He ATE his own children

It was my birthday on Tuesday. I am now an apparently astonishing 28 years old (astonishing to my parents, that is, I'm pretty well aware of my own existence). There are some interesting facts about turning 28 that I've only recently found out. First, it takes 7 years for every cell in your body to regenerate, so I am now a completely physically different person from when I was 21, and 2 different people from when I was 14. Second, it takes 28 years for Saturn to orbit the earth. Apparently this Saturn business is a sign of upheaval; one of my friends advised me that in Roman mythology Saturn ate his own children, so, you can imagine I'm not exactly feeling enthusiastic about my situation here. 27 was chaotic enough thankyouverymuch!

I'm hoping Saturn got all it's child-eating rage out on me already, you know, like over the past 28 years. Hmm, maybe Saturn's been chasing me around eating his kids for the past 28 years and now that he's come full circle and all the kids are ate up he doesn't have any reason to ride my ass. A girl can hope!

For a long time I saw birthdays more as a time to duck for cover than a time to celebrate. But since striking it out on my own in a new hemisphere I've been choosing to celebrate instead of hide. The past 2 years I've organised something, and while that's been fun, I wasn't up for it this year. I was hemming and hawing about what to do for my birthday when the solution came to me: an invitation to a 30th birthday party the weekend before my birthday, and Orlando (a monthly queer night at a nearby pub) the weekend after.

The 30th birthday involved a theme: create a matching outfit. So when I read that I right away thought of those horrible matching track suits (the ones in my imagination were pink velour and I nearly barfed) and I knew I was in for a good time. I'm not a fan of, in fact I am avidly against, the matching suit set look so I really had no idea what to wear. Then it dawned on me: POLKA DOTS! I have an amazing polka dot dress, and, in the course of moving office I rediscovered my polka dot shoes (which are, by far, the most amazing polka dot shoes to ever exist), and I was sorted! I rummaged through my stacks of accessories and pulled out everything spotted until I had the perfect polka dot look.

Since 30 is a pretty big deal, I didn't want to show up for the party empty handed. But being a poor student, splashing out on a present wasn't exactly in the budget. And then I had a moment of creative genius: Smarties cookies!

These cookies were doubly ingenious (in my mind anyways) because they are polka dot cookies, and because the party was for one of the admin staff at my campus, who has to put up with all us smart arse academics all day. Smarties...Smart Arses...get it?

The party was heaps of fun. It was a house party out in Northcote, which I was pleasantly surprised to discover is actually not insanely far from Brunswick. I won't go into the details, but, I ended up drinking half a bottle of rum, showing everyone my underwear (which, thank god, had polka dots), dancing, playing the piano terribly, and sitting out by the fire well past the wee hours of the morning and nearly into the regular hours of the morning. I got home around 5am, picked up a really nasty cough, and nearly died from the brightness of the sun when I crawled out of my bedroom-pit the next morning.

I've spent most of the past week with a nasty cold from this party, but I have no regrets. And I was hardly going to let a little thing like possibly needing medical attention stop me from going out on Friday night again! And again, I have no regrets, Orlando was a hoot! It was one of those nights that was either going to really suck, or be really awesome. It was really awesome. Well, for me. I didn't run into exes or crazy stalker ladies, though I did make a woman in the toilet intensely uncomfortable... Ah, good times, good times.

Maybe Saturn is done harassing me after all. Maybe it's time to just sit back and enjoy the sunshine.

Too polite? Or too much of a wimp?

For my PhD, I've been interviewing young people about their dating experiences in this modern digital world. It has been most educational. I have gotten some great tips from these kids, along with some shockers, but since I'm all old and wise I can tell the difference (unfortunately for them, I can't tell them the difference). It would be incredibly inappropriate of me to talk in detail about my interviews on here, so I won't. I'll just say that as a single woman who is currently on the dating scene, I am very much situated within my research! Often as I'm going over my interviews I am struck by how much relevance what the person is saying has to my own life. And sometimes it makes me want to scream!

