That's like hypnotizing chickens

The more I train, the more I'm amazed at the amount of cooking that I have to do. "Five small meals a day", They say, but They don't tell you that that also means an increased amount of shopping, perusing cookbooks, washing dishes, digging Tupperware out of the back of the cupboard to be able to save the leftovers in the hope that you'll have one less meal to cook some time in the future.

I'm not complaining, really. Five small meals a day also means that you get the opportunity to try new recipes, to diversify what you eat (you don't repeat recipes with five small meals a day, especially if they're recipes that require a lot of prep.) New fave: Chris Carmichael's black bean hummous (good thing that it only takes five minutes to make.) But on the bike, I'm thinking of food. Lying in bed in the morning, I'm thinking of food. What I can eat. What I can't eat. I hear "Lust for Life" by Iggy Pop on the iPod as I'm riding in the Casa de Campo, I think of how to prepare chicken breasts in some flavourful way so that I don't gag on the white meat. I smell meat barbequeing in the restaurants around the Lago and I start thinking about how I don't eat enough beef.

I think about food a lot when I go to the Mercado de los Mostenses and think about what a good thing it is that I only have one person to cook for. It's one of the things that makes me grateful that I live alone, that I don't have kids: I can eat things like liver and Brussels sprouts, food that would cause a minor revolt in most households.

In, out; in, out; in, out. Energy consumed; energy expended. That's like hypnotizing chickens, sings Iggy. I don't know where that line comes from (or, for that matter, what it's actually supposed to mean) but it always makes me think of food.