Last week I made a promise to myself that I would try and eat better - and that was mainly in the form of cooking real food rather than just opening jars and combining pre-made ingredients. Given that this is "Week 1" of the experiment, I'd say I'm doing ok on the deal.
After a longer than planned day at work on Monday, I swung by the local Trader Joe's with an idea of making a spicy green lentil and feta salad that I like. It's a very simple cold salad that would also result in multiple lunches for the rest of the week. It's got a bit of a "nose" due to the feta and red onions (I do try and think about my co-workers a bit) but I didn't care at the time since it's just a yummy thing.
TJ's is not known for having "just the right thing" at any given time - but they always have "just the thing right NOW". (sound familiar?) On Monday, rather than having green lentils and red onions, I found a Harvest Grain Blend that contained Israeli Couscous, yellow lentils, baby garbanzos (huh?) and baby red quinoa. Cooks in 10 minutes - SOLD. No red onions either, but the organic yellow onions were on sale and were summarily tossed in my basket. Add to that the pre-crumbled feta (what happened to the yummy imported stuff from Israel?) and some tomatoes and I was set. Ok, maybe not set, but I did have a plan.
Cook the grains per the directions (except add some white wine instead of all water) and then toss in to a bowl containing one chopped onion, three chopped medium tomatoes, about 3T of chiffonaded basil (leftover from the weekend), white balsamic vinegar, the feta, salt, cayenne pepper and olive oil. Toss, salt/pepper to taste, and voila! Dinner. Oh, and it was lunch yesterday, too. Check.
As for the running bit, I did go for a short run in my FAVORITE park yesterday over lunch. Not too hot yet, but definitely getting to the point where morning or evening runs will be mandatory. Needed to do that 'cause I met up w/some friends last night for beer and pub food (no, those french fries are NOT healty eating) and got suckered in to co-leading another run next week. Did I mention that I sprained my ankle last Tuesday doing the same thing? And it HURT?!? (and it still DOES!) Ah well - c'est la vie.
So, today - rather than running over lunch, I bought some yarn instead. Maybe the sock overload is starting to hit (though I've got the Monkeys on the needles, need to start the Grashoppers over again and there's more yarn on the way) but I want to knit some lace. Simple lace. I'm doing the Knitty Clapotis. I saw the picture and spent a ton of time looking for the wool/silk blend called for in the pattern but with little success. So, I threw my hands up and went to a new LYS to see if they could help. Could they? COULD THEY!?!? Geez - they recognized the print out of the pattern for cripes sake! :-) "Oh, you're doing a Clapotis. Hey - she wants to do a Clapotis. Whaddya think?" I was overwhelmed. That had acres of wonderful yarn that could work and all of them had knit this at least once before. They vicarious dreams of additional scarves were piled on me and I ended up with a skein of Blue Moon Posh (cotton/rayon blend) in Lunasea. For whatever reason, the Posh yarn doesn't show up on their web site - but it's got this amazing shimmer to it. It wasn't the color I set out to get (I wanted something brighter) but this colorway spoke to me. It spoke LONGINGLY to me. It's out in the car. :-)
How long can I resist before casting on? Monkey on my back needs to be done ... but some mindless knitting for the long weekend would be nice ... what to do what to do what to do ...
Oh, and leftovers for dinner again tonight - after I go running in the hills to figure out what to do for next week. How many hours in a day?
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