weekday meals

I am super sick and gross (no surprise as being a home visit dietitian amounts to spending all day every day with sick people!) so I am gorging myself on potato chips and popsicles (the only things that make my poor throat feel better) and catching up on blogging. Please excuse any typos or non sequiturs.

Breakfasts: Check out THE NEW ESPRESSO MACHINE MY EXCESSIVELY GENEROUS STEPMOTHER GAVE ME FOR CHRISTMAS!

Sometimes I just make coffee. Sometimes I make cafe au lait. Sometimes I make cafe au lait with a bit of maple syrup and black pepper (!) or vanilla extract and stevia or almond extract and stevia (that last one was less good because almond extract drips out of its container too fast and flavors a beverage far too strongly. Consider yourself warned).

Sometimes when I feel sorry for myself for working from home and not having good company I remind myself that I can make myself fancy weekday breakfasts sometimes. Toast (fancy bread from Weaver Street Market), scrambled eggs, pear.

Avocado toast and a hard boiled egg plus Trader Joe’s Everything-but-the-bagel seasoning.

Lunch:

Sometimes when I’m already in Durham and have an awkward time gap between patients that doesn’t really give me enough time to go to the office (and deal with the parking kerfuffle, lengthy walk to and from the car, etc.) I opt to get lunch at Guglhupf.

This was a lovely persimmon and goat cheese salad.

With secrete pomegranate seeds!

Another day I stopped at Weaver Street Market and got a bunch of veggie-y things.

And sometimes, I’m driving all over rural North Carolina. That is a story called The Other Dietitian Who Covered The Rural Counties Retired. And They Still Haven’t Replaced Her.

Working in the rural areas has been super interesting, but it is QUITE different from Durham- I can’t just pop into some cute coffee shop with wifi. On the rare occasion that I am actually near civilization, it is more often a Burger King or the like.

One day, I found myself starving and baffled over options. I ended up throwing together this hot mess at Food Lion:

To be fair, dried apricots dipped in peanut butter are underrated and delicious. Note that I did not have a spoon for that yogurt, which was quite an adventure.

Then I camped out in my car in my patient’s driveway, waiting for her to get home. Taking selfies in the meantime.

Dinners are mostly pretty boring (I could sincerely eat avocado toast- plus sometimes a protein and/or vegetable- three meals a day)…

(that’s tomato red pepper soup and baked tofu)

However, I’ve had some fun weekday evenings out.

Went to Bartaco for my friend Jessie’s birthday. I got a mushroom taco (boring), shimp po’ boy taco (FAB), tuna tataki taco (fine), and a spicy cauliflower taco (solid!)

Jessie just got hired to do cool and inventive nutrition things for Google (!!!) on their California campus. I will get to say I knew her when.

Another day I did a roomie date with Alli at our usual sushi spot. We are both creatures of habit and got our usual items- in my case, a bento box with sashimi (salmon and tuna) and a crunch roll. Reliably great.

Now this, THIS MEAL WAS SPECIAL.

My friend Roxanne is married to a guy named Kareem. I love them, I love their love story, I love their energy. As it happens Kareem is Frawnch and so once they got married there was a certain amount of green card hoop jumping for them to do. Roxanne texted me one day like, “Agh, can you write a letter verifying that you have witnessed our love?!” and I said “Of course!” because they are good ones. I got all verklempt writing about seeing Kareem with Roxanne’s son and watching them learn from each other and build a life together and… *sob*

And then, because Roxanne is ridiculous, she thanked me by taking me to a fabulous weeknight dinner at Lantern.

First we had wine, then we had their famous fried shrimp (omg) and fried dumplings for appetizers.

Then, JUST LOOK at our gorgeous entrees:

First we have:

CRISPY WHOLE BLACK BASS CHÂ CÁ LA VONG
hot chile, fresh turmeric, dill, fried shallots, roasted peanuts,
spicy heirloom carrot salad, jasmine rice

Then we have:

LEMONGRASS GRILLED LOCAL PORK CHOP
spicy green papaya salad, roasted peanuts, fried local farm egg, steamed jasmine rice

We shared both (though as y’all know I’m not a big pork eater… but since there was an absurd amount of food I did just fine. Also the pickled veggies with the pork were REALLY good!)

Good grief everything was amazing. We both had wine, we gabbed about our respective careers… when I met her I was about to be accepted to UNC and she was hard at work on nursing school. Now she’s an RN at Duke and I’m an RD at Duke! So fun to look back at everything that has happened in our journeys!

christmas vacay

A girl in her onesie, a cat in his sweater.

