Teresa's 3rd New Meal

It's been a sad week in my kitchen.

I was so excited about grilled skewered teriyaki tuna. I made a wonderful marinade with ginger and garlic. I headed out to the supermarket to buy my first tuna steak, but was bummed to learn my selection was limited to frozen. Desperate for the taste of seared tuna, I silenced the voice in my head that said to shop elsewhere for fresher fish.

The man behind the counter assured me the tuna would be delicious when thawed. I fridged the fish and waited the required 24 hours.

The next night I plopped cubed tuna into the patiently waiting marinade. In minutes I realized I had forgotten skewers. I felt I couldn't stray from a recipe at this point in my cooking career, so I let the tuna sit another 24 hours, this time in a wrapped bowl of gorgeous marinade.

In the meantime, I fell in love with a recipe for Spaghetti Squash Lo Mein. I figured lo main and teriyaki tuna would make smashing dinnermates.

The next morning I picked up skewers and a runt of a spaghetti squash from another grocery store. I was unyielding in my desire to try these two new recipes.

Never again will I try two new recipes in the same night.

They both turned out awful. They were great companions in that each was mushy and brown as overripe bananas. Some tuna was fine, the rest fishy. The lo mein was soggy and over-seasoned.

Here is where my limited culinary skills come into play. A chef seeks diversity in flavor, texture and color when orchestrating parts of a meal. I was fixated on the promise of ingesting Japanese! and Chinese! food in the same night. These are two cuisines that I avoid while on a low-carb plan food due to rice. I am powerless against rice. I love rice. And there is no room for rice in my life right now.

For some reason, last night, I took this week's cooking defeat to heart.

Instead of focusing on my series of successes this month, and the six pounds I've lost in 22 days, I concentrated on my failures. I thought about how I've plateaued in my weight loss. Then I thought of other non-related setbacks in my week. Soon while gazing into my fridge, my eyes landed on the container of whole milk. Then they rose to the top of the fridge, where they rested lovingly on the Chips-Ahoy With Real Candy Bits package. Who needs dinner when one has milk and cookies?

Luckily, I spied the remaining half of the spaghetti squash wrapped tightly in my fridge, and I remembered my success two weeks ago with Mock Fettucine Carbonara. I never blogged about it, but I was so impressed the first time I made it. Last night's revisit with Carbonara was good, and satisfying, but not the smash-hit it was the first time. However, it helped lift me out of the self-condemnation hole I had dug, and kept me on the good-carb track for another day.