Tastes Like Chicken
Over the last five weeks there has been no shortage of one-off meals of the absurd, but Friday turned into the perfect storm. Maybe this had to happen, just once, before it’s all over. I’ve spent many moments this weekend searching for an explanation, or least a lesson learned, for Friday. I’ve also spent much of it anxiously thinking about how to make it up to myself without wasting what’s in the fridge.
Breakfast was relatively reasonable — most mornings I’ve been consistently sticking with variations on the blueberry almond smoothie, sometimes swapping mango for banana or rice milk for orange juice, depending on what I feel like and have around. The past few days I’ve felt so bad about not using the abundance of kale from our CSA, that I’ve stuck a couple leaves in my breakfast. It didn’t taste so far off from the original, and it was a nice two-in-one guilt reduction/anti-oxidant booster, but the color was simply dreadful. Let’s be generous and call it a dark puce.
So then, what exactly happened at lunch? In retrospect, it seems I was craving some sort of Asian food. It’s not the straightest line from there to what ended up in my blender, but somehow a really good peeled and diced cucumber, half a chopped fresh tomato, a squeeze of fresh lime juice, a handful of cashew pieces, a spoonful of New Buddha sauce, and a few drops of Sriracha sauce turned out a lot better than it sounds. Again, not so much to look at, but it was a little spicy, and I think that’s all I wanted.
Whether it got worse at dinner depends on the “worse” with which you’re most concerned. It was not worse in the sense that I kept things simple and got enough protein. It was not worse in terms of color, although it would be less than true to say it was better than breakfast or lunch, considering it wasn’t even photo worthy. It was definitely worse in that I cheated on my kitchen (and my arteries) and blended store-bought chicken salad, although it was not worse when you consider some of the prepared foods I opted not to buy. Somewhere I had read that chicken salad was a great broken jaw blender diet food, and I just wanted dinner to be easy. Great was an overstatement.
After five weeks of paying such close attention to food, one might expect me at least to have interesting commentary on this meal. Well, I’ve spent all weekend thinking about it, and the only thing I have to say is that it tasted like chicken. Perhaps the lesson here is to be grateful that the only time something has tasted like chicken, it actually WAS chicken.
And, that everything has its low points. At least now I can say I’m on an upswing, and one that has included empanadas and rhubarb ice cream and a good Saturday brunch bloody mary, no less. New recipes coming soon.
