Chugging along

I still have not shaken off this silly cold but it's not coming back with enough vengeance to justify me staying home sick.  I've used the nose salve the doctor prescribed for me a few times now and it's completely gross. Although it does seem to help somewhat, I'm not entirely sure that it isn't just the mixture that's coming out when I blow my nose (apologies to those who don't want to hear about the things that come out of my nose - that's just the kind of place I'm in at the moment).

It occurred to me over the weekend (not for the first time) that if I really want to have a semi-normal life, you know, one where I eat meals at home every day with the attendant washing-up that entails, I really need to actually be here most evenings for most of the evening.  Working even just till seven and then walking home and/or stopping in to say hello to my friend (and her very cute baby) who has a shop in the bottom of my building means not getting into my apartment until after eight.  By the time I change and have time to gather my thoughts and perhaps get something to eat (assuming it's already waiting for me and at most needs to be heated up) still means nearly nine before I could begin to think of anything else.  And by nine I am really tired and ready to start winding down to go to bed around ten.  But if I don't do at least that much every day, I can forget about being organised enough to actually eat proper food every day and at least keep on top of the daily chores well enough to not need a major catch-up session at the weekend.  Le sigh.

Anyway, at least today I have gotten somewhere.  Despite the minus temperature (okay, it's 'only' minus one here, which for some of you barely registers as cold, but we'd count our minus degree weather in weeks rather than months here and that's still usually interspersed with days of warmer weather), I did walk home from work today.  I was exhausted for a good part of the afternoon, even giving in to a major chocolate craving, but after sitting down for ten minutes or so when I got home, I did actually get up and put on a wash (the fact that I opened up my bedroom window to let a bit of air in may have had something to do with me getting up again - it was freezing).  While I was doing that I also cleaned the bathroom.  Okay, I haven't washed the floor but the rest of the basics are done.  And I put the apples I dried yesterday into a jar, labelled it properly and added it to the stockpile.  I really missed having a good store of apples on hand this summer, when the old ones on sale at the market were just not really very nice anymore but the summer fruit season hadn't really started yet.

And even though when I arrived home I couldn't imagine summoning up the energy to even heat up my planned pineapple rice for dinner and ate three chocolate covered macadamia nuts instead, I did get up after that and put the box away and the pineapple rice is heating up now, along with a small amount of the pulled pork and the onions and sauce from yesterday.  I made less pineapple rice than I planned as I decided to just finish off the open box of rice without opening a new one so really I had two decent portions, which I divided into three smaller portions.  I did feel like I wanted a bit more yesterday at dinnertime but had already divided  the rest between a couple of Tupperware containers and decided to stay strong and not just give in since, really, I was full enough.  But I am really hungry today so I am just going ahead and eating both of the small portions that were leftover.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I had salad for lunch.  Delicious though it was, I think this cold weather does require some more substantial meals.

Now to eat that.  Have myself a nice cup of tea.  And snuggle under a blanket on the sofa while watching a bit of The Bourne Ultimatum.

Edited to add: the pulled pork was a success and I will definitely be doing this again, as well as trying similar recipes for beef.  I will probably tweak the spices a few times until I find a few variations I really like.  This time round, I found that the taste of the BBQ powder overpowered everything else quite a bit.  It kind of needed the sweetness of the pineapple in the rice to balance it out a bit.  And I'm trying to figure out how it ended up so spicy (in terms of heat).  Perhaps it was the mustard powder?  It's just a nice amount of heat but definitely more than I was expecting.  Definitely a keeper recipe although since it's so delicious it's definitely easy to eat an awful lot of it.  Four portions is doable but expecting five was a bit too ambitious, methinks.