Ride Down the Joisey Shaw

ADDENDA:
A nice relaxing Saturday. Woke at 6:15, made myself a hearty breakfast, hopped on the bike, picked up some kick-ass organic local donuts and pedalled down to Pier 11 to catcht the 8:15am fast ferry to Stoney Point. Road 30 miles down the shore and 30 miles back, the way back a lot quicker so I could make the 3:15 and miss the rain... which poured over me the last 15 miles.

A 2 hour wait for the next ferry, long straight flat pieces of road, and buckets of rain is good motivator to sprint and push your legs to the point of pain (in a good way).

BREAKFAST: 6:45am, 3 substantial pancakes, seltzer, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 8:45, 2 donuts, hunger 3/5
Watching the Verezanno peel by over my head, both ends invisible because of fog....time for a donut!

AM SNACK: 11:45, 4 whole wheat pretzels, small amount of gatorade, hunger 2/5
Halfway mark. Monmouth County public park, lots of surfers in full gear everywhere. Seagulls, fishing boats zipping around, to think I was home only a few hours ago...

PM SNACK: 12:45 'medium' cherry ice, hunger 3/5
From a concession's stand on the board walk at Asbury Park. In NYC, the 'regular' is a little paper cup with one small scoop. This was a gargantuan 3-scooper, bright neon red and weirdly overly sweet - corn syrup in FULL effect. Huh. I've had this quality of ice before, never tasted so totally cloying and fake. But my body just absorbed the sugar, and the rush propelled me into the rain....

PM SNACK: 2:15, 2 wholewheat pretzels, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4:45, 4 pieces whole wheat bread with hummus, handful of carrots and cucumber, hunger 4/5
Betsy prepped a nice spread for me when I got home, which allowed me to cook for an hour without goin' nuts.

DINNER: 6pm, 2 smoked pork chops with mushroom & onion, basmanti brown rice, seltzer, hunger 4/5
Pork chops, non nitrate, from last week's farmer's market. Oh. My. Gawd. I got to have some friends over and serve this.

Color Me Pagan

ADDENDA:
Betsy is a bit concerned about not honoring the Yom Kippur holiday, while I'm used to pretty much ignoring it all together, save for taking work off (which my mom insisted on.) Being I'm coming off a honeymoon vacation, I don't feel comfortable taking more time off.

Listening to NPR on my pedal to work this morning, I heard a story about how the hardliners in Iran are rewriting history books to diminish and ignore the greatness of the pre-Islamic Persian empire. Them Persians were friendly to Judeo-Christian things, had their own Zoroastrianism and Paganism, too. Ah, Paganism - from the little I know about it, it sounds like it was the ideal (and first) religion. Worship the land, sun, nature, fertility. Respect to those people and things who produce (and reproduce) the very basics of life. Of course, back then people died at the average age of 32 and didn't have chocolate. Still, if I were to give it all up and live on a family farm, I'd probably read up on Paganism to see how it could help me run the farm better.

A lot of dumb holidays have very smart Pagan roots, easter and halloween based on harvest fesitvals, Xmas on the winter solstice etc. Women demonized as witches in the switch from matriarchy to patriarchy. Crazy cat lady's cats literally demonized as familiars....hrumph, poor kitties!

BREAKFAST: 7am, good yogurt with peanuts and a dash of honey, superhippy bread with good butter, dirtpill, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 9:15am, 24 oz still water

LUNCH: 1pm, megasoy burrito with black beans, chips and salsa, small cup of Ben & Jerry's chocolate therapy, hunger 4/5
I occasionally go to Burritoville, maybe once a month, always eat the exact same thing, ever since I was a vegan many years ago. This burrito has soy cheese and sour cream, tempeh for meat, whole wheat wrapper, brown rice. The salsa that I had with the chips, though....ICK! It tasted soooo salty! Is this just this batch? Or did I not notice before? I'll go there in a month or so, and if it's so salty again, never again...

Figuring I'll be waking early to ride tomorrow, would eat my desert now rather than with dinner. Also, no pressure on B to snarf sweets with me. Ben & Jerry's pisses me the f#ck off - instead of small, medium and large, they have kid, small and large. How about 'normal', 'don't care' and 'superfatass'? You KNOW the smallest serving now was a large 30-40 years ago. Yeah, I ordered a 'kid' size, f#ck you, Ben & Jerry's!

