Um...Saturday and Sunday

Sorry, due to internet connectivity issues, being busy, and being lazy, I'm a little behind. On Saturday, after the symposium, I finally made some tortillas. Since the ground beef was thawed, I made tacos for dinner. I don't usually use flour tortillas for tacos, so it was kind of weird. And then I forgot to put the rest of the tortillas in the fridge or even in a bag until 11 pm...I hope they'll still be usable!

Sunday morning I made a butterscotch peach pie to take along for Mother's day dinner. I also figured I'd better do something with the thawed chicken, so I made curry for breakfast. I made enough curry that I had to do two batches of rice in my rice cooker to go with it! The extra servings are safely stashed in the fridge and freezer. I also made refried beans. I used the black bean recipe I like, but with pinto beans. I think pintos have tougher skins than black beans; they seemed to take longer to cook. And the refried beans are more oniony than I expected. I guess I'm used to it with the black beans! Anyway, a different flavor and consistency than canned refried beans, but good. And I did all that before church.

My sister and I made meatloaf and baked potatoes for dinner over at our parents' place. And I had leftover curry and rice for breakfast today. Okay, I'm all caught up now, right?

5/7/10 Breakfast, lunch, and later

Um, it's past my bedtime, but I figured I'd better check in in case anyone was worried that I didn't eat today. This morning I made biscuits. Because I haven't gotten milk yet (trying to put off using the $20 gift card as long as possible), I used some buttermilk powder I had in the fridge. I was planning to make a 1/4 recipe of regular biscuits (usually I make drop biscuits), but due to errors and inattentiveness, I ended up making a half recipe of buttermilk drop biscuits. I ate three for breakfast. (480 cal, 27 g fat)

Right before running off to the afternoon sections of the woodturning symposium, I threw together a sandwich. A couple of slices of the absurdly dense rye bread, light mayonnaise, some monterey jack cheese, a little salt and pepper, and some lettuce. It really does make a good combination! (377 cal, 14 g fat)

I put the last three biscuits in a plastic bag and put it in the bag I was carrying with me at the symposium. I snacked on them through the afternoon. I never exactly had dinner, but I had the biscuits and I got a cup of hot chocolate from the free drinks concession at the symposium. And on my way home tonight, I ate some more of my crackers. I really need to make more crackers, but I'm not sure when I'll have time. Speaking of time, it is now time for me to go to bed!

5/5/10 Breakfast and dinner

So, I spent too much of the day sitting out in the sun. If I had realized I'd be outside all day, I would have put on sunblock. Alas. I am quite sunburned. I was volunteering at the local woodturning store for their big sale today so that I could get free admission to a rather excellent woodturning symposium going on for the rest of the week. So I had to be up and out much earlier than usual.

I ate more rice and monterey jack for breakfast, and packed a sandwich and crackers and Jello for lunch. But it turned out that I got a free lunch at the sale (including the hugest hot dog I have ever seen in my life), but as I didn't cook it or pay for it, that's all you need to hear about my lunch!

Well. When I got home, I wasn't exceptionally hungry, and the only things I could think of to cook required either too much time, meat that was still frozen, or milk. I can't tell whether milk is still safe to use by smell, so I tend to give up on it as soon as I think that maybe it might be bad. I'm going to try to make it through the rest of the week before I go get more. For dinner, I finally decided on frying two eggs. Quick, easy, and fairly filling. (180 cal, 14 g fat). I may have some ice cream or Jello for dessert.

Today I did buy what is technically a grocery item, but since I'm using it for skin care rather than food, it's an acceptable purchase. I acquired a fairly impressive sunburn today while I was being a cashier at the clearance sale, so I picked up a gallon of vinegar to use for a home remedy. This will only be my second time using this method, so I haven't decided yet if it really works!

5/4/10--Breakfast

Well, my grumpiness has not gone away yet. So I took the easy way out for breakfast and just had leftover black beans and rice again, this time with a double helping of Jello. Are you catching on to my eating style yet? Yes, it's very usual for me to eat the same thing several meals in a row. Boring, maybe, but easy.

I was planning on making bread today so I can make sandwiches this week. But of the two recipes I wanted to try, I'm missing one vital ingredient of each. I may end up trying to think of something else I could substitute, or just make a different kind of bread, or something.

