Eating Baby Animals

There was a time when I wouldn't eat baby animals but it seems that time is fading into the distance. Last night I ate Greek-style lamb sliders with yogurt-cucumber sauce. These were made on the grill, with fresh-from-the-garden mint, and with feta cheese added to the lamb concoction. They were AMAZING. Here is the before shot:

This is the final product paired with fresh-off-the-cob corn sauteed with butter:

You may be noticing the sauce and thinking, "wait a minute, she doesn't eat sauce on things." You'd be right, generally.  I gave the yogurt-cucumber sauce (which included garlic!) a day in court and, to my surprise, really enjoyed it. It added a creamy, tangy element without stealing the show. The downside is that it made the little slider a bit gooey and hard to hold but it was worth it. 

As a side note the prep was accompanied by New Belgium's Cocao Mole Ale, which I tried fresh off the tap for the first time at the New Belgium brewery on a tour on Friday. I recommend it - spicy, fresh flavor but not overpowering. The meal was paired with New Belgium's Shift pale lager. I think it was too light to stand up to the oniony, minty, garlicky goodness that was dinner.  I'll need to try it again on its own to really be fair and review it. 

So, in the end I went out on a limb and tried things I hadn't tried before and had an amazing meal. There must be some kind of positive influence at work here...

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Coffee Love

I’m in a love affair – with coffee. This isn't a terrible surprise given my last post.  It seems I can’t get enough of the stuff.  The strange part is that it doesn’t do much to keep me perky in my various meetings during the day.  It is, however, keeping me up late into the night. The logical answer is to tone it down but I just can’t tear myself away from the brown, creamy, caffeinated goodness. What’s a girl to do?

Sleep

Let’s be honest. I haven’t been kept up all night by a screaming baby nor have I been so full of anxiety that I couldn’t sleep. All the same, I slid into my bed very late and couldn’t find that special place of deep sleep. As a consequence my day is filled with me staring listlessly at my computer desperately trying to kick it into high gear and get things done.

Then there is the eye problem. No amount of eye lotion is soothing my tired eyes this morning.  I’d offer up a photo but I’d rather not have evidence of my exhausted eyes on the interwebs. Suffice it to say that they are quite red and dry – the allergies don’t help.  In fact, the allergies didn’t help with my effort towards solid, uninterrupted sleep.

Then there was the cat. The geriatric feline spent her time caterwauling for the better part of the night. She’s no longer allowed in the bedroom while I sleep but I was disturbed nonetheless. Unlike me, she’s looking fairly perky this morning getting ready for her day of sleeping!

That is all.

What?

This showed up in the kitchen at work about a week ago:

I love this kind of random humor.

Fat and Connections

I just ate a little chunk of bacon fat. Despite my fat-conscious nature, I’m greatly enjoying the Tuscan white bean soup that I made on Sunday (I’d include the link but it’s from Cooks Illustrated, which is stingy with its recipes).  It involved both chicken broth *and* two slices of bacon. It’s just a little greasy…but delicious and satisfying.

Now to report on the antithesis of delicious and satisfying: I went back to online dating for a few weeks.  It’s ending as quickly as it began.  I had something like eight dates in two weeks and I’m exhausted.  That’s a lot of getting-to-know-you conversations! Most involved me listening to the date going on about his life and showing faint interest in mine – that’s a sure sign of compassion…Another wanted to play trivia competitively when I didn’t and another tried hard to get me drunk and go dancing and two looked almost nothing like their photos.

Then there are the emails. I got one from user name “Ticklefun” that said, “Random question…are you ticklish?” I did not respond.  There are really creative emails like the one I got last week that said simply “Hi  :-)” That gives me so much to respond to. There are the emails from guys who are in from out of town “just looking to hang out” for a night.  We can all read between the lines on that one.

Mostly dating is a lot of no-connection. You know immediately when there is something there and, similarly, you know immediately when there’s nothing there. Happily, during my dating hiatus I am looking into something.

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