Alethea in real life...

So dear friends, I feel sadly inadequate when it comes to contributing to this blog, but nevertheless, I will do my best!

Let's be honest - I'm a lazy person. Especially when I'm tired after working all day. Hence, I get home and feel largely unmotivated to make myself dinner. Yes, I know, you gals work/study all day and still have the energy and commitment to cook for yourselves. For that I applaud you. This is not to say that I go out to eat every night or heat up Lean Pockets in the micro either. Yuck. Most of the time, I reheat leftovers from lunch or from going out to eat some other time, or I make a salad or a sandwich, or I heat up some Trader Joe's Indian food (surprisingly very tasty and a very good price). I'll chronicle my few attempts with cooking down below... but first, a few thoughts on why I haven't made a huge effort to cook since "growing up":

1. The point stated above - I'm tired when I get home and don't want to have to go through a ton of prep to have dinner ready. I'm also lazy and would rather eat right away.
2. Food (and everything) in NYC is SO expensive. Because of that, I usually only buy the essentials when I go grocery shopping - stuff for sandwiches, salad, breakfast food, snacks, etc. I don't tend to buy stuff in the off chance I'll be cooking since it's pricey. This includes everything from onions to sugar (two things which I finally bought today so I could try to cook more). When there are times I want to cook, I don't have the stuff I need... My roommates don't either, so then I just fall back on the same old, same old.
3. Sometimes it's also a lack of forethought. If I get out of work early enough and I realize that I can make X for dinner, but need Y, then I can at least go get that from the grocery store on my way home. But I often don't think of that until I'm home.

So that's some of my ramblings. With regards to the price of food here, it also requires a lot of time and energy to figure out which store has what for the cheapest and to then plan ahead so that I can get everything I need from the various places for the cheapest. Sigh, the cost of living in NYC!! What I wouldn't give to go back to Vt....

For dinner tonight I did cook. I baked a sweet potato - unfortunately not for long enough since it was slightly undercooked, but that's ok. Broiled a chicken sausage and had some salad too. Nice, balanced, didn't take too long or require too much preparation.

For my next post, I'll give you the recipe for a rice salad thing I made when I was fed up with all the random food I had and wanted to make something with it...