Last week I mentioned the bored with food feeling. And although that bored feeling is still present, I am really doing my best here. Like, the whole Mother’s Day food situation which I described yesterday. The obvious inability to dine out, unable to get the usual breakfasts we like even as take out, and then the organized chaos in the evening trying to pick up dinner was a total test of patience in dealing with what is already months of restrictions.
I try not to let these things bother me and to realize it’s minuscule in comparison to being without a job or sick. BUT still, this prolonged shut down is certainly becoming a test to patience. There’s no doubt that it can feel hard to keep living this way. I’m hopeful things change soon. Yet, I also know we are absolutely last for easing restrictions in my area of New York, so there’s that.
Overall, take out has still been my overall answer to keeping things interesting at home.
I’m finding that buying big salads that give me several meals offers me a chance to not think much about what I want to eat or if I have enough ingredients in the house to make a salad. We won’t even get into the fact that I haven’t been to a grocery store in what, five weeks now? Longer? Who knows anymore.
We did a take out order from La Scala the other day for a change which was a great idea. I ordered two large chopped salads, one garden, and one greek salad. From those two salads, I believe I got five, maybe six meals.
It was also time to stock the freezer with pizza. La Scala is definitely a top pizza place on Long Island. Like, you can’t go wrong with pizza anywhere in this area but you want an extra special slice? La Scala.
We also ordered a few grandma slices so I had that with salad one night for dinner.
I had a few salads like the below picture for lunch, adding chickpeas and avocado to the base salad. I’ve loved having La Scala salad dressing in the house too. Really makes things different for a change and different is what I need right now.
Another pizza and salad combo. Not complaining.
So.
Over the weekend, my son wanted bagels. We were trying to figure out a different bagel store to pick them up from so that we could take a ride to give us something to do. That’s when I suggested we pick up bagels from the city for the change of scenery. Originally I had wanted to take a ride out to Montauk or the Hamptons but it was just so cold! I’m hoping to do that this coming weekend.
For the first time in my life, the traffic was so light that I went from the upper east side down to the midtown tunnel on one continuous traffic light. Over 40 blocks without stopping? It was so odd.
Let’s get back to Mother’s Day dinner. I know I left that hanging a little in yesterday’s post. Mother’s Day dinner turned out to be delicious. It was a process to get to our good dinner, that’s for sure. First, my parents had given me gift cards for The Cheesecake Factory so we tried to place that order for dinner. The order wouldn’t go through online. We tried by phone, no one answered. We tried ordering from PF Chang’s (not even sure how we chose that but we did) and that’s when we pulled into the parking lot to see the organized chaos (picture in yesterday’s post – easily 100 people waiting for takeout) and gave up on that order. It was a real mess.
I really just wanted to go home and have a bagel for dinner. I felt defeated. Instead, we decided to order Chinese food for delivery. It was such a delicious idea. The food was perfect. Note my son’s President’s placemat in the picture. He has always loved the Presidents since he’s a little boy and lately, likes to quiz me so we took out the placemat for entertainment.
The cold peanut noodles hit the spot and I never order Chinese food without my usual steamed vegetable dumplings.
One more meal to share today. Remember how I’m trying to preserve my steam fresh vegetables? Well, I’m definitely running low. Sometimes I just don’t have a choice but to eat them. This salad contained a bag of steam fresh vegetables, the little bit of lettuce I had left, roasted sweet potatoes, chickpeas, avocado, and some of the leftover brown rice from the Chinese food. Random, but quite good!
What have you been eating lately? How is the food shopping situation in your area?
