Wednesdays are belly dancing nights for Maria and her dancing group. They take it very seriously and dance for hours.  Maria loves her class and works hard at it.

She usually gets home around 8 or 8:30. I am usually writing while she is gone, or reading.  I miss her, but I like being alone once in a while. It helps me to think.

When she gets in, she usually grabs something to eat or skips food altogether and then staggers off to bed and falls instantly asleep.

I take over.

I clean up, do the evening chores, close up the chickens, check on the animals, let the dogs out.

She usually doesn’t want much to eat, but tonight I decided to surprise her with a stir fry of my own making, flavored in some new ways.

It was basically mixed vegetables with rice noodles added. I decided to try some new things.

I cooked the noodles separately, as always (yes, rice noodles have carbs). I chopped up some tofu into small bits and cooked them on the stovetop with virgin olive oil until they were crisp and brown.

In addition to the vegetables (we added zucchini this time to the others), I put in a couple of tablespoons of couscous, a half cup of barley, and the pan-fried tofu, now in small bits.

The grains and noodles all soak up flavor and added a great deal to the stir fry.

I also added some Hoisin sauce (I am coming to see the importance of spices and flavorings and starting to explore them).

When Maria called and said she was on the way home, I heated everything up, mixed it together, and added the Hoisin, then stirred and stirred. I felt this was going to be a winner.

I’m learning that adding small amounts of grains to the stir fry greatly improves the flavor, as the grains soak up the taste of the vegetables and add their own flavors to it.

I like the vegetables to be well cooked but very slightly crunchy. I have to watch closely and test often to get that result.

Maria was surprised when she got home and surprised. I love doing things for her, and she loves doing things for me. It makes both of us happy.

She was very pleased with the meal, even impressed I think. She said it was one of our most delicious stir fry and she loved it, and I was proud. I see that cooking is creative, as most of the things we do, and I am slowly getting more confident about innovating.

That is the advantage of cooking alone, there is no one to ask.

This would not have been possible even a few months ago. I have a lot to learn about spices and I’ll start experimenting with some.

The carb police got on me again for including grains in my list of healthy and low-carb foods. I put them on my protein list, and a number of people instantly burst blood vessels. I could almost hear them popping.

The carb police were right, grains are not proteins, but they are convinced I am part of a conspiracy to hide the truth about grains.  “Why,” asked one angry woman, “do you insist on lying about carbs!”

We live in strange times. I told her that this isn’t Watergate, I’m just doing a lot, working hard, and too busy to do all the homework I should be doing. She is mistaking stupidity and distraction for malice.

I just make mistakes sometimes, what can I say? I hate to hide beyond my dyslexia, I’m just awful busy and don’t always have time to go over every detail. I love writing and don’t care for proofreading, and the proofreading software I use now makes more mistakes than I do, and often adds to mine.

It’s as boring as that. I am glad the Carb Cops corrected me, though, because that is something need to know.

I am learning that there are ways to correct people nicely, but that is a lost art on social media. I did not often handle it well, I’m doing better.

We are losing trust in everyone. I won’t go down that road. When I stop laughing at myself, I’ll be dead.