This was what we ate on Tuesday.

I’m not sure if this qualifies as “some kind of chicken” because my mom would’ve hated it.

We had spicy chicken with bulgur and cherries salad. Only the chicken wasn’t so spicy. That’s okay.

There was supposed to be eggplant in the salad but eggplant is disastrous around here, so I left it out. Then I realized there were no vegetables, so I threw together a salad with some mixed greens, chickpeas, grape tomatoes, and goat cheese.

Today, I had to go back to my favorite doctor ever, which was a treat, as always. Next week, I’ve got to take this test, which, in the biz, is referred to as a meth challenge, and which I prefer to think of as METH CHALLENGE, some kind of reality show for meth heads.

Anyway, after the doctor, I worked from home and was reminded again why it’s not a good idea for me to fulfill my dream of a work from home life style at this point in my life: snack attacks. Or, as I like to call them, snack-cidents. I just can’t stay out of the peanut butter. Or the yogurt. Or the granola. Or the trail mix.

Now I’m going to go do some cleaning to try to make up for it.

Guess what? We had pasta and veggies again.

After last night’s state of events, I woke up to a really shockingly beautiful day. I mean seriously, when my alarm rang at 6:15 there were birds chirping. It was ridiculous. So, anyway, that meant that I didn’t have to cancel my rheumatologist appointment in Topeka, so I checked my oil and went on my merry way.

My rheumatologist didn’t have a clue about all of my recent health issues, which was a surprise to me, as my pulmonologist was all “Oh, we must keep your other physicians apprised of this situation” (no lie, that’s how he talks). So anyway, today my doctor said “Let’s find out what’s going on,” which was really comforting until the lab assistant came at me with the big needle and took half of my blood. I ate a snack but I still felt woozy. LUCKILY, there is a Kohl’s nearby where I could wait it out. And buy some shoes.

Then I drove back and went to work, after which I forced myself to go to the gym because I felt guilty that I didn’t really get any exercise yesterday.

Wait, does RUNNING FOR MY LIFE count? Man, I really could have used that earlier.

Then we played mini-golf and came home for an exceptionally late dinner of pasta and tuna and feta and a ton of veggies that were on their respective ways out. I bet you wish I had skipped that whole first part and just gotten to the point.

I think we really nailed the whole colors of the rainbow thing.

Now I’m watching The Tudors. So far, it’s pretty dirty.

Everything tastes good when you don’t know how it’s supposed to taste.

Right?

So, last night I made two things I’ve neither prepared nor eaten before: tabbouleh and falafel (I know! I lack culture). I thought they both turned out pretty well, but then, really, what do I know?

There’s the falafel. I know, it looks sort of creepy.

And there’s the tabbouleh. If you’re down with grains, as I am, you may notice that it’s not traditional tabbouleh because it’s made with quinoa instead of bulgur. Really, I think we get enough bulgur around here. And my sister made quinoa recently, which made me realize that it’s been awhile.

I also had more roasted broccoli because it’s maybe the best thing that happened to me all week.

I was going to post this last night, but they were doing stuff to the sewers in our neighborhood and spraying our car with weird steam. I don’t want to know what was in it. Anyway, I had to go out and move it, because… gross. And then I was agitated.

I’m tired now, because I woke up at 3am, hungry and plagued by searing arthritis pain in my knee. At 5, I limped around and got ready for the gym as usual and then I actually laughed out loud at myself and my spunky stupidity and can-do attitude. Then I went back to sleep.

I just got back from a work thing, where I tried really hard to keep my weight off my bad knee and to eat a lot of broccoli and strawberries and grapes so that I wouldn’t be tempted to pick up the entire block of cheese from the cutting board or eat seven pieces of carrot cake. What? It’s got vegetables. So anyway, no actual dinner. I’ll probably have some tabbouleh about 15 seconds after I hit publish. Matt’s on the phone with his brother talking about simulated basketball games and I’m falling asleep on the couch and it’s a standard Friday night here at the See Food mansion. The big news is that we have air conditioning in the bedroom now. I hope it gets so cold in there tonight that it freezes my tears of happiness.

I’m not sure if I’ll be posting tomorrow because we’re going to a high school basketball exhibition kind of deal, featuring some players who are going to be college players soon, presumably. At which point they will become very important to me because of my freakish, out-of-character love of college basketball, so I’m trying to get invested early. It’s supposed to start at 8am (I will not be there) and last until… 12 hours later or something. Let’s see if I make it that long.

