PIZZABABY!!!!

NO PIZZAS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS PICTURE! (And it was at room temp when Edie mounted it. And she immediately got bathed and changed moments after the session was done! And she smelled like a pizza! And it was so cute!)

The original plan was to ride bikes all day, but instead I woke up late and spent the day with B & E and Mommainlaw. I'm working on a presentation for class, which involves selling an idea of a pizza restaurant. I'll be showing pictures of some of the more interesting pizzas I've made at home, but for some levity, I'll be slipping in some pictures of..... PIZZA BABY!!

The pizza was tossed off -- Wholefoods dough, a small can of cheap tomato sauce, a block of whole milk dry moz. I made a second one, with less sauce and cheese, grated with parm, sprinkled with sea salt and finished with good olive oil, which was actually pretty good -- the WF dough is annoyingly good, better than my homemade dough. Gotta work on that.

Got something cool working in the fridge that I set up yesterday. All aboudit tomorrow.

Gazooks, I'm looking at what I ate today...and how little I did. School is over this week, gotta hit some regular riding and yogaing, f'real.

AM SNACK: 10am, watermelon, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

BREAKFAST: noon, pancakes, bacon, homefries, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 1pm, donut, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3pm, dulce de leche ice cream, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6pm, homemade pizza, watermelon, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, pistachios, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 9:45pm, dulce de leche ice cream, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

Good product

Spent a good part of the day helping my friend P move within Brooklyn. I'm glad I'm not in college anymore, and most of my friends who rent now hire professionals. We spent an hour with a sofa wedged in a stairwell before we bailed on the seller. Craigslist, it's a hell of a website.

BREAKFAST: 9:15am, bagel with cream cheese, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 12:15pm, low calorie grape Gatorade, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Good product. It still has corn syrup as the main ingredient, but has sucralose down lower. It's pleasantly mildly sweet, but doesn't have the cloying fake sweetness of a drink that is strictly fake sweet.

LUNCH: 2pm, 2 slices bad pizza, a slice of so-called "salad pizza", a Manhattan Special, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
At a run-of-the-mill pizza restaurant in Staten Island. The salad pizza was a nightmare, a load of overdressed house salad and some marinated antipasto over an undercooked shell that was mush by the time I sat to eat it. The plain slice had a blanket of cheese that after 1 bite I peeled off in one and set aside.

DINNER: 7pm, 3 sea scallops, 2 ears corn, water, a little tiramisu and a little chocolate cake, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Cooked a nice crust onto the scallops. Corn is finally in season. B was busy with feeding the E, so I cut the kernels off the boiled ears, HVS-style, so she could eat them with E in one arm. B is like the Swiss-army knife of mommas.

DINNER 2: 8:15pm, beef lomein, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Still hungry, out for a walk with B&E, so I went for it.

Really Tubby

I hate to sound like 2/3 of the American population, but I'm starting to feel really tubby of late. I dropped to the lowest in a long time when I was in the midst of working 70+ hours a week at the restaurant, but for now that is over and another diet-controlling gig doesn't seem to be in the immediate future due to Edie Bebe and some other potential opportunities coming down the pipe.

I was surprised how I was jonesing for sugar last night, that was one of the first things I spied and got under control when I first blogging about my food intake. Now that I've finally gotten to the meat of the matter -- learning to feed Edie! -- I need to go back to the beginning.

BREAKFAST: 7am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, cashews, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 10:45am, marble poundcake, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
For old time sake, this was my default am snack for the first half of management classes, back when it was cold out. Sniff sniff.

AM TASTING: 11-noon, about half a glass of red, a hunk of gruyere, french bread, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 3pm, pepperoni pizza, cesar salad, water, rice pudding, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Me, B&E went to Lombardi's for lunch. Have ordered delivery, never eaten in before. Decent service, long narrow dining rooms. The pizza was MUCH better in person, with the coaly flavor much more pronounced with the original heat on the pie. Not a fan of pepperoni, that was B's thing.

DINNER: 8pm, green salad topped with fresh grilled shrimp, 1 bowl, hunger 4.5
Grilled some colossals in the grill pan and smoked up the whole house.

I fed her!

Felt good after 13 hours of relatively uninterrupted sleep. I only wish I could gift something like that to my wife, whose sleep has been anything but uninterrupted. I guess if it's gonna be interrupted, the cause being a healthy beautiful baby girl is a good reason. Then again, we're gonna go to bottle soon so maybe we'll be able to take turns with the interruptions sooner than later...

Soon, being today. I fed Edie B's milk from a bottle today. Holding her while she sucked and slurped from the nipple of the bottle while staring at me was pretty awesome. She sucked down a good 5 ounces in a flash, and her belch afterwards was pretty charming. Then afterwards we sucked on pacifiers together!

BREAKFAST: 7am, bagel with creamcheese, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 12:15pm, beef fried rice, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Went to my favorite dumpling shop and ordered something different off the menu, something I always see the construction workers chowing down on. Surprisingly superior to typical NYC takeout, was made with steamed rice, large pieces of thin freshly cooked beef, large bits of celery. It was less salty than typical take out fried rice but more flavorful.

