Thanks for all the well-wishes for my tooth! My awesome dentist called me back first thing this morning and managed to squeeze me in before 10. They examined the tooth, took some x-rays, and found…. NOTHING. Nada. No abscess, no cavity, no popcorn kernels. Apparently all of this badness is from sinuses. How lame is that? So back to the Zyrtec and Sinus Rinse I go. Hi ho.
I didn’t want to eat anything too hot (oatmeal) or too cold (Green Monster) for breakfast, so I toasted an Ezekiel english muffin and topped it with almond butter and a sliced banana.
After the dentist I headed downtown (er, uptown) to meet Brian for lunch. He suggested La Cubanita, and being a fan of Lombardi restaurants in general, I concurred.
Started with the Lentil Soup with Chorizo:
Delicious. Lentil soup has the potential to be painfully boring, but this one was smoky and well-spiced. The chorizo provided a nice chewy constrast to the lentils, too. Would have been great with a big hunk of bread.
For my entree I had the La Cubanita Chopped Salad:
Romaine, mango, tomato, bacon, hearts of palm and avocado. I’m not going to lie, the main reasons for ordering this were: 1. avocado, and 2. hearts of palm. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough of either. But I was happy with my order and really liked the passion fruit vinaigrette.
We just had new neighbors move in next door and Brian suggested that I stop spying on them and go say hi instead. He’s nice like that. So rather than head over empty-handed, I pulled out my trusty old Mrs. Field’s Cookie Book (I’ve had this since I was 10) and decided to make the Applesauce Oaties. Could they have come up with a more unfortunate name? I think not. This is basically a spiced oatmeal cookie with raisins, walnuts and chocolate chips. It does contain about 3/4 C of applesauce, which seems like a lot. I baked them for longer than the recipe indicated and they were still kind of falling-apart moist. Oh well.
(Oh, and the neighbors seem very nice.)
We had a couple of eggplants in the fridge, so for dinner I made the Tomato and Roasted Eggplant Stew with Chickpeas from Veganomicon. You roast the eggplant for a LONG time and it came out kind of charred, so I was dubious. The stew also features roasted red peppers, onions, chickpeas and a whole can of tomatoes. It looked thick so I added a little water. It came out wonderfully!
Even Brian liked it. I had mine with an East TX tomato with salt, and a toasted pita smeared with goat cheese. Mmmm.
Hope everyone had a productive Monday!
OH, look at these cute studded bracelets I found at Target today:
They remind me of these CC Skye bracelets I was lusting after last year. Except $10. For FOUR.
What’s the best deal you’ve found lately?
Chloe needs a matching studded collar!
Dude, $105 for a bracelet would have been insane – so good move on holding out for a year:)
You are such a friendly neighbor. I hope they liked the cookies.
That eggplant soup looks yummy.
Cute bracelets – I might have to scope some out at my local Target.