Butter Me Up, Baby

The culprit.

See the faint little scar to the right of the fresh gash? Well, my friends, that is one of the newbie’s siblings, and one of the reasons why the hammer finally has to meet the beastly trunk.

Three strikes and you’re out, Mr. Trunk Corner. Having cut my knee for the third time on the savage corner of this Arabian trunk – my family bought it in a souk in Jeddah when we lived there when I was 12 – I have decided enough’s enough: The hammer’s coming out and I’m going to bang that corner until it’s as blunt as a well-worn pencil nib; these legs are scarred enough from years of adventuring in the Sierra Nevadas, namely scaling the boulders in our backyard in Lake Tahoe. Usually, I just shrug it off and let the cut do it’s thang, but today I was in a rush to eat breakfast and get to class, so I slapped on a band-aid, hurriedly poured myself a bowl of cereal, and trotted off like a disheveled school girl.

All-Bran with skimmed milk and raisins.

After class, my friend and I went for a 7-mile run along the river, followed by abs and stretching on the intramural field. Stuck in conversation, she and I decided to forgo having lunch at our homes in favor of treating ourselves to a little something at Holy Cow, a vegetarian café in the student union building on campus. Instead of eating inside, we took our salads and sandwiches (in my case, a wrap) to the park, where we sat in the shade nattering, munching, nattering, munching. By mid-afternoon, we were beginning to feel itchy from the dried post-workout sweat, so we parted: I headed home to shower – in cold water because I was getting so hot and bothered in the sun – and I expect she did the same.

With lunch verging on the lighter side, I was more than ready for a snack by the time I returned from my afternoon lecture, so I chose to have some Greek yogurt accompanied by a crumbled up homemade powerbar and toasted walnuts:

Post-work at the school newsroom, I headed home via the Post Office – my lovely mum mailed a fantastic early graduation gift – to make dinner. For dinner, I was craving pasta – running does that to me – so pasta it was:

Big ol’ bowl of rotini topped with creamy vodka sauce and large flakes of parmesan cheese. No greens necessary because of the salad I ate with my veggie-packed sandwich at lunch.

Pink + Bubble wrap = A tremendous invention.

The gift: An antique plate depicting the University I will be graduating from in 1 month! I love the colors, and since I collect antiques this household addition made me smile from head to toe. My wonderful and nifty mum found it on Etsy, one of my favorite shopping sites.

Question: Do you butter your pasta before topping it with sauce?

Before plating, I took the butter out the fridge with the intention of adding a knob to the rotini, but in the end I opted against the addition, deeming it superfluous. As a child, I loved butter – I was occasionally caught with the whole stick in my mouth – and didn’t think twice about its nutritional value (or lack thereof), but now that I’m well versed on nutrition, I have become increasingly averse to adding it to my meals. By no means have I cut butter out completely – you better believe buttered toast and buttered rice are staples in my diet – but I am more conscious of how much I use it, especially when it comes to using it as a condiment. Part of me thinks I think too much about ingredients, but the other part rests peacefully knowing that my body is irrefutably getting enough fat – predominantly through nuts, avocado, and cheese – to worry that I’m just being disordered. Would my pasta have tasted better buttered? Probably. Would I be a little fatter because of the added fat? No. Will I add butter next time? It depends: I appreciate mixing butter into pasta when it is being served sauce-less and just with cheese, but experience has taught me that adding butter to pasta that is also topped with a creamy sauce can be overkill. What do you think?

Butter aside, I finished off the day with a glass of ice-cold milk – milk any degree warmer than freezing cold makes my tummy turn – and a cupcake while watching Life of Pi (word of advice: read the book first). Exhausted, it mustn’t have been more than two minutes after I licked the last crumb off the cupcake wrapper that I decided it was time for bed. Usually, I’m not partial to going to bed on a full stomach, but some nights I just can’t help it. The upside to going to sleep having just eaten is that I get to experience some crazy dreams.

How much time do you typically leave between your last meal/ snack and bed?  

Do you feel uncomfortable going to bed with a full stomach, or do you sleep better with a belly full of food?   

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