WIAW 174 – Adjust to Circumstances
Well, my original plan had been…
Saturday I traveled a couple of hours out to Long Island to a friend’s house, where a whole group of us gathered to work on a project. So I carried lunch, and, well, not a full dinner but enough to hold me until I got home. So I was cleverly going to take pictures of all that – and of course I didn’t… We grabbed lunch while waiting for dyepots to come to a boil (yes, I’m going to have a sample sheet of about 25 ways you can dye with cochineal – we were a little overextended…) and I was not thinking about Inhabited Kitchen… Then I spent Sunday (and to a lesser extent, Monday) recovering from 11 hours of dying and 4 hours of travel (with three transfers. There’s this construction… )Though really, the hardest part was probably getting up a few hours early to be out on the Island by 10 AM! Working from home, I don’t have to get up at 6…
So I adjust. This is from yesterday. Which required its own adjustment…
OK, so, basic, boring, easy breakfast… my bean tacos. Beans and cheese – I didn’t even season the beans this time, just mashed some. I need to make my omelet strips again… but the cheese is so easy! I’m all about easy breakfast… No picture, but I drank the cold brew coffee, too.
Lunch was salad, of course… Plenty of cucumbers, now, and the first green pepper! Scallions and radishes… and lentil salad. It’s funny, I’m so used to serving lentil soup that I forget you don’t have to cook it down that soft – even the ordinary brown lentils can stay firm enough to make a lovely salad. This is one place where the more expensive ones actually do make some difference – the French, Beluga or Puy lentils hold their texture beautifully, and I would choose them for guests or something fancy. But the everyday ones work perfectly well… Just don’t use red lentils – they’re split, and cook right down into mush.
And I’ll have you know I put that plate together – Rich’s elegant styling is evidently rubbing off on me… Well, I had the center of a darling little head of Boston bibb, and it just seemed a pity to tear the cute little leaves up (even though of course I had to cut it to eat it) and the next thing I knew, I had a pretty plate!
Then… Rich called from the dentist, to say the chipped wisdom tooth was neither filed nor filled (as expected) but extracted. So I adjusted dinner… Extremely cheesy grits – that intense yellow is real, it’s from the cheddar, though there is also parmigiano in there. Zucchini cooked softer than usual, and some chickpeas. Everything on the downright mushy side… I’d planned something that wasn’t going to take a lot of chewing, but this didn’t take any, and there were no hard or sharp bits. The ground turkey I’d planned will be tonight’s dinner, and we go from there…
He can’t eat the rice cakes, or tortilla chips, or… even the actual tortillas seem a bit chewy to him right now, so (with my agreement – he would never do this without asking!) he bought a few soft wheat rolls. We’ve basically run a gluten free kitchen, but it’s been OK with me if he sometimes brings home half a leftover sandwich or the like – I know he’s properly obsessive about protecting me from the gluten. But actually going out and buying it on purpose felt very strange… I kept saying “I know you know this, but don’t…” He needs to eat something, though. Ironically, my objection to commercial gluten free bread has always been that it’s too soft and mushy, so in theory he could have picked that up, but our local grocery store doesn’t carry any. Guess I need to get my gluten free bread baking in gear!
I must say that reading Laura’s post reminds me how trivial an extracted tooth is… Come over to Jenn’s What I Ate Wednesday party!