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, 24 oz still water
Thirsty, lunch made me thirsty. Maybe because of the salty salsa?

PM SNACK: 6pm, popcorn, hunger 4/5
Movie with B, not totally desirous of the popcorn but wanted to share with her. Oddly enough, I got the 'medium', which seemed kinda small, particularly for $5. But the large was stupid, but still smaller than what I remember as a kid....Betsy got a headache after it, I was fine.

DINNER: 8:30pm, bulgogi, vegetable dumplings, kimchi pajun, white rice, weird slightly sweet cinnamon after-dinner non-alcholic drink, hunger 4/5
Had the traditional bulgogi, as I haven't eaten proper beef in a while. Eh, should of got the pork. Dok Suni (on 1st near 7th) is really good, Korean food that caters a bit more to round-eyed devils than some of the places on 32nd Street....

Resistance is Futile

ADDENDA:
I packed lunch based on left overs from last night, in the lunch boxes me n' B bought at the super-cheesy Christmas Tree store on Cape Cod. Looks kinda like a Borg cube, huh? ....if the Borg were delicious tortellini and baby carrots, with a shmeer of hummus.

Tortellini was another food I introduced to my parents, and my mom loved them, called them 'torteloonies' and acted a little goofy when I made them for her.

At the conventional supermarket last night, however, I had a small revelation. One of the reasons I was there was to pick up Sabra hummus, the brand B prefers. She eats hummus with just about everything. (Pasta? Hummus! Salad? Hummus! Potato? Hummus! Bagel? Hummus! Chocolate brownie? Hummus!) I bought an extra tub for the freezer. When I told B of this later, she asked if you could do that to hummus. Of course you can! My dad used to make gallons and freeze enough for a year!....

Duh! I attempted hummus about a year ago, it came out crappy, but I think I was over-reaching - I tried making the tahini from scratch. Twice a year I would take a day with my dad collecting ingredients, then going home and blending them all together, packaging them, then finding space in a freezer to put it all. Back in the late 70s, early 80s, hummus was still a rare specialty item to be found in the small emergent health-food market. We, however, had hummus all most all the time - so common around the house, I took it for granted pretty much until I road cross country last fall and found a striking lack of Hummus from Utah to Illinois.

Maybe not next week, but this winter I'm going to make a massive batch of hummus, poppa-style, have B assist me to blend it to her taste, and have it on hand for B until it's time to make more....

Just registered for the Basics 1 class at the Natural Gourmet Institute based on Ilsa's recommendation. It's jsut two Monday eves in November - if I dig it, will do the other 3 sections of their basics classes. Me n' B looked into yoga, we'll be doing 4 beginners classes every Thursday eve through October...

BREAKFAST: 7:45am, 3 bites of horrible cereal with good milk, whole wheat bagel with hummus, hunger 3/5
As my conventional stuff runs out, I'm switching to healthier alternatives. My rice-crispies died, so I picked up this organic no-salt version, which I tried this morning. I poured in the good whole unhomogenized milk, and took a bite.

You ever hear about how photographers use glue instead of milk when shooting food? Well, this LOOKED like rice-crispies, but I swear it was made of flecks of cardboard. At first I thought it was just slightly stale, then I realized how important salt was to it's flavor - it literally tasted like bland wood pulp. I know at some point in my life I may have to have a salt-free diet, but this is just not palatable. After three bits, I tossed it and ate a bagel. Maybe it's because I wasn't expecting it. I'll give it another shot later, but woo-wee, not what I was expecting to wake up to.

AM SNACK: 9:15am, 24 oz still water

LUNCH: 12:45pm, cold tortellini leftovers, baby carrots and celery, humus, hunger 4/5
I have been assimilated.

PM SNACK: 2:45pm, chocolate chip cookie icecream sandwich, hunger 4/5
Desiring sweets. Not the greatest desert, but it's available. My one-desert for the day, spent before dinner!

ADDENDA: 3:45pm
Got a screaming headache, same kind of front-side headache that I've gotten from food in the past. Definitely the ice cream sandwich. WTF? It's not dairy, it's not sugar...let me pull the wrapper out of the garbage....whoa, about 50 ingredients....maybe its a preservative or additive that's giving me these headaches? Since stressing organic food and lowlighting sweets, these headaches have definitely gone by the way side. Damn. Next time I reach for one of them friggin' icecream sandwiches, I'm gonna think, "remember the headache"....

