on the morning of April 9 (my dad's birthday, which I didn't get around to acknowledging, because of the inertia.  If you knew my dad, and the fact that he almost always forgets my birthday, this would not seem as terrible as it sounds.  But I still felt guilty about it).  We started the intro diet on Sunday, April 10.  Basically, the Clean Gut diet allows most meats (not processed stuff); eggs; all vegetables except really starchy things like potatoes; berries; nuts; lentils and peas; and quinoa.  It does not allow: Sugar.  All grains except quinoa (not even rice, dammit).  All fruit except berries.  Dairy.  Soy and other beans.  Bacon.  :(  Potatoes.  Coffee.  It's extremely low-carb and not easy.

So, for three days we simply followed the dietary guidelines, in order to get used to the new way of eating.  It wasn't so bad.  On the fourth day, April 13, we began the cleanse protocol, which involves a morning shake, a regular lunch adhering to the diet, and a big dinner salad.  Also a bunch of supplements: B-complex vitamins, digestive enzymes, probiotics, antimicrobials (and, no, I don't really understand how those last two do not, to some extent, negate one another).  By that evening, I began to feel queasy and headachy and sick.  I did some research and decided we were taking too many of the B-vitamins, cut back.  The next afternoon and evening, the 14th, I felt the same, only worse.   Maybe even one B-vitamin was too much?  Maybe it was the probiotics?  I decided to cut out all the supplements (for myself; my husband was fine) and then reintroduce them one by one.  On the 15th, taking nothing, I mostly felt better, but still developed a bad headache late in the evening.  Made it through the 16th, despite a long day at work and grocery shopping in the early evening, without any particular suffering.  Time to try the B-vitamin again.  I took it on the 17th-- okay.  Again on the 18th-- okay.  On the 19th (yesterday, as of this writing), I added two doses of the mega-probiotic pill, my second suspected culprit for the nausea and headaches.  So far, so good.  We'll see what happens.

Clean Gut requires a fair amount of organization.  First, when you are on an extremely restricted diet where many things are off-limits, you have to shop often and shop carefully, in order to ensure that your limited variety of staple foods are well-stocked at home.  Then there is the prepping.  My first-thing-in-the-morning routine, always somewhat elaborate, has now ballooned to 45 minutes or longer.  1) feed cat.  2) take my one prescription med.  3) see if there are any boiled eggs left in the refrigerator and, if not, boil a few.  4) pour tall glasses of water for my husband and I, and squeeze half a lemon into each (another detail of the Clean Gut protocol).  5) make a big pot of green tea.  6) Make box lunches for my husband and kid.  Since they both have wildly different dietary requirements now (did I mention that kid has become a pescatarian?), this takes some concentration.  7) Make a double-batch of breakfast shake for my husband and I, generally consisting of some kind of liquid such as almond milk, a little bit of hemp protein powder, an added fat such as coconut, nut butter, or avocado, some berries, and a few handfuls of greens.  8) dispense supplements.

The dinner salad is labor-intensive too, given that one is not supposed to snack after dinner or overnight: the salad itself must be full of enough calories and protein to qualify as a hearty meal.  A base of mixed salad greens/herbs and various raw vegetables can be supplemented with meats, nuts or seeds, boiled egg, avocado, and-- my favorite add-on lately-- roasted vegetables, which bring out the sweetness we desperately crave.  So around 6:15 you can find me going into the kitchen and starting some broccoli or squash or brussels sprouts to roast in the oven, perhaps cooking some chicken or steak or (last night) lamb kofta, maybe boiling some frozen peas or artichoke hearts... and then assembling large salads out of this most-of-a-meal that I have already created.  They are really very satisfying. 

Oh, and my husband-- for whose sake I undertook this project in the first place-- is doing very well on the diet.  He has not felt sick at all and has had remarkable self-discipline.  On certain days he feels very hungry, and then I try to up the calories and protein that we're providing, and he'll go buy a little bag of nuts at the store.  He's a big man and he needs to eat more than I do.  But, overall, I am very pleased that this process seems to be working well for him.  He even loves the morning shakes, after looking askance at the first one.

