Do you ever have one of those days at work where everything just goes wrong?

Yesterday afternoon, I was on the bus, about a quarter of the way to work, when I realised that I’d left my keys (including the crucial locker key, without which I would be unable to retrieve my uniform) in my friend George’s car. So I got off the bus, and called my Dad, who very generously picked me up and drove me to George’s house to get my key, and thence to the closest tram stop. After all this, I was half an hour late to work. Luckily my manager, Ben, is a top bloke and very understanding. However, because of my lateness, I was basically thrown head-first into successive sold-out sessions of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and spent my whole shift feeling very lost, running drinks into the cinemas, up and down stairs with heavy trays of glasses. For some reason I was really klutzy too, and kept spilling drinks and knocking shit over – glasses of water, champagne, beer etc. At one particularly low point of the evening, I spilled two glasses of champagne down my top. My uniform is black, thank goodness, but I still smelled like an alcoholic for the rest of the evening. I finished work at 11:30pm, determined to come straight home and sleep, to prepare for my next shift, which started at 11:00am the next morning.

Soon after I came home, however, my friend Liam popped over to say hi. Liam, my brother and myself stayed up watching Ricky Jervais’ Politics on DVD. Fucking brilliant. It was so funny that I barely even noticed the time, and suddenly it was 3:30am! I was a bit worried about how I'd handle the next day. However, the next morning, I woke up on time, went to work, and had an excellent shift, with everything running smoothly and no dramas at all. I was in kitchen, not waitering, which basically meant that I just cooked all the orders as they came in, and made OTHER PEOPLE run them into the cinemas and deal with the customers. It was a great shift, but needless to say I was rather buggered when I got home at 7:00pm, just in time to make dinner.

That might have been a long-winded way to start this post, but the point was (and trust me, there is a point) to illustrate how wonderful and easy tonight’s dinner was.

184. Chicken with Salsa Verde (Fast Food)
185. Miso Mustard Dressing (Low Fat)

The chicken is chicken breasts, poached for about 10 minutes in some stock (cubes with water), with parsley stalks, bay leaves and a chopped carrot (I had no celery). While that was going on, I made some lentils, cooked as per another suggestion in the Fast Food chapter. That is to say you firstly cook a finely chopped mixture of onion, garlic, carrot and parsley in some oil, tip in the lentils and then warm them through. I’ve tried this many times before with other pulses, and it’s a great accompaniment.

I also made a salad dressing from the Low Fat chapter – miso, wholegrain mustard, honey and orange juice to go with baby spinach and cos lettuce.


Dressing

And then the salsa verde. This just involves bunging everything into a processor and turning it on.

Then all I had to do was put the food on plates, and a lovely, healthy and nourishing dinner for my mother and I was served.