Dinner of Champions

Last night I had the whole house to myself for four glorious hours, and it was magnificent. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Hubby much like a crazy stalker loves their victim, but as an introvert, I need periods of complete silence and alone time.

I function better when I get my alone time, especially when I’ve had a particular social or stressful week, and this week has been a tad stressful.

Now, I have to give a shout out and mad props to all the mommies out there because I don’t know how you do it. I’m trying to handle a one pound kitten, and I can barely manage. Since he has been stripped (really dumped) from his own momma too soon, he has yet to learn social etiquette and likes to “wrestle” like crazy with pretty much every appendage I own, including my face. I have mini-cuts and scratches all over my body (and one across my lips). You’d think Edward Scissor Hands has moved into my house. So, I’m working on little Oscar’s social boundaries and behavior (gotta break them early, right?), and I can actually handle being his scratching post since he sleeps with his mouth open (Look at those teeth; no wonder they’re carnivores).

It’s the other thing which has me freaked out. The one where we were hanging in the kitchen, and I turned my back for five seconds. Poof, he disappeared. It turns out he’s small enough to fit under the toe kick in the kitchen island, which then leads to the duct work and ultimately the furnace. Yep, he went into the space I can barely fit my hand into (and I have really small hands) and then proceeded to slide down the duct work until he came to a stop at the furnace in our basement. The Hubby and I spent a good forty-five minutes ripping apart the furnace in order to free him, and he cried the entire time for help. It was gut wrenching, and he’s just a cat. He’s completely fine now and back to his crazy attack mode self, but I’m still traumatized.

Now you know why I needed some alone time to just relax. With de-stressing in mind, I came home from work on Wednesday and cracked a bottle a wine (a rarity for me mid-week), so I could sit with a glass, a book and chill. As it turns out, it wasn’t wine. It was champagne, and we don’t need to talk about how I missed that the first time around. I’m more embarrassed about this than I would be wearing a garlic hat.

In any event, I didn’t feel like cooking (gasp; it does actually happen) and just wanted to take it easy, so I nuked some green beans in the microwave (god bless modern technology) and tossed them with lemon olive oil, blue cheese and walnuts. They were good and paired nicely with my champagne. Since I was still hungry, I ate some Beanitos which didn’t go at all with my champagne, so I switched to water. For those of you unfamiliar with these lovely little guys, Beanitos are basically potato chips made out of beans. I love chips, so I love them; it helps they are covered in salt (although still way lower in sodium than your normal bag).

There you have it folks, the dinner of champions: champagne, green beans and Beanitos. Just typing it feels so wrong, but whatever; they’re not all winners.

So what do you eat on your night off? Have you ever tried Beanitos?