5/3/10--Breakfast (sort of) and dinner (if you can call it that)

Breakfast was leftovers of the rice and the black beans. No lunch. For dinner I'm cooking one of the chicken bunles and will be reheating some more rice and beans and probably having some Jello and maybe some lemon ice cream because I'm grumpy. No pictures tonight, because it's pretty much all stuff I've already shown (imagine the breaded chicken from the other day rolled up, and that's what the chicken bundle looks like).


Scratch that. The chicken is inedible. Just eating the rice and beans and then going for as long a drive as I can without being late anywhere.

5/1/10 Breakfast and lunch and the first ingredient to run out!

Well, I've done it. Run out of the first of my kitchen staples: black beans. To go with the chicken that's been thawing, I decided to cook up my favorite bean recipe. I'll be cooking some rice, too. But there weren't quite enough beans. I had a bit less than the 1 cup of dry beans the recipe called for. I'm making the recipe the same way as usual, not reducing anything. But even though I've often gone a whole month without cooking black beans, it makes me kind of sad to know this is my last batch for the forseeable future. I have a lot of other kinds of beans in the cupboard--at least 4 varieties, plus split peas--so I guess I could see what it would be like to cook this recipe using a different kind of bean! Not sure about that, though.

Breakfast today was burritos. I used the last two of the tortillas I made earlier in the week, and finished off the can of refried beans I started on Monday, too. I also used some of the beef fajita strips I'd marinated and frozen. I still have several bags of that meat in the freezer! And because I like cheese, of course there was some cheddar on the burritos, too. Oh, and while the meat was defrosting in the microwave, I had a first course of Jello. (594 cal, 22 g fat)

For lunch I decided I'd better make a salad, since I happen to have a head of iceberg lettuce in the fridge. I'm not sure that was the best idea, since I don't have many other vegetables to put in, and no ham, which I would often include in a salad. So it was a little bland. Lettuce, sunflower seeds, cheddar, a hard-boiled egg, and some ranch dressing I made using a recipe from www.cooks.com. I may need to add some more mayonnaise into the dressing; it was really thin. (382 cal, 28 g fat)

Hopefully dinner will turn out better than lunch. Which reminds me, I'd better go tend to the black beans simmering on the stove!

4/30/10--Breakfast and dinner

Simple breakfast this morning--oatmeal with a little brown sugar and some raisins. With a little milk. (155 cal, 2g fat). I also made some crackers using this recipe to eat for snacks or pack with lunches. The recipe calls for a mixture of whole wheat and all-purpose flour, but since I don't have any whole wheat flour I substituted some bulk seven-grain cereal I'd gotten for making some multi-grain bread. (I have plenty of the cereal to make the bread too, later on.)

I had thought of packing lunch and dinner, and not going home in between the various things I had scheduled for today. But part of what I was planning required the chicken I was thawing, which was still frozen this morning. Actually, it's still kind of icy even now. So I'll probably start using the chicken tomorrow. Anyway, I changed my mind (or rather, hadn't made another decision by the time I needed to run out the door to go to my voice lesson) and didn't pack anything. So after spending some time on campus trying to work on my thesis, I came back to my apartment to eat a lunch/dinner sort of meal.

I'd gotten an idea while I was on campus. I used half of half of the french bread loaf I had left. I cut it in half and spread it with some mayonnaise mixed with dried basil. For the past two years, I've grown fresh basil on my balcony, and had forgotten I had dried basil at the back of my collection of herbs and spices. Due to my plans to move, I didn't plant a garden this year, and I've already been missing having basil around. The dried stuff isn't quite the same, but it works! So. Bread spread with basil mayonnaise, which I then topped with shredded cheddar and monterey jack cheeses and broiled. While it was cooking, I pulled a little bag of last summer's green beans from the freezer and cooked them in the microwave, then sprinkled them with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Some of the jello I made last night rounded out the meal. (Estimated total 555 cal, 28 g fat)
The green beans tasted a little freezer-burned, so I don't think I'll want to use them straight again. Next time I use some, I'll cook them into something with enough flavor to cover. The broiled bread and cheese was fantastic! I'm toying around with the possibility of eating a little of the lemon ice cream I made yesterday morning before I dash off again, or putting together some snack I can eat while I'm off gallivanting around tonight. I've gotten in the habit of getting strawberry limeade from Sonic to drink while I'm on long, late drives, but I need to avoid that and find another way to keep myself alert while I'm driving home tonight!