With the school year in full swing, the boys are constantly bringing home new germs. To combat the inevitable sniffle-assault, I started my morning by cracking through the protective layer of congealed fat atop my refrigerated bone broth…
..to get at the quivery meat Jell-O below.
Once I got the soup steaming hot on the stove, I ladled it into mugs for the whole family. I could’ve reheated it without removing the crust of fat, but my picky kids insist they won’t drink soup that’s “greasy.” (They already get plenty of healthy dietary fat from other sources, so I’m not sweating it.)
For breakfast, I decided to fry up some of the leftover meat from the bone broth (shredded shanks and oxtails) in butter, and cracked an egg into the skillet for good measure.
I tossed on a few cherry tomatoes, and chowed it down before heading to the women’s class at CrossFit Palo Alto.
The hour-long class whizzed by – complete with a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” sung in Coach Trish’s honor during the warm-up. We practiced Zercher squats during the first half of class, and ended with a 2K row. I was spent by the time I returned home, but I’m sure I was grinning. Yay, endorphins!
My quick post workout meal consisted of a small cup of roasted yam purée and a handful of prosciutto.
I was heading back to work in the evening, so I decided to get a head start on dinner. I prepared a tray of the World’s Best Braised Cabbage…
…and stuck it in the oven.
And here’s where my day took a turn for the worse.
As I was getting ready to take my regularly-scheduled Flip Day afternoon nap – which I desperately need to power me through a sleepless night of drug peddling – I attempted to take out my contact lenses.
Only I wasn’t wearing any.
I don’t wear contacts often, and today, I was so distractedly busy that I must’ve forgotten that I’d already removed them. Thinking they were still on, I literally tried to pry my own cornea off of my right eyeball with my fingers. My failed attempts to remove my (not-there) contact lens just got me increasingly frustrated, so I kept digging into my eyeball with my fingers until it started bruising and bleeding. WHY WOULDN’T MY CONTACT LENS COME OUT???
It took me forever to figure out that there was no contact lens in my eye. What a dummy.
When the kids came home from school and saw me, they recoiled in horror – my bloody zombie eye was freakier than any of those lame, plasticky displays at the Spirit Halloween Store.
Luckily, my optometrist assured me that there was no serious or lasting damage – but it’ll take a week or two to heal. In the meantime, I’ll just have to walk around with my hair strategically placed just so.
Super-glamorous, right?
As if my missed afternoon nap and gimpy eye weren’t bad enough, I discovered that the oven’s malfunctioning. There’s something wrong with the temperature; as a result, the braised cabbage wasn’t cooked properly. Curses!
I wanted some comfort food, and I wanted it NOW.
“Paleo” or not, it doesn’t get any more comforting than potatoes. I broke out some russets and stuck them in the pressure cooker.
I steamed them on high pressure for six minutes, and let the pressure release naturally.
I seasoned the spuds with Magic Mushroom Powder, added a big blob of butter, and a glug of raw cream…
…before smashing everything together.
Mashed potatoes, baby.
To salvage my cabbage, I dumped it all in the pressure cooker and cooked it under high pressure for 5 minutes.
By the way, for those of you wondering whether foods retain their nutrients when pressure-cooked, check out this excellent post by my friend Laura over at Hip Pressure Cooking.
To round out my comfort meal, I reheated a cheater beef stew that I had stored in the freezer.
My dinner was just what the doctor ordered.
Once the dishes were cleaned, I kissed the boys good night and headed for bed for a short snooze before work. Then, I headed in to the hospital to spend my birthday with my work husband. Yeehaw!
