Sugar Headache

Woke up at 4:30am, as I'm attempting another 100 mile ride tomorrow and need to get up without being worn out. Also woke up with a headache, which started last night. It's either from not enough water or....lack of sweets! Could I be going into sugar withdrawal?

BREAKFAST: 6am, organic cheerios with dead organic milk, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 9am, emthaller cheese, green apple, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Watching a DVD of short films about food justice, this farmer's market snack seemed appropriate.

AM SNACK: 10am, potato nick with mustard and onion relish, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Got lunch-level hungry, but going to yoga in a few hours. I took the last piece of potato nick out of the freezer and into the microwave. When I took it out to check temp, I noticed it was reheating slow....because it was a big piece. My instinct is to just eat the whole thing, I'm hungry and don't want scraps lying around....but should I make myself the human garbage can? I cut it in half, one half back into the micro, the other into the fridge for an easy-to-heat snack at a later point.

SNICKLESNACK: 2:15pm, falafel on whole wheat pita, a couple spoonfuls of vegan rice pudding, diet coke, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
The HVS & I hit up Maoz on Union Square after yoga. As we were sitting in the window, every other person was walking by carrying several cans of Coke Zero, a newish line of the coke brand. I was thirsty, but didn't want to buy a soda (all restaurants should give water away for free, damnit!) So I popped my head out and indeed, 20 feet away at the corner the cokes were being given out for free. So I jogged over, falafel in hand, and got a can.

This product has the same artificial sweetener and flavor profile as the European diet coke, a less overpowering sweetness, but still tastes fakey and acidy. Still, I remember both my parents drank tons and tons of diet coke, and my dad loved buying large amounts when it went on sale. So to score a free can, at a time when you really want to drink something, well, it almost made that fake acidy mess taste good!

DINNER: 5:30pm, homemade spinach cheese ravioli in butter sauce, halava, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

Too grim

Edie has good taste in food, it seems -- she drinks mother's milk all day, but on the day I ran out and tried to feed her formula, she'd take a few sucks then push it away. Ain't nuthin' like the real thing.

It rained all day, and me and Edles stayed in doors. We went down to the lobby to get mail and looked at the rain and the wind, and we both agreed that the world was too grim to enter today.

BREAKFAST: 8am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Replicated yesterday's, came out just as good. I need to have some one else taste this, is it this good or is it just me?

BREAKFAST 2: 10am, pumpernickel bagel with hummus, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1pm, Stouffer's Deluxe French Bread Pizzas, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, large green salad, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6pm, catfish buritto, pork taco, guacemole and chips, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Fneh Mexican food ordered in, while watching a movie with B&E. We were watching 'State of Play', which I saw in theaters with the HVS, but fell asleep during because I was exhausted from the restaurant. This time, I fell asleep because I was exhausted from lovin' on the Edie all day!

One smal step for Noah, one giant step for Smoothie technology

Looking back at yesterday, the farmer's market was extra fun, with an awake and happy Edie charming all-comers as we walked through, but afterwards popping into Wholefoods was a bit of a stress, with Edie getting cranky and one hand on a cart that just wanted to veer left into every display. The advantages and disadvantages of food shopping with a baby writ large, with immediacy!

The ingredients on the Haagen Daaz "Vanilla Bean" ice cream is: cream, skim milk, sugar, egg yolks, ground vanilla beans, vanilla extract. (The HD plain vanilla is the same, minus the ground beans.) My vanilla ice cream, if it had a label, would be: organic cream, organic whole unhomogenized milk, organic egg yolks, organic sugar, vanilla bean seed scrapings. The Haagen Daaz, compared to my ice cream, has a weird fluffy fatty texture, and is soooo vanilla to the point of overwhelming any flavor of cream, which I guess is fine, since under the vanilla it tastes....cooked. My vanilla ice cream is more subtle, more clean tasting. And, I imagine, if I were to sell it by the pint, to make a profit would be $15/pint instead of HD's 5.

Edles n' I walked over the Manhattan Bridge to the restaurant. L has an idea he wants me to help him with -- open up a 2nd location.....in Williamsburg....in the RELIGIOUS section....and make the place glatt kosher.....this is definitely going to be a either a funny footnote anecdote or a chapter heading in my book....

