You know those times when you’ve got an idea in your head and won’t settle for anything else? (I bet you do.)

Today was a bit of a frustrating day at school and I got home pretty late so I didn’t have time to work out before dinner. I was quite hungry by the time I got home, too. Since we’re living in a hotel (another frustration) we don’t have the luxury of one person making dinner while the other does something else, like run errands or work out or just chill. We also don’t have the luxury of a quick, easy pot of pasta and some jarred sauce.

Another source of frustration today is that Malaysia has beautiful fruits and vegetables but, for whatever reason, salad is not a major food group here. I’ve seen lots of cold salads at lunches, but all of them have included meat. I haven’t seen any plain, boring vegetable salads on menus. And because I don’t have a kitchen (I hate not having a kitchen), I couldn’t make the one thing I wanted to eat tonight, which was a plain, boring vegetable salad.

It took some coaxing, but Mitch finally convinced me that we could go to the grocery store, buy ingredients for salad, buy all of the utensils we would need (bowls, forks, cutting board, knife, dish soap, sponge), and make salad for dinner. I protested because we only have a bathroom sink and a desk to work on, but Mitch wouldn’t let me skip eating to go to the gym so I had to eat something. Darn him. But I’m glad I listened.

Our salad included:

• Red leaf lettuce
• Baby butter lettuce
• Cherry tomatoes
• Regular tomatoes
• Cucumber
• Green pepper
• Feta cheese and black and green olives in olive oil (product of Germany)

Et voilà! It was delicious, especially in comparison to the rice I’ve had every day for too many days.

We also bought sugar snap peas but they had a weird soapy aftertaste so we threw them out. The beer section is conveniently located on the way to the cash registers in the grocery store near us, so I’d grabbed a couple cans of Guinness on the way out.

When we finished our salads, I suggested getting ice cream at the Baskin Robbins in the mall where the hotel is. And then I had a better idea: Guinness floats!

And so . . .

Good. Really good.

Sometimes you just want what you want, and sometimes you can figure out how to get it. Today was a frustrating day but it ended with a smile. Onto better things tomorrow!