Friends, I spent a total of 8 weeks living out of a hotel while we transitioned from Wilmington to Greenville.  2 months of my life.  Living in a tiny room out of a suitcase.

At first it wasn’t so bad, but as it turns out, I’m SUPER picky and high maintenance, so the arrangement soon began to wear on me.  I bounced around between a couple of different hotels in the area to try to find the “best” one that had my trifecta of a good workout room, some sort of kitchen area, and good wifi (surprisingly difficult to find).  Most hotels had 2/3 but I never found the elusive Hotel Utopia.

Along with that a combination of not having my own stuff, plus other stresses and emotions that come with finding new jobs and moving had me feeling pretty down.  One major area where I focused my displeasure was not being able to make any of my own food.  I missed cooking.  Eating out for every meal starts to feel a little disgusting, doesn’t it?  I did find a few hotels that had tiny kitchens but that comes with its own set of problems too.  It’s REALLY hard to grocery shop for one person for one workweek.  I ended up overbuying or underbuying, spending way too much on convenience foods, spending too much on stuff like spices and oils that just got thrown away, etc and got really frustrated by the whole ordeal.

I started daydreaming about being able to cook my own freaking dinners.  As I bitterly ate my sad, spiceless meals I would make lists in my head about all the foods that I wanted to eat once we finally got an apartment.  Avocado Toast? ABSOLUTELY.  Eggs that didn’t come from powder, CAN’T WAIT.  Homemade Chiptole bowls?  NO DOUBT.

Then the damndest thing happened.  We got an apartment, I went grocery shopping for our first night there, and was completely overwhelmed and RACKED with indecision about what to make.  WTF, Self.  I wandered the aisles of our Super Target like so:

I had been waiting for this day for what felt like SO LONG.  And I couldn’t even come up with one freaking thing to make.  I eventually pulled myself together and picked something (Pesto Shrimp + Orzo, for anyone interested) and went home to cook.  And it was amazing.

I’m still getting into the swing of buying and preparing food over here, but I’m happy to get some of my favorites back into the mix and thought I’d share that today!  As always, thanks to Jenn for creating WIAW!

I started the morning off with some hot lemon water.  Oh how I missed my silly little (probably placebo effect) “healthy” rituals.

Breakfast was my #1 favorite breakfast meal.  Glad to see you, old friend.  Greek Yogurt, strawberries, honey, and Peanut Butter Cheerios.  I threw on some Trader Joe’s Ancient Seed Blend on top just for kicks.

For lunch, I had a salad and I actually enjoyed it.  I totally could have had salads every day while I was forced to eat out for lunch….but given the choice between something hot and non-salad like, I will choose the non-salad every time.

This was a Greek salad of sorts: chicken, feta, cannellini beans, tomato, cucumber, olives, red wine vinaigrette

Dinner was another one of my favorite go-to meals.  Noodles with peanut sauce.  This permutation had pork, snow peas, red pepper, and shredded carrots.

At the end of the day, I also had a (unphotographed) cup of Moose Tracks ice cream.  I say “cup”, not because I measured it, but because I actually ate it out of a drinking cup.  I completely misjudged how many bowls we would need in the apartment and I didn’t have it in me to handwash one.

If you couldn’t cook for two months, what’s the FIRST meal you would make?  What one food item would you miss the most?