I am having a really exhausting week of getting up at 4:30a and riding the bike thirty miles a day. My brain is not really working. I am still hungry, though.

A couple days ago I was craving steak for some reason. John and I went out the door to have a nice cool walk to the store. Then we ran into our next-door neighbors who instead drove us to the store at which John started spontaneously filling the basket with porterhouse steak and tiny bay scallops and peppercorns and mushrooms and shallots and three different Ritter Sport bars. Then we came home and went next door where I sat down and ate snacks while John made us all gigantic multidish dinner.

Can I remember what was in these? An excellent question.

Carrots and peas with melted onion in butter and five pounds of parsley; scallops in butter with garlic and another pound or two of parsley, plus lemon; green beans and orange pepper in the last of the shallot butter from the peas and carrots; porterhouse steaks (two for three meateaters) seared and covered with onion and mushroom in butter plus yet more parsley. I think we got through one and a quarter of the steaks. The rest will be consigned to stroganoff at some glorious future date.

You notice that we have no qualms whatever about all eating out of the same dish. Whatever. It's nice to have friends with whom we can eat like we'd eat normally.

By the end of dinner, I had lost the ability to stand upright, due to meat overload. Too much meat makes my stomach hurt. I sat on the floor eating chocolate squares and discussing which of them were better until it was time to go home.

Then I had a week of biking. I am building all the endurance! This weekend I am going to sleep for a week.