That kind of a day!

Woke up at 5:00 this morning and couldn't sleep, though I guess I did finally doze. My motor was running too fast, thinking of all the things I had to do--most of them self-imposed, none of them necessary to the well-being of the world or even my small world. But when I feel that way, my balance is off, my cheery self is off, etc. I finally worked it out, doing all the errands I had planned--vet for dog food, a fruitless search for empty atomizer bottles, bookstore, grocery times two (had to come home in between to put perishables up), and Clothes Carpenter to get them to repair the lining of a purse. With all that, I made it in time to pick up Jeannie at 11:30 for lox and bagels at Carshon's. And one final errand: we dropped off some boxes at the office. They can use them for mailing books, and I see no reason to just recycle them. Then home to write a thousand words, but I have a great puzzle. When I started I wrote down the number of words in the mss. to date, and when I finished, I'd lost almost a thousand words. Yet I did a word count on the new material and it was over a thousand. Not sure if I misread the first time or what, but it was discouraging. I  thought I'd hit 50,000, and I didn't. Hope to do another thousand tonight.
This is a cooking weekend. Four good friends are coming for supper Sunday, so I started tonight. Cooked the spinach and grated the gruyere that will go in the mashed potatoes; measured out the French bread I need for meatballs and sealed the rest to serve with dinner; washed all the lettuce for salad. Still have to get out the table settings and can't quite decide what plates to use--I'm leaning toward the red-and-green plaid, since the holiday season is upon us. I'm trying to get a jump start on it. Tomorrow morning I'll make meatballs with brown gravy--they should only get better sitting a day--and Sunday I'll make the mashed potatoes, which will leave only the salad for the last minute.
Tonight I also cooked myself a good dinner, abandoning tuna fish and hummus and hearts of palm, my usual last-minute fare. I sauteed two small filets of Dover sole I'd bought this morning, sliced about half a zucchini, topped the slices with salt, pepper, olive oil, and grated parmesan. A fine meal.
Okay, off to write another thousand words--I hope.

Food for thought

Tonight 's dinner was sloppy Joe, an old stand-by recipe.. I make it with ground bison (low fat), beans (good for you), onion, ,canned tomatoes, and a bunch of other things including red wine. I figure it's good but fairly low in calories and fat content. I often eat it in a bowl like stew but tonight, for company, I put it on whole wheat buns. I like it better without the bun. But with salad, and the Weight Watchers hummus Jean brought for an appetizer, it was a great, easy and satisfying meal.

Today I was watching the Food Network--I often keep it on but muted when I work, glancing up every once in a while to see if it's something interesting. But today I had the volume on for one of those programs about how to feed a bunch of people on the cheap. The absolute indifference of these programs to healthy eating amazes me--fatty hamburger, inexpensive cheese, etc. I love to save a penny as much as anyone, especially these days, but I won't sacrifice nutrition and taste. Anyway, this chef said she chose corn tortillas rather than flour because she saved $2.20, but there was no mention of the fact that corn tortillas are much more nutritionally sound. I kind of lost track here, but I think I have to give her credit for making her own tortilla chips out of those corn tortillas. But then she was making salsa and raving about how much she saved by using bottled lime juice instead of buying limes--excuse me? The tastes are worlds apart. I can't imagine using bottled lemon or lime juice--when I do I'll know for sure it's time for the kids to cart me off to the old-folks home.

Next came Paula Deen with her total disregard for fat and calories and her absolutely scrumptious-sounding recipes. Today, she and her son were cooking steaks--the steak she proposed to eat would have fed me for at least four meals. But she was making stuffed zucchini. I often hollow out a boiled zucchini and stuff it with celery, onion, bread crumbs, the scraped-out part of the zucchini, and maybe a little cheese. First of all, Paula roasted the zucchini--much better than boiling--and then instead of bread crumbs she used chicken-flavored stuffing mix. She added spinach--great idea--and sour cream, of course. Oh, well, you would use low-fat. It looked scrumptious, and I plan to go on the food network to find the recipe if I can. Paula was in the next half hour too where she had a guests--I can't even remember what she was serving, except that she pulled out a pan of potatoes au gratin and asked the young man to dish them both up some. When he handed her a plate, she looked at it and said, "Are we on a diet?" It looked like a good helping to me. Lord love her, I don't know why she isn't as big as a barn. Sometimes I get bothered by that kitchy southern-ness, but on the whole I like her. My granddaughter Edie and I started watching the food channel together about three years ago, and apparently she still watches it. She's skinny, too skinny, but I hope she doesn't follow Paula's recipe.

My gripe of the day: the new Cowboy Stadium. There was no news on tonight--it was all the Cowboys big first game in the stadium, and the fans going wild. Get a grip here, people--by the end of the evening, most of you will have spent $500--tickets, parking, food, beer, etc. To me, the stadium is a great big symbol of all that's wrong with our culture these days--the bigger-the-better mentality, Jerry Jones making a fortune off it, when he already has several fortunes and lower middle-class people lost their treasured homes to make way for this monstrosity. Somehow, to me, it's linked to the self-absorption and rudeness that marks so much of our public life today. I did laugh when Jim said at dinner that it was like the '70s all over again. My response was that it was like the bouffant hair that lasted so much longer in Texas than anywhere else. Bigger is better--or that's what a lot of people seem to believe. Don't get me started on secessionists, tea-party people, or rude politicians--my blog would turn into a book.