Eggless Fried Rice

This week I found myself with leftover zucchini, onion, and mushrooms-- I chopped them all into tiny pieces and fried them with butter, sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic, black pepper and leftover brown rice, and then added shrimp sauteed in lemon and soy sauce. I forgot the egg, but this meal was still delicious and easy; plus, it was created solely with ingredients I had on hand! New life plan: open Hibachi restaurant.

Blehhhh

I count the hours as they pass

one by one.  My feet

fall in line, miles to work and back.

Evenings ring of dinners prepared

and eaten,

of arms around me in the

kitchen,

bottles of wine shared in noisy

restaurants,

the mornings side by side.

I greet the sun with resolve.

I insist on forgetting.

Hour by hour I close my mind to you,

open it and breathe,

close it to you again. 

Going through the motions

I'm still eating. 

Proof:

I basically copied this recipe, except I measured everything to taste and eliminated the red pepper. 

Creamy and delicious. 

Because I feel bad for not posting about anything food-related in so long...

This is a bit of an atypical meal for me-- leftover buffalo chicken chili mixed with whole wheat pasta and topped with cheddar cheese. It tasted super unhealthy, and I think maybe it was. It was one of my last meals in my old apartment (aka like 3 weeks ago) and I honestly forget what I put in it, but this recipe seems similar. 

In other news, Schuy hates running in the heat and has been downright depressed about it. Thank god Nate is coming to take him back to Ithaca for the next 6 weeks before he starts considering suicide.

Vignette

Birthday presents in action at my new home: 

My herb garden, from Jordan. 

A panted green shelf from Westy, with a Ball jar vase. 

More to come soon; I'm still rearranging and getting into the swing of things at my new spot! 

Whose house is this?

I've always been ridiculously sentimental about beginnings and ends of things. Lately I've been finding myself admiring the gardens of my neighbors in the Palisades, or pausing outside houses that I'm sure I'll never walk past again to take in their perfect doorways or fences, saying to myself "this is the last time you'll ever see this door knocker, Gwynne, say goodbye."

I feel like the past 3 years have been filled with goodbyes to people and places that I never really intended to leave; drafty apartments in Ithaca, the unremarkable Dallas skyline, and now my picturesque neighborhood in DC with its entirely too perfect wooded trails and sidewalks. I think of Schuyler, how he's plodded along beside me at each locale and waited for me behind dozens of doors. I have to wonder how many more houses we'll adopt together before settling down in a true home. There has been so little permanency to each of my "homes" since I graduated that I feel like I've been living in a perpetual state of not-quite-belonging... I'm not sure what it will take to shake that feeling of displacement.

I guess most things in life are better articulated by a Nobel prize winning writer--

Whose house is this? 

Whose night keeps out the light

In here?

Say, who owns this house?

It's not mine.

I dreamed another, sweeter, brighter

With a view of lakes crossed in painted boats;

Of fields wide as arms open for me.

This house is strange.

Its shadows lie.

Say, tell me, why does its lock fit my key? 

Toni Morrison

Breakfast/Dessert

I'm pretty sure breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. That might be because I eat it when I get to my office, nearly 3 hours after I wake up, so I'm absolutely ravenous (what's new?). Or it could be that I'm just unnaturally obsessed with oatmeal in all its forms, and my various concoctions are always imitations of my favorite desserts including peach melba pie (no words for how good this is, I'm actually eating it as I write this), chocolate raisin spice cake, and of course, carrot cake. I might write a cookbook called "Let's add stuff to oatmeal until it's no longer good for you." Here's what I used for my carrot cake oats:

1/2 cup oat bran and 1 and 3/4 cup water

dash of salt
1 tbsp. chia seeds 

1 heaping tbsp. dark brown sugar

one small carrot, finely grated

vanilla, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice to taste

ginger pecan granola (sprinkled on top)

dried cranberries 

golden raisins

This is what the end result looked like (sort of; this is a picture of an earlier version that wasn't quite perfect):

Healthy? I think so. Let's not think about the calories. Delicious? YES. Make this, become a believer.