#61 - Cooking for 1

Monday, March 5

Today I am thankful for food.  Lots of it, prepared how I like it.

I made a big grocery run on Saturday, but had to skip the perishables because I was headed to dinner afterward.  Today I had Friday leftovers for lunch, and made a grocery stop on the way home.  On the list: butter, sandwich meat, frozen chicken, sandwich cheese.  In the cart: butter, frozen chicken, sandwich cheese, italian sausage.  Pretty good grocery discipline for me.

I had cubed and frozen some ham last week, and knew I had a bunch of eggs to eat and swiss cheese.  But I did not have any chipotle sauce, which would inhibit the awesomeness of my omelet.  So I cooked up the hot italian sausage, sliced it in rounds to go in my spaghetti sauce later in the week, and put it in sandwich bags in the freezer.  The hot oil I left in the pan, and cooked my omelet.  When I went in the fridge to get the eggs, I saw a bowl I had brought up a few days ago from the breakfast bar: craisins and almond slivers.

Now, a ham-swiss-almond-craisin-cooked-in-hot-oil omelet sounded like uninhibited awesomeness.  Add a cup of OJ and some grapes.  Excellent and awesome.  This is the kind of food I can think of, cook, and enjoy by myself.  And I can't do that with the rest of the family around.  It's not that they're selfish or demanding, it's just that they need to eat, too.

In other news, I picked up my dry cleaning today.  This is a big deal because it took me 2 weeks to remember to take it to the cleaners, and only 5 days for them to clean it.  Which means I need about 3 weeks worth of shirts to not have to resort to the bottom of the barrel.

I think I have also chosen my keeper house.  Of all the homes I have seen (and I've been to 30 or so), the one I like the best is the one Katrina likes the best as well.  It also is very close to the top of the list in our weighted average criteria, scoring close to a 7 on a 1-to-10 scale.  House size and condition, lot size and type, price, neighborhood, and commute all weigh in.  It's not the greatest neighborhood, in the sense that it's  not really in a neighborhood.  The kids won't have friends' houses they can walk to.  On the other hand, the area is not very kid-dense.  So I don't know if they'd have friends' houses they could walk to in any case.  Everything else about the place is perfect.

I'm just really hoping that the Beaverton sale completes soon so we can move toward purchasing one of these places.  I have about 5 houses that I would be happy with.  Very excited to move in, get settled, and live our lives again.