Light as a cucumber, Stiff as a salad

Because I'm waking up long before the break of dawn to watch THE ROYAL WEDDING (cue Cannon in D), I figured I should stick with a light dinner, not like there's any correlation between the guaranteed sleep deprivation I'm sure to experience and the amount of food consumption but hey, I'm no scientist, I do what I want!

With the past two heavy meals far back, passed out and gasping for air on the track that no doubt is the trajectory of my chefitude-ness, I stuck with an old faithful dish, which requires no recipe.  Da Da Daaaaa...the salad!  I mixed romaine lettuce, kale (more on that in a moment), cut up radishes and mushrooms, green olives, banana peppers--to keep it interesting--and a sprinkling of chopped walnuts.  Topped with some classic Italian dressing, it was perfect!

Have you ever noticed that every now and then, at the most random place ever, you find a food staple that's amazing?  This happened to me a while back, when I was eating a salad at Edwardo's in Wheeling.  Not the classiest of joints but it's decent.  However, I could bathe in their house dressing.  It is curiously good.  Like, you're just a pizza parlor yet you have this amazing secret, kind of good.  I refuse to buy it though, since I fear that if I indulge, it'll lose it's luster.  Kind of like how I listened to Pink's 'Raise Your Glass' so many times that when I hear it now, I want to chop my ears off so the pain will stop.  Although sometimes, I have the opposite reaction, beautifully interpreted here.

Anyway, to go with my light(ish) dinner, I was feeling the whole "water with lemon" thing now that I'm off my pop kick--thank you Lent!  At the risk of sounding dangerously like a health nut quack, there is something to be said for an ice cold glass of water.  It's the lemon that's making it look yellow, I swear!!

With that, I've never understood the "compliment" of telling someone they're like a tall drink of water.  I get it--hot day, need cold water--I'm from Arizona, I know a thing or two about the value of agua--but really?  Interesting fact--if you UrbanDictionary.com it (yeah, I made it a verb) one of the tags is "David Boreanaz".  The vampires are everywhere...but Angel, you were different!

Jetting back to the salad for a second, I had an interesting observation while grocery shopping these past several days--American food packaging is really off the charts.  Do I really need this much kale?  THERE IS NO SMALLER BAG.  THIS IS THE ONLY SIZE YOU CAN BUY. My attempt to demonstrate how large this bag is may have fallen short--you be the judge.

That's a lot of salads to add that too, given that it wouldn't be the main leafy green (too tough) although I found an interesting recipe for a type of kale chip to replace a potato chip (those crazy vegans!  God love 'em) but I burnt the crap out of it in the toaster oven--did I buy industrial?--so I only got to taste one and the rest weren't salvageable.  But the one was good!  I'll have to play around with the temperature and time settings.  And at least I got rid of some of the kale even if it did go straight from the bag, to the oven, to my trash can.

I followed the salad and kale chip (singular) with some cut up cucumber mixed in a spicy chipotle flavored oil blend that my mom loaned me, which was FANTASTIC.  I'd been missing my hot sauce staple lately.

Lastly, thanks to my Irish buds, I found that one of the ways to eat soda bread is to top it with melted cheese so I did exactly that while watching one of my new favorite shows "Happy Endings" on NBC.  Yum, yum, yum...delicioso!

And that's all folks so I bid everyone an "hasta luego" since I'm turning in for the night...but I'll be up shortly and the world will have a new princess!  I should learn how to make a crumpet to go with my tea.  Here's hoping Kate brings hats back in fashion.