Of rambutan and meal prep

By Elizabeth Prata

Good morning! Did you ever have a long enough's night sleep and wake up the next morning expecting to be refreshed, but you aren't? Or get a good night's sleep and wake the next morning and leap out of bed with tons of energy? Both happened to me this weekend. Once on Saturday and once on Sunday. Back to back, I'm perplexed. Oh well, I'll take the good night's sleep and morning energy bonanza where and when I can, lol.

A while ago I'd discovered that one of my favorite authors, John Grisham, had written a book of short stories. You know the excitement when you think you've read all there is from your favorite author but you find one more? Like that. I found a hardcover at Amazon for cheap and combined with my points got the last book the seller had for $3.00. I can't wait till it arrives! Later Grishams have been disappointing, but this is a very early book and those, by gum, were really good. So anticipating a new book I can dive right into is always fun.

I got up early to do some cooking. I didn't do any meal prep last weekend and though I had plenty to eat and packing lunches wasn't a burden, I did have to scramble at night when I got home. I'm tired when I get home, and I want just to open the fridge and grab some dinner without a lot of fuss or standing there to cook it. The items I grabbed for dinner last week were hummus and crackers, rice cakes, seaweed chips... but that's not enough of a dinner to sustain me.

I need to eat whole food, non-processed, with no preservatives or my stomach will rebel. That means I have to make myself every meal I eat, and think carefully about every snack I ingest. Rice cakes and seaweed chips are on the edge of manageability for my belly since they are processed, but they have barely any ingredients so I can usually eat them in moderation. But I do need to go easy on them and make them an infrequent snack and not a meal substitute. My usual snacks are fruit or homemade granola. Sometimes a few peanuts if I haven't put them all in the granola.

Anyway, so as not to repeat my mistake from last week, this morning I made:

--Quinoa to have on hand to sprinkle on salads, or to have as warmed over cereal
--Spicy chili. There was a sale on avocados so those will go on top, with sour cream too. ;)
--Baba ganoush, an eggplant dip with tahini and lemon. It's garden time and a friend gave me three eggplants. So...reduce them down into a dip!!
--Fig preserves. A friend gave me a gallon bag of figs, so I made preserves with them, and kept a few back to have as fresh into cottage cheese etc.
--Granola. I use this as cereal, snacks, or to put in cottage cheese.

I use whatever my friends give me and I do not waste any of it if I can help it.

Last week there was a markdown on some weird looking fruit., It was reddish and hairy like a sea urchin. Since the bag of them was only 99 cents, of course I bought it. 99 cents is a small price to pay for experimenting, and for potentially having a new world of fruit opened up to me. Here is what they looked like

You put a sharp knife into the end of it and slice all around from north pole to south. You don't press so hard you slice into the fruit, but only through the skin. Inside the fruit's center is an almond shaped pit. The fruit is about the sizeof a ping pong ball or a bit smaller. It's juicy.

They are called Rambutan, I discovered, and they look and taste like a lychee fruit. I do not like lychee fruit. I did not like rambutan. I ate one of them and threw out the other 4. So only 79 cents wasted and aside from the reddish one in the picture the others were really over-ripe anyway.

The fruit is from Malaysia and actually rambutan means hair in Malay, an apt name, lol. The fruit contains a high amount of fiber and iron, and is sweet and juicy. If you like lychee you'll like rambutan. Nevertheless, I think I will skip the rambutan next time. I've been there and done that.

I cooked my heart out this morning and my fridge is full. It was a hot and busy two and a half hours but worth it. I've already packed my chili serving for lunch tomorrow and I'm looking forward to church at 3:00 later today. But first, a nap.

Have a good week ahead everyone. By the way, I'm really looking forward to this hot weather easing up and getting some fall leaf colors going, pumpkins on the doorstep, wearing long sleeved comfy shirts, and snappy air evenings. Aren't you? Fall, you're on your way and I'll greet you happily when you get here. Fall also means hot tea season!