DINNER: 7-8pm, small amount of left over tortellini, 3 ears of boiled corn w/o butter or salt, 1 whole wheat pretzel w/ no salt peanut butter, 1/2 a Margarita DOC pizza minus the crusts, 1 glass of wine, hunger 4/5
B was late coming home (and for the most part didn't know when she was coming home, despite having made dinner plans with her), so I started grazing over the hour, keeping to reasonable things that wouldn't blow me out.

The pizza (and B shortly after) arrived around 7:45. The last time we ordered a pie, I got horrendously sick so I was paying more attention this time. I ordered from a place closer by, Isabella's Oven and ordered the Margarita DOC - a plain pie with a minimal balance of buffala moz to the sauce and crust. When it arrived, I was happily surprised to see less cheese than I remember - little islands of creamy white in an ocean of red. This is the way to do it!

I remember years ago my mom off-handedly said her favorite pizza place was one on 6th ave around 11th or 12th, a Rays - she used to live near there during her college years when she rebelled and moved out of her parent's place in Brighton Beach (breaking from the tradition then of women living with the 'rents till they got married) I went and tried a slice - not only was there a thick blanket of yellowy oily cheese sitting on tip, but their 'thing' was to throw on free extra cheese before popping it in the oven on every slice. YUCK! It's cool if you love cheese, but if you can love this, you're friggin' retarded. I hoped it wasn't like that in my mom's day.

Lunchtime Reverie

ADDENDA:
This morning, B expressed concern that big meals at the end of the day may be part of the reason she's put on a little weight this year and sleeps more. I'm not quite sure what to do - my entire life, the last meal of the day is the bigger meal, a chance to relax with cooking/food preparation. With work, the only chances to focus on food is breakfast which is a bit rushed, and dinner after work, which tends to be a few hours before sleep. I don't want to take meals separately from B at the end of the day, it's the time we have to be together with any real quality on a regular basis during the week...

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, yogurt with a squirt of honey and organic unsalted roasted peanuts, dirtpill, hunger 3/5
Nice heavy breakfast. Peanuty goodness, just like I used to eat as a kid growing up under my parent's roof. Only then, the yogurt was sugary sweet.

AM SNACK: 8:45am, 24 oz still water

BP 9am: 132/81

LUNCH: 1pm, Ethiopian vegetarian combo, water, hunger 4/5
Confluences at work too boring to explain here gave me a solid hour and half to take off and chill. So I hopped on my bike and went deep into Hell's Kitchen to go back to the place where my parent's found the food hellish, Meskerem. Before the summer, they were shuttered for health violations, and I only had the cuisine once lately, with B & her mom. This place, on 49th off 10th, is one of the best in the city.

I haven't really focused on this weird plate of food since changing my diet. It was more delicious than I remember it. Some people pray before eating or give thanks - me, I took a photo of the plate on my phone then snarfed it up. (unfortunately, my phone is not allowing me to export the pic). It just tasted fantastic, a cuisine formed in the shadow of 1000s of years of trial and experimentation with limited ingredients.

Having snarfed, I got back on the bike and rolled over to Central Park, eventually settling in on bench by the pond in the SE corner. Headphones rockin' the NPR podcasts, I sat contentedly with a full stomach watching people of all stripes walk by. The sun was shining, the weather comfortably coolish/warmish, wedding ring starting to get familiar on my finger, the big old trees reminding me why it's worth the struggle to live in NYC.

DINNER: 7:30pm, conventional baby carrots and a few greenmarket cucumber pieces, hummus, meat and cheese tortellini with fresh tomato, onion, mushroom, olive oil and good butter, a large serving of malt gelato, hunger 4/5
Cooked up a tortellini dish with random ingredients, after picking up some ingredients at the local Pathmark. I was there more to buy paper goods, deoderant and elusive sabra hummus, realized with all my green-marketing, have kind of left this supermarket.

The Bloom is off the Blog

ADDENDA:
I think the newness of changing my diet and keeping this blog is starting to wear off, the same way the newness of a bike ride wears off after 30 miles, then you realize you still have another 70 to go before you can rest. I think this is a good thing, it'll be clearer what my real habits are.

