Just a Tuesday evening with Tricia

Hello Barrys (and fans of the blog),

Whenever I am home for breaks I enjoy catching up with my good friend Tricia. This break, all she has been talking about is The Barry Table (she is it's number one fan) and how she longs for the good food while at school.
We were chatting away about life and food when we realized that it was approaching 9pm and neither of us had eaten dinner! I know that my mother would be horrified if I skipped a precious meal, so quickly we began going through her fridge.
"How about sandwiches?" I asked (of course).
"Great!"
So we pulled out the lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, onions, several fancy mustards, two kinds of hummus, mushrooms, carrots (?), and a variety of nice cheese. I have to admit, I was getting pretty excited seeing all of these great ingredients come out.
"Uh, we might be low on bread..." Tricia said sadly holding up one end piece in a bread bag. "But I have been wanting make some!"
"Okay!"
So we put the sandwiches on hold and pulled out the computer, to look up a bread recipes, and Tricia's bread maker to (duh) make bread. While piling in the ingredients we realized that making bread in a bread maker takes 3+ hours, so we wouldn't have our dear sandwiches until about 12:45am.
This was no good.
Back to the fridge, and ah, glory, english muffins!
We ended up eating fried egg (with mushrooms) sandwiches on toasted english muffins. The sandwiches had orange pepper, tomato, red onion, lettuce, and garlic chili pepper cheddar cheese (slightly melted, to add a gooey warm goodness that complimented the fried egg nicely).
Mustard was tough decision because Tricia had a wide spectrum of mustard types, from sweet to spicy. Organic whole grain from france went on Tricia's sandwich and organic dijon from Whole Foods for me (both of which Tricia kindly pointed out earned the USDA organic seal of approval).
While I was perfecting the art of the fried egg Tricia took the anitiative to make ours a well rounded meal and busted out her organic roasted red pepper and tomato soup. She chose to heat it up in the microwave, adding salt, pepper, and parsely at precisily the right moment in the heating process. Her specialty.

We chowed down on our fantastic meal while listening to the bread machine continue to knead our precious whole wheat bread, now not needed for sandwiches.

After a few more hours of chatting we enjoyed a nice snack of warm whole wheat bread with seedless red raspberry butter (not organic!) and tazo red apple tea at 12:45am.

A nice bowl of (soupy) oatmeal

I know there are a lot of oatmeal fans out there: John, a year-round oatmeal man who fortifies his with a big spoonful of peanut butter; Kevin, who makes it as a snack any time of day or night; Mike, a steel-cut oats purist; and Pam, who sits next to me at the winter table eating something hot and made of oats, but quite different than my oatmeal.

I like mine real soupy, with lots of nuts and fruit. (So soupy that certain family members make fun of it.)

I start with whatever piece of fruit Pam has cut in half, usually a pear or apple because it's winter, sometimes a banana or peach. Chop that up, then break up a good half handful of walnuts or pecans or mixed nuts, and for extra flavor add in some chopped dried fruit, like the excellent apricots and plums that Brian gave me for Christmas.

And of course the oats, just under a half-cup of quick oats from the cardboard tube.

I add enough water mixed half and half with soy milk or dairy milk to almost fill the bowl, and give it four minutes in our underpowered microwave. If it comes out thick, I add some more water before sitting down to read the papers and take in a fine well-balanced meal. That's good eating!