Lunch, Day Thirty-Five

• 1 oz whole wheat penne
• 1 whole package frozen broccoli
• 6 oz tofu (give or take)
• garlic, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, ground red pepper, parsley, oregano, basil
• 2 tbsp low-fat mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup fruit cocktail

For perhaps the first time since starting this diet, I didn't have any salad greens in the apartment. Considering my recently acquired hatred for salad (don't know where that came from), I wasn't really inclined to walk to the store just for lettuce. I also thought that if I went to the store, I would buy other things and realized there was significant danger I would just pig out and completely screw up my diet.

Instead I doubled the amount of broccoli in the pasta salad, which actually improved it immensely I felt. I noticed something strange while preparing this dish as well - after cooking all the ingredients together, I had to refrigerate them to make it a cold salad. As I popped the combined dish into the fridge, I had no appetite whatsoever and felt like I'd already eaten on account of all the effort I'd put in already. Perhaps this is why many chefs don't eat much and come home to eat cereal in the evenings.

Once cooled, this was quite tasty though, and a nice change of pace. I'd used a splash of lemon juice to remove some burnt tofu from the pan, but that actually gave it a very nice fresh taste, which I'll probably include if I make this dish in the future. It took a bit of adjusting to appreciate the mayonnaise, which my brain kept wanting to be a cream sauce, though the powerful flavor of all the spices I'd added certainly made for an interesting contrast with the tangy mayo flavor.