55. IBP: Daniel Ingram down the rabbit hole – The Imperfect Buddha

I’ve been making a point of having protein (instead of carbs) for breakfast most days: hamburger, steak, chicken. This has helped greatly with the weak/light-headed/dizzy spells I’d been having about a year ago. On the weekend I make a batch big enough to last the week and I’m set.

But on the weekends I look forward to something a little more extravagant: bacon egg and cheese on a roll from the deli, a pastry and cappuccino from the bakery, a salt bagel with tomato and melted swiss from the bagel shop. Right now (#coronavirusdays) those things are off my radar. A quick trip to a public place for prepared food is generally discouraged. Yesterday I ALMOST went to a 7-11 because I have been craving Real Coffee. And I’m not even a coffee drinker! I’m more of a weekend coffee person. And I have instant here…and I do drink it sometimes, but. Come on. It’s hardly the same beverage. It should have a different name. Like how Kraft’s “american cheese” is not REALLY “American cheese,” it’s “pasteurized prepared cheese product.” Instant coffee should really be called like “slightly-coffee-flavored hot beverage powder.”

So here it is the weekend and I’m really jonesing for something carby and satisfying. Plus, it’s rainy and grey. Which only increases the need for comforting foods. I flash on french toast for a moment, but I’m getting a little low on bread…and while the plan is to bake my own bread when this runs out, I already have a baking project in mind for this week (hint: waiting for the bananas to get JUST a little blacker). So, french toast is out.

But pancakes! I make a lovely lemon coconut pancake with blueberry sauce. But my stainless steel pan is still potato-encrusted from yesterday’s hash brown attempt (can’t manage to make frozen hash browns without losing 94.9% of them to the bottom of the pan) and in need of more soaking time. How about the electric nonstick skillet, which is my pancake tool of choice? Oh. Well, while I know where the SKILLET is, I do NOT know where the box from last apartment’s kitchen miscellany drawer is, and that’s where I kept the power cord for the electric skillet. A quick rummage through several relatively easily accessible, still packed boxes, is not helpful.

Not for today, obviously, but it might be faster to order a NEW power cord for the skillet than to find the original one. So…to Amazon I go. Wow, they’re between $15-20. Seems like I could almost get a brand new skillet for that, especially seeing as how the one I have was a WEDDING GIFT in 1989. So my search moves from power cords to electric skillets. Okay, so they’re not as cheap as a new cord, but…maybe I should just get a nonstick PAN, that wouldn’t have the inconvenience of having a separate cord to always lose track of or having to sit on already-limited counter space. So the search changes to nonstick pans and they’re not that inexpensive either.

BUT. Didn’t I just get an email this morning from CVS reminding me that my 40% discount off a single item ends tomorrow – Monday? They have a little kitchen aisle, don’t they? So the search moves over to cvs.com where I discover that while they DO carry non-stick pans, they are only available (at this time) in stores…and there’s no way to check individual stores…and if I was going to go to CVS for a nonstick pan, then I could just go to the deli for an egg sandwich! But…wasn’t I thinking about getting one of those round brush hair drying thingies? I tried Katie’s when I was in CA and while it probably wouldn’t be my “everyday” hair tool, it was very good for neatening up second-day hair, and at 40% off? Seemed like a plan. So the search moved to hair styling tools at cvs.com. But the one I wanted was out of stock…and the second choice was…you guessed it, only available in stores.

I hate to miss out on a 40% discount so I look at folding step ladders (so I can finally put a new bulb in the hallway light that’s been burnt out for over two months) but they’re not the kind I want and OAIS anyway; men’s razors (because I the one I JUST bought last year broke after ONE DROP in the shower…after the one I’d had – which had been my father’s – for over FORTY YEARS had finally just crumbled away in my hands), but the one that matches the blades I have is out of stock online; and my perfume that I ran out of probably more than two years ago, even with the 40% discount it’s only $1 less than I can get ANYTIME on Amazon, so that just doesn’t seem that imperative right now. I looked at heating pads, hair color, skin creams, water bottles, rechargeable batteries, biotin, indoor motion sensor lights, and on and on and on. In the end, after an hour and a half at the computer, I could not find ONE THING that, even with the 40% discount, was cheaper than Amazon’s regular price. So I got nothing.

And it was lunchtime. And I had a can of soup.