A Day at the Markets

ADDENDA:
Feel a bit out of touch with food, haven't been to the farmer's market since before Las Vegas. So I hopped on the bike and off I went....and felt what the winter market is all about. It's literally half as big as it was around Thanksgiving, and 1/3 as big as it was full swing in the summer. The meat/dairy/baked goods peeps were all there, but other than apples and gourds, there wasn't much in way of produce. I got the crazy-good lamb sausage and superhippy bread, but not much else.

I road to Wholefoods, and bought up a full green salad and supplies, focusing on a short shopping list of vegan stuff B wants to experiment with. I look forward to her (and the HVS) trying my home-made chocolate soy ice cream, it kicks some serious ass. It puts chocolate tofutti to shame, if I don't say so myself.

After the markets and before cooking, I felt lazy and didn't want to cook, but didn't want to order in food, as you're forced to buy a lot of food for a minimum order. So in true NY-lazy style, I wanted to go to the pizza place around the corner but didn't want to walk so far....so I hopped on my bike for the 120-second ride! I know in the suburbs people will get in the car to go around the corner to drop their fat-ass kids off at the bus stop, I now know how they feel....

BREAKFAST: 10am, good yogurt with honey and raw cashews, hunger 3/5
Outta vanilla!

LUNCH: 1:30pm, 2 slices streetza, bottle of water, hunger 4/5
After getting back from the markets, put everything away and pedalled around the corner to A1, the local slice joint. This is the place my parents would order pizza from. I like it because it has character - unlike a lot of other NYC slice places, these slices have a nice thin coat of sauce and a thinner, spotty coating of cheese - no goopfest here.

DINNER: 7pm, fresh wholewheat pasta, tomato sauce, pork/veal/spinach concoction, green salad, chocolate soy ice cream, lame biscoti, 2 glasses red wine, hunger 4/5
Friend just came in to town staying with me for a couple of nights, an excellent excuse to try some experimental cooking on someone (and have a friendly face to help washup! Thanks, Rach!) It was to be meat ravioli, but I failed to mix any white flour into the wholewheat and in the end it was both too tacky and too rigid to bend to shape into the ravioli forms.

So I scrapped it and went with linguine, with the stuffing as a side of meaty stuff. I got the recipe for the meat stuffing off the internet, and it was all wrong, I adjusted a few things to keep it reasonable but it failed. It needed white wine. Also, I bought pre-ground meats, it was a bit too chunky. I need to get a meat grinder attachment for the mixer to make nicely smooth meat paste! (Mmmmm! Meat paste!)

The only non-home made item was the biscoti, which reaked of fennel, oddly enough. But the soy-ice cream (silken tofu, unsweetened soy milk, maple syrup, cocoa powder, 70% dark chocolate) came out surprisingly rich and tasty, not tofuy at all or oily-fake like tofutti. We ate it straight from the machine, so it had a smooth, soft-serve consistency.

PM WATERING: 10pm, 2/3 of a bottle of Perrier

EVENING SNACK: 11pm, small bowl of veggie booty, hunger 3/5

My Wife Done Leave Me

ADDENDA:
Only for the week, though, to be with her momma while I stayed behind to attend to work! Feel good. Starting to miss B a little - it's nice having her flittering around the house, getting ready for work as I emerge from the fog of sleep. She's kinda easy on the eye, too. And a lot less furry than Rufus, who woke me up by pushing his side into my face just gently enough not to wake me up, but so I couldn't breathe.

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, wholewheat pancakes and good bacon, hunger 4/5
Good night sleep, whipped up a new batch of pancake mix using 2 different kinds of whole wheat flour, unexpectedly yummy. Why are whole-wheat recipes so hesitant to use 100% whole wheat?

AM WATERING: 11:15am, 24 oz still
Rolled into work late after communing with Erikka's cat all morning.

LUNCH: 1pm, 3 potato samosas, cold pumpkin noodles with tofu, turkey chili over brown rice, hunger 4/5
A nice hunk o' food from the organic hot bar trough at Green Symphony. Had the turkey chili just to have something different, was surprisingly enjoyable, though the meat is so processed as to be generic "meat stuff" - it might as well be a soybean-derivative.

PM SNACK: 3pm, large chocolate chip cookie, hunger 3/5
Got the sugar cravings, haven't felt them in a while, so I indulged it. All that was available was a grocery store generic cookie in cellophane, no ingredients listed. YUK! I ate it, my stomach felt icky for 2 hours. Never again.

