a dinner-time miracle

(this was staged--kudos if you can figure out why)

Lately, I feel like I'm not doing much well. I'm slacking on GRE study planning, compelling myself to go to work each day knowing I have nothing to do is getting more difficult, and I have been totally neglecting the LKTC.  Just a garden variety post-Lent rut, it seems.      


So tonight when I didn't finish with a post-work thing until 7, and didn't get home until nearly 8, the siren-song of the restaurants in Courthouse were hard to resist.  I don't know how Thai at Corner manages to get the wind to blow the scent of drunken noodle in my direction every time I walk past, but it is a highly effective "marketing" ploy. 


But I decided that the LKTC was feeling a little lonely, and settled on eating at home, even though I hadn't defrosted anything pre-emptively.  Trying to shake myself clear out of that rut and all.  And to not go broke.  Minor considerations, really.


When I got home, in what is becoming a tradition, I stood in front of the fridge dumbly looking at the collection of PBR and various types of cheese (cheese?? I don't even EAT cheese! why do I have so much cheese??), and wondered what in the world I would eat for dinner.  I was suddenly regretting passing up Thai. 


I resorted to the freezer.  Maybe I could eat the leftover ice cream from Saturday's peach cobbler?  And then, under a few frozen bananas (you know, some day they'll make great smoothies or banana bread...), I spotted the evidence of some forward thinking that must have struck me back when this adventure first got started. 


In a stroke of (dare I say) genius, I froze quart-sized baggies of homemade pasta sauce with ground turkey, and I froze them flat to make defrosting a quick little trick.  I didn't start making pasta sauce myself until around the time I moved to DC, and I have no idea why I waited so long (and especially why I didn't take advantage of the super high-quality ingredients when I lived in Italy).  I pretty much cringe at the sight, scent, and taste of bottled sauces now.  


Anyways, I grabbed one of these brilliant little single serving size baggies of sauce, and tried to figure out how to extricate the deliciousness. I realized it was frozen flat, but somehow not frozen to the bag itself, so it'd peel right out of there.  Hence the super-surgical scissor attack on the bag, and the giant flat sheet of sauce snapped in half in the pan in the photos above.  


The whole thing felt a bit like cheating, so I exploited the ONE grocery-bought basil plant I've managed to keep alive (the ratio is not great, in case that wasn't already obvious), and sprinkled some fresh basil on the top.  Somehow that made me feel like less of a sham.  


And now I'm going to get to that leftover ice cream.