I spent the afternoon yesterday at the cigar lounge working. When I got home, I took a shower, and then before my class started, I ate a couple pieces of matzah. I did this both because it is a mitzvah (commandment) to do so on the first night of Passover, but also because I was hungry. I had originally planned to go to the supermarket to pick up a chicken breast, or some other suitable food to prepare for dinner after class. I was worried I was running late, so that did not happen. I ended up having matzah and butter and jam for dinner and was quite satisfied by it.
Today is the first day of Passover. As a kid, it was always my favourite holiday. The traditional foods are amazing, the story is inspiring, and the songs were always a lot of fun. It was the only holiday on which we would sit around the table and sing. I loved it and still do. Today I am older, and the Passover Seders of my childhood are far behind me. That does not mean that I will not sit with my tiny family this evening and try to share some of that same joy with them. I will be preparing a roasted chicken, and I will make charoset, which is a concoction of apples, nuts, cinnamon, honey, and sweet wine. It is the first time that I am making it, and I do not know how it will work out. I am sure it won’t be bad, but it won’t be terrible.
With all of the matzah that I ate yesterday (including a pre-class snack and after class, plus some chocolate covered matzah that I shared with the family), I was still able to move my bowels this morning. I was also pleased that the numbers on the bathroom scale were substantially down. I am almost back down to my original best weight from 2020 (within .4 lb), which was a better than two-pound drop from yesterday morning. I was thinking that it will not be so difficult to get back to my best-weight-ever territory, which is still six pounds from where I am today. There will only be one or two restaurant meals the rest of this week (if we do not include salads), and so many of the cheat foods that I usually turn to on my partial program are off-limits to me because of the holiday. My diet will consist mostly of eggs for breakfast, salads for lunch, and light proteins for dinner. Even without the exercise that I had been doing prior to this week, I might still lose a couple more pounds before returning to Canada!
My plans for today are to go shopping and then spend the day preparing for the Seder. It will be a very abridged Seder, but a fun one, nonetheless. While the charoset is a bit fattening, and the matzah is one big carbohydrate, everything else on the menu (read: roasted chicken) would be perfectly fine on my modified program… which I am not really doing now. This week my intention was to eat (mostly) smart, but the program was never on the agenda… at least, not after the stomach and bowel issues I have started late last week. On that front, I would not swear to it, but the swollen hemorrhoids might be reducing in size these last two days, as well as in discomfort. They are still absolutely there and big and huge and yucky, but either they are less so than they were, or I am just getting used to them. I am leaning toward the former, and that is not simple optimism. I know there are a lot of discomforts that I have gotten accustomed to over the years… I cannot imagine that is one of them.
I made a lovely three-egg omelet for breakfast. A little bit of olive oil in the pan, a dash of milk in the eggs, some of the leftover cauliflower from the dinner I prepared the other night chopped up, and a bit of shredded sharp cheddar, all with a dash of salt. It was absolutely delicious and reminded me that I do not need bread… and I do not need my meal replacements to eat healthy.
It is a cool and cloudy day today but that is fine because I do not plan to spend a lot of time outside. I have to go to the supermarket to buy a chicken and possibly another box of matzah… depending on whether this store has them or not. Other than that, I will be home most of the day. On second look I do not think the charoset will be too difficult to prepare (it is mostly about chopping fruit and nuts which will be done in the blender), and roasting a chicken is not new to me. The only thing I need to consider is what seasoning to put on the bird, but that will not be the hardest thing to decide.
I suppose I should get started. Have a great day folks!
