
Breakfast (eaten at a Panera while writing, in an attempt to work on a Saturday morning while my husband is home): Avocado, egg white and spinach breakfast sandwich (it also has some sort of delicious cheese on it), fruit cup, decaf coffee.
From Michael Pollan's Cooked: "Stillwaggon's mad Web site achieved a kind of perverse brilliance, accompanied by a handful of louche cheese photos and the occasional clipping from the French press. (Including one about a French study of human odor that found that men, when ripe, smell more like washed-rind cheese than women, who smell more like sauvignon blanc.)"
Lunch: (eaten at a Peet's Coffee, still trying to write) icky strawberry yogurt, cheese danish, bag of potato chips, two cups of coffee.
Shopping (Safeway): 2 cans cat food, 2 bags Safeway brand ground coffee (different varieties), apple raspberry almond Special K cereal, World's Best cat litter, aluminum foil, brown cage-free eggs, lactose-free 1% milk, 6 individual Dannon yogurts (assorted flavors), large Chobani Greek yogurt (strawberry), $41.
Dinner (eaten in front of the TV as we obsessively watch Making a Murderer): scrambled eggs, oven-fried potatoes with onions, two pieces of ciabatta toast with butter, little bit of arugula dressed with olive oil and lemon.
Snacks: more coffee (1 regular at home in the morning, 1 decaf at home in the evening, with half and half); glass of sherry in the evening. Trying to have some kind of self-control.
Jan 17
Breakfast (at Parkway Deli): omelet containing hash browns, bacon, and cheddar cheese, wheat toast with butter and jam, two slices of orange and one slice of cantaloupe. Coffee. The omelet was so generous with the bacon (thick-cut) that entire strips of it could be seen hanging out the side. Nevertheless, it somehow managed to be tasteless. The hashbrowns inside were unsalted and mushy. We still love the ritual of our brunches, though, and the Parkway at brunch is a well-oiled machine. I always marvel at the large number of staff, with their carefully controlled division of labor, processing table after table with efficiency and (relative) grace. So different from where I work. Oh, I also went over to the pickle bar and tried a few things. A little pickled red cabbage (good!), a slice of pickled beet (probably canned, but I like them), a spicy pickled vegetable mix heavy on the cauliflower (help, major vinegar overload!), and a completely weird wedge of green tomato that tasted like it had simply endured a brief but extreme salt brine (yuck!).
We also bought our future dinner from the Parkway's hot bar on our way out, so as to not have to think about it later.
Dinner: Matzoh ball soup (Parkway makes an incredible matzoh ball soup, with giant, buttery-tasting matzoh balls), cornbread stuffing (an unpleasant mush), and chopped spinach (lots of onions) from the hot bar. My husband had rotisserie chicken instead of matzoh ball soup, because he is insane. (See "broth.") We also tasted this jerky that we bought at the market, and we hated it. Hopefully my daughter will like it, but I have a feeling she won't. Eaten while watching the very last episode of Making a Murderer, which we basically watched all weekend. After we watched it, we went and read all the articles about it on the internet that we had been avoiding due to spoilers. They sure did spoil it. But it's nice that Americans take such an interest in justice, in their various and sometimes misguided ways.
Snacks: a pre-breakfast snack of leftover eggplant pickle and leftover fava beans. My husband was sleeping late and I could not wait. 3 other cups of coffee, 1 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.