Resistance is Futile

ADDENDA:
I packed lunch based on left overs from last night, in the lunch boxes me n' B bought at the super-cheesy Christmas Tree store on Cape Cod. Looks kinda like a Borg cube, huh? ....if the Borg were delicious tortellini and baby carrots, with a shmeer of hummus.

Tortellini was another food I introduced to my parents, and my mom loved them, called them 'torteloonies' and acted a little goofy when I made them for her.

At the conventional supermarket last night, however, I had a small revelation. One of the reasons I was there was to pick up Sabra hummus, the brand B prefers. She eats hummus with just about everything. (Pasta? Hummus! Salad? Hummus! Potato? Hummus! Bagel? Hummus! Chocolate brownie? Hummus!) I bought an extra tub for the freezer. When I told B of this later, she asked if you could do that to hummus. Of course you can! My dad used to make gallons and freeze enough for a year!....

Duh! I attempted hummus about a year ago, it came out crappy, but I think I was over-reaching - I tried making the tahini from scratch. Twice a year I would take a day with my dad collecting ingredients, then going home and blending them all together, packaging them, then finding space in a freezer to put it all. Back in the late 70s, early 80s, hummus was still a rare specialty item to be found in the small emergent health-food market. We, however, had hummus all most all the time - so common around the house, I took it for granted pretty much until I road cross country last fall and found a striking lack of Hummus from Utah to Illinois.

Maybe not next week, but this winter I'm going to make a massive batch of hummus, poppa-style, have B assist me to blend it to her taste, and have it on hand for B until it's time to make more....

Just registered for the Basics 1 class at the Natural Gourmet Institute based on Ilsa's recommendation. It's jsut two Monday eves in November - if I dig it, will do the other 3 sections of their basics classes. Me n' B looked into yoga, we'll be doing 4 beginners classes every Thursday eve through October...

BREAKFAST: 7:45am, 3 bites of horrible cereal with good milk, whole wheat bagel with hummus, hunger 3/5
As my conventional stuff runs out, I'm switching to healthier alternatives. My rice-crispies died, so I picked up this organic no-salt version, which I tried this morning. I poured in the good whole unhomogenized milk, and took a bite.

You ever hear about how photographers use glue instead of milk when shooting food? Well, this LOOKED like rice-crispies, but I swear it was made of flecks of cardboard. At first I thought it was just slightly stale, then I realized how important salt was to it's flavor - it literally tasted like bland wood pulp. I know at some point in my life I may have to have a salt-free diet, but this is just not palatable. After three bits, I tossed it and ate a bagel. Maybe it's because I wasn't expecting it. I'll give it another shot later, but woo-wee, not what I was expecting to wake up to.

AM SNACK: 9:15am, 24 oz still water

LUNCH: 12:45pm, cold tortellini leftovers, baby carrots and celery, humus, hunger 4/5
I have been assimilated.

PM SNACK: 2:45pm, chocolate chip cookie icecream sandwich, hunger 4/5
Desiring sweets. Not the greatest desert, but it's available. My one-desert for the day, spent before dinner!

ADDENDA: 3:45pm
Got a screaming headache, same kind of front-side headache that I've gotten from food in the past. Definitely the ice cream sandwich. WTF? It's not dairy, it's not sugar...let me pull the wrapper out of the garbage....whoa, about 50 ingredients....maybe its a preservative or additive that's giving me these headaches? Since stressing organic food and lowlighting sweets, these headaches have definitely gone by the way side. Damn. Next time I reach for one of them friggin' icecream sandwiches, I'm gonna think, "remember the headache"....

DINNER: 7-8pm, small amount of left over tortellini, 3 ears of boiled corn w/o butter or salt, 1 whole wheat pretzel w/ no salt peanut butter, 1/2 a Margarita DOC pizza minus the crusts, 1 glass of wine, hunger 4/5
B was late coming home (and for the most part didn't know when she was coming home, despite having made dinner plans with her), so I started grazing over the hour, keeping to reasonable things that wouldn't blow me out.

The pizza (and B shortly after) arrived around 7:45. The last time we ordered a pie, I got horrendously sick so I was paying more attention this time. I ordered from a place closer by, Isabella's Oven and ordered the Margarita DOC - a plain pie with a minimal balance of buffala moz to the sauce and crust. When it arrived, I was happily surprised to see less cheese than I remember - little islands of creamy white in an ocean of red. This is the way to do it!

I remember years ago my mom off-handedly said her favorite pizza place was one on 6th ave around 11th or 12th, a Rays - she used to live near there during her college years when she rebelled and moved out of her parent's place in Brighton Beach (breaking from the tradition then of women living with the 'rents till they got married) I went and tried a slice - not only was there a thick blanket of yellowy oily cheese sitting on tip, but their 'thing' was to throw on free extra cheese before popping it in the oven on every slice. YUCK! It's cool if you love cheese, but if you can love this, you're friggin' retarded. I hoped it wasn't like that in my mom's day.