DINNER: 8pm, 1/2 pastrami sandwich, matzoh ball soup, mound of cabbage salad, 2 pickles, handful of fries, large piece of chocolate babka, water, shot of chocolate soda, hunger 4/5
Went with my friend Yana to the new 2nd Ave deli, where we used to go regularly when it was located on 2nd Ave. Food just as good, memories of me and my dad eating there a lot, too. Unfortunately, though I tried to limit myself to just a half sandwich and soup, I over-ate anyway. I wanted to share 1 slice of babka, but Yana insisted on getting our own. Oof! Chocolate Babka is a magically delicious food stuff, but next time, I'm going to insist on sharing a piece!

PM SNACK: 10pm, half a pint of beer, hunger 1/5
Out at a bar with a good DJ with Yana and friends, but I was just too full to fit in more than 8 oz of beer. Even then I didn't feel good. But there was a photobooth!

Cookin' With Booze

ADDENDA:
Made multiple trips to the bathroom through the night, the late night Indian did not agree with me. Was weird wandering around my home in the middle of the night without concern for turning on lights or watching the television loudly. Rufus slept where B sleeps, wasn't quite the same thing. Except in the morning he usually chews and head butts HER, this morning he inflicted his Rufusness on me.

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, raw nuts, hunger 2/5
After last night's roiling, didn't feel much like eating but wanted to start off on the right foot.

AM WATERING: 10:30am, 24 oz still

LUNCH: 3:30pm, beer-boiled shrimp in a wine butter sauce over a baked potato, vanilla soy ice cream, hunger 4/5
Felt tired, left work around 2:30. Picked up shrimp and a potato and improvised this meal. Have left over beer from the party that I'll never drink so sacrificed 4 of them to boil the shrimp in. Made a sauce, starting with a roux just like the mac n' cheese, but added fresh garlic and white wine and a drop of lemon instead of milk n' cheese. Microwaved a potato and through it all together in a bowl, looked so purty I had to take a picture. The smell was....French n' stinky, but good.

DINNER: 8:30pm, sushi & sashimi plate, edamame, small green salad, tea, a cookie, a few chocolates, hunger 4/5
Road my bike up to 102nd on the west side and back to visit a friend I don't get to see nearly enough. She almost cooked, but couldn't get her stuff together so we went out for Japanese. The food was nothing special but her company was, which is the point of most restaurant food, I guess.

Early Bike Ride Turns My Head Around

ADDENDA:
Got out of the house by 8am and road over to Park Slope to look after Erikka's cat. Very cute, all rubbin' up on me for the entire time I was there. Then I road up the waterfront of Brooklyn to the 59th St Bridge. Cold and crisp, with minimal traffic, maybe 10 miles. I've forgotten a little just how stress-relieving a bike excursion can be.

After all the holiday hullabaloo and house guests and stress, Betsy has now gone to Boston to be with her mom for the week, my house is empty, and work is deadly quiet. Maybe if the weather cooperates, I'll take the road bike out tomorrow morning to the cat and to work...

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, organic cornflakes with the good milk, hunger 4/5
Nice to wake up with an appetite - it's like being driven by a need for caffeine, only much more satisfying when satiated. I should try it more often.

AM WATERING: 10:30am, 24 oz still

AM SNACK: 10:45am, overly sweet corn muffin, hunger 4/5
Morning bike ride left me hungry. From the company cafeteria. I can taste the corn syrup and stabilizers.

LUNCH: 2pm, .5 lb organic cow burger on wholewheat bun, side of vinegary slaw, hunger 4/5
The HVS and I hit up Better Burger on 9th ave over 42nd St. I'm about 1/2 way through the Omnivore's Dilemma, reading about the meaning/meaninglessness of what we accept to be 'organic' - the author uses the example of an organic TV dinner as how an organic analogue of something at the end of a long industrial food chain is just that - something at the end of a long industrial food chain, just with less pesticide and petroleum-based fertilizer. I imagine the organic fast-food burger is in a similar bucket.

The burger itself tasted surprisingly salty, almost unpleasantly so, and tasted a bit gamey, not what I expect from a burger.

PM WATERING: 2:45pm, 24 oz still
Feel a bit parched from the morning ride. Really feel good from it.