I can’t think of a title.

Today was kind of rough, so I’ll keep this short.

Dinner was pan-fried tempeh, bulgur pilaf, and roasted vegetables:

I’ve never roasted broccoli before. It was awesome. I’ve also never cooked tempeh before. I’ve eaten it, and one of my favorite Planet Sub sandwiches is the tempeh parmesan. I loved making it. I think I’m going to make it every single day for the rest of my life. This blog will now be called See Food (But Only Tempeh). Nice, right?

Here’s a close-up. It looks like I burned it, but that’s actually a soy sauce/rice vinegar coating type of thing. I hope.

Mmmmmmm. Grainy.

Anyway, now I’m struggling with my eternal question: Edy’s fruit bar or coffee ice cream?

Both?

For Marilyn

As an early Mother’s Day gift, I am posting tonight, even though dinner was boring. All because my mom asked me to. I think she worries.

I woke myself up sneezing again, and when I finally got back to sleep, I somehow missed my alarm. And the gym. And half of my morning routine. Then I felt weird and congested and gross all day. It was super.

Because I didn’t feel like cooking, we had black bean burgers. With cheese! And avocado! I also tried out my new bread which contains no high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils. It was $4.69 for a loaf. And I thought my Fage habit was going to be a problem.

Here it is with some vegetables from a bag I found in the freezer:

I thought the monkey would cheer me up. It kind of did.

It’s 9 and, when you’re 97 like me, that means it’s bedtime. We might get severe storms tonight, so if my own sinus problems don’t wake me up, I’m sure that will. I might as well sleep while I can.

This is the greatest thing that I have ever made.

Barley Risotto with Asparagus and Parmesan

I have no idea how it turned out so well. I’m a perfectly competent cook, and I like what I make most of the time. But this was in a class by itself. I’ve only had risotto once or twice, and only in restaurants. And since rice isn’t always my #1 grain, I liked it even better with the barley.

I’ve been intrigued by this recipe for a week or so, but I didn’t want to make it tonight because I didn’t get home until after 7, but after taking stock of my vegetable situation, I saw that the asparagus wasn’t going to make it much longer. So I bit the bullet, figuring it would be an okay night for dinner to turn out poorly, since Matt’s at work. I should have a similarly pessimistic attitude every night, and see if all of my meals turn out this well. And now I really want Matt to get home and try it so that I can see if maybe it was just me.

I’ve had terrible allergies since I was in middle school, I think. I may have the year confused, but really, I can trace most of my health problems to 7th grade cheerleading camp, so I’ve decided that’s when my allergies started. Today I walked around like a zombie with enormous red eyes and a sniffing problem. So, like a junkie, really. Anyway, one of the reasons that I didn’t get home until 7 was that I went to buy this:

That’s my new BFF, the neti-pot. I had just rinsed it, so that’s water. Not anything gross. If you’re unfamiliar with this magical contraption, here’s a video for your educational pleasure:

I have to say, it was much messier than this clip would have you believe. But that’s okay, because I can actually breathe through my nose again.

Which seemed like the perfect opportunity to enjoy some granola.

Hey it’s 9! That means it’s almost time to force-feed Matt some risotto and get all in his face, saying “Is it good? It’s good, right? Really good, right? RIGHT?”

Doctor day

I still have no idea what’s wrong with me but I did have several new kinds of uncomfortable experiences today, so I guess that’s something, right?

My appointment with the nutritionist was great, though, and I learned a few important things. Perhaps most notably, my sister and Donna have been right all along, and I need to increase my daily caloric intake. Otherwise, though, I am awesome. Her words, not mine.

We also talked about the importance of eating Different Colored Foods, which I already knew, but which helped solidify my plans for dinner. We had stuffed zucchini and carrot salad.

Pretty colors.

The zucchini dish was based on this recipe, but modified so that they’re stuffed with bulgur and ground turkey breast instead of bulgur and beef. Matt expertly got the innards out of the zucchini and now we have a huge bowl of guts that I need to use for something. I guess I’ll figure it out.

Anyway, these were awesome. Since I had my bases covered nutritionally but still wanted something extra, I did a carrot salad inspired by this one over at Not Eating Out in New York (which is a great blog). I used that ginger-lime dressing idea, and added some goat cheese and pine nuts to it (see, more calories).

