Week 5, day 4.

I have a terrible compulsion to use anything new I get immediately. When I was small it consisted mostly of demanding to wear my new shoes home from the shop, this week it has been to use each new furoshiki ASAP. This one has Happy Hens on it. The original ceramic Happy Hens are made by a lady who lives just five minutes from me on the Otago Peninsula.


My lunch is bulghur with furikake, Thai green curry sausage; a tomato; meatballs from my freezer stash, with Burning Desire barbecue sauce on them (the company which made this delicious smoky sauce seems to have gone out of business, so I am rationing my last bottle); and some of the carrot and capsicum, and some of the mushrooms, that I made the other night.


Bulghur = 96 Cal
carrot mix = 70 Cal
50 g sausage = 130 Cal
meatballs and sauce = 100 Cal
mushrooms = 20 Cal
tomato = 3 Cal

Total = 419 Cal

I am displaying a great deal of willpower, as an old friend is here on business from Auckland, and another old friend is here from the USA (unfortunately because of a death in the family), and I am not meeting them for lunch. I am giving them time to eat and then going over to join them for coffee.

I may have to rethink my bento ingredients a bit too - my interstitial cystitis is flaring up. Usually it is well controlled by restricting my coffee consumption to one or two cups a week, and only espresso. Maybe the flare up is hormonal, but maybe it is all the spicy food I've been including in my bentos! Or perhaps it's the sugared tamarind I bought the other day? I have always eaten a lot of spicy food so it shouldn't be that really. Whatever, I need to do something about it.