Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Sunday dinner

The less said about the Terps game, the better.

I was right about being sore from yesterday's little weight workout...I am feeling it most when I climb the stairs...but I did drag my lazy ass out of bed this morning for a walk with Victor and the dog. It wasn't much, just around the little neighborhood lake (Fifty minutes, but a fifty-minute beagle walk is a twenty-minute walk with thirty minutes of sniffing), but hey, two days in a row.

I wish I could report that it filled me with energy and a new sense of purpose. The dog was happy, at least.

Victor claims we are not yuppies, but our grocery shopping has become something of a trek. First, the farmer's market (or actual farm) for produce and fruit. Then the bakery for fresh 470-grain bread. Then Whole Foods for free-range grass-fed meat, goat milk gouda, and vegetarian tv dinners. Finally we hiit the "regular" grocery store for Diet Coke and toilet paper.

I suppose if we really were yuppies we'd kick the Diet Coke habit and go ahead and buy the organic unbleached toilet paper from Whole Foods. It's probably only $4 a roll.

I mock, but it is actually my preference to buy the local, organic, and as-close-to-natural as possible food. I don't hate chemicals and modern manufacturing processes, not at all. (I am addicted to Diet Coke. Thank you, Monsanto.) I work, in a way, in the chemical industy. To me, "organic" means "containing carbon."

But having seen the decline in health in my grandparents and now parents, and realizing I have no children to take of me when I'm old and feeble, I figure I better do what I can to stay healthy. And as I started switching over from...well, to be honest, crap...to real food, I realized that the less-processed, fresher food tastes a whole lot better.

My sensibilities probably did lie closer to the environmentalists and the ethical vegetarians than they did toward Big Chemical and McDonalds, but now I'm acting it, too.

Anyway, when I was a kid Sunday was our best meal of the week, and Victor and I have picked up the tradition. Tonight we grilled corn again (there are a lot of farms right around here that grow very sweet corn, and as far as I'm concerned that is one of the best parts of summer. There aren't many corn days left this year, and I'm making the most of them, dammit.)

So, corn again, and grilled chicken-apple sausage, cucumbers and sour cream, and kalamata olive bread. Oh, and a Magic Hat #9. (I'm a beer snob, too.)

And my leftovers at lunch tomorrow will be looking way better than that Lean Cusine or the Extra Value Meal #3.