Good day, bad night

After sleeping on and off all day yesterday, woke up feeling very achey -- my back needs to live! Got out of the house by 9 with Edie and went to Wholefoods to stock up. Unloaded, got out to vote then to Chinatown to meet K for vegetarian dim sum. Stopped in to the mom's group thing at the local community center, met a new mom in my building whose a bit freaked out by her 3 week old, turns out she also has a plot in the coops garden club, made a friend.

After our adventures, me and Edles headed home, I strapped her to my chest and I got to work o making salad, a big pot of pasta sauce with a big flavor (contemplating a rich baked ziti to bring to home warming this weekend, this is half the battle), then a nice entree with 2 sides (Betsy only ate the sides, and grudgingly, since the spinach was full o' chicken stock and chicken fat....but it tasted so gooooood!)

Looking at what I've been eating, is it a big surprise that I felt poopy? I much better today, with fruit and veg in every meal, and no sweets, though it's 8pm right now and craving cookies...

....it's now the next morning, feeling a bit guilty for powering through a crappy industrial ice cream cone AND a full bag of Pepperidge Farm Milanos. Thing was, I ate half and put them down, but literally felt a little hungry/desirous for sugar an hour later. I guess I didn't eat enough during the day.

BREAKFAST: 8:15am, blandie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
I guess this wa my own kind of cleanse. Out of bananas, only frozen fruit, I made a smoothie with the organic dead mik, good yogurt, frozen cherries, mango and blueberries, freshly ground flax...and thats it. No sugar, no salt, no banana. It came out ok, the consistency was missing a certain thickness/binding that the banana gives, and while I enjoyed the mild sweetness vs the yogurt's tartness, the fruit flavors were muted. Sugar, out, vanilla and salt, way in.

LUNCH: 12pm, veg dim sum, water, tea, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Sticky rice, mashed taro treasure box, shark fin dumpling, sweet n' salty dumpling, golden mushroom fried thingy and kale in rice paper. Yeah, a bitter green! Healthy or what!

DINNER: 7pm, sauteed pork loin in pan sauce, spinach and mushroom, pasta with freshly made sauce, large green salad, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Made salad then pasta sauce when I got home. Went without a recipe, thought of my dad. In addition to the sweated onion and carrot, I added celery, diced Italian pepper and portobello -- my dad would through through this stuff in AFTER the tomatoes, which is a mistake -- you end up just boiling this tasty stuff. By sauteing it to soft, you capture it's aromatic essentials in the olive oil. Added dried herbs to the hot mire poix+, then ground the tomatoes right into the pot. After 30 minutes of simmering, dropped a bound head of basil in to steep for a few hours.

So for dinner, I forgot about the left over risotto and boiled a little pasta. Cooked onion and mushroom in chicken fat, then added a bag of chopped spinach, garlic and chicken stock and cooked to dry. I browned the large pork chop in chicken fat on both sides, then finished in the oven. Took it out to rest, and made a nice pan sauce with shallot, sake (my only booze on hand), chicken stock and a dash of salt. The pork chop was thick cut, about a pound and 2 inches thick. I cooked it to rareish/medium rare -- nice and pink in the middle in about half of it, a little too pink in the other half. I ate half, the rest will make a good sandwich tomorrow...

EVENING SNACK: 9pm, crappy freezer case ice cream cone, half bag of cookies, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 10pm, the other half of the cookies, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5