Every day

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.
~ Robert Chapman

I don't cook much, but what I do cook tends to be things I've made over and over again, things that I really don't need a recipe for, but can put together by memory. One of those things is a vegetarian chili/soup that I've been making for my lunches at work. I'll make a big crockpot full of it and then eat it all week. I'm beginning to get a little tired of it, but I think this is the third week, so that's understandable.

The recipe is basically this:

• Large can of whole tomatoes
• Regular size can of chili beans in chili sauce
• Small can of tomato paste
• Small onion, diced
• Regular size can of green beans, drained
• Salt
• Chili powder
• Some water

See? I could make it in my sleep.

Except this weekend I screwed it up. I was at the grocery store, and when I was looking for tomatoes, they had some other brand of "diced tomatoes" rather than the whole ones I was used to buying, and instead of about $1.29/can, they were something like forty-two cents. It seemed like a no-brainer to me--TONS cheaper, and I wouldn't have to cut them up.

And they (whoever "they" were) made tomato paste, too, so I bought that instead of the Heinz--it wasn't a lot cheaper, but some, and every little bit helps.

I dumped everything in, including the chili powder and salt, then tasted it. Wow. Salty. Way too salty. Bob was standing there when I tasted it and screwed up my face, and he pulled the empty cans out of the trash and read them. I'm sure the old brand of tomatoes had salt in them, too, just as part of the canning process, but I'm thinking that the new brand had more. That's got to be it, I didn't add that much extra salt to it, maybe half a teaspoon for the whole pot.

But if the tomatoes were saltier, and the tomato paste was saltier, and there's salt in the chili powder, and extra salt . . . I like salt, but this was ridiculous.

I didn't want to throw it away, I hate to waste food, so I thought maybe it would be better after it was cooked, and it was, but not "better" enough. So I went to the store and bought a couple of cans of salt-free tomato sauce, and added them, and it's okay now, just kind of different. More of a tomato soup than a stew. But still good, even though I'm getting a little tired of it by now.

Last month it was a terrible struggle for me to write. I kept thinking, "Is it over? Am I done?" It's been eight years, and maybe I'm getting a little tired of it. So I'd go a week without writing anything, and then suddenly feel like writing again, and then it would be another week . . .

But I do like creating stuff, and I like looking back at the things I've written--sometimes--and I'm not sure I'm ready to stop. So I thought I'd make June a write-every-day-month. We'll see what happens. I'd kind of like to get back into the rhythm of writing every day, although I'm not sure that means a journal entry every day.

I ran across something a couple of weeks ago that said, "Create something every day," and I'd like to try to do that for awhile. I was going to try to be more creative with the journal, but that hasn't happened yet. There's still hope, though.