Like the interview I am looking at today. The woman says that she is 'too polite' to tell someone she isn't interested in them, and so instead just ignores them. .... GAH!

When it comes to dating, I don't think there is anything that pisses me off more than this attitude that it is somehow impolite to tell someone you're not interested in them. No. It is fucking RUDE to not let them know. And this seems to be a social disease that is epidemic amongst women.

Why are people so afraid of hurting someone else's feelings? I understand that it is awkward to have the conversation with someone, but for fucks sake, give the other person some credit! This is just something that I find really inexcusable. Like, if I ruled the world, the punishment for not being upfront with someone about your feelings towards them would be to allow the other person to punch you in the face as hard as they could. And yes, I admit, I would be getting a few black eyes from this law, but I stand by it!

More hurt is caused by ignoring the issue than by addressing it directly. So if you think it's impolite to tell someone how you really feel, I say you're a wimp and watch out for justice fists.

Vouyorism 101

I enjoy Tegan & Sara's music enough to consider myself a fan. And I am not the kind of person who feels the need to know the life details of the musicians that I enjoy. So, when I made my 'debut' into the lesbian community of Melbourne, I really had no idea that these two facts would lead to my foot being put so firmly in my mouth. 

About a year ago I was chatting with a woman online and she was excited to hear that I'm from Calgary, because she is a big Tegan & Sara fan and they are also from Calgary. My response to this was "Yeah, well I know one of them is, but I don't know if both of them are." It wasn't until a good 6 months later when they were featured in an issue of LOTL that I realized why I never heard back from that woman: Tegan & Sara are twins. They're also both out and proud lesbians (my response to which got me in even further trouble!)

Prior to my finding out about all of this, one of my favourite Tegan & Sara songs was (and still is) 'Living Room'.



So you can imagine my excitement when I discovered that my new apartment allows me to quote from this song in relation to my own life!

"My windows look into your bathroom. Well I spend the evening watching you get yourself clean."

My apartment building is directly across from another apartment building. The windows on the bathrooms for the apartments on these two buildings are frosted glass. Now, the point of frosted glass is meant to be that it obscures the view in while still allowing all the natural light in. But my experience of frosted windows, time and time again, has been that they only actually obscure the view out, so anyone looking in can actually see in fairly clearly. Frosted windows must have been designed by a voyeur!

Now, I have to admit, I am a bit of a voyeur. For years now I have peered into people's windows as I walk down the street. Why? Because it's amazing the things people do when they think no one's watching. Maybe that is why the internet fascinates me so much; it has the feeling of being private while actually being very public - you never know who's watching (yes, yes, there's an exhibitionist in me too).

My kitchen window looks directly into the bathroom of the apartment across from me. I discovered this one night as I was doing the dishes, gazing out the window, only to discover that I could see my neighbour peeing. My reaction was a mixture of being grossed out, being glad that he washed his hands afterwards, and being intrigued that my kitchen window offers a view into such an intimate and private part of my neighbours' lives. Suffice to say, the kitchen window has become my favourite window.

A part of me feels like I should be ashamed of this, that I should make some effort to respect their privacy. It is only a small part. The rest of me says that I should just accept that this is just who I am and this is what I enjoy. So thank you, inventor of the frosted window, for creating such a wonderful voyeuristic tool. And thank you, neighbour, for that little dance you did while brushing your teeth this morning. It made my day.

The Sound of Silence

"Expecting our problems to go away is truly our fundamental problem. We resist facing our life as it is, because facing life as it is means abandoning how we think our life should be."
- Ezra Bayda

Over the weekend I went on a silent meditation retreat. This was my fourth retreat. As they are not associated with any particular practice, we look at teachings from different schools on each one. This time it was the Zen Buddhist teachings of Ezra Bayda. I found the readings very helpful and accessible, so if you are contemplating meditation, I would recommend looking him up.