So, reader, I am finally ready to return to you, with improved health, recovering spirit, and clean gut.  I hope that we can enjoy our time together and try new experiments.  Here are the few photos I managed to take during my hibernation (probably also on April 3; note the extensive documentation regarding finishing up our boiled Easter eggs):

​Mar 26
I wake up feeling sick again.  What is this?

Breakfast: sliced yellow squash, slice of flaxseed toast with butter and jam, 2 fried eggs.

Shopping (Safeway): Wheat Chex, Rice Chex, almonds, penne pasta, cooking oil, peanuts, rice cakes, 2 cans Progresso soup, ground cardamom, 2 bags coffee, organic peanut butter, fig preserves, brown cage-free eggs, 18 regular white eggs, cream cheese, whole milk, unsalted butter, Lactaid 2% milk, 3 Amy's frozen burritos, 6 individual Open Nature Greek yogurts, 3 Evol frozen burritos, large Chobani vanilla Greek yogurt, Pepperidge Farm whole grain bread, asparagus, red seedless grapes, sugar snap peas, Italian parsley, 2 avocados, green beans, 5 lbs. of clementines, romaine hearts, dried dates, 2 bags of Snapeas (1 plain, 1 Caesar), store-made guacamole, strawberries, dried mulberries, shredded romano cheese, pesto, store-made tortilla chips, Londoner cheese.  $171.

The slightly atypical purchasing patterns above reflect my desire to provide for my husband while kid and I are away in Massachusetts.  My husband does not cook for himself, and if left to his own devices will simply eat peanut butter (sometimes with bread, but not always) for the entirety of my absence.  I am trying to stock a variety of reasonably healthy foods that will require little more effort on his part than slathering peanut butter onto bread.

Shopping tires me out so much that I spend the next four hours hanging out in my bed with coffees and, eventually, lunch.  I am intending to make hamantaschen (specifically, these) as my husband's "pie-of-the-month" (his choice, I realize these are not technically pies) before March ends and we start our gut cleanse.  After my return from visiting my folks in Massachusetts over spring break, we won't be eating any hamantaschen for a while.  However, I keep forgetting to leave ingredients out to soften (first I softened the butter, but forgot the cream cheese, so that's another couple of hours), plus I am wiped out for some reason.  I will make them later, after I get the oil changed in my car for the trip, and stop by our storage unit to pick up my kid's Easter basket.

Lunch:  Safeway-made tortilla chips with Safeway-made guacamole, grapes, strawberries, Snapeas.

About  3:30 I drag myself out for the oil change and storage errands.  Sitting in the Jiffy Lube waiting area, I can barely suppress my sneezes and snuffles.  Uh-oh.  This is bad.

When I get home, my husband is there, and I promise to make the hamantaschen, just after I rest a little.  A while later, I get up to make the dough.  30 seconds later, I return to bed and confess that I do not want to make hamantaschen right now.  My husband is relieved.  "Can I get you anything?" he says.  "Tea?"  "Can you put the butter and the cream cheese back in the refrigerator?"  I ask.  I know I won't be making the hamantaschen now until May.

For dinner, we order Domino's and watch The Amazing Race while I try in vain to get comfortable on the couch with my aching body and aching head and throat.  I doubt that I have any appetite but when the pizza arrives I eat six slices.  Five of "my" pizza (green pepper and onion) and one of my husband's (pepperoni and pineapple).  Mine was better.  My husband eats six slices too, which will turn out to have not been such a good idea.

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  For some reason, I wake up starving in the middle of the night, and eat a mandarin orange and some more chips with guacamole.  The chips poke my sore throat but I don't care.
 
Mar 27
A lot to do today, because it is Easter and kid and I are supposed to leave on our trip tomorrow.  My husband wakes up feeling sick himself, with significant nausea, which I don't have.  He starts throwing up after his morning coffee and this continues periodically all day.  At one point his temperature hits 102.  This is worse than how I feel.

