Chinatown with Edles

After sleeping away a large part of the afternoon, I couldn't get to bed until close to 4am. Today is the last experimental Edie day for me, which really is to give B some time to herself to get her matters in order, as she returns to work next Tuesday. So I got up as B was leaving around 8:30, and after changed her diaper, Edie was calm until she started getting cranky.

She would stop being cranky when I picked her up, but I wanted to, ummm, do stuff like email and, urrr, blog. So after a moment of discordance, a -duhhh- realization came into my head and I popped her into the sling as I sat at the kitchen table eating my breakfast. She wiggled a little, shouted a little, snuggled her face a little tighter to where my heart was (literally! - and figuratively), gave a coo, then shut her eyes. Ahhhhhh! After a few minutes I laid her down on the bouncy, sling and all.

Looking over what I ate today, realized my body is recovering from a bug -- feel a little worn out for no reason, eating a little less than usual.

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, 3 pancakes, a little peanut butter ice cream, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Freezer fresh, he he. Thing is, you can buy frozen pancakes in the supermarket, but a) they're about 3x more expensive than making your own from top-shelf organic ingredients, b) taste like cardboard because they were probably made months ago and c) involve a lot more packaging (OK, maybe c isn't a big deal for me, but it makes people happy!)

LUNCH: 1:45pm, "rice noodle with fishball", 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Leisurely walking through Chinatown with Edles, thinking about the "Chop Suey" book I've been reading, I noticed all the little hole-in-the-wall restaurants, which are more like food carts that evolved into shops, kinda like mobile homes that lost their wheels and ended up on cinderblocks. The only one that had any English at all had a handwritten sign, "Lunch Special: 3 items $3.25", and I'm sure that was on top of rice and not in a small portion. These places have buffet hot bars in front, a few dingy tables in the back. No room for a stroller, and Edie is just too small and unprotected to leave outside by herself while I popped in (how unEuropean of me, I know.)

It the corner of Rutgers and East Broadway, there was a street cart with a line of Asian peeps in front of it, so I got on. The tiny menu was in Chinese, with a few annotations in English. Their big specialty was Curry Squid, but I went for the more friendly sounding rice noodle with fishball. For $2.25, got a full pint of rolled tubes of meifun rice noodles, about 7 small fishy-tasting fried ground fish-balls, and on top the woman squirted 4 different sauces in rapid succession, a sweet, a salty, a spicy and something else I couldn't put my finger on. She shook some sesame seeds over the top for good luck, too. I ate it in the park while Edie slept, surrounded by Asian children and Asian grannies. I feel fortunate to live so close to such a thriving neighborhood, right next door to my thriving neighborhood. Only one block away from my noodle cart are the best pickles and best bagels in NYC!

DINNER: 5pm, pad thai, 3 little fried thingies, a beer, water, small cup of gelato, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Walked to the hepper section of the LES on Orchard to try a new Thai joint, walked Edles in the sling and met B there, ending her big day out without us. Food was surprisingly good, a lot of thought in the presentation and nicely balanced flavoring -- I could taste the galangal, a Thai sweetener similar to brown sugar, but with it's own special funk. Went to Laboratorio del Gelato after, where we both got 2 flavors in small cups and ended up eating half of each other's.

To be a Bohemian in the 1890s...

Woke up before dawn to prep for a bike ride -- I was hoping to do 100 miles. Got out the door by 6am, but as I was riding up the west side bike path, found myself getting more and more tired, less and less focused -- the opposite of what should, and usually, happens on a ride like this. By the time I was near the GWB, I stopped and ate the bagel I had hoped to munch on in the wilds of rural New Jersey. After eating it, got on the bike, pedaled a a few minutes and realized I felt even more drained than before the bagel -- something was not right.

I road home slowly, took a shower and put myself to bed, not arising until 3pm. I think yesterday's burger did a number on insides -- I like burgers, but ground meat that's not thoroughly cooked (like meat balls) never sat well with me. And if I have an Edie to look after, a burger is not a risk I should be taking!

I spent most of the day in bed with Edie while B did household chores, and got half way through "Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the U.S." I've been eating take out Chinese most of my life, but unlike pizza, know very little about it's history. The book is quite an eye-opener, starting from the first American trade ship to China in the 1780s, through the anti-Chinese problems in California after the railroads were completed, and right now I'm up to the part about NY in the late 1800s, when "bohemians" decided to stick a thumb in the eye of the upper crusties and started to be the first Westerners in the history of the world to thoroughly enjoy Chinese food. Yup, it took some uppity artsy NYers with a little money and a little annoyance with foofy rich people to get me today's mooshoo shrimp...

