Greenville and Wheat.

Yesterday was the first day of the two-day wheat test, in which I'm supposed to eat wheat (shredded wheat cereal or whole-wheat pasta) at every meal for two days. If I don't run into any problems with the wheat by the end of the second day (today), I can try whole wheat bread tomorrow. Shredded wheat cereal is about as boring as cereals get, but as someone for whom cold cereal is a go-to comfort/convenience/snack food, sitting down to two giant bowls of the stuff yesterday morning felt pretty great. Coupled with the fact that I've been drinking tea for a few days - it felt like a real breakfast.

I decided to visit my sister yesterday, two hours south in Greenville where she's in school. Through the wonder of facebook, I found out that an old friend from my freshman hall at Wake also lives in Greenville, and so I caught up with Ms. Jess Held (now Martin) for lunch! For all the creepiness of facebook, and the immense drain on productive time that it can be, I have it to thank for an increasing number of real-life reunions with old friends, for the ability to keep in touch with people I would probably not have kept in touch with, and even for becoming good, real-life friends with people I knew casually from years ago. Hannah and I had a lovely afternoon in Greenville, and although eating in restaurants proved a bit of a challenge for me still (I had steamed vegetables and plain baked sweet potatoes at one place, and a very boring build-your-own salad at Mellow Mushroom) I was able to enjoy an Oolong and milk and honey drink at a little tea bar. Post-tea, we realized we had not taken any photographs to document our sisterly weekend, and so we quickly took a slew of awkward self-shots on the way to the car.

Today's agenda includes a long overdue trip to the laundromat and, barring any sudden onset of symptoms, baking bread for tomorrow. I haven't baked anything in ages, so that prospect is pretty exciting. I figured, for the full experience of enjoying bread, nothing beats baking it at home, where the oven heats up the kitchen and the bread smell fills up the apartment. Mmmm... Minus my brief encounter with my wrist bump, I have continued to be essentially symptom-free, which is really nice after spending most of November and December wrapping my wrist up in an Ace bandage and taking NSAIDs. I still have no evidence to tell me whether feeling great is a result of the diet, or whether my on-again-off-again arthritis was just about to start an off-again period that happened to coincide with my diet experiment. I keep introducing new foods until February 16, after which point I just keep careful track of what I eat and how I feel going forward. I guess we'll see.

Dinner tonight will likely be sweet potatoes roasted in the cast iron skillet with chicken, which has proven incredibly delicious in the past. Plus whole wheat pasta, I guess, since I'm supposed to have it at every meal. I'd never really known how to do savory sweet potatoes, but roasting them in an oven in a skillet of chicken fat makes them kind of extraordinary.

You need:

Bone-in, skin-on chicken quarters/thighs/drumsticks
Sweet potatoes
Oil (I used sunflower)
a little salt for the chicken once it's done

Brown the chicken in a skillet with oil. Add peeled, cut up sweet potatoes, turning in the oil and chicken fat so they're coated. Cook until the chicken is browned on both sides, and the sweet potatoes are starting to look slightly cooked/brown on the edges. Throw the whole skillet in the oven at about 375. Cook for another 30-40, or until the chicken is done and the sweet potatoes are soft. (If you use thighs it'll take less time as they'll cook quicker. If you use big-ass quarters like I did below, it'll take closer to 40-50 minutes.)