Alright, I must admit that I have not been cooking a lot in the past few weeks. But I feel like I have a good excuse. Or at least it feels like a good enough excuse to me. My husband spent the past two weeks in New Zealand! My extreme jealousy was expressed by eating Kraft Dinner Mac ‘n Cheese, Subway sandwiches and Cadbury mini eggs. As you can see, nothing to be very proud of. I didn’t want to share any of this at first (gee, I wonder why…) but I figured it was part of my food journey. Now I know that when Jeff leaves for too long, my diet and my cooking are thrown out of the window.
I did get a couple of nice meals out though. Two weeks ago, my girlfriends treated me to a nice dinner at Fellini’s for a belated birthday celebration. This past weekend, I visited my in-laws in Northern Virginia and we had a delicious lunch/dinner (linner?) at Firebirds in Fredericksburg. Both meals were fantastic but really were the exception to a very boring two-week period.
On my first night alone, I decided to be adventurous and try to make a dish that Jeff wouldn’t normally want to eat. The idea was to make a mushroom and artichoke ragout with coconut milk, served over locally-made spinach pasta. It seemed like a great idea but, unfortunately, the resulting flavor was slightly off.
As ridiculous as it may sound, I was really excited to eat some Kraft Dinner mac ‘n cheese while Jeff was away. Normally, I get some disapproval looks from him and now, I had a chance to eat it, judgement-free. It was tasty but I was disappointed that they changed the formula. First of all, the macaronis are actually shaped like real macaronis. The flavor was mostly the same but there was a hint of difference. I realized that I got the “thick and creamy” box instead of the original. Oh well, better luck next time. Now, of course I know that this is not, in any way, a healthy meal but it’s one of those things I used to love as a kid and that can still make me very happy once in a while. Like McDonald’s chicken nuggets. You know it’s bad for you but it’s just so good! I do believe that as long as you acknowledge that it’s bad, and you don’t eat these things too regularly, it is totally okay to enjoy a little taste of childhood once in a while.
While I was stuffing myself with chocolate and boxed mac ‘n cheese, I received a text message from Jeff with this picture attached to it. That was his view at lunch time. Meanwhile, I look up to a rainy evening with snow on the forecast. Blah! Time for one more handful of Cadbury mini eggs!
Jeff came back during the night of Monday to Tuesday. I was really happy to have him back home but, unfortunately, he has been sick since he returned. This means that he doesn’t feel like eating real food and so I don’t feel like cooking either. I am trying to eat as many oranges as possible to make sure I get plenty of Vitamin C and, hopefully, don’t get sick.
Now, yesterday, I went to the grocery store to get Jeff some of his favorite “sick food”: ginger ale, Lipton noodle soup, Spaghetti-O’s and frozen yogurt. But of course, when I see this food, I want it too! I ended up making myself some princess Spaghetti-O’s for dinner but to make it slightly healthier, I also cooked a bunch of broccoli and a chicken breast.
Hopefully this will be the end of my bad-food period. I bought a bunch of fresh produce and need to seriously get back on track. After all, I have several events coming up in the next few months and I need to fit into my dresses! 😉
The Hungry Quebbie 