the friday zone

I feel sorry for people who live on take-out and don’t use their cutting board and don’t plan meals and don’t buy groceries. I have to say, food preparation is something I enjoy to an almost obsessive degree.

On Fridays, some people get off work and get in front of a game (er, are there sports games on Fridays?) with a beer. That is how they unwind.

I get off work and prep my food for my 8-6:30 Saturday workday. I find it to be a serene task. I get in the zone. A typical tableau:

We begin, of course, with breakfast.

Overnight oats made with 1/2 cup oats; half a yogurt, half a banana, 1 T chia seeds, and a splash of water. Topped with chopped roasted almonds. With a beauteous plum on the side just for good measure.

Then, an adorable sandwich. The last of the homemade focaccia; avocado; and mashed kidney beans. This is an experiment. I love the hummus and avocado combo, but it seemed silly to make hummus when we had an open container of red beans. (Reports, though unconfirmed, have surfaced that some other people actually get sick of beans. I find this mystifying, but whatever). Anyway, I’m hopeful. I like the colors.

I thought this sandwich looked so cute and rotund when put together.

 

And the rest of it:

The toasted almonds, in addition to topping my oats, topped another bowl of oats for my mama, and became my afternoon snack, along with 2/3 of an apple (the other third of which I used for my mama’s oats).  

I used some of the kidney beans to top my sandwich, and the rest I combined with my sister’s abandoned baked beans (she likes to leave things in the refrigerator for weeks at a time til I worry they’ll go bad- it’s a challenge to me, like Iron Chef except with nasty processed foods).

Lunch was rounded out with a yogurt.

Those last few toasted almonds on the cutting board mysteriously disappeared.

And there you have it.

I really do love to cook more than almost anything, though I also very much love to write. To that end, I wrote an essay on cooking well and entered it in the Medium Raw Challenge, where I could win publication of my essay in Anthony Bourdain’s newest book. You can still vote for me! Check out my essay entitled Sticking it to the Man!