Without giving too much thought, I made a healthy going-away breakfast for Mariko. Mariko was semi-complaining how unlike all the times she spent in my home before, this time there was no stash of potato chips, ice cream or cookies. Huh. Yesterday was almost a desert-free day! And not on purpose, either!

The award ceremony yesterday, held in the lobby of a bank, was bittersweet. It was very-much a community gathering with lots of folk from my mom's Y where she was the executive. Some familiar faces, who I haven't seen since her memorial service, were there and said hello. I got a nice framed certificate for the fund I set up, and had a minute on the mic to tell people how happy my mom would of been to see them all there helping the Y thrive, how she'd compliment the new executive on his hustling, and how her idea of how social justice is measured - by how society treats it's least-privileged and least-able, like children and senior citizens. I was intensely uncomfortable there, the 3 cookies I ate didn't really help me - I think in the past I would of snarfed more of the unlimited cookies.... But Betsy had a wide-beam grin shining on me the whole time, kind of made it worth it.Today I wore a sweatshirt with an abstract drawing I designed, based on a picture of my mom when she was young and hip in the early 60s. (There is a similar one of my father on the back, with a rather square flat-top from the same period, he he)

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, superhippy bread with good butter, a large dollop of yogurt, 2 crispy pieces of bacon, dirtpill, hunger 3/5
Made the bacon just so it seemed like I cooked something and not just prepared.

BP 9:15am - 129/86
Not perfect, but better than the last measurement. I think stress was elevating it last time. Just completing freelance work, everything is shaking out. I woke up at 6:30 this morning, got to work an hour early, and it feels like a really late starting day!

AM SNACK: Noon, 24 oz still water.

BP 12:15pm - 126/83
Just made an appointment with my MD next Thursday to see if these numbers are legit...and we'll see what all this pork and yogurt is doing to my cholesterol....

LUNCH: 1pm, pork tonkatsu with white rice and curry sauce, side of raw white cabbage and weird pickle bits, water, hunger 4/5
Waiting in line at Sapporo on 49th St (off 7th) with Erikka and Mariko, have avoided this place because of the line but because Mariko is leaving today, we waited. It was well worth it - the breaded pork cutlet was tender and tasty, the Japanese curry was flavorful and the right balance of sweet/salty/spicy and the raw cabbage was a nice palate cleanser. The place is more known for their ramen soup, but those are total salt traps...

After lunch, said a final goodbye to Mariko, then walked back. Started thinking about my Mom, the pleasure I used to get from introducing them to new cuisines in their later years - they spent most of their lives with Chinese food as being as 'exotic' is it got. They love love loved Indian food, though Ethiopian was a bit beyond the pale for them. They liked the cooked Japanese stuff, but thought eating fish raw was uncivilized. It was a bit embarrassing as a snobby snotty teen, but really every time we went out to restaurant together, it was a bit of an event. They didn't grow up with eating at a lot of restaurants, so eating out was special. The ceremony of sitting down with out distraction in a nice room other than your house, being served, given "free" bread (which my mom would embarrassingly wrap up and take home).

Our thing was that after the meal but before desert, we'd all guess how much the bill was (without tip, with tax), and whoever got closest got to pay the bill. My dad was closest EVERY time. I think in my entire life, I only got it closer once, but my dad insisted on paying anyway. I wish I pushed back and paid myself.

DINNER: 8pm, green salad, broiled bay scallops with butter and olive oil, small amount of baked small red-jacket potatos, a few bites of not-fresh corn, half a mini chocolate fudge cake with 2 scoops of malt gelato, 2 glasses of water, hunger 4/5
Went food shopping with B after work, was fun inventing the dinner menu with her on the fly. Let's hope the (non chocolate) gelato sticks around a bit longer, or I may really have to get that locking mini-freezer....

Used a garlic press on this heirloom garlic I got at Saturday's farmer's market, it was a 'German Red' or something like that. Still a little dirty, roots on the bottom. I noticed a remarkably large amount of liquid squirt out of them when I pressed them, and gave a scalliony less-sharp garlic flavor to the fish....really nice.

EVENING SNACK: 10:30pm, one saltless whole wheat pretzel with organic saltless peanutbutter, hunger 3.5/5
Funny thing, when B made the potatos, I knew it would not be enough food for me, so I threw on the corn that has been sitting around since Saturday morning. The corn wasn't really good, and I only had a few bites. When 10:30 rolled around, I was hungry in the way that I knew would interfere with going to sleep. Normally, this would be an ocassion for desert round 2, but that didn't even appeal to me at this moment.

