cooking for one

i've been wrestling with the fact that i seldom cook for one. when it comes to having a dinner party for thirty, or four or five friends sitting around the table, no problem. i enjoy the preparation, the conversation and just looking at my friends faces in my house and usually cleaning up afterwards is a good time for me too.

so, recently, i've been making a little bit of change in my life. trying to be a little bit more focused and spread less thinly with regards to the things i love and how i spend my time. for the most part i'm failing, but in some ways i have begun to succeed.

i was new york bound on friday, i had a one way ticket to islip. i was headed out there to visit family on long island and drive back with mom, aunt & grandma a couple of days later. i arrived to the airport with plenty of time (especially for a domestic flight) i checked in and proceeded to gate B26. after i had dropped my belongings on the conveyer belt and begun to walk to the human metal-detector, i had a shred of adrenaline, realizing that my backpack had the picnic setup in the front pocket. i decided to play it cool and walk through the detector and when they pulled me aside and confronted me, as to why i would ever bring two metal dinner knives, a wine opener complete with a pocket knife and some plates, i would just proceed with my real reaction, "oh, how could i have done that? i totally forgot they were in here, look the tags are still on 'em, i obviously haven't used them"

i would've been fine, had they asked. but they didn't, they let me slide. scary!

so, i'm sitting there, passing time when the loudspeaker informs us that the flight to laguardia has been cancelled, storms in new york. i'm flying to philly, so that didn't pertain to me, so much. but there were two flights supposed to be on my plane, and of course it was overbooked by two. so they offered a $250 travel voucher and my heart beat quickened. i've got to be the first one to the desk, i thought. but then i considered my family, and decided to have a conversation with the lady from the airline and see if maybe i would just have less of a layover but still make it to islip on time. nope. i'd be several hours late.

in the time that i took to decide what i was going to do, they had started boarding the airplane, and back into my head came the words from the original lady who checked me in, two hours before. you don't have a seat number, but you'll be just fine, you're confirmed.

putting pieces together, the fact that i maybe didn't have a seat, the storms in new york, travel money which i could use to visit my friend kelsey, in london. all of those factors led to my decision to stay in columbus. as much as i had anticipated the visit in new york, the idea of having a whole weekend without work or plans seemed so liberating and i had my mind made that it was going to be a great weekend, a stay-cation!

i texted a few friends, to find a ride home from the airport and my friend, kate, picked me up. we had the best afternoon. we're both super busy and invested in different ways we spend our time. it's seldom that we have a nice chunk of time to just be together. it was great though, we went to the market and studied (yes, we really did get stuff done) our only interruptions were: sharing what we were learning, refilling our coffee and a relocation as the sun moved to the other side of the building, of course we had to follow it.

after that, we went grocery shopping at trader joes. something i had been procrastinating for two weeks, "oh, i'm going to new york in a week, i shouldn't buy groceries" even though the amount of time that i would've used them was much more than the three days i'd be gone. but i suppose living car-less also effected the decision.

so i bought some food. good food. food that i would want to spend time making. less going out, less cereal.

two weeks before my friend nicole ran into eva at the grocery store. nicole made eva get some bacon. eva ate the bacon. eva is my roommate so i smelled the bacon. i've never been much of a bacon person, but it smelled so good. so i bought some bacon too.

i also bought some israeli couscous from the green grocer, at the north market.

fast forward. yesterday, i made both couscous & bacon (separately). today after a cold ride home from school on the scooter, i wanted to make some more couscous. as i was making it i decided i wanted some bacon and so i added it to the cous cous, and cooked it together.

here's what inspired this blog. i'm sitting there eating the cous cous and it's really not that good today. maybe my stuffy nose yesterday, ignored the fact that the spices were a little off ( my fault, not the grocers) but i also realized that by not cooking the bacon separately, that i was consuming a lot of bacon fat. ew. not only that, but it probably wasn't cooked all the way through. it's really hard to tell, being a soup texture meal. anyways, as i'm eating it. information enters my mind about pork needing to be well done, i think bacon falls into the pork category. anyways, if i die. i wanted to say, goodbye.