How I'd Like to Eat

Barbs became my friend because she was a VSO volunteer and I applied to become one but ended up in a corporate job in China instead of my choices, Africa and Afghanistan.  It's fun to visit homes of friends from the NGO world because they have this multi-cultural richness, artistic vibe but the best thing is sharing a meal with them because they tend to prepare and eat healthy food.   

Barbs' ref door has always been filled with postcards from the world over and her bookshelves caving in from the weight makes me wish for a split second I was still collecting physical books and not kindle-dependent.  

This is the yummiest, healthiest meal I've had in a while.  Jozef prepared lentils while Barbs did a red rice version of the tabouleh, home-made hummus and fish.  Barbs and Jozef keep a food log of their weekend meals and I'm lucky and grateful Barbs emailed me the word file of recipes.  If Jozef had his way, he would have it published and given out to friends but Barbs would have none of that.

This is the view from Barbs' home at the fifth floor -- expansive and you get your fill of sky, clouds and green with bonus mountains.  Mother pigs with their babies walk below and Barbs refers to them as her own.  Only Barbs would be such a beautiful soul to see.

So following Barbs' inspiring example, I get off my cushy ass and expand my cooking repertoire.  I get discouraged whenever I cook and it doesn't taste the way I want it so I avoid the task for a while, make all sorts of excuses until the next urge arises. Since friends from high school were visiting, I thought I'd give the tabouleh a try because of Barbs and because three years ago, I fell in love with this salad in a park in China when a middle-eastern friend prepared it for our picnic.

I've also always wanted to pick leaves from the herb garden where we live.  Funny how you have these things you want to do and there's no reason for you not to do it but it still takes some time before you actually do it.  Isn't that called procrastination?  But procrastination is such an ugly word.  

I'm happy and not discouraged with the meal I made although I didn't get the tabouleh exactly right.  Right means going OMG that is SO good after biting into it.  I kinda got the salmon pesto pasta right.  The ingredients of tabouleh took too much time to cut, it pushed back the time for the other dishes so in the future I'd like to try out the quicker recipes.

But thanks to Barbs and Jozef, I'm open to cooking again.