Making Meals

This morning I greeted the day right. The early sunrise helps, I can feel my body getting ready to wake as the darkness recedes and when the alarm rings at five I’m ready. I’m trying to remember to breakfast in the mornings, early, before hunger and distraction make it more a duty than a joy: grapefruit, yogurt with slices of nectarine, coffee - black to cut the sweetness and tang of the fruit. Snatches of conversation as my husband readies to leave - Yarrow is sleeping late today, she’s been grasping extra moments of sleep since her dziadkowie left on Saturday. Recuperation. Remembering the flow of quiet living.

I’m making goals left and right this spring, and keeping more than I expected. A new one, a reminder after a delightfully focused Lenten fast, is to eat well. To plan meals around beauty, taste, and health (in that order, of course) and in that way avoid continuing the post-fast gluttony that is so habitual to me. I’m committing to eat at the table (or picnic, or patio, or anywhere but on the go..standing and absorbing foods instead of enjoying them; committing to let the flavors rest and make their home on my tongue before adding more; to delighting in the vision - slices of sunny melon on bright red plates and greens embracing gold curry, not merely the act of eating.

We’re eating in meals again, without grazing in between. Breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner; and working on courses in the last meal. Tonight: black bean soup, chicken quesadillas, and a romaine salad with cilantro-lime dressing. For tea, I’m leaning towards lime and poppyseed mini pancakes, with curd and cream cheese to spread, and enough left over for my husband’s early morning meal. I am leaning away from heavy breakfast foods for the weekdays - I don’t work like he does. There are plenty of options: eggs we have in abundance - with seven or more arriving each day, yogurt, grapefruit, and melon.

Christie over at Everything to Someone is doing a similar meal-time re-adjustment. It’s something that’s helpful to do whenever things get stale: reflect, remember, recast..and live just a little deeper because of it.