When I tell people that I am going on a silent meditation retreat I am often met with a combination of awe and suspicion: "You can't talk to anyone for a whole weekend?", "What do you do?", "There's no way I could do that.", "Um, why?" I find these responses amusing because when I first heard about these retreats my response was so different. I was more like "That sounds interesting, sure I'll go."

The first time I went on one of these retreats I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. Like I've said, I'm a jumper. A friend of mine goes on them regularly and she gave me her version of what happens on these retreats... and I naively took her word for it. I had quite bad hay fever at the time and I asked her if it would be OK for me to blow my nose during the meditation sessions. She insisted that no, it would not be OK, and so I didn't bother bringing many kleenex with me. (In retrospect, considering how anal I am about blowing my nose, I don't really know why I agreed to go along with that.) Her version of what happens on these retreats was more about her own initial concerns about going on them than what actually happens on them. Not the most helpful advise, as I soon found out!

The retreats start on Friday evening and end at lunch time on Sunday, so it's really more like a day and a half of silence than a whole weekend of silence. But that first retreat felt like a month of silence! It dawned on me as the first meditation session started on that warm October night that a) I had no idea how to meditate, b) I had no idea what was going to happen to me, and c) I had no idea what was going to happen to me!!!

The meditation sessions are structured so that at the start we are given a reading, which Don (the guy who runs the weekend) reads out and then we are given some time to reflect on it before moving into the actually meditation. Don provides instructions for those who want them at the start of the meditation, and then it's 30 minutes or so of total silence. As I know now, the instructions start out pretty basic, and as the weekend progresses Don adds in more instructions and encouragements - the most helpful, for me, of which is: whenever the mind wanders, no matter how long or what it's wandered to, it is always a smiling, accepting return to the focus.

That first weekend my mind was all over the place! Focusing on my breath seemed to be pretty much the most impossible task you could set for me. Well, that and being silent around other people. I hadn't expected that to bother me, but when I woke up that first Saturday morning the idea of being around other people caused me so much anxiety that I ran outside and sat, meditating, in a field. My hay fever punished me for the rest of the weekend for that, but, I have to admit it was pretty amazing.

That first Saturday seemed to go on forever. There are 5 formal meditation sessions on the Saturday, which leaves a fair bit of down time. And what does one do with one's down time on a silent meditation retreat? I had no idea. I did, however, have a desire to be close to nature and that lead to some bird watching and me climbing up into a gum tree to meditate. I experienced the whole gammit of human emotions on that first weekend, from rage to elation. And when I was happy it felt overwhelming to keep that emotion for myself. I found myself smiling at people and trying to get them to make eye contact (along with no talking, there's not meant to be any non verbal communicating either).

While the Saturday seemed to go on forever, the Sunday came to an end much too fast. I had just gotten the hang of things and suddenly I had to pack up and go talk to people! I only knew a few people at that first retreat and I felt shy going into the dining room for lunch when the silence had ended. But, I sat down with my friends and they were happy enough to listen to me re-live every moment of the retreat.

Each retreat has been a different experience for me, though it has always been a positive experience and it's always bittersweet when the silence ends on Sunday. I have gotten a lot more comfortable with meditating and find it much easier to quiet my mind these days, though I definitely still find myself wandering off to the most mundane places.

One of the difficulties with meditation is that it makes you sleepy (in fact, often when I'm having trouble falling asleep the first thing I do is meditate). On the second retreat, I was quite tired and planned to use the weekend to catch up on my sleep. And boy did I ever! I fell asleep in every meditation session, except one. And the only reason I stayed awake in that session was because I had slept through the call to meditation. I was fast asleep, with no pants on, in my little room, when suddenly there was a knock on my door. I nearly jumped out of my skin! I tried to jump into my pants and get to the door as fast as I could, since I didn't want to break my silence to say "just a minute!" I spent that session wide awake!

