What's on your Wednesday Menu?

Good Morning all! It's Wednesday already and that isn't a bad thing. Yesterday's day at work can be summed up with the syllable, 'huh?' I've already woken up to more emails that just make me SMH, so this is just going to be one of those weeks. The semester started yesterday and I think it's going to be a few weeks before things get quiet again.

I am heading in on the 5:45am train because I have a doctor's appointment at 8am near my work, but the train gets me in just a few minutes too late so, instead, I need to go in early and kill 45 minutes at a Starbucks. I'm happy to have grabbed a last minute appointment though. I need a head to toe check up.

Thanks for all your good wishes for Dad. Nothing new - he's still in ICU and getting grumpier and grumpier. I can't say I blame him, he is so bored. The most excitement he gets every day is when they mess up his meal order so that he can yell at everyone. It's his only hobby and he's getting quite good at it.

QOTD: Where do you donate your old/unwanted stuff? I give to Big Brother Big Sister because they pick up donations at the house about once a month. It's very easy to schedule pick ups online. I know I should try to sell my old clothes, but I don't have the bandwidth to deal with all of it, so donating is my go to to clear out stuff. But if anyone is currently wearing a size 0 petite, give me a shout and I would be happy to send pics of stuff to send you. I have given up on the idea of wearing that size again.

Accountability: I barely ate - wasn't hungry and ran with it since I was so far off plan this weekend.

• protein coffee
• egg bites
• cava caesar salad
• meatballs and mushrooms

Good morning and happy Wednesday! Already at the halfway point but it's still a long week ahead!

Today is just my morning walk, work, workout with my trainer and finish the laundry, not to exciting but a good day for sure.

QOTD - Vinnies and DAV are easy to arrange pickups with so I usually go with them.

Accountability - swapped my breakfast yogurt for a couple of mozzarella sticks and I added a fairlife 3/4 C skim milk+1/4 c choc milk before dinner.

Ok, let me tell you about one my favorite experiences in Cape Town. Our last night there, I had found a restaurant that offered a private spice journey -- basically we had a private room on the top floor and then we had a guide who took us through the history of different people who have come to Africa and how the various spices came to be used and create amazing flavors. Cape Town and its surrounds specialize in what they call Cape Malay cuisine, which is heavily influenced by the Portuguese and Malaysian people who came to the area and I really liked it. It was a fascinating history + cultural + food adventure. 14 tasting bites, which were just perfect as they were mostly a bite or two to just give you the flavor of that particular spice. It's a tourist restaurant so we also participated in a half hour drumming session, had dancers and singers come up and perform for us, and had a lovely young lady do our face make up. One of the singers was Xhosa and tried to teach us a few words in the click languages which did not go well but was very entertaining. We also had the opportunity to go down to the kitchen and meet the team there and they put us to work making some of the curry blends (which they then gave to us to take home). A highlight of Cape Town for sure. Those of you that have been using the Creami should consider adding cardamom to your ice cream offerings, it was surprisingly incredible.

1) Drummer leaders

2) Beginning of the Spice Journey

3) The glorious spices

4) The menu of each dish

5) Back at our hotel before we washed our faces

my meals today will be much less interesting

Greek Yogurt with Granola

Polish Sausage

snack select

Fairlife milk

Cardamom is one of my favorite spices! I love it in coffee! Your trip sounds so amazing, so happy for you to have had such a great time!

I have put in in coffee too! It's such a lovely flavor; they had it in the ice cream and in the cookie but it was way more noticeable in the ice cream.

Wow. What an awesome adventure!

I had a lot of cardamon in Scandinavia, too!

I don't remember what I ate in Cape Town, but when I did volunteer work up near the Zimbabwe border for a couple of months (this was 20 years ago), and the food up there was super bland. It was basically boiled meat, a cornmeal mash, and whatever vegetables were in season (at that time, it was beets and butternut squash (which they called beetroot and butternut). The speciality there was mopani worms (which are actually caterpillars), but I refused to eat them. The bananas there, though - OMG! I'd never had tree-ripened bananas before. So much better than the ones we get here!!

Some of our volunteers were in Kwazulu-Natal province, so they had tastier fare - there are a lot of Indian immigrants around there - especially in Durban. The regional food reflected that..

We had several amazing sweet potato/squash and beet salads, we all came home and decided we should have more of it!

the beets and butternut squash were fine - the boiled meat and cornmeal mash were pretty blah, though! (they just ate the beets and butternut squash plain, though - no seasoning or anything. And nothing was made into salads - everything was very plainly prepared)

I recently read a book on the history of the spice Islands. The history is fascinating. But I don't want to eat any of it.

This was a recent article on one of the spice islands that I enjoyed. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/world/asia/indonesia-pula u-rhun-nutmeg.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IE4.dFLR.6ip_oV1o wbLd&smid=url-share

Our journey guide talked about the nutmegs for manhattan deal:-)