PM SNACK: 1:30pm, small portion of eggplant parm, rootbeer, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
A few hours hanging out at the resto, probably my last for a while.

DINNER: 7:15pm, cheese tortellini in garlic wine sauce, water, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Made a really tepid sauce, missing something, not sure what. Should look up a recipe.

EVENING SNACK: 10:30pm, choco yogurt thing, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
So close to no sweets today, oh well. Needed a kick to spend an hour grinding away on final project.

More out of me

Woke up with a whisper of a hangover, but felt fine. We took the bus to Edie's first movie in a movie theater, "Bruno", and I'm glad she's not old enough that I have to explain that to her. It was cold in the theater, and half way through she got cranky enough that she & B had to step outside.

After that, a quick pizza break and we hit up the pediatrician for a check up. Edie has gained an inch and 2 pounds, and is super aware, so no worries there. After eating some farro, I sat down to watch a bit of TV before getting into some school work and then it was 9pm, dragged myself to bed and then it was 6am. Guess drinking the night before took more out of me than I thought.

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, potato nick, pickled diakon, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 1pm, pizza with fresh tomato, root beer, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
From PIE on 4th Avenue, not very good.

LINNER: 4:30pm, farro and sausage, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

Wine, No Women and No Song

BREAKFAST: 7am, watermelon, .5 bowl. hunger 4/5
So wonderfully in season, sweet, firm, happy.

AM SNACK: 9:30am, 2 street donuts, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 12:15, brisket on rye, water, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
Went back to R.U.B. on 23rd Street, not too hungry but just in the mood for a meat sandwich. After touring Blue Smoke last week, some smoked meat sounded right. Ordered the "classic" BBQ dish, brisket -- I'm usually not too psyched about this meat because of all the years I've eaten Jewish-style slow-braised brisket that was tough, stringy and all together unappealing. This however, simply put, was goyisha pastrami. Same cut, same slow cooking, except instead of being brined, encrusted and steamed, it seems it is brined then slow smoked, like a flavorful steam bath. Not as good as pastrami, though, to my L.E.S.-spoiled taste buds.

PM SNACK: 3pm, chocoyogurt bar, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4pm, softserve chocolate ice cream cone, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
The first was eaten lying on the couch, the next after I came outside to meet B after her mom-group meeting thing. I prepped a salad and fed it to her in our park behind the building. She wanted ice cream, so we stopped by our local kosher grocery which has softserve. Wasn't craving ice cream, but was craving to eat with my B.

DINNER: 6pm, bread, grilled octopus, mousaka, a bit of sardine, a few bites of honeyed baked goods, a lot of white and red wine, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Class dinner with my management peeps at Peryali. Good food, good conversation, perhaps too much wine...

EVENING DRINKING: 9-midnight, lots of red wine, a bit of water
....but it kept on going. After spending 12 hours a week with these people for 9 months, it's easy to feel comfortable with them in this setting. We all dig food, and all like talking about it.

Getting minty with it

BREAKFAST: 9am, organic chex with the good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 11:45am, slice of crappy Earth Mother pizza, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
This stuff is even worse reheated. The crust is really whole wheat bread, in the old 70s hippy style of too little leavening, too much dirt flavor. Fneh.

LUNCH: 1pm, bagel with cream cheese, onion, tomato, minted lemon aide, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Bunch of peoples & another baby over. I wanted to make bagels, B insisted on my going out and buying them. However, I did get to make something, inspired by the minted lemonade B bought for me from a local restaurant. A medium 12 oz cup of this stuff, watered down with too much ice, was $3.50. When I went to the market, everything (minus the sugar, ice and water) was $3.41....for SIX servings, not one. I made up the recipe based on method learned in school and from making gallons upon gallons of stuff at the resto:

Noah's Minted Lemonade Serves 6

6 lemons
1 lime
1 bunch mint
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
5 cups water and ice by volume

1. Remove all mint leaves from stem. Set aside the 6 best looking leaves. Mince the leaves.
2. Combine sugar, 1 cup of water and minced leaves in a small pot. Bring to boil, return to simmer for 2 minutes. Turn off heat. Let sit for 5 minutes.
3. While sitting, juice lemons and limes, strain out all seeds and pulp.
4. Strain minted syrup through a cheesecloth, squeeze out all liquid.
5. Combine syrup, lemon juice and 5 cups of iced water into serving pitcher, mix well with wooden spoon. Serve with the remaining ice cubes in the pitcher and one mint lead, shiny side up.

NOTE: The concentration INCLUDES the water from the melting cubes, so it may taste a little strong in the beginning, but mellows one the ice melts. You can add water to taste, of course.

NOTE 2: I used "vegan" white sugar so I guess this is vegan minted lemonade!!

The syrup step really makes all the difference in getting a great mouthfeel and an honest, strong but tasty mint flavor that is heightened by the acidity of the lemon.

PM SNACK: 5:30pm, Korean pickle diakon, a few Japanese sweet mochi rice snacks, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6:45pm, handful of pistachios

DINNER: 7:30pm, frozen pizza, orange soda, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Trader Joes brand, totally ass.

DINNER: