Tuesday 3/24: It Never Tastes As Good Coming Back Up

No cooking Monday night. I was taken out for birthday sushi at Restaurant Hama in Columbus. I could very probably eat seaweed salad every night and never get tired of it.

And I wasn’t really planning to cook Tuesday night either. It was my birthday so eating wasn’t really high on my list of things to do. But I had been invited over to a friend’s for a pre-bar chin-wag and it is the height of rudeness to arrive at someone’s house empty-handed.

My phone had been ringing and jingling all day with texts and calls wishing me well. Funny how the older I get the more technological my birthday greetings get. The first one of the day is invariably my mom. Since she gets up at 4am to workout, I can count on a 6am wakeup/birthday call. The last one is usually from my BFF HoneyBunny who lives in Alaska. The 4 hour time difference means that when he’s on his lunch break, I’m just getting off of work.

I wasn’t about to cut my HB-talk time short, so I had to figure out something I could cook quickly with a phone stuck between my ear and shoulder.

Couscous to the rescue!!!

Like noodles, couscous is fun to eat in part because it’s fun to say. Alliterative and assonant foods are almost always delicious. Green beens (more delicious if you change the spelling), cupcakes, pesto pasta, white wine, and so on. The exception being creamed corn. Blech.

But back to the cous. Since it only takes 5 minutes to cook once the water is boiled, couscous seemed the logical choice. While I was waiting for the water to boil, I opened, drained, and rinsed a can of garbanzo beans. I then put them in a bowl to marinate with the leftover cukedillgurt sauce from Saturday night. While the couscous was cooking, I mandolin-ed (I am so addicted to that thing now) a bit more than half an onion, a small zucchini, and a small green pepper. All the chopped veg plus a large handful of snap peas went into my giant Longaberger bowl I got for Christmas. Hot, fork-fluffed couscous went on top of that, and the garbanzo bean mixture on top of that. I gave it all a good stir and stuck it in the fridge while I showered.

For taking all of ten minutes to put together this was pretty good. My friend made lentils cooked with cumin seeds and a huge green salad with home grown sprouts, all of which we paired with “Royal Bitch” Chardonnay. A fine birthday dinner indeed. What wasn't so fine, perhaps, was that I chose to pair all of that with double fists of gin and tonic, a round of Lemondrop shots, a horrible shot with Lightning 101 in it, at least two shots I can't remember, two Hater-Ade shots, and two Bud Selects.

It wasn't the worst food I've ever thrown up (there's a tie for that fun distinction between zucchini brownies w/Jack Daniels and Popcorn w/2 bottles of riesling) but it was certainly better the first time around.

Happy 27 to me.