Monday, September 8, 2008

Day 96 - Blast you baked goods!!

I work in a strange office. Think “science geek” meets “happy homemaker”. I live in a “rural city” – a city of 60K or so plopped right in the middle of farm country. You drive 10 minutes and you find cornfields and cows. Thankfully we have the ‘inner city’ area where proper white folks fear to tread, so you know we’re keeping it real. A good portion of the women who work here are your classic small town/home maker types who throw Tupperware parties and scrapbook. I’m NOT at all speaking down on these women, they are lovely and delightful, and they cook a mean streak. Almost every Monday, you’ll walk in and counter in the kitchen is festooned with baked goods, left over for the weekend baking madness. Peanut butter pie, cookies, breads, muffins, bagels, you name it. It doesn’t even have to be super yummy. Any item will disappear in minutes. I’m sure I could bake crayons into muffins and the boys would rave. Geek boys always seem to appreciate the free food.

So I walk in today, and lo-and-behold, there is a bucket of home grown tomatoes and a banana bread and a pumpkin cake. I filled my coffee cup and picked up the knife, as I have almost every day the Baked Goods Fairy came to visit… Just as the knife was descending, the rolodex in my sans-coffee brain finally flipped to “Banana Bread” and with a mental “Whoa Nellie!” I put the knife down. Sadly, banana bread and pumpkin cake at the very least contain eggs (NOT vegan), milk (NOPE), and butter (oh how I love you non-vegan butter). I was able to walk away without even a pang of sadness or regret.

I was able to wake up this morning with just enough time to eat a bowl of cereal. I want to try and wake up even earlier and get in a quick mile jaunt before work. Not impossible, but will take a little dedication to get up a half hour earlier. I’m just not grooving on the mornings right now much perfering to stay all cuddled up.

For lunch today, I brought an obento (but I think I forgot my chopsticks!), with brown rice, the mini tofu burgers and tofu shumai. Here’s a lesson in having the proper tools for the job. I don’t have a steamer basket so I decided to do the “pan steam” that you would when you make gyoza. The shumai came out fine with crispy bottoms, but steaming would have been better. Oh and there’s some broccoli in there too. I have enough tofu burgers and shumai for 2 maybe 3 lunches this week, but I have TONS of shumai skins left over so I just might make a bunch and freeze them.

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