What a beautiful day! Clear and cool and indescribably gorgeous. If only we were in Yarnell.
The woochies and I started the day with a crack-of-dawn doggy-walk. Between the damn train and the constant construction, the ’hood has become a noisy place. Especially in the evening, the racket from Conduit of Blight Boulevard is now almost as loud here as it was at my old house, near War Zone Corners. Though this house is in the same tract, it’s generally much quieter: far enough from the Corners that the cop helicopters don’t park on the roof at 11:30 p.m. every Friday and Saturday night, and generally far enough from Conduit of Blight to fade the traffic racket to a distant rumble.
But when the atmospheric conditions are right — as they are when the weather is lovely — the Blight Conduit noise is as loud a roar here as it was in the old house, where some evenings SDXB and I had to shout to make ourselves heard if we had any misbegotten ideas about enjoying an after-dinner drink in the backyard.
Seriously: if there were any infrastructure in Yarnell, I’d move up there in an instant. But: no doctor, no dentist, no vet, one antiquated gas station, a general store for groceries…that’s fine when you’re a young pup, I guess, but at a certain point in life you move beyond your enthusiasm for driving two hours to get to a Costco or a medical specialist.
Oh well. This morning was perfect for breakfast on the back patio. To my horror, I discovered that after losing .5 pounds as of yesterday a.m., I gained .4 back this morning. DAMN!
This, after a fair amount of vigorous activity, including a speed walk of 2+ miles in the afternoon heat. Must have been the polenta. Or…more likely, the beer I had with the mid-day steak and salad.
So we won’t be buying any more beer soon. 😀
I’m about out of food, marking time now until the end of this month’s budget cycle. Out of the melons, apples, and papaya that have been breakfast — and melon is now out of season, so I’m going to have to come up with something new to eat in the morning. Breakfast in America is a challenge when you don’t eat eggs.
But today I dreamed up this: grilled mahi topped with a sort of guacamole made on the fly. It was incredibly good!
Costco sells some factory-made “guacamole” in small, single-serving packets, perfect for smearing on a sandwich or a few crackers. Its drawback is that it does contain some salt, which just now I’m trying to do without by way of engineering a fake but dramatic (morale-building) weight drop. But it tastes pretty good for commercial stuff, and it’s mostly avocado. Better would be to take half a small, ripe avocado and mash it.
To this add a bit of ground cumin (maybe about a quarter tsp±) and, if you have it, a squeeze of fresh lime or lemon. Toss in some chopped tomato. Mix it up.
Rub a slab of fish with some olive oil; sprinkle with herbs to your taste (herbes de Provence came to hand this morning). Cook to perfection over a propane grill. Serve it up with the avocado dressing smeared over it.
Had a few grapes with it: they’re in season just now and very delicious.
This kind of good-for-you food is surprisingly easy to make, especially if you have a propane grill and weather that allows you to cook outside year-round.
The Borderlands Food Bank folk will be back in the neighborhood come the first Saturday of November. I will be there when they open, around 8 a.m. Sixty pounds of produce for $10 just about defies belief! I’m still eating the frozen servings of eggplant lasagne I made from their largesse last spring. Unfortunately, I put some rotelli in it to stretch it, which worked nicely but which militates against using the stuff as diet food.
The main features of the 30-day/4 Months Diet are
• Lots of fruit & veggies, in salads or cooked
• Fresh meats and fish
• No added salt
• No processed sugar (but fruits are allowed)
• No refined starches (i.e., nothing with any kind of flour in it)
• Few or no other food starches (i.e., avoid potatoes, rice, corn, processed cereals, peas…)
• 40 to 60 minutes of moderate exercise per day (i.e., a decent brisk walk or two)
Honest to God. It is just too obscenely beautiful to (ugh!) work today. I feel like dropping everything, tossing the dogs in the car, and baptizing Phryne LaVenza on Yarnell Hill.
Buy this book, my friends, so I will never have to work again. 🙂
You make cooking sound so easy and so delicious. I’ve always considered it to be such a time-consuming, energy-sapping chore. I think some of us have a talent for cooking and some of us don’t. I need to eat more fruits and veggies because of my Type II diabetes but my current weird kitchen is tiny and L-shaped with maybe 2 sq. ft. of counter space and the smallest “full size” fridge I’ve ever seen.
I work in retail part-time and I’m constantly washing my company “uniforms”. Between work, laundry, housework, errands, and homework, I just don’t have the energy to cook. Maybe when I have a full time office job again, I can move to a place with a real kitchen!