-stretch-

ADDENDA:
Almost out of dirtpills. Not sure what they've done for me, but I'm quite certain they have not hurt. Last time I took a multivitamin a decade or so ago, the over-the-counter 1000% of everything-pill made me ill after a few weeks, poisoned by an overdose of vitamins. These ones, however, seem to be much gentler.

Tonight I'm heading out to deep dark Brooklyn to accept some sort of award for the living endowment I helped set up in my mom's name. She was the director of a Jewish community out there for many years and was well liked. With the help of the current director (who of course wants to be identified with the previous vey popular leader), I donated money to an endowment that will give scholarships to senior citizens who would otherwise not be able to afford the membership. Not looking forward to this, but I'd feel worse if I didn't go.

BREAKFAST: 6am, super hippy bread with good butter, glass of tap water, dirt pill, hunger 3/5
Gotta get to work early to finish freelance work. Fell asleep around 9pm. A litle sore but not nearly as much as I thought I'd be based on my aches and pains.

Too early for donuts. Not craving them. Huh.

LUNCH: 1:30pm, ricotta gnudi with a zuchinni pesto, 4 pieces bread and olive oil, a sampling of marinated vegetables.
Tamar got me to eat a brussel sprout! And I didn't die!!

PM SNACK: 7pm, 3 mini salmon cakes, 3 cookies, water hunger 4/5
Free food at the awards ceremony. Slim pickin's.

DINNER: 9:30pm, pad thai, spring rolls, water, hunger 4/5
Delivery with B and Mariko, her last night in town. We were all a bit too tired from trudging into deep Brooklyn to go out.

Tomorrow, a Donut!

ADDENDA:
After a passover seder, it is traditional to exclaim, "Next year in Israel!", as the ceremonial dinner is very much about the Jews being caste out of Egypt and wandering for many years. Afer today's bike ride, I found myself exclaiming, "Tomorrow a donut!"

Woke up before 5 to get my gear on and meet up with T in Brooklyn. Getting out of the city was a wonderfully relaxing thing, with so few cars, delayed only by a random press conference blocking access to the GWB. We explored some secondary roads of NJ into Rockland county, wound our way back to the Hudson, then over the Bear Mountan Bridge to Garrison to meet the train.

BREAKFAST: 5:20am, half bagel with butter, a little seltzer, dirtpill hunger 1/5
Not hungry, but gotta get the motor started on something.

POWER SNACK #1: 8:45am, 2 whole wheat saltless pretzels, 1 peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread, a bit of lemonade-flavored gatoraide, water, hunger 2/5
Not hungry, but I know it's from the riding, not too many calories.

I brought gatoraide on this trip, first time in a while. I experimented with a few healthier powders but couldn't hack the taste. I made a homemade sports drink wit coconut water and honey and water last week, but my bike malfunctioned before I got to the point of tasting it. Unlike last week's ride, if I were to have any kind of digestive stress, I wouldn't be able to end the ride, I'd have to complete no matter how uncomfortable (save for calling a very expense cab to a train).

POWER SNACK #2: 10:45am, 1 whole wheat pretzel, cliff bar, a little gatoraide, water, hunger 2/5
Upper Saddle River, in front of an volunteer ambulance company. Last time I was on this route, I called my mom from here. Infact, every time I had done this route, I called my parents at this spot, about 43 miles in...

POWER SNACK #3: 1pm, 1 whole wheat pretzel, peanut butter sammich, bit of gatoraide, water, hunger 2/5
Feeling a bit rubbery but good, fresh air, trees, gazebos, houses spaced out a bit more.

END SNACK: 3:30pm, chocolate hagendaaz bar, bag of sea salt & vinegar potato chips, a handful of oat cookies, 24 oz water, hunger 5/5
Felt my stomach reviving in the last few miles, anticipation of non-bike food roaring. Not the healthiest snacks, but literally 3x tastier than if I was just sitting in an office.

TRAIN SNACK: 4:30, one pretzel rod, hunger 3/5
Residual hunger - my stomach was full but I know I'd need to eat again soon...

DINNER: 6:30pm, large green salad, large amount of whole wheat pasta with homemade sauce and curry lamb sausage, large amount of water and seltzer, hunger 4/5
No desert! (There was no desert in the house, he he)