PM SNACK: 5pm, homemade vanilla soy ice cream, hunger 4/5
Dinner with a friend is late tonight, so I was gonna get some donuts as a special afternoon sweet snack, but remembered the Donut Plant is closed Mondays. I plan to make soy ice cream for the HVS this weekend, so it occurred to me to try making it as a trial run before presenting it for mass consumption.

Surprised how good this tasted - like tofutti, but without the fakey aftertaste. Only 4 ingredients - tofu, plain unsweetened soy milk, maple syrup, vanilla extract, all organic. Came out of the machine kinda like softserve.

PM SNACK: 7pm, handful of tortilla chips, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 9pm, shrimp butter masala, a little eggplant curry, rice and nan, 1 potato samosa, muligatawany soup, water, 1 glass red wine, hunger 4/5
Nice dinner with a friend, makes the holidays much more tolerable.

Eating Through the Holidays

ADDENDA:
Like stirring cooking milk and bringing up black bits unintentionally, the relatives staying with me have brought up some emotions from the family strife I endured when my mother passed away. It's unintentional and I hold no grudge (towards my guests), but it's still a bummer.

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, good yogurt with honey, raw nuts, vanilla, hunger 3/5
Immediately from breakfast I whipped up a batch of hummus and mac n' cheese for B's cousin's Jewish Xmas thing.

AM MEDICATION: 11am, 2 tums
Knifing sensation in my chest, over my stomach and below my throat. I suspected it was an acid thing, so I took 2 tums and it promptly went away. I've never had a pain like that before. I suspect it's emotion/holiday-related.

LUNCH: 2pm-5pm, bagel with hummus & smoked salmon, 3 large butter cookies, 10 or so small pieces of Jaques Torres chocolates, medium portion of homemade mac n' cheese, 1 glass presecco, water, hunger 4/5
Holiday party at B's cousin Cathy's house. This is the third time I've been to this party since I've known my wife, it's nice to see how these things remain stable year after year. My mac n' cheese came out pretty good, I've been refining the balance of ingredients and I think I'm getting closer. The hummus I made was way too garlicky, gotta pull back on that. Felt stressed thinking about my own family, overdid it on the chocolates, and my acidy stomach came back again.

PM SNACK: 5:30pm, 1/4 homemade cookie, 1/2 apricot turnover, seltzer, hunger 2/5
Stopped by another cousin of B's on the way home, an excellent baker he is.

PM MEDICATION: 7:30pm, 2 tums

PM SNACK: 9pm, small handful of tortilla chips, 2 saltless pretzels with peanutbutter, hunger 3/5

Merry Xmas, Goyim!

ADDENDA:
B & I had a nice bike ride over to Cobble Hill to lunch with T & friends. Nice Jewish Xmas eve with Ethiopian food (instead of the traditional Chinese, yer welcome, Ilsa!) and a movie.

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, good yogurt with honey and vanilla, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 11am, curried cashews, saltless pretzels, baby carrots, water, hunger 3/5
Sponsored by the Hungry Vegan Society.

LUNCH: Noon, hummus with fresh pita, smoked salmon on a croissant with small amount of potatoes and salad, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, small amount of tortilla chips, large amount of baby carrots, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6:30pm, Ethiopian vegetarian platter, vegan chocolate cake, water, hunger 4/5

Sunday Slips Away Quickly

ADDENDA:
Had a good time last night, but between getting to bed at 1am and drinking a little too much, it was a struggle to wake up after 10 hours, shooting my chances at yoga in the foot. Well, it's the holidays. Thinking of holidays past, I'm grateful for not being depressed right now. More on that later.

BREAKFAST: 11:15am, organic chex with homogenized organic milk, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 1:15pm, 8 mixed boiled perogies, water, hunger 3/5
Little Poland on 2nd Ave and 12th has the greatest perogies. 8 pieces, and 7 different kinds! Potato, sweet potato, cheese, meat, kasha, kraut, spinach. True soul food.

DINNER: 6:30, bread & butter, wild mushrooms in a puff pastry, hanger steak with frites, chocolate mouse and a little chocolate souffle, 1/2 glass of wine, water, hunger 4/5
Dinner at Les Halles with the Israelis and co.

EVENING SNACK: 2am, handful of tortilla chips, hunger 3/5
Could not sleep.