Strawberry Quesadilla

I'm going to start this by shouting, "It's SO good to be me!" Life is quite ordinary right now, but I still feel so good about everything! I now have less than two weeks left at the zoo, and I will definitely miss it. I enjoy working nights when the crowds are smaller and everyone is more relaxed, and I imagine that is what the off season would be like. A few days ago I got to watch as a reindeer was walked down the road that leads past the lion and jaguar exhibits in Elephant Odyssey. The jaguar was very interested in this prey animal and came right up against the exhibit fence, much to the delight of everyone on my tour bus. It's funny how life can seem so ordinary, then I have an experience that reminds me that I work at this incredible zoo, and I just feel so excited and happy to be alive.

On a less exciting note, I had a frenectomy on Tuesday. Big word for a periodontist using a tiny little scalpel to cut the piece of skin between my lower lip and gums below my lower teeth. I was so glad to be heavily numbed during the procedure--just feeling the pressure and watching the blood made me cringe. I'm very glad that a nutrition course was required for my degree at WSU, as I learned a lot of things to take with me into the future! Vitamin C is very important for collagen synthesis (think scurvy!), so I've been vitamin C loading to support fast healing of my mouth!

This super sweet morning treat needs some tweaking, but it was a good start!

Today's breakfast creation probably didn't get me as much of the antioxidant as I had planned (vitamin C is very easily destroyed by heat), but it was still pretty yummy. Having some flour tortillas on hand, I chopped up at least a quarter of a cup of semisweet chocolate chips in the food processor (chocolate overload!), then 5 strawberries. The strawberries were spread on the tortilla, and the chocolate on top. I had wayyyy too much chocolate. I warmed it in the pan until the chocolate was melted (this did get pretty messy), then flopped it onto a plate to devour. My next adaptation of this recipe will be to use Nutella instead of chocolate chips. Then I can just make a chocolaty, strawberry wrap!