BREAKAST: 5:15am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 7:30am, pumpernickel bagel with peanut butter, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DUNCH: 4:30pm, egg roll, mooshoo shrimp with a little brown rice, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

A day out

B got out the door at 8:15am, and then it was me and Edies vs. the world. She got cranky so I got her into a stroller and out the door we went -- the motion immediately soothes her, or perhaps in it's the world around her constantly changing. We took the train over to the restaurant and I spent an hour with L talking business and menu stuff, Edles performed remarkably. Our first work-trip together, maybe it won't be the last!

We made our way up to Brooklyn Borough Hall and she slept while I ate a cart muffin. We trained it up to Grandmamma's house, and on the train no one gave me a seat while I squatted over Edie and fed her a bottle. Grandmama took over and I took B out on our first date minus a baby since Edles came.

We hopped in a cab and made a matinee of "Julie and Julia". I loved the half of this movie about Julia Child, her good spirit and love of food, the context of the times, etc. Like many watchers of this film, I think in the next few days I'll be making Beouf Bouginion (which from my understanding, is just a braised stew -- c-school 101, literally. Cube some cheap cut of beef, brown it, cover it in wine and beef stock, braise it, add some sauteed veg and bacon, finish with, I'm guessing, butter. Never made it in c-school, but did other similar French braises)

The other half of the film, about the blogger Julie Powell who cooked every one of Child's recipes from her famous cook book in one year, well, I liked the book, could have done without the movie. She come off as self-obsessed and maybe points out whats wrong with blogging in general (and I don't except myself here) -- it's all me me me, with little by way of substance. Julie Child brought substance into the world, Julie Powell just....cooked in her kitchen and blotivated. Me, I just blotivate! He he.

Which makes me think I should reboot this blog for a third time, less me me me-centric and more thoughtful towards a goal. According to the Department of Health's Body-Mass-Index, my ideal weight for my gender, age and height is around 165 lbs, and my current weight makes me 'obese'. I would have to lose over 55 lbs to be "normal" according to this index -- I think I'd look like a malnourished castaway on the edge of death. Should I attempt it? I dunno. Let's blotivate along here...

After, we went to a bistro with a lame menu, where I ate a burger, which was tasty but didn't sit well with me later in the evening.

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, large piece of watermelon, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 11:15am, street corn muffin, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 1:15pm, cherry icee, popcorn, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 4:15pm, burger and waffle fries, some spaghetti & garlic bread, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 7:30pm, glass of mint lemonade, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

Terrible pot-head

Got to bed late, but B didn't wake me and I arose close to 11am. Between B on the phone with her dad, Edles crying for food and no bottle prepared, L from the restaurant calling me on the phone, and me just trying to package my special brownies for the freezer.... the thought did occur to me to sample a brownie, but the idea of not being fully present for my beautiful daughter (and not to mention, the better half of Team Wildberger) gave me the shivers in a not-good way. I'd be a terrible pot-head.

OK, OK, pizza and hotdogs, ice cream twice, but also 2 green salads and a large dose of fruit in the morning....

BREAKFAST: noon, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
It almost hurts when I get this smoothie right, because it makes me wish I measured everything out prescisely, timed the pureeing, etc. I guess it wouldn't matter, because it's rise or fall so depends on the quality of the fruit going in. This time: banana, red grapes, mango, kiwi, good yogurt, organic dead milk, spoonful of vanilla sugar, dash of sea salt and one thing I never used before: tiny wild Maine blueberries. Could that have made the difference?

LUNCH: 2pm, half a medium pizza, Cesar salad, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Lombardies with B&E, very mediocre, couldn't taste the coal of the oven at all.

PM SNACK: 4pm, soft serve ice cream cone, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8pm, large green salad, hot dog with small amount of potato chips, peanut butter ice cream, 3 mini peanut butter cups, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

Preparing the Kitchen for Edie

My friend is is off to the Minnesota State Fair for a week, so I met up with her before she left for the airport to give her a 'survival ration' made up of raw vegetable, hummus, high-fiber cereal and packets of lube from CVS (to assist with getting her pants on and off!)

As I was uptown and hungry for dinner, I swung by the noodle shop near my old employer for a meal. I remember enjoying the food highly, and I ordered a simple dish of sliced roast pork over a fried rice. For $6.50, it was easily 2 bowls of high-calorie dense vegetable-free food. Holy crap! I ate the whole thing, but I would have also been satisfied if it was half the size. Wow. I was packing this in while I was riding a desk for five years. No wonder even though I feel fat right now, I'm still 15-20lbs lighter than I was then.

In the evening, I made peanut butter ice cream and a round of "adult" fudge brownies. I had the key ingredient lying around for more than a year (I'm not a very good druggie), and figured better make something I can give away and indulge in maybe. Don't want stuff like that hanging around the house as Edles gets older. ESPECIALLY laced brownies! Memories of me scouring the freezer as a kid looking for treats, and finding my dad's pork breakfast sausages hiding in the back. These brownies will be gone before Edles gets to that point, that's for sure. And she will only find hidden stashes of healthy high-fiber unprocessed foods! Yeah!