We don't go out to breakfast the way we usually do on Sundays.

However, I do manage to boil 2 dozen eggs before breakfast.  A mother's a mother, no matter how small.

Mar 24
Breakfast: blackberries, slice of flaxseed toast with butter and jam, banana, pear, one fried egg.

I had a late-morning decaf americano at the Starbucks near the Wheaton Mall, after buying a new pair of jeans and too much (as always) Easter candy.  It was beautiful weather and I could drink my coffee outside the shop while writing and trying not to eavesdrop on the very sweet pair of young men talking earnestly near me about important things.

Lunch (after leaving the mall and picking up my kid from their theater rehearsal-- it's the first day of spring break, so the rehearsal was in the middle of the day): fish and chips at the Woodside Deli (kid's choice), which also came with coleslaw and a side salad.  Plus I ate a couple of pickles from the pickle bar.  The fish and chips were only okay, but I was craving them for some reason.  Coffee.

After I came home, it was so beautiful that I went for a walk outside and took pictures of flowers.

Dinner: It was one of those nights where I tried to bring my creativity to bear on a small number of available ingredients, with only moderate success.  We had: roasted cauliflower (good) with a dipping sauce of curried yogurt (not so good, nor necessary).  Brown rice cooked in vegetable broth with za'atar sprinkled on top (eh.  Why is za'atar so good on bread, but not really so good on rice?  I ended up mixing some of my yogurt in with my rice).  Cabbage slaw with raisins, in an apple cider vinegar dressing that was dressed up a bit with cumin and cayenne pepper (but you couldn't really tell).  Little side bowl of sliced bananas dressed in sour cream and honey.  Weird dinner.  Probably nutritious, though.

Snacks: 2 other cups of coffee, 1 regular, 1 decaf, with half and half.  A few pieces of roasted cauliflower while waiting for my husband to get home for dinner.
 
Mar 25
Breakfast: leftover cauliflower, leftover brown rice, leftover cabbage slaw, one fried egg.
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I haven't done any significant, not-by-the-seat-of-my-pants cooking in about two weeks.  I miss it.  Why exactly does it seem like I'm so busy?  I'm not really that busy compared to normal people.  And I can't find the time to make a menu plan and go properly grocery shopping?

The plan today was to go hiking on the C&O Canal Trail with my kid, as we sometimes do.  But when I "awakened" them at 10:45 (really they were watching something on their iPod Touch), it turned out they were not in the mood to tackle this adventure.  So, after some initial difficulty, we ended up spending our day on some other wholesome, mood-boosting activities: having lunch out (during which I ended up somehow relating unwholesome old family stories that kid had been Too Young to Hear before now); purchasing a new sketchpad and markers and drawing together; and impulse-purchasing a set of Magic the Gathering cards (a game I used to play long ago with my teenaged foster son, back when this kid was a wee baby) and re-figuring out how to play it.  It was a good day.

Lunch (at Capital City Cheesecake, in figurative company of my paternal extended family): chicken caesar flatbread (again, so good!  Not too much dressing this time) and chips, redeye coffee.

Dinner: I met husband at Kin Da, our neighborhood Thai restaurant.  I had a pineapple-mint-ade sort of drink, vegetable tempura, a yellowtail-and-scallion roll, and futo maki.  Plus half a dozen or so edamame pods, and one taste of my husband's cashew chicken (deep-fried).  On any given visit, some of their items will be terrific and others only okay (and it's not entirely consistent which ones are terrific), but overall this restaurant is such a nice addition to our neighborhood.  It provides a cuisine we don't otherwise have within walking distance, it is overall good quality, the staff is very nice, and the atmosphere is dignified though not expensive.  I like it.

Snacks: 3 other cups of coffee, 1 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  Cup of green tea in late morning with kid, as we hashed through the best way to deal with a precarious beginning.