Wow, free food just seems to breed more free food, and I’m loving it! I feel like everyone’s looking out for me — and that’s such a nice feeling in the midst of the working-full-time-for-free-while-in-grad-school lifestyle :-).

As Vianni left work last night, she announced to me, “Sarah, if I cook tonight, I am bringing you food tomorrow.” And she did not let me down! Just as she did last week, Vianni walked in this morning and immediately unloaded a tupperware of her seasoned chicken and vegetable rice onto my desk calendar/placemat:

How yummy does that look?? I put it right in the fridge to await lunchtime.

And the food kept coming! I ate my orange as a mid-morning snack, and when I got back from my first visit of the day, there was a ripe banana sitting on my desk, also from Vianni. The banana is now chopped and happily resting in my freezer :-). I couldn’t sit down and eat with my coworkers because I had another visit at 1pm, but I joined them for a five-minute “pre-lunch” before I had to head out. Mildred shared her sopa de mondongo (and some avocado!) with me:

When I was in Peru last summer, I always heard talk about mondongo, the miracle hangover cure. I never tried it because many foods in Peru were on the no-no list according to my Peruvian host family — food health standards there are, ummm, not enforced so much.  I ended up sick several times though, so I probably should have taken the risk anyway!

But back to today, yayyyy for new food experiences! I was so excited to finally join the I-have-eaten-mondongo club. The meat in mondongo is actually tripe — aka cow stomach — which might make some of you feel ill. But even though I’m not the hugest meat fan in the world, I’m all for experimentation in the name of cultural experience ;-). Now that you know what you’re looking at, here it is again:

I only had those two little spoonfuls since I knew I’d be back in an hour or so for my real lunch … and what a feast I had! Vianni brought me a TON of food. I made myself a plate with some chicken, her rice mixed with the brown basmati (for whole grain health, of course) I’d brought, and about half of my curry on the side (for veggie-power):

(In case you can’t tell, these are teeny dessert plates — not regular-sized dinner plates!)

This chicken was so good!

And here’s a close-up of the yellow rice to brown rice ratio:

Vianni brought me so much food that I was able to save some of the rice and chicken to have with the rest of my curry for lunch tomorrow and bring home an additional cup of rice (now in my fridge). Thank you Mildred and Vianni!

For lunch dessert, I had my Greek yogurt + apples + bananas + raisins + ginger:

Perfectly filling! I ended up eating my afternoon snack of broccoli trees + roasted red pepper hummus around 3:30, and I had my apple as I was leaving work at 5:00 to tide me over until dinner. I did not end up eating the raisins + pb that I had packed to go with it (although I did have my five daily pillow mints from Belkis’ candy jar), and I still have the Quaker True Delights bar in my bag that I’ve been carrying around all week! Maybe it will come in handy tomorrow? It’s anyone’s guess!

Dinner

Normally, Tuesday is a double workout day, but today, it became an inadvertent rest day! I was up so late last night deliberating about the BSI that I opted for seven hours of sleep in favor of five hours of sleep followed by 5am gym. I was still planning to do running club tonight, but after a very hectic morning of running late and several false departures from my apartment (forgot my hair elastic, forgot my cell phone, lost my keys, etc.), I decided that I needed a night at home to regroup! Glad I did because it ended up snowing alllll day, and by the time 5pm rolled around, the only place I was headed was to my apartment. I made a quick little scramble of leftovers and some of this week’s food collection:

In the teacup, we have the rest of last week’s GC tofu, yellow squash (from the stash I found last night at school), 1 date, and the final bit of goat cheese from the lecture I attended last Thursday. I sauteed everything with minced garlic, drizzled it with balsamic vinegar, and sprinkled it with coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Yummy and classy!

For dessert #1, I returned to my old stand-by: the Vitamuffin. This was a dark chocolate pomegranate vitatop with yogurt, honeydew (also from last night‘s findings), nutmeg, and ginger:

And for dessert #2, a spoonful of the frozen carrot cake I saved from when Mildred brought it to work last week:

Perfect way to end the day!

Oh, and speaking of how everyone is looking out for me, huuuuuuuuuge thank you to Erin Gunn, the most amazing friend who overnighted my camera battery to me last night because I left it at her apartment over the weekend! No one was home when the mailman tried to delivery it (of course), but I’m expecting redelivery within the next two days and will hopefully be able to return to my camera ASAP. In the meantime, thank you to roommate Brigitte for continuing to let me kidnap hers 24/7!!

And now it is bedtime because I will be returning to my 5am gym schedule tomorrow, snow or … snow.