Day 2 - Getting the hang of things

By day 2 we had a better grasp of how much food to take to eat during the day, how much we hated sweet potato, and the fact that lamb is our friend.

I would usually eat meat maybe 3 times a week or so. I think I'm a vegetarian avoiding her fate, and I have reasonably good reason to think so. In my life, there is a conversation that recurs, quite frequently. The friend that I share it with changes, the exact situation changes, but the general theme is the same. It goes a bit like this:
Friend: "Lets go out for dinner"
Me: "Sounds good to me, where do you want to go?"
Friend: "Hmmm... How about.... Oh, hang on. You're a vegetarian aren't you?"
Me: "No, people just think I am."
Friend: "Really? I could have sworn you were a vegetarian. I'm sure you stopped eating meat for a few years at least."
Me: "You know, so many people say that to me, you know, friends who really know me, that I think I might be fated to be a vegetarian, but I've just avoided it so far."
So anyway, I don't eat a heap of meat. Luckily lamb is the only meat that I actually like just as it is. But still the thought of eating it every day was a little unappealing. I certainly hadn't planned to eat it at lunch as well as dinner. But after day one where both D and I were starving by the end of the day and hated sweet potato, the lamb-at-lunch eventuality has been realised.

So day two's menu looked like this:
Breaky: 1 apple, 1 pear
Lunch: 1 lamb chop, cabbage, kumara (sweet potatoesque, we figure this is ok)
Arvo snack: 1 apple, 1 pear
Dinner: 1 lamb chop, cabbage, beans, sprouts

I actually don't know what poor D ate for lunch because he forgot his lamb and cabbage. I think he found some beans in his desk drawer (don't ask), and I guess he had a small stash of apples and pears to add to that. But I found the new menu much more satisfying and wasn't quite so ravenous by the time I got home.

After dinner I decided to get a bit adventurous and poach some pears and apples for breaky the following morning. So I peeled and cored them, put them in a pot with just enough water to steam them, and set them on the stove. Then I went back into the loungeroom, and forgot all about them til my housemate said "Is something burning?" Oh dear. You cannot probably imagine how burnt you can get a mix of apple, pear and water. Very burnt. Burnt solidly onto the pan. Scorched pan. Horrible smoky stink. I retrieved what I could and we packed them up for breaky, but really, I can recommend that you eat your poached fruit unburnt. Burnt fig jam is nice (thanks Maggie Beer!), burnt poached apples and pears are not. Even with maple syrup to disguise them.

Apart from the not-so-haute-cuisine smokey poached fruit breaky, today's fare has been much the same as yesterday. However tonight we have a little tradition called Wednesday Night Dinner to attend. It's going to be a test of will power, as delicious things are always in abundance. I think some version of poached fruit for desert will be required (prefeably not the same as last night's version!) to save D and I from caving in to the aromas of our friends' no-doubt amazing food.