GROCERY SHOPPING!

I live on fresh food.  And by that, I mean I don't get meals at fast-food places.  I LOVE fresh veggies, fresh meat and fresh fruit.  I only keep refined sugar in the house to feed the hummingbirds. 

And don't get me wrong on the fast foods either.  I think Taco Bell Nachoes Bell Grande and steak soft tacos are great.  I think MacDonald's Big Mac is fantastic.  But I haven't had either for years.  I just think that whatever I cook is better for me.  I mean, I know what's in it. 

And, in a weird way, this relates to Dad.  Just before he arrived here last May, I had a freezer full of stuff I liked that he didn't.  He was strictly a "meat&potatoes" guy.  Hey, I'm adaptable, so I ate what I cooked for him - pork chops, or sausage or a chicken thigh plus a M/V potato and a tossed salad (an insistance I made for his health and my love of salads).  It worked OK.  I would normally slice up pork and stir-fry it with a lot of veggies but he wanted to see the pork in a whole piece, and I could deal with that.

So he's been gone a month now (and happily in the assisted living facility where they also like to cook things in chunks and offer potatoes).  Well, I decided to live out of my freezer and pantry for 3 weeks.  I used up 10 cans of soup, tupperware containers of frozen ham and pork, 5 cheap chicken pot pies, containers of cooked kale, frozen meatballs, and frozen shrimp.  It wasn't bad.

But today I went GROCERY-SHOPPING!

They say never to go grocery-shopping on an empty stomach, and I can see why.  I bought pickled beets, marinated artichoke hearts, a big bag of navel oranges, 6 plums, a big ginger root, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, grapes, a pineapple, 6 cans of soup, a couple cans of "chili beans in mild sauce", a can of white canelli beans, a can of garbonzo beans, milk, a half dozen eggs, marinated mushrooms,  and if they had had yak milk chocolates I probably would have bought them too.  LOL!

At the meat store. I bought a whole filet mignon on sale (1.5 inch thick slices) and with a free bottle of dry rub; I bought chicken thighs, a chicken breast, 3 hot italian sausages (for adding to the canned chili beans).

Three weeks of living out the the freezer can drive you to madness.  I am in a cooking frenzy of the stuff I haven't made in a year.  And next week, I plan to have large quantities of Moo Goo Gai Pan, hot&sour soup, spring rolls, char shu ding, and shrimp fried rice delivered.  Most to be frozen for "later", but some for an orgy of eating. 

I'm thinking I might want a Big Mac pretty soon too.

I weighed 163 when dad arrived and I weighed 169 when he left.  I'm down to 160.5 today.  Let the food celebration begin!

The wok is "in the building" again...