Apparently, this week (January 27 – February 1) is Center City Restaurant Week
I even managed to find a place still open when I get off work.
So, I snagged reservations at Amada for 2 this Tuesday at 10:40pm. (The restaurant week $35 prix fixe menu is here.)
So will anyone else be up that late on a school night?
I think I might be back to eating food like normal. Woo!
And since I have more energy, I am getting back into the swing of cooking.
This morning I threw together some ingredients that were starting to worry me (roast chicken leftovers, tail end of a jar of salsa) with a rice mix and cooked then thoroughly. Then I tossed in a can of kidney beans and a can of corn. Those were all packed up into containers for lunches.
Yesterday, I started a pot of chicken stock. This morning I finished it and strained it into containers.
Tonight (or tomorrow morning), I shall cut the pork loin in my fridge into 2 roasts and a pile of chunks. Then it and some of the stock will either go toward goulash or carnitas. I have all of the ingredients for both except for the (optional) orange for the zest in the carnitas recipe.
Maybe soon I’ll go buy some vegetables. Hmmm – I should check the few remaining vegetables in my fridge for whether they need to go in the compost pile or whether they’ll still be good for eating.
Shopping List
orange(s)
lettuce
tomato(es), if tasty smelling
limes
bread
milk
I am at work, so I thought I’d console myself by buying a fancy hot chocolate (and by earning overtime, so not so much consoling as luxuriating)
Only – woe! – the cafe in the basement is closed because they are not working on Martin Luther King day.
So my other options for a fancy pantsy hot chocolate within a 1 block radius include:
– Dunkin Donuts (who pretty much just has a machine where they’ll give you the equivalent of cheap ass powdered cocoa, but I have coupons that would make this option free. Also, they are the closest)
– Starbucks (I have gotten tasty hot chocolate from Starbucks before when I was in Seattle and people were trying to brainwash me to the glory of Starbucks – no lie!)
– Cosi (most likely to have an annoying line, but also probably the most satisfying option)
– Bucks County Coffee Company – (untried, but it seems reasonable that they’d be good, ya’know?)
I will be waffling about this for at least another hour while I am inside and toasty warm.
ETA: The winner was Bucks County Coffee. Well, sort of winner. They looked at me funny when I asked for a fancy pants cocoa and did not try to sell me on drizzles of chocolate syrup or odd flavors or anything. They just made me a regular hot cocoa and charged me $2.50. That said, it was like good powdered cocoa where you get just the right ratio of powder to milk. It was light and creamy, but went down easily and is now all gone. Not a luxury drink, but tasty and yummy nonetheless.
ETAA: The next day, I tried Cosi. Again, I went up and asked for some kind of fancy hot chocolate (only not the white chocolate thing they were advertising), and again the person shrugged and offered me a regular hot chocolate. A large was $3. This time it was milk and syrup, instead of powder, but she could have had a heavier hand with the syrup. It ended up being a bit too bland for my taste.
ETAAA: Hot chocolate from the cafe in the basement. Eh – it’s a lot like hot chocolate everywhere else. I did not see how they made it, though, since I sent a student worker to get it for me. No, not quite that imperiously: I just asked if she’d mind getting it after she asked if she could go get a coffee for herself.
When did dark chocolate sexiness go out of fashion? I liked that fashion.
Maybe the reason I am starving all the time is because I haven’t eaten anything all day.
So I pushed the recovery on the injured knee and let myself get worn out. And when I am tired, my immune system crashes. So I have a cold.
I’m having the weirdest relationship with food right now. It just doesn’t taste like much, or I have to put a lot of work into tasting it.
And the stuff I am making at home, mostly seems to make me actively uninterested.
Part of it is that I’m worried without a reliable sense of smell that just cooking is becoming a high risk activity – especially as food sits around longer when I’m not interested in eating it.
But even when I make something safe (like a whole tube of Pillsbury cinnamon buns because I’d just finished reading Sunshine by Robin McKinley and was craving cinnamon rolls as big as my head like you would not believe), it still hardly registers as having eaten food – I just feel vaguely starving and uninterested in eating.
I am going out to eat more because I can trust that food to be food.
And I am craving fancier food because then not only do I know the food is good, but the atmosphere is also soothing.
And yet right after I eat, it still feels as though I haven’t. And I don’t know if that because I’m still hungry because it was over 24 hours since the last time I ate or just that I’m not registering my innards correctly.
So I’m pretty much trying to make sure I keep track of time, but that’s never been the easiest thing for me to do, either.
I just want to be back on kilter.