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Day 29: Nostalgia Food

Happy Friday, everyone!  Today, I made a Target run and treated myself to a a very fuzzy new pair of sweatpants (ha), along with the other (actually essential) items on the list.  It was my first time at Target in over a month.... funny how a thing that is so mundane brings so much gratitude now.  Gratitude for the folks there keeping us orderly and stocked, and gratitude for that guy who stood in the cold wind for 40 minutes to buy a pool noodle and a mini-bag of Cadbury mini-eggs.  That gave me a good, hard laugh.

Chili Dogs, Pandemic-Style
Chili dogs are a landmark food for us as a couple.  Jeff and I met on OKCupid, and one of the canned profile questions was a fill-in-the blank: "I spend a lot of time thinking about..."  Jeff said "where to get the best chili dog."  In my initial overture, I teased him a bit: "Too bad that the best chili dog is not in Cambridge, it's in DC.  At Ben's Chili Bowl."  He claims that the bit about the chili dog is what made him write back.  We even had mini chili dogs at as an appetizer at our wedding, in honor of it.

Fast forward two and half years from that first date.  We moved to DC, and just happened to live around the corner from an outpost of Ben's Chili Bowl.  We would go from time to time, and Jeff came to agree that Ben's is, indeed, a pretty awesome chili dog.  While we couldn't go over to U street for the real thing, we made a version that was more than serviceable in Distance.  With a cheesy tortilla, because who has time for hot dog buns?  And shallots rather than onion.  Finished with yellow mustard, a trick we learned from Ben's.
Japchae 
Here is a picture of the deliciousness.  I also had a banana with almond butter and coconut, because darn it, there is still a lot of it in the fridge.  The key to a good banana-with-nut-butter is to dig out a trench in the bottom piece of the banana.  It keeps it from sliding around quite so much.  And it's how my parents did it.  Alice got to eat the banana guts, because even a dog deserves to celebrate Friday.

Avocado Toast
More avocado.  More sourdough.  More grapefruit.  More coffee.

In normal life, I eat the same thing almost every day for breakfast.  It reduces decision fatigue.  I guess maybe this is a sign that I'm settling in to a new rhythm?

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