the proverbial turning of the leaf: i love cooking. i've always loved cooking. i like being creative and bold with foods. i get satisfaction out of making something good. i love trying new recipes. i go to a zen place while doing my thing in the kitchen. then why for the last six + years have i had such a hard time cooking at home? it makes no sense. it's crazy, i tell you.

so i'm turning over the leaf once again. yesterday i had a good time in the kitchen. i watched conference from home and spent the whole day at home, and in the words of maria to captain von trapp " and having a marvelous time." smug smile. ...well had a marvelous time...

for breakfast i had an andrea apple. i slept in.

after the morning session i made myself an egg white omelette stuffed full of red peper, feta and cilantro. the smell of cilantro can send me over the moon. lime too. lime is something special. anyways we're not talking about lime. i love to eat my omelettes with a splat of hummus on the side and so that's what i did. a carrot and a cucumber chunk made the meal complete.

that was good but what was better was dinner. and what was good about dinner was roasted broccoli. roasted broccoli is to die for. i'm going to tell you how to make it so you can eat it too. everyone should know about roasted broccoli. what you do is cut up a bunch of broccoli. i ate a whole head of broccoli myself--that's how good it was. then you put it on a shallow pan and toss it with some olive oil and salt and pepper. pop it in the oven at around 425F and roast it until some of the tips are getting brown. you can check it and toss it a bit somewhere in the middle. it took me around 20 minutes. when you take it out you squeeze lemon (i used lime because that's what i had) and zest lemon (again i used lime) on it and then you're supposed to grate some parmesean over it. i had the powdered stuff because i'm not rich. it was awesome. i also broiled a huge steak in the oven. it's a steak that i've had in my freezer since before moving here. it was so big and i didn't want to deal with it. so i tackled it yesterday. i looked up a marinade which in retrospect had too much cayenne pepper in it, left it marinating during the afternoon session of conference. i'm getting 3 or 4 meals out of the sucker so that's nice.

today i had a salad with steak strips in it. still too spicy. i also had corn on the cob. i ate the cob at the kitchen window gazing out at the lush, silky overgrown grass of the backyard. i saw a tiny bird wing headlong into a tight hedge.

there's a spider web by my front door with a garden spider in it. it's outside so i keep my peace with it. this morning as i left for work it was jeweled with raindrops.

new weakness at work: dino-sours. .35 for a baggie.