
Breakfast: Last leftover pear/hazelnut/chocolate chip muffin from Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen recipe, piece of toast with pizza sauce and provolone cheese. Except for a single pear last night, I have hardly had any fruits or vegetables in the past couple of days. This is probably not good for me. I already feel a bit digestively upset. As always, when I stop restricting food choices according to some "diet" (Clean diet, Perfect Health Diet, etc.), I return to eating excessive carbs and particularly wheat flour. I don't think this is about my personal choices so much as the ubiquity of these foods in our national cuisine (though I shudder to use the word "cuisine" about the American diet). If you are not actively avoiding wheat flour and sugar, you are almost certainly overindulging instead.
Lunch: White cheddar cranberry cheese (it wasn't as good as it sounded), Whole Foods house-made flour tortilla chips (also not so great) with Whole Foods house-made artichoke-spinach dip (why are so many Whole Foods products not as amazing as they sound or look?), spoonful of leftover pistachio paste (yum).
Shopping at the coop: Talenti vanilla ice cream, organic lactose-free milk, cage-free eggs, organic black mission figs, organic ground cinnamon, organic pepper, $22.
Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's corn with sesame seeds and tomatoes, Palak Paneer, basmati rice and chapathi from our local Indian restaurant, salad of lettuce and CSA arugula and dried figs. Apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert.
The corn recipe was really very delicious. It has a lot of ingredients (most of which are seasonings), but it is not difficult. I wasn't sure the sesame seeds added much, besides nutritional value.
For my husband's and my wedding anniversary this year (our fourth), I gave him a gift: a fruit pie every month, of his choice, made by me and made only for him. He only has to share as much as he wants to; it is fully his. (He always shares a bit.) The apple pie was actually a belated pie for October, which got overwhelmingly busy near the end. That means he'll have to come up with a second pie request, for November. I am willing to interpret "fruit" very loosely. Pecans can be a fruit. Pumpkins are a fruit.
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee with heavy cream or half and half, 2 regular, 2 decaf. 1/2 a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale (the other half sat on the table undrank. Undrunk. Undrunken.)