I had just finished reading Eat, Pray, Love before going on the third retreat and I was excited to try out some of Liz Gilbert's meditation practices. As much as I loved that book, I have to say that it's been more of a hinderance than a help to my meditation! Now I often find myself comparing my meditation experiences, during meditation, to hers. And that is most unhelpful!

So what happened on this weekend? I'd been feeling a bit lonely prior to this retreat. Most of my friends are people from uni and it seemed like everyone was too busy with their work and their own lives to do anything social. I felt the absense of community that comes with being an expat. But when I arrived at the monistary on Friday night I suddenly found myself surrounded by smiling, accepting, and compassionate familiar faces. The irony of finding community on an inward spiritual journey isn't lost on me. This time I even looked forward to Sunday lunch, when I'd have a chance to actually catch up with all these familiar faces.

You don't need much in the way of stuff on these retreats, so I've learned to pack light. As I was sitting in the meditation room waiting for the retreat to officially begin I went over what I had brought with me...and realized I'd forgotten my toothbrush just as the bell was rung to signify the start of the nobile silence. D'oh! The first session was about how we try to create control in an essentially uncontrollable world. How apt!

I generally don't come out of these retreats feelings like I have resolved some issue in my life or whatever. I always feel calmer and have a temporary sense of inner peace. Sometimes I feel like something has shifted, sometimes I don't. I got a lift back into the city after the retreat, and as I got out of the car I had a strong sensation that I'd left something behind. I was struck by the same sensation when I got off the tram. I think this weekend I managed to leave some of my sadness behind.

Bills, Bills, Bills

It's often been commented upon that I have a fairly breezy attitude about the pressures of doing a PhD. While I don't think that's completely false, it's certainly not entirely true. I guess I don't display my anxiety over it much, but trust me, that anxiety is always bubbling away, under the surface. Probably another reason people make that comment is because I don't actually have any doubt in my ability to do my PhD. I'm not sitting here for nothing - none of us are - but not everyone has really internalized that. So while I have anxiety about doing a PhD, it is more about the process than the thing itself. I know I'll get there in the end.

For me, the big huge stress that keeps me up at night and gnaws away at my stomach lining is money. I know I can finish my PhD and that it will be good and launch me into a research career, I just don't know if I can do it without running out of money. Being an international student adds an additional layer of complication and stress to the situation - especially because I do not consider moving back to Canada to be a viable option. If I had permanent residency in Australia, my money woes would be much, much more managable.

I have a scholarship which pays for me to be sitting here, or actually, pays for me to get on with the business of living life. It's not a lot of money, but it's enough. The problem is, that scholarship expires in 6 months! I will most likely be able to get a 6 month extension on my scholarship, but after that it gets tricky. While in the past getting a second 6 month extension was quite common, that second extension is getting a lot harder to obtain.

So, get a job, right? Well, that's tricky. I do have a work-study visa, and I have been working for the past 2 years, but there are restrictions. I can only work 8 'business hours' a week while receiving a scholarship. In theory this means I could get an evening/weekend job, but in reality, that is asking for a mental breakdown. Besides, if I'm going to be working on anything on evenings and weekends, it's going to be my PhD. To the best of my understanding, the conditions of my visa would allow me to work more hours if I was no longer receiving a scholarship. This is not ideal though, because that decreases the amount of time I have to work on my PhD, and my student visa has an expiry date as well (April 24 2012).

So, apply for permanent residency? I'd love to, but I won't qualify until I've submitted my PhD. The good news is that when I have finished my PhD I should be a shoe-in, and apparently changes are being made to both fast track applications from Australian qualified PhDs and to allow PhDs in any field to stay.

