Thursday, June 06, 2019

pain, the de-motivator

I think my right foot is getting better, but I'm not completely sure. We're off work today because it's Memorial Day here in South Korea, and I've been flat on my back pretty much all day. I'd had big, ambitious plans to be out on the paths, walking a 30K-plus-step route, but the pain of getting up and moving about my apartment has de-motivated me to the point where I don't even want to do the cooking I'd thought I'd be doing. I have some cukes and carrots that need pickling, a mass of bacon that needs frying up, and calzones that desperately need to be made (I'll be using Wolfgang Puck's pizza-dough recipe, courtesy of Chef John from Food Wishes) before the delicate salami in my fridge goes rancid.*

I'm thinking I might just forgo the cooking until the weekend, and if my salami has gone bad by then, well, I guess I'll break my austerity and buy another package. I've broken my austerity way too often this pay period, anyway, so... in for a penny, in for a pound.



*The idea is to make six calzones and freeze them immediately. This isn't ideal: the notion of reheating frozen calzones in a microwave causes an actual twinge of pain. Ideally, I'd pull the frozen calzones out the night before, let them thaw, then reheat them in some sort of oven—a toaster over or whatever. That's not possible, alas; the closest I can get to reheating the calzones without damaging the dough is to 'wave them first, then finish them off in a pan on top of a gas range. That sort of reheating risks smoking, so I may have to do it outside. Luckily, the fifth floor of our new office building has an open space where a man can quietly reheat his food without being disturbed. Or so I hope, anyway.

SIDE NOTE: I'm calling them "calzones" out of habit. Technically, they're going to be stromboli because they'll have tomato sauce on the inside.

ADDENDUM: I did manage to pickle some cucumbers and carrots. So there's that.



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