First of all, I haven't figured out how to properly format my entries and the inconsistency is bugging me.
I appologize to all the "aesthetically sensitive" people out there.
Wednesday night, I had three of my friends over for dinner. As a single person, it's a lot of fun to cook
for a group of friends since I feel that it's worth the effort to create different dishes. It was also interesting
since we're close enough to admit each other's eating quirks. We've run marathons together, seen each
other through tough times and shared our dreams...we're beyond the stage of politeness. So, the cooking
challenge for me was to figure out a menu where we'd all be >90% happy.
I knew one person was vegetarian and one person just started a high-protein/no refined sugar diet. So, my
strategy was to shout out questions as I cooked, such as "do you like eggplant?" Having them interact
with me made it a lot more entertaining and it became a game of how to solve the menu puzzle. Then
solution was to compartmentalize some of the dishes and make as much as possible from scratch, so I can
control the ingredients. We ended up with a nice tossed salad (I made an executive decision on this one
to lessen my stress. Plus, I was aiming for >90% happiness, not perfection). Whole wheat pasta with a
homemade marinara sauce, fresh mozarella and fresh basil. Grilled eggplant with olive oil and balsalmic
vinegar. I bought prepared pot roast from the grocery store, so there would be extra protein.
The guests had figs stuffed with blue cheese and bread to snack on. Also, one of the other girls was in
charge of dessert...simple! They also know that I have a compulsion to clean...dirty dishes in the sink make
me crazy crazier. It's nice to know that we all have our own quirks and issues. I'm so fortunate to have such
wonderful friends who let me just be me, and who kick my butt when I get off track.
We shared each of our vision boards and will follow up after the Chicago Marathon to see how things are
going. Already, some weird coincidences have been happening, so it'll be interesting to track this
experiment as it unfolds. We each had work/business/finance, realtionship and athletic goals.
