nourishment

We saw our dearly beloved friends tonight. We invited them over for dinner. It has been much, much too long since the last time we've seen them and it was great to reconnect.

To prepare for dinner tonight, I put all the food together at two this afternoon. The little 'uns were fast asleep (!), having worn each other out, I suppose, so I figured I'd better use what time I had before they were up again being their silly, wacky selves. I made black bean and chicken enchiladas. Gringa enchiladas. I'm told enchiladas are a use-up-what-we've-got-on-hand kind of a dish, when I always thought there was a specific recipe or set of recipes. I didn't do anything too fancy and the only thing I made from scratch was the chicken, which was made previous to tonight. That was an adventure in itself. I've only ever made a whole chicken maybe once before and after all the initial gagging and revulsion I experienced this time, I might not be doing it again anytime soon. (As I've often said, if I had to kill and dress (ha!) our meats, we'd definitely be vegetarians.) After some initial freaking out though -- all the while trying not to freak out because Pic was helping me make the chicken -- all turned out well and we had *tons* of chicken. It's almost all gone now. So, the enchiladas? I didn't take a picture. I thought about taking a picture of them before I cooked them, but I just didn't and then I forgot. Oops. Simple stuff. Smashed black beans and pulled chicken inside flour tortillas. That laid in a pan, covered with store-bought sauces and shredded cheese. I covered the pans with aluminum foil and put all that in the refrigerator until it was time to heat it all up for dinner tonight. I served it with TJ's canned corn. I know how lazy I sound, but I'm really not a cook and this was as much as I wanted to take on today. Oh, also Cardo (my love) made guacamole and we had that with store-bought tortilla chips.


[The chicken is featured here. I mainly based it on the recent chicken recipe on Dalai Mama Dishes. This was way more than I ate at that meal. Well, way more chicken. We also had (over-)roasted green beans (oops), bruschetta and kale slaw.]

While we were on vacation last week, I felt like I ate horribly. I remained very aware of what I was eating and I really didn't do too badly, but I was definitely on vacation in more than one sense. So, this week, I'm working on a somewhat slow recovery of sorts from that. Despite having an extra kid hanging out today, I felt like today was the first really routine day we've had since the move and my eating is settling down also. For lunch, I had roasted vegetables and some of the day-old HoB baguette we bought on Saturday. I heated the baguette in the oven after I took the vegetables out, which gives the bread a nice crunch. Mmm. We actually live in a place where sunlight streams directly onto our little bit of countertop space, and I couldn't resist a picture.



So, while I'm working to regulate my eating, the chocolate heart-shaped bread we also bought at HoB on Saturday has been teasing me since we got it home. Mmm, again. In fact, I can hear it calling me now (which would actually be pretty disturbing, were I to mean that literally).



Here's to good friends and good food.