Code Green, hopefully

In the side bar to the left, I've color coded the lists: dark green for every day, light green for 3x a week, yellowy orange for 1x a week, and red for never. I'm going to color the text of meals for a while, so I can see if I'm in a sea of green or flailing around in a world of yellow and red.

I spent the day doing laundry in the early morning, shopping for food in the late morning, and cooking in the afternoon. I assembled a bag of Russ & Daughters goodies for my brother-in-law for his birthday, so I was inspired to cook off a bunch of chocolate babkas. It's a lengthy process involving 2 rises, and 2 parts (dough and chocolate filling), but the result is fantastic. During the 4 hour ordeal, I made salad for the week and a large bowl of tabouli. I didn't use a recipe, I just looked at some ingredient lists on line and free-balled it. Got bulgar wheat from the bulk section, soaked it in hot water for 15 minutes. Added chopped tomato, onion, scallion, garlic, red pepper, parsley, mint, a little olive oil, a drop of balsamic vinegar, the juice of one lemon and a dash of salt. At first it tasted a bit weak but as it sat and came together, I'm glad I left it alone. It's mild, but you can really taste the wheat and it has that tabouli flavah.

I wasn't planning to eat desert today, but life had other plans for me. After spending 4 hours knocking out the babka (and the vegetables and the baby and the clean up) when B got home, she made short order of one of the babkas. Once she started one, I had to have a small piece to see if it was good. (The dough was really wet, but I decided to see what would happen instead of adding more flour -- it became MUCH more tender than last time, really good.) I stopped at a 1" piece, but B made her way through the ENTIRE 8" pan!! Hrumph!

A few hours later, I was really desiring sugar, broke down and had another desert, officially breaking B's rules of no more than one a week. I know tomorrow there will be a sweet snack at the playdate drop in, and I'm baking macarons and going to a dinner party on Thursday, which will be another sweet spot. And no weekend is complete without desert. If I make it through the week with only 5 deserts, I guess it'll still be an improvement....for now

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, organic cheerios with organic dead milk, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Woke up pretty hungry, but I wonder how much of that is due to only 4.5 hours of sleep. I know lack of sleep is a potential cause of obesity, due to messing with blood sugar levels...

LUNCH: 2pm, two sardine sandwiches, 2 pickles, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
I was nervous about this, but Brown hyped up the nutritional power AND deliciousness of this sandwich, but I had never really done sardines. Once I opened the can, two things soothed me -- first the heads, tails, fins, scales, bones and guts were all removed, leaving just little round fillets surrounded by skin. Second, the smell -- it smelled like a mild tuna fish! Ah hah! This isn't some scary little eyeball-and-gut crunchy thing, this is just sustainable, healthier tuna! I tossed them with a little cider vinegar and fresh parsley, and smeared some ripe avocado on the toasted whole wheat bread. They went down lickety split, I can't believe I haven't been eating sardines all along.

I always associated those tins with anchovies (funky salt!) and old people like my parents, though even my parents were all about the chunk tuna -- the sardines were THEIR parent's thing. Justine Timberlake can have his sexy, I need to bring sardines back.

DINNER: 7pm, large green salad with chili shrimp, a few spoonfuls of homemade tabouli, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, small slice of freshly baked babka, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 10pm, 3 graham crackers with chocolate and peanut butter, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5