So, what's the issue? I don't know how long it will take me to finish my PhD. I'd love to say I'll be done in a year, but I can't say that with much (any?) confidence. While my scholarship (just) covers my living expenses, I have debt back in Canada that it doesn't cover. Like most people, I don't have a map telling me what paths my life will take; and I certainly wouldn't have forseen myself taking this particular path! The money I make working 1 day a week goes towards keeping the creditors at bay. It would all be fine and lovely if there was any sort of security in having a job to work at 1 day a week. But there isn't.

Last year I was miraculously fortunate enought to get a sizable grant with which to fund various aspects of my research...and hire myself on as a research assistant. I'm still dumbfounded at having gotten that money, and it has gone to good use. But, alas, it is not a bottomless well and my funds are drying up.

And so that gnawing anxiety of how I am going to financially manage is starting to grow again. Fortunately, I am not at the point of having no funds yet. I have some time to get myself sorted. And there often is casual work to be had at my centre, or at any of the multitude of universities around Melbourne.

Like everything in life, there is only so much I can control. I manage what I am able to manage and try not to be consumed by what I cannot.

The Start of a Love Affair

Is there any other feeling better than that of the start of a new love affair? All the excitement and raptour! All the potential for things to come! None of the disillusionment of reality! sigh...

Another one of our "lose the cake weight" office ventures involved an "all levels" lunch hour yoga class. I had never done yoga before and really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Ah, like so many things in my life. I'm a jumper.

I jump into something and just hope I come alright on the other end. Mostly, I find this a rewarding way to go about living life. But every now and then I am forced to admit some forethought would have served me well. But that's a tangent for another day.

This lunch time yoga class we went to I intially found quite enjoyable, though incredibly difficult. I was happy to struggle along, and the instructor was pretty good about giving me alternate poses to do when the rest of the class did more advanced things. But then he went on holidays and a new instructor appeared. Her take on "all levels" did not seem to include the "super basic beginners" level and she did not seem to have much interest in giving me the guidance I needed to still be able to get some value for the $14 I had just shelled out. One class in particular I did my best to keep up, massively over did it, and was pretty much unable to use my abdominal muscles for a week. After that, I decided that this "all levels" business was a bad idea and decided to just stick to swimming until I could find a beginners yoga class that was covenient for me.

Well my friends, that time has come! My new apartment is quite near a pilates studio and the Brunswick Baths and this week I started looking into what these places had on offer for a gal with a limited income and at the "super basic beginners" level for pretty much everything. The Brunswick Baths supplied the answer: beginners yoga late Sunday mornings, with student rates. Perfect! So this morning, for the first time in close to a year, off I went to a yoga class.

While I had heard lots about the Brunswick Baths and walked past it many times, I'd never actually gone in before. I got there early and purchased my pass for yoga class. The guy at the front desk advised me to hang out for a bit so I had a wander and looked at the facilities. I'd been considering coming to Brunswick Baths for the odd swim since it's so much closer to home, but I've had some reservations. I'm quite fond of the Melbourne City Baths pool, and I've already got a membership to use there. But, yesterday's swim left me longing for more lanes. I often find the people who use the slow lane at MCB are lacking in lane etiquitte. I'm not quite fast enough for the medium lane, which means I'm either the slow one in the medium lane or the fast one in the slow lane. If I swim in the medium lane I make sure to space myself out so that those who swim faster than me aren't constantly being held up by me. When I swim in the slow lane, I rarely get the same courtesy. Yesterday in particular I felt the pool could have done with an additional slow or medium lane.

As I waited for my yoga class to begin, I sat and watched the swimmers. The pool at Brunswick Baths is a 50m heated outdoor pool... with 2 slow lanes, 2 fast lanes, 3 medium lanes, and an aqua play lane! That's a lot of lanes! Instantly I could feel my heart fluttering and my vision becoming rose-tinted. None of the swimmers seemed too concerned about swimming outside in the middle of winter, and my reservation about that suddenly seemed ridiculous. And so what if it's all chlorinated, as opposed to the MCB which is a mixture of salt water and chlorine? I have goggles! And yeah I normally swim in a 30m pool, but what a great new challenge 50m would be! *Cue cheesy love song*

Eventually, I tore myself away and joined the queue for yoga class. I really enjoyed the yoga class. The instructor was helpful and kind, the poses were all things I could do, and the atmosphere was friendly and welcoming. And best of all? The room it's in looks out over the pool.

