Why lite not light?

At least it was lite.

I'm on a 30-day no-alcohol challenge, and yesterday -- day 13 -- I took a short break. It's like when you're swimming across a pool and you have to come up for breath. Right? Okay, not really. But that's what I reasoned at the end of a very unpleasant day in which I interacted with the most unpleasant human I have encountered in 2011. I drank two sidecars while fixing dinner. The bad news is, I failed at my challenge. The good news is, I don't want to do it again any time soon. This morning my husband showed me a picture he took at around 9 p.m. when I was sitting on the sofa in my sleeveless nightgown eating lite Cool Whip out of the tub. The picture is sobering in all senses of the word. I need to stick to my 30 day challenge and I need to go the gym and learn how to use those bicep machines. The picture is also funny and I would post it, but I only post extremely flattering pictures of myself, in case you were wondering why almost all the images of me in "about Jennifer" and "Family" are vintage.

If you are surprised that I even have lite Cool Whip in the house, I will explain. I bought it last spring to make unkind comparisons to real whipped cream, which was easy to do. That I didn't throw it out, well, that is harder to explain. Except, it's not. When it comes to food, I pretend otherwise, but I'm basically a junkyard dog.

On another subject, last night I also started cooking from a new book. Soul of a New Cuisine was fine, but only fine. Marcus Samuelsson's recipes are too expensive and not quite delicious enough. One day last week I spent $90 on two pieces of meat -- a veal shoulder and a rack of lamb -- to cook Samuelsson recipes, and neither was a hit. I decided I was done. 

The new book is Tender by Nigel Slater. I walked into Barnes and Noble with the intention of just browsing for 15 minutes, but I could not walk out of the store without Slater's recipe for beet seed cake.  I haven't made that yet, but it's coming. Last night I did make his Southeast Asian stir-fried lamb with broccoli and as I recall it was pretty tasty.

Honestly, though, it was sort of a blur.