I’m still low for today, but we’re about to go to the mall and maybe I’ll get some frozen yogurt. I’m sure that’s what she meant by increasing calories, right? I know she said something about calcium, too. Plus, we’re doing an arthritis walk tomorrow morning and I think you’re supposed to carb-load for those. Right?

In other news, I got my tax refunds today and now I have to decide what to spend them on. So far I’ve come up with: not student loans.

That’s a solid start.

Mmmmmeaty

If you haven’t caught on yet, we typically don’t eat a huge amount of meat. Cows and pigs gross me out as a rule, so no beef or pork, and sometimes I get tired of heartlessly hunting the chickens, plucking them, etc. It’s a hard knock life.

We’ve had a lot of poultry lately, because every time I asked my mom what she wanted to eat while she was here, she said “No bulgur. Chicken.” So, I stockpiled chicken and turkey and we’ve eaten a lot of that recently, and there’s more in our future before it goes bad.

I lost my way again.

Oh, right. Okay, so, to take a break in the middle of all that poultry, I decided I wanted to experiment with a new protein source, so I tried Veganomicon’s chickpea cutlets.

The cutlets were okay. I think they tasted almost too meaty, though. I made six, instead of the four that the recipe called four, so they were a little smaller. They’re kind of plain on their own, so I decided to mimic the gyros I used to get at Mediterranean Deli when we lived in Chapel Hill and Matt worked right next door to it. Oh, to live in a town with a Mediterranean restaurant…

Anyway, so, I broke one of the cutlets into two pieces, whipped up a tahini-yogurt sauce with Donna’s consultation, and shoved it all in a whole wheat pita.

That’s the rest of the tahini sauce. Is that gross? Sorry, I have no food filter.

I wanted to put some lettuce and cheese in there to complete my at-home Med Deli creation, but they wouldn’t fit, so I just had a salad on the side with mixed greens, goat cheese, and an agave-lemon dressing.

Since I know you were all concerned about this, I did go to the energy efficiency thing last night. And, good thing I did, because they had three door prizes (compact fluorescent bulbs, natch), and three of us showed up. So I scored a free light bulb.

Tomorrow I have to fast before my CT scan and echo cardiogram. For FOUR HOURS. This may not seem like all that long, but it’s from 10-2, a timeframe during which I typically eat AT LEAST twice, if not three times. What? I’m a snacker.

I’m also going to a nutritionist tomorrow, which means that I have three medical appointments in one day - a new record! At least one of them is food-related and, therefore, fun.

I’m a girl

If that fact that my toolbox is actually a pink and purple Caboodle wasn’t enough to tip you off, this dinner should be:

I’ve always been one of those people who blots their pizza to get the extra grease off, which is really just a strategy I use to justify eating more. But, ever since I started getting all health-conscious, I’ve been a little wary of a few of my favorite things, like pizza and beer and Mexican food and ice cream and everything that is good in this world. But Matt requests pizza, oh, I don’t know, every week or so, and today I finally caved and said we could get it. And then, I got brilliant - I could get my own pizza WITHOUT THE CHEESE. Talk about a strategy to justify eating more. No cheese easily means that I can double or triple my usual portion, right?

Right.

Oh, and, for the record, I know that lots of people (vegans) order cheeseless pizza for moral and/or ethical reasons (luckily, I don’t have those problems). So, I’m not saying all vegans are really girls (although, really…), I’m just saying it’s very “oh, I’m watching my figure” of me to order a cheeseless pizza. Especially when I admit that I actually filled up on salad (not my fault - I made it for three people and two of them opted out of my delicious spring greens, HAND-SLICED pineapple, and craisin creation, so I went back  to finish it), and I put one of those slices back. And you know what? It felt good. Mostly because it left me plenty of room for

Cake.

Here’s what I can say: cheeseless pizza is actually really good. It’s very saucy. It does, however, make it harder to ignore the fact that the vegetables at this pizza place are not of the highest quality.

So, my mom got here fine, I risked my life driving two hours through torrential rain and hail to pick her up but I’m sure she’s grateful. Not grateful enough to eat my lovingly prepared salad, but WHATEVER. Of course, once I picked her up, the weather calmed down and it looked like I was lying.

We made it to Lawrence for an awesome dinner at Ingredient (I ate that ground turkey salad with the tortilla bowl that blew my mind last time), and because I am a loving and thoughtful partner, I brought home a pizza for Matt.

