re the bold:
I keep thinking it can't go on like this. I'm engaging in day-long intermittent distractions (often oriented to food) that are putting at least my winter pantry into some disarray, if not also my plans to maintain good health through exercise and attention to nutrition.
Lately I've abandoned oatmeal and taken to toasting pita halves and putting caponata in them, for breakfast.
Aaaaand... so there will not be enough tins of that eggplant relish to last the winter.
Pitta halves; must stock up, as I've long run out.
They are brilliant when one has run out of bread, and the weather is far too inclement to risk venturing out to stock up on bread.
Earlier today, attended an online meeting, and then headed out to pay a few bills, and stock up my beer pantry.
Re food, this week, I have done some serious - and very tasty cooking (vegetarian tom yum, fish rendang, Indonesian spiced rice) - for the first time in around a fortnight, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
And aubergine (eggplant): I doubt that there is a dish in which this delight features that I dislike. Caponata, yum. That is an idea.
Actually, I remember the first time I ever came across aubergine/eggplant in a ratatouille dish served on my first trip to France as a teenager. I was absolutely blown away, bowled over, and wondered where had this cuisine - this taste, this texture, this astounding combination of flavours - been all of my life.
It was an extraordinary epiphany, as, until then, while there were certainly dishes I preferred, some I quite liked, and some I disliked, I had never really seen food as something to be cherished, something that formed part of a culture (very often the part of a country's culture that women get to influence, or have a say in), something to be explored and treasured as part of a culture; and the culture surrounding food in France - the whole family sitting down together to dinner (well, we did that, also) but sitting down for hours, and having intense, interesting conversations, making tie for food and conversation, playing classical music (or other music - but never TV, another rule of my mother's, strictly enforced, and one I adhere to, myself, to this day) in the background, had an enormous influence in how I came to define a cultured life, and in how I chose to live life.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/jackie-evancho-river-video53-3aac0f5585654bda8a3b329dbadd7668.jpg)
