January 20, 2012: Three late-night sauces, two strange snacks, and one funny dream

Breakfast:

• Organic hot chocolate with homemade whipped cream
• Again, I don't know why anyone ever buys the canned stuff (other than the fact that it's fun to spray straight into your mouth!). But really, making homemade whipped cream is so easy and so delicious! All I do is quickly whip together heavy whipping cream and powdered sugar for about 3 minutes and...voila! You have some fluffy, thick, tasty whipped cream ready to top off your cocoa. I suppose this would be a good place to publicly announce a little personal fantasy of mine. When I'm stirring away at my hot chocolate I dream that when I grow up, all the kids in the neighborhood will to come to my house for the best hot chocolate in town after playing outside in the snow. Of course, by then I will have perfected the recipe. Just the right amount of sugar, just the right amount of cream whipped to just the right consistency so that it's fluffy and swirled on top-- real melted chocolate, real milk, maybe I'll even use a steamer! The goal is that anyone would be able to taste the secret ingredient (which is love, as my mom would say). Yes, when you ask my mom what her secret ingredient is for something you like to eat, she will always say "love". And when you ask my dad what he wants for his birthday, he will always say "world peace". Oh boy haha. When I was growing up, my friend Anna's mom was the hot chocolate queen. I only had the pleasure of drinking her hot chocolate once after playing in the snow, but I still remember how much love was put into it to this day. It warms me up just thinking about it. 
•  1 small plate of black beans and rice
• My friend/housemate Alex spent some time in Nicaragua and she said that they ate rice, beans, and bananas for pretty much every meal. They would throw an onion in if they had it available. So, Alex made us a beautiful traditional Nicaraguan breakfast. I love beans and rice  and honestly, as much as I enjoy the variety in the food I am blessed to be able to eat, I could happily live in Nicaragua with beans and rice for every meal. 

Lunch:

• 1 slice of turkey 
• Yep, that's all. Kind of weird, but I was only a little hungry, not hungry enough for a full sandwich. So I ate one slice of turkey to curb my hunger. It did the trick.

• 2 mini sheets of nori 
• Just for kicks. I like the flavor of nori (seaweed)
• 1 tiny piece of homemade pumpkin bread
• Frankie made homemade pumpkin bread. For some reason, the baking powder didn't mix in well and there were big clumps of just baking powder. He warned me before I took a bite and I thought to myself "aww, it can't be that bad" right before tasting this extremely bitter nub of baking powder. I spit out the bite, but the taste was still in my mouth. Oh dear. Well, other than that part, the pumpkin bread was actually very good. It was moist and compact and flavorful. I was scared to eat more of it after getting that huge chunk of baking powder so I stuck with my tiny piece and nibbled away.

Dinner:

•  Egg Pasta with 3 sauces
• It was very late by the time we ate dinner. I was busy cooking my 3 different sauces until around 2 in the morning, so this was more of a two-AM-snack. Frankie, Jenn, and I ate the rest of the homemade egg pasta with the three sauces and did a sensory evaluation of each. I'll post pictures and more details in a separate post. Was it worth it to stay up that late cooking sauces for fresh pasta? Absolutely.