Monday, August 17, 2020

it’s gonna be another weird month i guess according to my horoscope

Today involved far too much slogging for my liking. That's not entirely fair; part of why it felt like too much was because I didn't write this morning (although I did meditate). I also spent some quality time cooking tonight, which could have perhaps been devoted to writing or other endeavors. But all in all, it was a good day. Like I said, I meditated this morning; I also watered flowers in my backyard and generally relaxed a bit before hitting the day.

Then I slogged all day; I didn't have a ton of meetings, but I had a lot of actual work to do, and luckily I had some time in which to do it. I ate some leftover bacon frittata for lunch (it's almost even better the next day), and I thought I might be done by 5 or 5:30, but instead I worked until after six. At that point, I was supremely glad that I'd ordered groceries in the middle of the day, although supremely hungry and not really wanting to cook them.

But I persevered, and I'm really glad I did. I tried a new recipe for a grilled vegetable salad, and it was the absolute bomb. The original recipe called for eggplant, zucchini, radicchio, and halloumi; I didn't have eggplant, so I substituted summer squash and a yellow bell pepper, and it turned out great. I don't know how it would be without the radicchio, which adds some bitterness. It would also require a bit more salt, perhaps, if you did it without the halloumi - halloumi is this brined cheese that is really salty (and squeaky, like cheese curds), which I ate a lot of when I was staying in London a lifetime ago. It has a high melting point, so it can be grilled right on the grill, and so it's perfect with the grilled vegetables. I grilled it all for 3min (radicchio) to 10min (everything else), chopped it up, tossed it with some lemon juice / olive oil / honey, and it was absolutely excellent.

The chicken burger I made to go with it was less excellent - it tasted good, but it was a little dry, so I had to slather it in tzatziki to make it better. But that salad with a steak would have been the perfect summer meal. Needless to say, I'm glad I got my grill even if it is 95 degrees out, the air is still full of smoke and dumping ash on my patio furniture, and winter is coming.

Speaking of winter coming, I also got some quotes for a fire pit and I talked to one of the companies today; hopefully we can move forward so that I can extend the functionality of my backyard. And I spent the rest of the night watching the DNC (mostly so I could tell Terrence that she needs to intervene with her network anchor's hair gel situation), messing around online, trying on things that are trickling in from my aggressive pillaging of the Nordstrom anniversary sale, etc.

And now I really need to sleep - goodnight!

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