La Vida Fresca

I’m rather tired after such a long day, but there’s just enough time for a little recap before I pass out.

Today we hit up Yamato, a new Japanese steakhouse near us.

Kevin got the usual meat-noodle-rice-vegetable plate.

I would normally get something like that too except we had a pretty heavy dinner including noodles last night so I looked for something a little lighter/fresher.

I went with a gomaae salad (chilled cooked spinach with sesame sauce)

and a “Go Green” roll (rice, lettuce, carrots, and avocado wrapped in soy paper).

Here are food highlights from the rest of today’s foodings (the important stuff - not everything from today, but mostly everything):

After dinner (mine was a little too light) we picked up some treats. I got a huge coffee (x2 before the night was out!) and giant cinnamon pecan roll. The roll definitely looked bigger in real life.

And this was earlier (almond raisin granola, strawberries, and nonfat plain yogurt).

I also squeezed in 20-something minutes of Yoga for Runners today.

Well, I’m exhausted. I hope everyone is having a great weekend. Night!

Black-eyed peas = luck, greens = wealth.

Today we had our traditional New Year’s Day dinner at the family’s house: black-eyed peas, collard greens, and white rice. Every January 1, they generously cook up this food and make sure everybody has some for health, wealth, and general good luck. It’s all very casual and we just show up and eat whenever we feel like it. Usually we have cornbread too but my mother-in-law served baked macaroni and cheese with it this year instead, which was fine with me. I like cornbread but I’m also quite fond of her macaroni and cheese. It’s one of my favorites. Of course I had to douse the mac and cheese with hot sauce. It’s so good that way.

That was my little plate. (I used a tiny plate because I wanted to sample all of the desserts, which I did. Some more than once.) The greens were fresh from their garden and so was the onion. Note the piece of hog jowl on the peas. They always make sure everybody eats a portion of the jowl for good luck, whether we like it (some do) or not (me).

The desserts, all made by my mother-in-law, were scrumptious: Coconut Dream Pie, strawberry shortcake, and chocolate pie. The cake part of the shortcake was Kathryn’s Favorite Cake from the Dillard House Cookbook. Yum.