I DO NOT want to think about food or see any kind of food-related object for at least twelve hours.

Why the distaste at the moment??

I have been around food or doing food-related activities for what seems like all frickin' day.

This morning, after a mini powwow of neighborhood ladies, I headed off to the commissary to do my grocery shopping. This is a good week to do it; it's not yet time to stock up for everyone's Memorial Day cookouts, and it's a week after payday. Technically payday was Monday, but when it falls on a Monday, the money gets deposited on Friday.

I was right -- the commissary was pretty much empty. The produce was still looking pretty good, and the meat department had plenty of meat. I got a cheap pot roast to make on Sunday for Grace and me, a recipe my mom cut out from Heloise's Hints a billion years ago. And boy, is it GOOOOOOOD!

I got everything on my list, although it took me at least ten minutes to find the bread crumbs. I had asked a passing commissary lady where they were located, even though she made it clear that she didn't think that guiding lost customers to their desired products were in her job description. She pointed me down a random aisle and took off. After another five minutes of wandering up and down aisles, I finally found it about two feet from where I was standing where I waylaid the passing commissary lady.

Oh well. Lesson learned.

I also managed to save nearly $20 in coupons! Wooo!! Go me!! Usually I'm doing good if I can manage to save $5. My local newspaper doesn't give out very many coupons, and the ones I do manage to find are mostly for products I don't buy anyhow since I tend to make most of my food as much from scratch as possible. It tastes better that way.

I also found these Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich thingies selling for $2.50 or so each. Makes me so irritated because they were ON SALE at the local foo-foo grocery store for $6! Had I known they were so cheap at the commissary, I would never have bought them at the other place.

We were at the commissary for probably two hours. I have no idea why it took so long! Gracie was pretty fussy by the end of it, poor girl.

I was extremely bad and stopped at McDonald's on the way home to get lunch. I prefer Wendy's far above Mickey D's, but seeing as the Wendy's was in the opposite direction and the McD's was right there on base, I went to McD's.

Once we got home, I set Gracie up in the high chair with her nuggets and her apple slices and started bringing in groceries. That, of course, turned into the biweekly clean-out of the fridge, where I get rid of the produce I haven't managed to eat and investigate leftovers forgotten in the back of the fridge. I also managed to get around to cleaning out my garage fridge which was full of things that had been in my kitchen fridge when it went on the fritz.

A year ago.

Now before you get all vomitous on me, the stuff that was still in the fridge were things like salad dressing and sauces. None of it was stuff that would really spoil, but I didn't trust any of it because of its age and the fact that it had been in the fridge when it went on the fritz.

Although it was really gross to see the bag of salad that dated to December 24.

In my defense, my darling husband has been getting the salad out of the garage fridge for me to replenish the kitchen fridge. We all know men -- most of them have no clue regarding the rule of "use the old stuff first." So he'd probably gotten out the new salad back in December and this bag had been pushed to the back.

It was still gross.

Once both fridges were cleaned out and the groceries put away, it was already 3:30pm, nearly 4. I sat down and watched Oprah (that two-legged dog cracked me up! How cool is that??) for a few minutes before getting sucked into checking email. Next thing I know, it's 5pm, and I want to get the roast ready for the marinating process. Heloise's recipe calls for marinating it for 24 to 48 hours, and then it has a six-hour cooking time. So if I want to have it on Sunday, I needed to start it now.

Once the roast was safely ensconced in its marinade in the fridge, it was time to cook dinner. We had Asian Skillet Chicken, which turned out QUITE yummy, but took about an hour to prepare, what with defrosting the chicken in the microwave and simmering it for 30 minutes.

Dinner didn't take long to eat, and then it was time to clean up. And I had made a MESS.

I didn't finish until about 7:45. So for seven hours today, I've been around food or preparing it.

YUCK.

Maybe I'll head off to the freezer for one of those ice cream sandwiches....