Today, even though I was on vacation, I went into work for a meeting (I give and I give…) and then, this afternoon, I finally go to meet my new pulmonologist. My experience wasn’t any better today, as the same receptionist was there. We had this really great chat:

Receptionist: Oh. We don’t have your medical history form.

Me: I filled it out on Monday, my appointment was rescheduled.

Receptionist: I’ll call the records people. [calls records people] Okay. They lost it.

Me: Okay, so…

Receptionist: So, you fill it out again.

Me: Okay, there was a lot of information on that form, so, I don’t know, is it just… out there?

Receptionist: They lost it.

Me: Okay. I’ll fill it out again.

Receptionist: [blinking without expression] I feel horrible.

It was so strange. It was like I was a character in Bad Waiting Room Experience: The Sequel.

Though, I will say - I was the only one in there without an oxygen tank, except for one other guy, and I’m pretty sure he coughed up blood. So, comparatively, I’m a ray of shining, healthful light.

Anyway, so, I waited for an hour and a half to see this guy, and I had to be entertained somehow, so I ate a Clif Kid bar and took pictures of myself with my cell phone. I learned that I have huge bags under my eyes. I think I’m tired. Then, he came in for all of four minutes and didn’t even know why I was there. I had to tell him to read the lab results my doctor sent over. So then he ordered five tests, including cool hospital show types,  like a CT scan. Then I punched him out.

Not really, but I so wanted to.

Then I was comforted at the salon by Aveda’s Comforting Tea. Apparently it relaxed me so deeply that I: a) got all my hair cut off and b) said Yes to pizza. And cake.

Clearly, I’m still working through things.

Tomorrow is this. I’m excited. A trip to Wamego means an excuse to buy cookies, fancy foodstuffs, and weird Oz-themed wine.

What can brown do for me?

A few weeks (months? time flies when you’re Dutifully Serving the Public) ago at work, we did a customer service forum thing, where we were all handed a slip of paper with a slogan, and we had to sit at the table of the company our slogan represented. I think I made that sound more complicated than it is. So, I got “Can you hear me now?” and sat at the Verizon table. One of them was “What can brown do for you?,” which, having only recently re-entered the world of television not originating from DVD format, I didn’t really recognize. Apparently, it is the “catchy” slogan of UPS, and…

Oh god, it’s happening again. Ever since I came down with my current ailment, I’ve been having trouble staying on message.

So, dinner was brown:

Although, there are a few nice splashes of color. This is a lentil salad, inspired by Couch Cubicle. It’s basically lentils with red peppers, mushrooms, spinach, grape tomatoes, feta and a little balsamic vinegar. I had it with brown rice and some crushed up cashews, which I have been hiding from myself since my last bender. After I took this picture, I threw some curry powder on, which actually made for a nice contrast to the sweetness of the balsamic vinegar.

Then, I did some frantic cleaning to prepare for my mom’s arrival tomorrow. The whole apartment smells like gardenias. It’s kind of giving me a headache. After I finished, I had dessert:

I cut up a pineapple for the first time today, and I didn’t even hurt myself. There’s some of that under there, and then some yogurt, flaxseed, Target cereal, a few sliced almonds, and some frozen blueberries. I thought they would make it taste like ice cream. They did not.

I have no idea why my hand looks so red and shiny. I think I need to use some of my tax refund to get my own camera, because I clearly lack skill with Matt’s. I also need to use some of it to get a bike, so I can be like this hipster girl we saw outside the grocery store the other day, with her Pumas and rolled up pants and a box of Corn Pops displayed prominently in her bike basket. I thought I was suddenly on the set of Juno or something. Which, for the record, was an okay movie, but DO NOT read Diablo Cody’s memoir. Seriously. I can’t stress this enough.

Remember what I said about losing the message?

No pictures from last night’s dinner, because I was feeling lightheaded at the end of the workday and somehow decided that the best way to remedy that would be to take a 2 and a half mile walk to eat Chinese food. We always love Happy Valley, but last night, it tasted like mall food and, because I am ruthless, I have stricken from the list of acceptable restaurants.

The rest of yesterday was stupid, and I’m pretending it didn’t happen. Oh, except for the part where we watched the first episode of VH1’s Miss Rap Supreme, which Matt DVRed for me on Monday. The White Rapper Show was my favorite show of 2007, and this has even more venom and cursing, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Tomorrow, I’ll be picking my mom up in Kansas City at 5ish, and hopefully we’ll be able to eat at Ingredient in Lawrence. Nothing cures a mall food experience like a giant salad with salmon and chips in it.