BREAKFAST: 10am, 3 pancakes, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:45pm, hotdog with kraut and onions, potato nick, gatorade, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6:15pm, roast pork with fried rice, wonton soup, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 7:30pm, a few mini dark chocolate peanut butter cups, a spoonful of freshly made peanut butter ice cream, .25 bowl, hunger 2/5

EVENING SNACK: 10:15pm, ramakin of peanut butter ice cream, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
Very curious how this came out. I kinda made up this Philadelphia-style (no egg) ice cream recipe, trying to keep the number of ingredients to a minimum:

• 1 cup peanut butter
• 2 scraped out vanilla beans
• 1/2 cup cane sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 pt heavy cream

Creamed the peanut butter, vanilla and sugar. Used the good peanut butter, ground fresh at the market, with nothing else in it. Added the milk and let it loosen everything. Added the cream and loosened some more. Into the ice cream machine, then into the freezer.

Tasted clean and pure -- can taste the peanut, can taste cream, not too sweet, just sweet enough. Next time may play with a maple or molasses sweetener to play against the peanut flavor. A dash of salt probably wouldn't hurt.

Peanut Butter Cup Reverie

I remember when I was a young teen at summer camp, food was pretty regimented, with all campers and staff piling into the dining hall three times a day, every day, for communal meals. On top of that, there were afternoon snacks distributed in mass, ocassionally ice cream on sticks, but too often unpopular fruit.

The exception to this was the canteen, where we could buy junkfood. Only at certain times, and limited in amounts. The prices were less than in the real world, so they weren't doing this for a huge profit -- it was more to head off the 2ndary black market that would emerge when kids would get care packages from parents then distribute the junk food for cash and power.

My parents weren't big on the sending of junk food, so the canteen was where I got to indulge in a way in which my parents would not approve. One thing I loved were Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I just loved them. I loved them so much that when the camp took us on a day trip to the Hershey's Amusment Park in Hershey, PA, I went and got myself a Reese's t-shirt. So at every opportunity, I would purchase the cups at the canteen. The problem was, once I ate them, they were gone...

So I remember one summer I decided to save them. When I got back home, I would not have such easy and casual access to the peanut butter cups. I would not be able to eat them in the presence of my parents, would have to dispose of the wrappers carefully if I ate them at home. I remember that by the time the summer was over, I had horded about 20 packs of peanut butter cups -- that's 40 or so individual cups. Seeing them piled geometrically in my wooden cubby was a pleasure. But the summer was over, and here was my well-curated collection, a supply of pleasure defered, that if were to be greeted by my parents, would be at best doled out to me over time in limited quantities, and at worst confiscated and destroyed.

This only occurred to me the day we were being brought back to the real world to be reunited with our parents after the summer. On the 3-4 hour bus ride from the Poconos in PA to NYC, I ate the entire collection of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups right up, first quickly, them working through, a little bit slower. I was sitting next to a friend, and shared, but he could only get through 2 packs. I didn't eat breakfast that morning, because barfing would of been such a waste of cups. I remember feeling queasy getting off the bus but happy to be in my parent's warm and loving arms. I was proud of myself that I was able to ingest all my peanut butter cup freedom before coming back to my parent's control of my diet. It was a duality I never really resolved. I hope Edie never has these issues.

As I was struggling with tummy issues stemming from my peanut butter cup gorging in the morning, came upon this article in the NY Times. Food for thought, indeed.

BREAKFAST: 9:15am, organic cheerios with organic dead milk, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 10:30am, dark chocolate peanut butter cups, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
B took Edles this morning and met up with a gang of her gal friends for early afternoon alcohol while I made a matinee movie. I brought the bag of peanut butter cups and reverted to a 14 year old in the dark for a few hours.

PM SNACK: 2:15pm, watermelon, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8pm, Shrimp Scampi a la Noah over fresh spaghetti, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Sometimes when I wing it, it comes out the way I hope. Jumbo shrimp unfrozen, shelled and deveined. Salted water boiling, 1 serving of pasta in for 4 minutes. Fry pan heated, olive oil to 1/4 inch, minced shallot and shrimps in. Salt. 2 minutes, flip. Add a dash of Worcestershire, a dash of hot sauce, a pat of butter. With a minute left, crush 4 small cloves of garlic into it, turn it all together. Pasta drained, plated, pan of shrimp and sauce poured over, mixed. Freshly grate parm over.

The buttery garlicky scampy came out with just the right amount of subtle spicy kick, shrimpy in a fresh balanced way. Pat myself on the back. Now if a) I can figure out how to make pasta where it doesn't stick together then b) duplicate this for multiple people, I'll be in business.