Couscous totally rocks...the pasta that masquerades as a grain!

check out Israeli couscous sometime. It's the same, but bigger. Little pearls -- kind of like barley (only made of pasta!) or orzo (only small like grains!)

My dinner? Well...full disclosure: 1/3 leftover frozen pizza, some crackers and hummus.

I had a high-protein, no-cook dinner - some cheese, some ham, some grapes and some yoghurt.

I had a wonderful cous-cous salad recipe that I lost, and now I'm sad. It had carrots, raisins, and maybe a tablespoon of orange juice in it, I'm sure. Other things that it may or may not have had: bell pepper, zucchini, green onion, pine nuts or maybe almond slivers. I just don't remember! I know I can just play around with it and get something like what I used to make, but I sure wish I hadn't misplaced the actual ingredient list. It was pretty and yummy.

I hate chopping/peeling squash so I just chop it in half, stick in the oven cut side down with a bit of olive oil smeared over, then let cool a bit, remove seeds and scoop flesh from skin. mmmm.

oh, and last night's dinner was some popcorn, lychees, yoghurt, chocolate and flapjack, which made me feel terrible. Not recommended. Mr alto was out, is my excuse.

All of a sudden it was dinnertime, and I found myself in the kitchen chopping up stuff without any good notion what I was making. As it turned out, we had:

- eggs poached in spicy black beans with plenty of scallion, mine with cheddar, The Fella's without;
- sweet potato oven fries (crusted with spiced flour, which got 'em a bit crispy);
- two dipping sauces for the fries: a sweet chili sauce (a storebought sauce, from a gift basket) and a thick creamy curry sauce based on drained yogurt.

Was good.

Couscous is awesome and fast. I love it, but I don't eat much pasta anymore. Not for any specific reason, just haven't been in the mood for it.

Last night for dinner I had a huge spinach salad with shallots and beets. The dressing was olive oil, lemon juice, coriander and garlic. I'm on this diet (week and a half left yay!) otherwise I would have put honey and a little fresh ground pepper in it too. I was going to have some Wehani rice and black beans last night too, but I wasn't hungry.

Last night, MuddDude tried to make Chicken Fried Steaks. I don't know what went wrong, but they were sort of cold and greasy. I think the meat was too thin and the batter was too runny.

what kind of evil diet forbids fresh ground pepper?