Since Will works from home, I often get to come home to lovely household messes. Not giant, the world-is-going-to-end messes but little things out of place here and there that add up to drive me crazy.

My kitchen, for example, was clean when I left this morning…

No, not that bad. This is the tame, teaser mess. I’m not even going to show you what the office looks like.

See, I’m a neat freak. Freak being the key word. I like things to be immaculate with all the pieces put away where they belong. Organizing is a hobby for me (yes, I know how lame that sounds). So I can’t get too mad at Will for leaving his coffee making materials all over the counter or that the blankets from our bed have migrated over to the office.

Will’s been extra busy (and therefore extra messy!) these past few days as he finishes up his thesis. Yeah, we’re still kids. It’s funny – today at work someone was saying that don’t like people in their twenties when I pointed out that I am one of those youngsters. “A young 20, too. Only 22,” I said and the new girl who started today turned in absolute shock and expressed to me that she couldn’t believe I was that young. I’ve always looked old for my age but any day now I’m going to hit that spot where that’s no longer a good thing. Maybe I should stop stressing about things being out of place. Stress ages!

But moving on from all this talk about stress, mess and age. I’m feeling a little worn out from my day tonight (further evidence for this morning’s post on why the morning work out is essential!) and so the thought of cleaning up messes, which I normally do because I’m the one who is bothered, and making dinner all seemed bigger hurdles than I wanted to jump.

But a girl’s gotta eat!

I preheated the oven for Will’s dinner so I decided to take advantage of that for mine as well.

I don’t talk about Will’s dinners very often but they are never the same as what I eat.

For example, tonight’s Will dinner:

Tonight’s Katie dinner:

I don’t even think twice about how differently we eat but our friends and family are always commenting. Will is a carnivore with a limited range of foods he is willing to eat. This stems from a very serious bout with salmonella when he was younger, which resulted in a life-long phobia of foods. I do see the irony that we ended up together. Food causes panic and anxiety for Will and it is a form of relaxation and pleasure for me.

Like tonight. While I had not intended to do any big cooking, I ended up making a meal similar to one I would create on an ambitious night. As I got going with the process of making each part, I calmed down bit by bit.

Since I was taking advantage of the heated oven, I decided to use up the eggplant that was starting to wrinkle on my counter. I always roast the cubes in the oven and they usually turn out better. The flavor was lacking tonight and the gooey texture seemed to prevail. I think I rushed them because I just wanted to eat lol.

The other side, while it may look complex, is the easiest thing to make. Brown rice with roasted chick peas. I detailed how to roast the chick peas here but tonight I just did them plain, no lemon, with a little sprinkle of Fresh and Easy fajita seasoning. For some color and flavor, I added a chopped tomato and some salsa. A little Mexican flare!

Extra chick peas found there way into a salad for tomorrow’s lunch.

Salad = easy prep and volume to eat aka a win-win in my book!

And on the side (meaning munched while I impatiently waited for the eggplant to cook) is my first watermelon of the season! Melons are some of my favorite fruits and a reason to look forward to summer. As we get into that season, you’ll hear me long for winter more and more. I’ve always been the odd ball who likes winter more. Anyone else?

But the fruits and veggies sure are better in the summer.

This one was actually really good considering how early it is.

Wish I could say the same for the rest of the dinner. The eggplant, as mentioned, was a little too soggy and the rice and chick peas each tasted good on their own but I wanted more flavor out of the combination and even with the salsa/tomato addition, it was still lacking.

Oh well. The beauty about meals is that there’s always another one not too far away. In tonight’s case that’s my desert bowl when hunger stikes again later this evening. It always does.

Time to relax now. See ya’ll later!