9/11

I love baking. And sometimes cooking, too. But mostly just the eating after cooking. In the months before moving I had fallen into the bad habit of eating most of my meals from restaurants and cardboard boxes. This stemmed from a combination of lethargy and... having my priorities misplaced - as in I'd rather go out constantly than spend any time at home actually making something. This sorely needed reversing.

Last night I continued to correct this problem by cooking at home - grilled salmon (brought from my dad's house over Memorial Day) on top of Caesar salad, and spaghetti noodles with low-fat "alfredo" sauce made from cream of mushroom soup, flour, milk and a little salt. I've already got all the ingredients I need for two more meals and a batch of vegan muffins I used to make in my everything-from-scratch (bagels, tomato sauce, peanut butter...) days. Must keep up the momentum!

Behind my mock-Martha food and Fiesta plates, my new penchant for seasonal beer is prominent, as well as my grandmother's well worn Better Homes cookbook with a broken spine, and the Chicago cow I bought my mother on a class field trip in middle school. My paternal grandmother was an antique collector and her house was an antique store called The Hitching Post. I've certainly taken after her.

It's also very strange that today is 9/11... when everything happened I was going from first period to second period my senior year of high school. I was wearing a long grey skirt and a black sleeveless shirt with a sparkly Air Force logo on it in homage to my admissions packet for the Air Force Academy. I watched most of the footage on TV in my chemistry class. The next year I was in DC for college (turned down the Academy after a wait-listed admittance), and the Pentagon was still under repairs. Strange strange strange.