Did you know that public pools were started to encourage public hygiene?

Before I moved to Melbourne I really wasn't a fan of swimming because it involved the use of public pools - you know, where the public go. And the public is fucking gross! I should know; I'm a member! But, about a year ago some of my office mates and I decided that since we'd put on the cake weight together, we could take it off together. Swimming, we decided, would be the way to do this. Thus began our weekly (occassionally bi-weekly) trips to the city baths.

I was weary of this swimming business at first. All those wet toilet seats and hair covered floors of my youth were cackling their germy laugh in my head: "Step into the change room Joni, let us stick to your skin!" But I decided to give it a go before dismissing it as just too nasty to deal with. Besides, I'd already been to the Harold Holt pool and that hadn't been horribly gross.

My first visit to the city baths was a pleasant surprise; the change room practically sparkled with cleanliness. The day shift cleaner, I must say, is a saint! I could kiss her she keeps things so clean! I have been going back to the city baths regularly ever since, and have long gotten over my disgust at pool change rooms (even when they don't sparkle with cleanliness).

Hmph. You wouldn't think this germ business would be such a big deal for someone who once willingly drank directly from the Nile...

For the past, oh, month I've had just about every cold that's gone around. And as you can imagine, this has left me a tad phlegmy (see? Public = gross). And yes, when I swim sometimes I contribute a trail of snot to the water. But today I was put in a phlegm confronting situation!

As I was stretching after finishing my 50 laps, I noticed that someone had hacked up a rather hearty amount of phlegm onto the side of the pool. My initial reaction was to be incredibly grossed out, but a little voice inside of me said: "Hang on there Ms. Omigod That's So Gross! Would you rather they have hacked that up and spat it into the water in which you are swimming? And for that matter, what, exactly, do you think YOU would have done in that situation?" Admittedly, if I'd hacked up that much phlegm there's no way I would be putting it back in my body, and I would have been really cranky if I'd swam into that mess.

So yes, public pools are kinda disgusting places, but hey, where better for all our germs to mingle? *cough* *cough* *public transit* *cough* *cough* At least the pool is full of germ killing chemicals.

Having just made my peace with the phlegm, I made my way into the spa, where I was in for another special public pool treat! Ooooh the spa! Never a dull moment to be had! No matter how hard you try...

Today's special spa treat was a man. A man who would have been completely inconspicuous if it wasn't for that cheeky smile. I got in and hoped for the best. After a couple of minutes he stood up, only to reveal that his board shorts were hanging dangerously low. I averted my eyes. He turned around. Not only were the shorts half way down his ass, but, there was a giant rip in the back so his entire right butt cheek was on display. This is when I started to pray: "dear god I really do not want to see this man's testicles."

I reminded myself that this is a public pool and he is just as much a member of the public as I am, and got back to ignoring him. But the entire time I'm in the spa he seemed to be trying to catch my eye, and then when he thought he'd got it, he'd stand up and get out of the spa for a minute, then come back in. This was additionally annoying because he was sitting on the best jet and I really wasn't interested in finding out how he'd react if I grabbed it on one of his short ventures out.

I don't know what it is about the spa that inspires weird behaviour in people. From flashing too much of your junk, to pashing your bf/gf, to blatently wearing your underwear... People are just strange!

Holiday Chilli!

I was never a big fan of meat and haven't ever been a red meat eater. This meant that growing up, generally there was some separate meal made for me. So when I became a vegetarian, I didn't think it would be all that big a deal for my family. Turns out removing chicken (and occassionally ham and turkey) from my diet really threw them a curve ball. I found this most perplexing, as I wasn't having any troubles cooking meat-free meals for myself. For awhile at my Dad's house my vegetarianism was met with veggie dogs, and on one particularly memorable Thanksgiving, an unopened can of kidney beans.

