Things I’ve cooked recently: a roast butternut squash and bread panzanella-ish salad with a tahini-lemon dressing, served with lentils on the side and parsley from the garden (regrets:none). One perfect burger, in a brioche bun (regrets:I ate it while looking at my phone talking to R on FaceTime and I am not sure i really tasted it). Sambar in the pressure cooker, using my mother’s spice mix (regrets: only that I took this long to try to make sambar).

I’d thought to make burgers for H when she came for dinner, but we ended up just snacking on cheese and olives and crackers and carrot sticks and hummus (regrets:none). So last night I made a Bolognese, which I simmered for 4 hours. (Regrets: I cleaned up everything at 1am, I don’t know why I start these projects so late). But I ate a few spoons of it tonight with roasted cauliflower and it was so worth it. The rest goes into the freezer for later.

I have a lentil soup simmering on the stove (amazing: the Parmesan rind I threw in because I was cleaning out the fridge. Regrets: maybe I should have deseeded the Serrano pepper and fished it all out before blending it. This soup might kill R). There’s half a cauliflower roasting in the oven that I need to do something with. More soup? Meh. I have bananas on the counter that are looking brown and i might make muffins in the morning and freeze them too. I feel like I’ll want my own food after surgery.

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Leaving for Kinshasa on Sunday, trying to rest as much as I can before the long trip. R left for toronto on Wednesday morning and I didn’t leave the apartment for 48 hours. I was so happy to hole up here on my own .. but always afraid of that fine line between happily hibernating and depressed, unable to leave.

9:23 p.m. - 2023-10-06