Dinner at last!

November was an insane month. In every sense of the word. Work was crazy (but luckily the outcome has been amazing), personal emotional issues continued, and I had a lot of extra stuff going on at fairly inopportune times. And the result of all that was a month of really, really horrible eating. Especially in the past two weeks. I started becoming one of the people I swore I would never become. Someone who eats takeaway or mediocre ready meals more than once or twice a week. Because I either didn’t have time to cook, or when I did, I was far too exhausted to consider doing anything requiring thought or even minimal talent.

This has been a huge problem. I already felt like crap to begin with, but eating stuff that was either crap itself or else just not good enough to be happy about eating has been making me feel worse. Food is a big deal for me, obviously, and when it starts repulsing me instead of exciting me, there’s something seriously wrong. And the whole situation is self-perpetuating, because when I get depressed about what I’m eating, my success rate with experimental throw-shit-together cooking goes way down, and I lose all of my creative culinary mojo.

I know that the answer to this is good food. So I’ve decided over the past few days that December is get-your-ass-cooking-again month, because I need some enticing leftovers in my freezer so I won’t buy another sad excuse for a meal from Tesco or something on the way home. Aside from being less than appealing, it’s also expensive, and December is not the month to haemmorhage even more money than one normally does at the holidays.

I have allowed myself to plan all of the comfort food I like, because I’m going for health, but I’m also going for gaining some weight back. This doesn’t mean all meat and fat and potatoes, it just means cheese and pork fat are encouraged alongside the pile of proper vegetables I have been so desperately craving.

Tonight, I had big plans for a pot of risotto-type barley with the cavolo nero I bought at the veg shop last week on impulse. I had no particular plan for it at the time, but it was just so green and healthy-tasty looking that my nutrient-starved self had to buy it. Then my boss let me out early today after the hectic craziness of this week, because she is the most awesome boss on the planet, and I decided to swing by Crombie’s on the way home for some sausages to add to my dinner. (And I needed beef anyway, because tomorrow I’m making stew. YAY.) And then I bought wine. Because I needed it.

Happy leftovers. Look at how GREEN that cabbage is. I imagine it contains double its mass in vitamins and good stuff. (Excuse the shitty iPod-taken picture. I don't have the energy for proper photography.)

After a tea and a spot of trashy, pointless 4od watching, I fired up the experimental cooking engine and came out with a big bowl of barley, cavolo nero, and Italian Piccante sausage meatballs in the time it takes to listen to Paul Simon’s Graceland. And it was GOOD. I was so craving the cabbage actually, that I ended up pushing aside a bunch of the meat to leave for leftovers and eating mostly barley and greens. I probably could have just eaten a whole bowl of the cavolo nero and left it at that, but the goal here is full meals. This is the first proper meal I’ve had in so long, and I have two whole pots of leftovers. I’m still disgustingly exhausted from this week, but at least I don’t feel as gross as I did after two nights of oven pizza. Uck.

Next up: movie, popcorn, and maybe even a mince pie, because now that it’s December, that’s allowed.