Christmas with family, what could be better?!

My sister’s cat has developed allergies and created a bald spot obsessively scratching his back. Thus, the sweater. Also, let me assure you, that is one of THREE onesies owned by my sister.

So it’s February, which means it’s as good a time as ever to reminisce over the holidays. (Work just completely brutalized me last week so it’s nice to look back at happier, easier times!)

I’ve continued a tradition of wrapping some of my Christmas presents in old ads from Vogue.

I truthfully took hardly any pictures when I was home. I was too busy having fun and being happy and reading Harry Potter in the bathtub at my mom’s house (yessss).

My baths were greatly improved by the sassy gift given to me by my cousin Stephen:

I tried to keep up my physique over vacay, once getting my mom to do a modified Body Pump class in the basement, me using five lb dumbbells, her using soup cans 😀 It’s silly AND YET, as I constantly tell my patients, you really can exercise anywhere and don’t need fancy equipment. Also I created a custom playlist for us that featured I’m So Excited by the Pointer Sisters and (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing. So really you should be jealous.

I even dragged myself to the gym once or twice, mainly so I could pick up Sweetgreen on the way home (I miss that place!)

I took a trip up to Annapolis to see my aunt Jeanie and uncle Tim’s gorgey new house and we sat around and spent a *lot* of time discussing Cooks Illustrated recipes and also a *lot* of time (as usual) digging deep into the (extensive) psychological issues of our relatives.

I got my Korean fix (which is essentially impossible in Chapel Hill, alas, but which is everywhere you turn in my mom’s town in the DC ‘burbs). My mom and I hit up Lighthouse Tofu for potstickers and pickles and stew and barley tea and all the goodness.

An of course, my aunt Kathy and uncle Tom threw their annual Christmas morning feast. There was laughter, nostalgia, gag gifts, a lovely warm fireplace. My sister and Eric brought their dog, Billie Jean, who was everyone’s favorite. At one point I ran out to the car and came in and literally everyone in the kitchen/dining area was just standing in a circle admiring the Bean. She LOVED IT.

More cute animal snuggles continued with Bodie Dog and Jasmine Cat later in the day with my dad’s side of the family. Bean did not attend that, as Bodie tries to get a bit… amorous with her heh. Of note is that my aunt made REALLY great scalloped potatoes from the Foster’s Market cookbook.

Then it was time for our annual post-Christmas, pre-New Years open house. It was also my sister’s boyf Eric’s birthday.

IT WAS ALSO, UNBEKNOWNST TO MALINDI, THE DAY SHE GOT ENGAGED. YEP! YEP! THAT HAPPENED!

It began with Malindi making this (#@)#%&@#% incredible) birthday cake for Eric. If you love pumpkin spice and cream cheese frosting (and YOU HAD BETTER), then do yourself a solid and make this cake.

There’s the finished product on the right (the icing was a wonderful collaboration between my mom and sister), and on the left is my mom’s homemade baklava (amazing as ever).

Malindi also made mint brownies, and I made these gluten free peanut butter cookies from Smitten Kitchen (which were so yummy!).

This year was the year I made peace with the fact that I really don’t have to make ten thousand kinds of cookies. Mom and Malindi bake stuff. People bring stuff (including my aunt Nan, who somehow mystically condensed what tasted like the flavor of a pound of chocolate into each single, incredible cookie that she brought).

Also, there was an extensive savory department!

Lotsa dips, including muhammarra and artichoke cheddar dip (made by me), labneh and taramosalata (lovingly bought at the store), and baked brie topped with fig jam and wrapped in puff pastry (made by my aunt Kathy, and SO AMAZING as always!)

Also literal pounds of cheese, various pickled things, some kind of crescent roll concoction dreamed up by Malindi, and deviled eggs made by me peeking out of the corner there.

Birds eye view! With the turkey and ham and rolls and even more yummy things on the table.

So I was more than happy to collapse in my jammy pants at the end of that rowdy day…

… but that was not the case for Malindi and Eric, who drove to Baltimore, had a fancy dinner, walked by the water in frigid temperatures, AND GOT THEMSELVES ENGAGED. Some of us knew it was coming… but Malindi did not, which was the goal 🙂 They seem real happy and cute and I’m sure there will be a wedding update on here before you know it.