day four: grapefruit & fennel salad plus a few observations

It’s day #4 of this elimination bootcamp, and the caffeine migraines have finally gone away. After yet another mug of tea last night (I lost count after 6 mugs, so I can’t tell you how much tea was had), I decided I had to turn to pills to fix the issue. Which, you know, was not ideal, but the throbbing felt like a semi was doing donuts behind my eyeballs. Desperate times and all that.

I also noticed yesterday — after scrubbing my face down for bed — that my skin had broken out spectacularly. Excuse me, what? I thought this was supposed to be some feel-good, look-like-a-goddess elimination cleanse! I’ve been foregoing tomatoes and eggs for shitty skin?

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day three: markets, monographs, & miso (GF)

Now that the fridge has been aggressively scrubbed down, I’ve turned my attention to the storage closet-pantry. It’s primarily cluttered with stacks of shoe boxes (unsurprising), but a good deal of canned and dried foods have accumulated there over the years. Thus far, I have taken stock of about 15 cans of beans that need to be eaten sometime in the next three weeks. That’ll be fun.

I also randomly stumbled upon 4 boxes of half-used pancake mixes, which to me is rather suspect because: a) I haven’t used real pancake mix in about 2 years, and b) I certainly do not remember eating all that many pancakes before then. For the moment, I’ve stacked them up on my dining table, and my apartment now looks like the beginning of an in-house IHOP.

Another work in progress.

day two: quinoa salad with peas & asparagus (vegan & GF)

Last week I spent a few hours clearing out my closet of clothing items I will never wear again. By this, I mean it was high time for me to donate all those dresses and cardigans in size XS that have never seen the light of day in the 6 years I’ve owned them. (I am also 5’8 with man-shoulders, so I’m not quite sure what possessed me to believe I would ever fit into a size XS anything.) It was one of those terrible things that girls do, buying clothes that are too small in the belief that it will motivate them to get their ass on a treadmill.

Incidentally, I hate the gym. And running. So, the cardigans were never worn.

day one: operation floppy hat

…or: my dream to look classically vogue while wearing a sundress in a Scottish field.

Noosh very sadly moved out of the apartment yesterday morning, so when I got home from work in the evening I opened the door to a half-empty living room and the realization that most of that crap was actually mine and dear God how am I going to get rid of all of it before I leave next month. Feeling the nausea that was rapidly transforming into borderline hysteria at the thought, I turned my attention to the refrigerator.

Aim low. Start small. I can do this.

I then spent the next hour and a half cleaning out my fridge. And when I say cleaning, I mean I took a vacuum cleaner to the floor while the shelves lay in heaps strewn about the living room. Of course, there was much produce to be thrown. Carrots hidden in drawers for so long they had decayed into some sort of orange mass (not pleasant), grenadine stains on door shelves that really should not have been left unattended for two years as they were (even more unpleasant), wasabi paste that I did not even know we owned. It was like bargain hunting in thrift store bins for treasures, if ‘treasures’ meant ‘I cannot believe you let yourself keep this crap for so damn long.’

It was also while I was cleaning that I really thought about food for the first time in a while. And not just what am I going to make for dinner thoughts, but food.

(I’m not quite sure when or why the food blog turned into an online diary, but I’ll run with it.)