Adventures of a Tofu Slut

Why I Love Salad: An Essay in Four Points

1. Crunchy! I love crunchy foods. I crave crunchy foods. Crunch crunch crunch.

2. I like variety. I have a short attention span, even when it comes to food. The love of variety is why I'm so fond of buffets and pay-by-weight and tapas. And salads (good salads) have lots of stuff in them.

3. I know it's odd, but I think I like food better when it's presented in small pieces. Especially vegetables. I like them chopped up into little pieces! There are quite a few vegetables that I always thought I didn't like - it turns out I mostly didn't like them when they were just a large vegetable on a plate. This is why stirfries are awesome.

4. Salad dressings. Dips and dressings make life worth living.

I had salad for both lunch and dinner. I was berating myself for being unimaginative, when I realized that there wasn't even one ingredient in common between the two salads. Take that, unimaginativeness!

Lunch: romaine, mushrooms, lentils, egg, purple cabbage, green olives, cucumber, avocado, feta, red wine vinaigrette

Dinner: spinach, yellow pepper, grape tomato, carrot, chickpeas, walnuts, goat cheese, capers, ranch dressing

My roasted veggies and tofu were very disappointing tonight. :( The tofu (a different brand than normal) tasted sour, the carrots didn't fully cook, the cauliflower got mushy, and I still can't cook with eggplant. Lame. Also, I have piles left because this was going to be lunches for the next couple of days. I'll have to pick out the good stuff and supplement.

On the plus side, I have almost filed my taxes. My return is complete, but I can't netfile because my address is wrong, and I had to create an account to change it, and they're mailing my account verification etc etc etc. Still, almost done! Whew.

Good morning! I am craving pizza LIKE MAD.

Yes, I realize that it's only 8:45 in the morning (...or at least was only 8:45 in the morning when I wrote this), and no, I'm not craving leftover cold pizza for breakfast. I want hot fresh pizza with mushrooms and olives and lots of cheese. And maybe a glass of wine.

In my defense I've been up for 3 hours already, so it's not quite as ridiculous as it could be, but still. If this keeps up I may have to do something about it tonight.

***

So, here it is, the end of summer, and it's 14 degrees outside. Wait, what? Not that I'm complaining, because I love autumn, but now that I finally have a balcony I would have liked a few more evenings of being thankful that I had it and could cool down. :D I really, honestly, believed that I was going to spend vast numbers of summer evenings on the balcony reading...in French. Yes, that's right, I thought I was going to practice my French all summer. Ha! I mean, I did spend many evenings on the balcony reading, but mostly I was re-reading all my romance novels. Not quite the same thing.

ps. now it's 11:30 and I'm still craving pizza.

1. I love that we have the green bin for food composting, but I have to remember to take the organics out at night, because the bin is full of bees during the day. Aieeeee! Bees freak me out entirely.

2. Lettuce sure doesn't last long without getting sad and soggy during the summer, does it? Neither does cucumber, really. It's sad, because salads are very awesome in this heat, but seriously - I can't go through a head of lettuce by myself in two days! I may have to start cooking things that require the stove, now that it's cleared, instead of relying entirely on things from the so-called crisper.

3. Sugar and I are in a bad place right now. I can't stop eating sweet things! It's really over the top. I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with it, but all I can think about is pie and candy and brownies and bread with honey.

4. Since I wrote that last night I have decided to go on a sugar fast for a few weeks or until I can't take it anymore, whichever comes first. Naturally, today all I can think about is ice cream.

5. Before sarcasma left, we took a little trip around the south end of the neighbourhood, dropping stuff off at Goodwill, picking things up at Home Depot, and availing ourselves of all the Indian food along the way. This time, we went to Siddhartha Pure Vegetarian (which appears to not be related to Siddhartha across the street). It was the best Indian buffet I've ever eaten (and I've eaten a lot). Every single dish was awesome, the rice was fluffy, the naan was fresh. Not to mention how much variety there was for me, since it's purely vegetarian. I don't know how much I'll be able to convince people to give up their butter chicken and join me, but I'm definitely going back.

My library system doesn't appear to have any single, borrowable, book copies of Persuasion. CDs? Videos? Complete works? Illustrated complete works? Reference copies? Large print? No problem! But just a book, of the one work, that I can carry around with me? Unless I am blind. Which I now have to go double check.

