WIAW – 51

We’ve continued to have not as much snow as predicted… Storms keep heading towards New York, then veering off unexpectedly – and clobbering New England. There was an abrupt freeze the other day, though, which coated the city in sheet ice. When I went out yesterday, there was a bicycle chained to a street sign outside – perfectly typical, so far – totally encased in a half inch of solid ice. It looked like some sort of avant garde sculpture. (No camera, unfortunately…  and it started melting when the sun reached it.)

So this seemed a good time to pull some things out of the freezer for my Taste of Summer meal.

All right – first, of course, breakfast. I miss my steel cut oats, so I’m trying other grains as porridge. I’m not entirely happy with anything yet, and may end up making my own blend – we’ll see. When I eat hot cereal, the beans feel like too much. I also realized that I’ve slid out of eating much fruit at all – just an occasional apple. I had been eating fruit as part of breakfast – fruit or juice in the shake, fruit on cereal – and never quite replaced it when I changed my breakfast last year. Between the two – I’m going to have the protein shakes again, more than I have been (though I still don’t think I will go back to that on a daily basis.) So – this was a commercial hot cereal mix (which I found a little bland) and a protein shake made with milk, yogurt, orange juice, and a little vanilla and dried ground ginger. There’s coffee there somewhere, too…

One advantage to not having eggs at breakfast is that it gives me more options for lunch. This is pretty much the cheesy eggs you’ve seen me eat for breakfast, but with vegetables added. (I can’t wrap my mind around vegetables at breakfast. It’s not that I object to them – I don’t – but that I can’t handle another variable in the morning… ) I heated some frozen vegetables and some leftovers, added some cheese, scrambled in the eggs – and served them with corn tortillas heated in the microwave. I think technically it’s supposed to be a flour tortilla to call it a burrito, but I never did like flour tortillas, so there you are. I’m eating it, I’m happy… I don’t care what I should call it.

I’ve started to have tea, some afternoons… and I’m trying to remember to do it more often. It feels civilized, and a treat, even (perhaps especially) when I have it while I sit here writing… Just a moment to do something nice for me. This was a vanilla scented holiday tea blend someone gave me… perfectly pleasant, though I don’t actually notice the vanilla. The cup was a gift from a friend, years ago, when Valentine’s Day was hard for me… It makes me feel cherished.

Now – dinner… A year and a half ago, I made ratatouille to use the eggplant and zucchini, but I didn’t have enough tomatoes – and decided to make a virtue of necessity – I froze it, and added canned tomatoes in midwinter. Well, that was a treat! So last summer I did it deliberately, and froze a couple of pints of it. This is the last one…  Then, I had cooked a pot of chick peas, and thought I’d go for a vaguely Mediterranean theme – I mixed them with tuna, and a couple of cubes of frozen herbs – lots of parsley, and some thyme. (I’m almost out of CSA produce, now, in February…  Still some more frozen herbs, hot peppers, the scallions I used the other day, and one last half pint of frozen cooked eggplant – I’ll use it with the rest of the chickpeas to make hummus.) Then I added garlic, and a splash of lemon juice right before serving. So, in the middle of winter, we took a break from eating pot roast  and cabbage, watched the snow fall, and tasted August.

Joining Jenn for the Wednesday party!