Take a break from your regularly scheduled programing...

...to talk about food. Tonight I had plans to meet up with a couple of friends, have dinner, and watch True Blood. The dinner part alone was enough to get me excited about the evening, but that in addition to being reunited with this and this sent excitement levels out of control.

In anticipation of Eggplant Parmigiana that was to be on the menu, I decided to prepare for it by working out at the gym for an hour and half and having a "light" lunch. I think I just need to go ahead and make peace with the fact that I'll never be one of those women who can have a "light meal" anytime, least of all on a Sunday. I survived on my light meal of toast, cereal, and fruits, until about 5:30pm, but on my way to my friends' place, my head was so full of cheese and pasta that hunger started humming. Pretty soon that hum turned into a buzz and the buzz turned into a sound worse than those vuvuzelas at the World Cup. I didn't think I could survive for another minute without some carbs and had to alter my travel plans to make an emergency pretzel stop on my way to the meetup.

I finally arrived to their place and wonderful and tantalizing smells of garlic and cheese welcomed me. I was again out of control with excitement and even offered to help out in the kitchen so as to be as close to the food as possible. Finally, after what seemed like eternity to me but was only a few minutes, we sat down for dinner and True Blood. To say that the Eggplant was delicious would be an understatement of the century. Everything about it - the sauce, the cheese, the actual breading, was perfect. The accompanying apple salad was also light enough to allow us to think that we were eating a healthy meal, but also delicious enough to not make us feel as if we were having salad. My hosts are truly wonderful cooks, I can't emphasize that enough. Between the food and Eric and Bill on True Blood, I had achieved Nirvana.

Now, normal people usually show up for dinner parties wearing jeans or a nice pair of pants. But when food is involved, I refuse to hold myself up to such standards set by society, and instead showed up in sweat pants so as to facilitate maximum possible eating. I'm just going to go ahead here and state that elastic pants are man's best invention. And judging by how much I ate, it was definitely a wise decision.

But as all good things come to an end, I had finally reached a point where I could eat no more. I had to eventually turn down a third serving that my head had promised my stomach. I also had to dig through all my will-power to make the toughest decision of the evning: turn down the offer to take away left-overs. It was a hard thing for me to do, and I thought about that decision the entire tram ride home, but when I stood on the weighing scale upon coming back and saw the numbers that it displayed, I knew it was the right decision.

But fear not, for I intend to make such dinners a regular occurrence. My friends don't know this yet, but I intend to fully integrate myself into their culinary activities. In fact, I'm off now to devise a strategy to do just that. I'll post a progress report on implementation of said strategy on a regular basis. Until then, Good night, and hope you had as wonderful a dinner this evening as I did!