I lied.

Yes, I lied about Friday's dinner. I ended up making a giant plate of spaghetti & vegan meatballs with steamed broccoli w/ earth balance soy margarine and a sprinkling of nutritional yeast. The only vegan meatballs I will eat are Nate's Brand (or Trader Joe's, which is actually their private label Nate's); even Danny likes them, and he doesn't even like meaty meatballs! I wasn't very hungry but the broccoli had to be eaten or thrown out, so the plate ended up looking like this:

If you know me at all, you know that if you put food in front of me, I will eat it. I have some sort of psychological issue that leads me to do this. Only in the past several years have I learned to stop eating when I am just full, versus oh-my-god-I'm-going-to-hurl full. Whenever I ate out at restaurants I would end up feeling the latter; I have finally taught myself that it's okay to take a doggie bag.

Yesterday I didn't need a doggie bag when we went out to dinner for my friend Veronica's birthday. We were planning to eat at the uptown Carmine's (so, Italian food) but the wait was ridiculous, so we went next door to a Mexican place, randomly named Mary Ann's. I was pleasantly surprised that they had a vegetarian burrito with all sorts of yummy veggies AND tofu! You don't often find tofu on the menu at Mexican restaurants. The burrito came with rice and black beans, but sadly sans tofu. I didn't realize this until I was halfway through, and it was tasty, so I didn't care too much. I was so hungry that I forgot to whip out my camera and take a pic. Oops. But you know you don't mess with me when I am hungry, so...

Today was food shopping day, which means I spent yesterday poring over my cookbooks. I am completely unable to "just wing it" in the kitchen. You'd think after years of cooking for myself, I'd be able to do something, but no. It's the same way with crocheting - I need to have a pattern; I can't just freehand. Oh well. Anyway, there's some exciting food coming up this week. I started tonight with a marinade that I came across on another food blog, Eat Air; they used it on portobello mushrooms, which is what I did as well:

So tonight was Ginger Sesame portobellos, steamed kale with some of the ginger sesame marinade on it (tasty!) and homemade garlicky mashed yukon gold potatoes. I'll be having this again tomorrow for lunch. Everything was tasty, but the portobellos were quite too salty from me. Maybe I need to go easier on the tamari next time, or find some low sodium tamari. I was glad I had the potatoes to ease some of the saltiness. Mashed potatoes are one of my favorite foods ever. I only really discovered them in college; my mom had always made them from the flakes in a box, and I didn't know any better. After talking with a friend about mashed potatoes, I decided to make my own and OH MY LORD there is a world of difference between real and boxed. I like to leave the skins on, since they are nutritious and I like my potatoes kinda lumpy anyway.