What's for dinner? Dinner 1-Amy 0

This week Gavin and I ventured back into the kitchen in full force.  Today, I retreated.

If you haven't noticed, cooking/eating/everything has been a bit of a struggle for me lately.  We started off strong enough with a meal plan and a list.  Getting to the store was a challenge, but no pain no gain, right?

Last night, we made bacon wrapped meatloaf and mashed potatoes from Rachel Ray 365.

We laughed, drank wine and enjoyed the end result.  We even cleaned up cheerfully (sorta). 

Today, the kitchen taught me that it is impossible to work a 12 hour day and come home and cook dinner.  Even if that dinner is a '30 minute meal'. 

In reality, today's dinner wasn't much different than yesterday, as shown below.

Lemon and Thyme Chicken and Gnocchi.  But my was it problematic.  Chicken wouldn't cook all the way (I cooked it 2 times the recommended time and STILL had to butterfly them... )  I was missing one of the ingredients (an onion).  I DESTROYED my kitchen (mostly thanks to the frying of the chicken).  And I ended up with a mediocre meal that made me wish I had just gone through a drive-thru.

As I sat down to write this post, I immediately realized that the kitchen challenges were likely directly linked to a very busy work day, but still, I realize that I have been defeated by my kitchen.

What's for dinner?

Dinner, which was once an approximately regular part of my day, has become quite a bit more difficult this year.

Lately, what's for dinner has tended more towards Monsoon Indian in Palm Springs (at least a few days a week!) or the TV dinner our office manager makes for me because I haven't left the office for hours. 

Still, there have been a few nights of cooking.  Last week, I made some lamb on white means and rice for Gavin.

And last night, Jen made me an awesome pasta dish. 

What I'm going to try to figure out tomorrow is how to eat remotely healthy when you're spending 3+ nights away from home and 60+ hours at work.  Any suggestions are welcome!

Uh oh, garden

A few weeks ago I planted by vegetable garden again.  I toned it down to three tomato plants (down from 9 last year, resulting in the tomato monster), a cucumber plant and a red bell pepper plant.  I wasn't optimistic about the red bell pepper plant, and the dumb slugs took the cucumber plant.  But last night, snow took the rest of the graden.

Yes you heard that correctly.  Snow.  In Orange County.  Okay, maybe it was hail, but it was enough to kill I think...

Wish my little garden, luck!  And weather, what's the deal??

Movie Date 3 of 6.

So you may or may not notice that today is in April.  I owed Gavin a movie date once a month until June, but sadly, March just got away from us.  I couldn't find a time machine, so the best I could do was today. 

Gavin and I won a Regal gift card at the charity auction we attended in San Juan last month, so we decided to use it.  Our favorite Peruvian Restaurant, Inka Mama's,(okay, it's the only Peruvian restaurant I've ever been too) is located right next to a Regal theater, so we decided to go eat some lettuce Salsa.  I'm sure it has another name, but they have this fantastic sauce there that is made using lettuce, so I call it lettuce Salsa.  It's terribly addicting.  Once when we went with Sara, we used an entire bottle for three people.

Then we went and saw Sucker Punch.  Sucker Punch is a movie about a girl who is in a mental hospital.  I think.  On second thought, it's a movie about hot girls wearing not very much clothing and fighting.... something.  Not entirely sure what.  The movie was terrible.  Really terrible.  I can't count the number of times I looked around the theater for something more entertaining to look at.  At one point, I was actually trying to time a (unnecessary) trip to the bathroom around one of the "action" scenes.  Really, the movie was that bad.

So I'm even forgoing the picture of the movie poster (no need to draw more attention than necessary to this fiasco of a film.  At least my date was good looking. :)