A Rollercoaster of a Week

Hey everyone!

I've made it through the first full week in the new place. Still getting used to it, but we'll get there somehow :D Food-wise it was an eventful week too — a mix of healthy meals and a little bit of junk food. Honestly, it's not that I can't handle skipping it, because I easily could, it's not a big struggle — it just feels nice sometimes. Especially since between my two surgeries I couldn't eat stuff like that at all, so it's been roughly 9-10 months since I've had anything "bad." So right now it feels good to enjoy some of the old flavors again with this new gut of mine. Of course, everything in moderation — never overdo it, and it'll be fine.

Just the other day I read an article online about a study showing that colorectal cancer is unfortunately fairly common among younger generations these days — yes, my own generation, I still consider millennials young xD. According to the study, this is largely because people eat so much junk food, fast food, ultra-processed and pre-made meals, and of course a bunch of other factors play into it too, like a sedentary lifestyle. So with this new project of mine, it looks like — at least in theory — I can help prevent that nasty disease. That's part of the whole point of this new way of eating. It was a nice bit of positive feedback, realizing I'm actually heading in the right direction.

I don't want to go on forever about last week's meals, but I'll describe them in some detail — just not too much. (I don't want to always dissect it this thoroughly, honestly, since I'm not sure how much people care, but for now I'm still going into the details :D)

The week kicked off with an Asian craving hitting me out of nowhere, so I made a little soy-sauce chicken and egg fried rice. It turned out great — I'd never made it quite like this before, and it surprised me how well it came together. Only thing was, while eating it, it occurred to me that something crunchy would've been nice in there — some vegetables, maybe onion. Oh well, next time. I actually considered adding peas too, but decided against it, since I'm not sure yet how well my gut tolerates the skins.

Then came a quick-fix meal, since I didn't have much time to cook: instant Korean ramen, which I jazzed up with my own soy sauce and two eggs cracked in while it cooked. It came out decent overall, though I messed up the eggs a bit — they didn't get the texture I was going for. Next time, for sure.

Midweek brought a proper Hungarian-style paprika potato dish — except instead of the usual sausage, I used ham, plus a few small chunks of kolbász thrown in for good measure. It was insane. Though I think I messed this one up too, since it didn't really taste like paprika potatoes at all. The story is: it turned out too watery, so I figured I'd thicken it up — decided to add some sour cream. Yeah, not my best idea xD

Then the first real junk food of the week arrived, in the form of a gyros plate. Though I'm not totally sure how "junk" it really counts as, since the meat was fresh and there was nothing wrong with it otherwise — maybe the fried potatoes weren't the healthiest part. Anyway, it had been ages since I'd had gyros, so it hit the spot.

That was followed by a salami pizza... yeah, this is where things started picking up momentum (spoiler: there's more junk food coming later this week xD). After that came chicken thigh with mashed potatoes, made by my mother-in-law — the usual comforting home flavors, exactly as they should be.

On the weekend, my wife and I went out for a walk and grabbed some lángos by the Danube. Nothing beats a proper Hungarian lángos with sour cream and cheese — except somehow (and how is that an accident, really xD) I ended up eating mine with bacon bits and cheddar cheese sauce. What can I say, pretty innovative flavor combo, haha. Never had lángos with movie-theater-style cheddar sauce before. My wife pointed out that I always try out the weirdest stuff — and yeah, fair point 😀

As promised, I closed out the week with one more round of junk food: back at the same spot by the Danube, a cheeseburger and sweet potato fries. The one hiccup was that before I could even start eating, I had to pick the sesame seeds off the bun one by one — a truly magical experience. By the time I was done, it had gone cold, and honestly the taste wasn't anything special either, just average. Oh well. Not even going to mention the couple of beers that went down in the heat. So, looking back, maybe it wasn't the healthiest week — or let's say it balanced out, roughly :D Next week I'll pay more attention, I swear!

Anyway, a ton of stuff has been running through my head this week. My brain's constantly spinning with plans and goals, and I can barely keep up with writing it all down. Like, it occurred to me that maybe I should start logging what I eat and what I want to eat, so I'll have more data for the new web app down the line, and can develop it faster based on all that information. It's going to be a decent amount of work to pull together, but I might give it a shot — it'll help the blog too, since otherwise I'd definitely forget half of it.

I'd also planned some Mediterranean dishes, but that didn't end up happening this week :D I'll try to make up for it this coming week — I've already scoped out a good recipe, and I'll write about it in the next post. I wanted to eat tuna too, and ended up managing it in the form of a little pâté — though ever since that one incident with all the bones, I've been a bit wary of it. I'll work through that fear eventually.

To wrap up, something outside the food world for once.

This week I'm finally starting to work out again. Because of the surgery I couldn't put any strain on my body, but I've been looking forward to this week so much — it'll be so good to finally get moving again. I'm heading out for a bit of a run on a nice track. I've already ordered an abdominal binder for it too, to protect against a hernia forming, and to look after the surgical site on my stomach. On top of that, my buddy and I are sneaking off to a downtown gym on Thursday. Honestly, I'm looking forward to it — should be good, I just need to be really careful with myself.

Lastly, I had a pretty strange realization I didn't expect after 35 years on this earth: I'm into survival-type stuff. Like sleeping out in the woods for a few days — with or without a tent — cooking (whether from food I bring or whatever I find there), building a fire, that kind of thing. I'd genuinely love to try it sometime. I watch a ton of videos about this online, and it genuinely energizes me. Maybe someday I'll actually go do it instead of just daydreaming about it — but for now, with everything else going on, I don't think I'd have the time. And there's still a bunch of other stuff I want to do that I haven't even mentioned — I could probably fill 10 pages with it, which I shouldn't, since this is already the longest post I've written so far 😀

Thanks so much for letting me write here again — regardless of whether anyone ever actually reads it or not.

PS: I'm literally cooking a Greek-style chicken dish with rice and tzatziki while writing this 😀

See you all, and enjoy your meal! :D