Being handed an unopened can of beans and told to make myself something, minutes before the extended family all sat down to an ellaborate dinner that the entire kitchen facilities were occupied to make, was a wake up call that they weren't going to get this vegetarian cooking business without some direction. So from my vegetarian cook book I picked out a chilli that looked quite yummy and handed over the recipe to my Dad.

From then on, any sort of big family get together was accompanied by this chilli. For years this chilli was synonymous with Christmas for me. It's a yummy chilli, but I don't think many other people integrated it into their holiday dinner experiece. I wonder if they still make it now that I've moved overseas? I'll have to ask.

I'm a bit embarassed to admit that although I've eatten this chilli many, many times, I had never made it before. Not once, in my thus far 6 years of vegetarianism have I actually prepared this chilli for myself! Not even when faced with celebrating Christmas without my family (though, chilli isn't really a summer dish). So finally, FINALLY, today I cooked up some holiday chilli! The result?

Delicious! It's cooked quite slowly, so takes a long time to make. But the preparation time was not nearly as consuming as I imagined it to be (probably because I just used canned beans instead of dried ones like my Dad). And for my efforts I've got 4 delicious chilli meals to look forward to - or 3, since I had it for dinner tonight. I'm going to have to stop cooking and start using up all this food that I've made! Our freezer is getting pretty full!

And on a totally unrelated note...

I know how I'd react if I came across 2 or more people fighting, having had the opportunity to witness a stabbing last summer (and even though I said 911 I dialed 000). But what do you do when you encounter a gang of rainbow lorikeets trying to rip each other's throats out?

Maybe they were mating? (Maybe it's almost spring?? Please??) It's often hard to tell, I think, with most creatures, if their intents are reproductive or violent. It makes me glad I'm gay!

Maybe Not Masterchef Quality But...

Since moving into my "swank" new apartment I've been feeling the impetus for change particularly strongly. I'm pretty much always up for change, but lately I'm more up for major life overhauls. Because my new inner city lifestyle costs a pretty inner city penny one of the changes I have to make whether I want to or not is lunch. Since my office is basically in food Mecca I generally buy my lunch. But if I continue to do that, I'll be spending a lot of evenings and weekends at home! So it's back to the kitchen for me.

I pretty much always cook dinner, but I don't always put effort into it, and I don't always save some for lunch the next day. This is one of the things I am changing. Now I am cooking big, yummy, healthy dinners and rationing off smaller portions to take in for my lunch. (This is the long awaited change to my eatting habits in the healthier lifestyle grand plan. The excersize phase has already been well implemented.) It's exciting because it means I get to be creative in the kitchen and it's forcing me to do more than just whack on some pasta when I get home. Especially since part of this new plan is to cut back on the carbs.

I plan to make chili tomorrow, so today I headed across the street to the Vic Market (seriously, food Mecca!) to pick up my organic veggies for the chili. It struck me that at the moment I mostly have odds and ends for food and I was faced with the dilemma of what to do for dinner tonight. After wandering around in a cirlcle a few times going "uuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh uuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh uuuuummmmmmmmmm" I decided to get creative and mostly use what I already had. I picked up some spinach and rocket and decided to make a roast vegetable and tofu sausage salad.

The result? I was pretty impressed! I fried up my pumpkin with a dollop of allspice, then added some eggplant. I put in the spinach, and a splash of balsamic vinegar, then tossed in the rocket and finally, a bit of pear. I cooked 4 tofu sausages separetly with a bit of balsamic vinegar. The end result, to me, evoked a grown-up version of mac & cheese with hotdogs and ketchup. It was delicious, nutrious, filling, and even presented nice! Though not a dish that allows for left overs, definitely something I will keep in mind for future dinner experiments.