I had my last Mitzvah technique class tonight. I totally enjoyed it, but I don't really have any interest in going on. I think what I need right now is not more classes, but more days where I come home, stopping by the grocery store, and cook a proper dinner. Maybe I can consider it my making time to cook class. Complete with the glass of wine bribe.

Meanwhile, I'm down to almost nothing on the to-be-read shelf (if you ignore those books I bought last weekend, but those are totally for travelling. totally), and I ran through all my holds at the library, so I went on a book-holding spree on the weekend. But I still have more room! So recommend me a book...

[Poll #1145018]

I was reading a TWoP Pushing Daisies recap, and the recapper mentioned cupcakes, and now I have decided that the answer to all my problems is cupcakes, lots and lots of cupcakes. Never mind that one of my problems is that I'm too fat for all my pants, the answer is still cupcakes. CLEARLY.

I'm going to have to buy some cupcakes this weekend. Maybe lemon. Mmmmmmm.

I am craving pancakes like a mad crave-y thing! Where in Toronto has really excellent pancakes?

* * *

So, what will you all be up to this weekend? Assuming this is your weekend. It used to drive me crazy when people assumed I had Saturday and Sunday off (especially when they assumed that as we were closing the CD store at 9 on Friday and I wasn't off until Tuesday), and now here I'm doing it. ANYWAY. It's a gorgeous fall weekend, and I hope everyone has exciting plans. Me, I think I'm hunting down pancakes.

I stayed up way too late last night making soup - soup that, as sarcasma says, I'm probably not even going to want to eat because apparently summer is making a return appearance this week. But without soup, I had nothing to bring for lunch today, and I just wanted to do one thing right this week. Of course, in the end I fucked the soup up anyway*.

It was at the point where I was really happy to come to work this morning, because at work, I'm terribly competent. Not so much at life.

*It worked out in the end, but it took me twice as long as it should have. Sometimes I really hate cooking.

I am feeling old these days. Old and boring.

HOWEVER.

...damn, I was really hoping I'd come up with something exciting to put there.

***

I've been waking up at 4:30 every morning. I suppose, if one has to wake up in the middle of the night, it's not a terrible time to wake up -- after all, I can still go back to sleep for a while. Better than waking up at 5:30, that's for sure, because waking up at 5:30 means getting depressed over how soon the alarm is going on, working myself into a panic trying to get those last few minutes of sleep, finally falling asleep at 5 minutes to 6, and then being rudely woken up with the alarm 5 minutes later. That's no fun at all.

I do find it odd that I'm so regularly waking at 4:30, though. Maybe I've been programmed! Maybe I'm really a sleeper spy. I should work on my fighting skills, in that case. And my wig collection.

***

Today I came home from the library with a huge bag full of holds (I have to counteract the dwindling to-be-read shelf, after all) and sat and read the first chapter of each, something I haven't done in years. It was always my way of picking which book to read first -- the one where I didn't notice that I'd moved on to the next chapter. And now I know for sure that I have a passel of delightful books waiting for me.

***

Speaking of things to read (...sort of), where is the EW Fall TV Preview? I am anxiously awaiting it, here! Never mind that I don't have cable, I still want to read about what I'm not going to be watching. I heard that the Designer Guys have a new show this fall! I kind of love them. I miss extended cable time-waster shows -- I want to take a vacation that involves me staying in Toronto (so I don't feel guilty about not exploring wherever I am) but being somewhere with all the cable so I can lie around all day, watching home decorating shows, and makeover shows, and cooking shows.

And now we all understand why exactly I got rid of the cable.

***

I made two actual meals for myself this week, and have been living off the leftovers. One, curried chickpeas and tofu, is something I used to make all the time. I don't know why I stopped -- other than chopping onions it's pretty effortless. The other was an attempt to use the chipotle that's been opened. It was a vaguely Caribbean wrap of some sort, involving black bean chipotle hummous, and red peppers and cabbage. It was ok, I guess. The hummous was good, although I couldn't taste the chipotle and my wee food processor wasn't entirely up to the taste of chopping everything up, so it's not super blended. And now I have tortilla shells left, so I am going to think of something else to make with them. Also the rest of the red cabbage. And I'm going to think of it quickly, so that I'm not buying groceries on Sunday. Seriously, never again. That's 3 weeks in a row I've gone to the store on Sunday, only to find them out of the most ridiculous things: this week, it was garlic, cabbage, chick peas, tofu, and my soy milk. CRAZY.