BREAKFAST: 8am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
On my harried run through Wholefoods yesterday, I picked up a bag of frozen mango chunks and a bag of frozen depitted cherries. Cherries because they are out of season, mango because they're hard to cut up and go bad before I use them up. In addition to fresh blueberries, banana, good yogurt, dead organic milk, a pinch of vanilla sugar and a pinch of sea salt, I finally added a few spoonfuls of freshly ground flax, now that I have a new spice grinder. I eliminated the ice cubes, as the frozen fruit served the same purpose, minus the dilution.

And wow, this was the best smoothie yet. Thick, sweet but balanced with tartness, and the fruit flavor just tasted...fruitier, due to lack of ice cubes.

LUNCH: 12 noon, 2 small slices texmex pizza, 8 oz sprite, glass of lemonade, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
L has a Tex Mex pizza on the menu as a special, but there are so many ingredients on it that he substituted a bunch of stuff on this pie -- red onion for scallion, cherry peppers for jalapenos, avocado slices for guacamole. The chili-fresh corn-cheddar cheese combo would have been enough, really, but the vinegary cherry peppers kinda blew everything else out of the water with it's overpowering flavor.

PM SNACK 3:30pm, apple, emmathaler cheese, 5 Milano cookies, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Green apple and raw milk cheese from the farmer's market, so good.PM

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, large green salad, small amount of vanilla ice cream, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Too hungry to wait for dinner, this was a semi-healthy stopgap.

DINNER: 7:30pm, chirashi sushi, fresh uni sushi, mini salad, edemame, 1 glass sake, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Met E on the UES to go to Candle Cafe, but there was a long wait for a table -- the Hungry Vegan Society must be multiplying and taking over that neighborhood or something. So we went up the street to a nice Japanese joint. They were offering a special -- fresh live sea urchin. So many Japanese sushi places in the city just make no effort, so I had to order this special -- I kinda hate sea urchin, because invariable it's funky, pasty and smells off. This sea urchin, which came presented on it's spiny black shell, was redolently fresh, smooth and creamy, tasting like the ocean, like caviar but more pleasant.

Little Steps

Rolled Edie downtown to try to buy a Beatles box, ended up in City Hall Park reading the paper. A slow walk home found us back at the fishball and rice noodle cart by Seward Park, this time I ordered some lotus leaf wraps off the weird little menu. I've only eaten vegan versions of this street snack, but this one had ground pork in a surprisingly subtle brown sauce, really good. I think I'm going to attempt to eat my way through that little menu, though the curry squid will probably be last, he he.

After a few hours at home, we set off again, this time with Edles in a sling. We ate lunch at 2Boots, which technically is pizza, but really is more like pizza-styled food. The Earthmother is an inch thick whole wheat crust topped with tomato sauce and cooked veg, which is good....but it ain't really pizza.

Afters sitting in Union Square a bit, I hit the farmer's market for the first time with Edie. She was awake, and her head propped up out of the sling, looking around and generally being a happy baby. We got a LOT of color commentary from the market goers, all female of all ages. Yep, Edie got the cuteness going for her. Where was Edie when I was a lonely teen, aching for female attention?

So far so good. B went to work, I got out of the house for a full day with Edie, and a lot of little thoughts fluttered through my mind through out the day. Little steps.

BREAKFAST: 8am, 2 pancakes, glass of Gatorade, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 9:15am, chocolate donut, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 11am, 2 lotus leaf wraps, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 2pm, 1 slice square pie, 1 slice earth mother pizza, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM WATERING: 2:45pm, lemon lime seltzer
After pizza, walking up Ave A, found myself desiring desert, but thought it just might be thirst. After a drink, it indeed was just thirst. Weird how a sweet tooth and dehydration feel similar.

DINNER: 6pm, green salad with sauteed shrimp and mushrooms, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 8:15pm, a little bit of ice cream, 10 Milano cookies, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
After a relatively healthy dinner, found my sweet tooth coming up again, and gave in. I did only eat 2/3 of the bag of cookies, which is an improvement over my old habits of easily getting down a full package when I'm in this mood.

And Edie had milk all day long...

For a day that is a bit of "this is the first day of the rest of your life", it was pretty fun. Betsy got out the door by 7:30, leaving me not quite awake with a quite awake baby. Around 9am, got a panicked call from L -- it seems there was a gas main issue on the restaurant's street, and he was in Connecticut, so I needed to go over and give access and represent. So me n' Edles focused, got our gear together, and made our way out to Brooklyn.

After spending an hour at the restaurant, we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, a first for Edie no doubt. Around this time, I had my first phone call with B from work, who seemed to be doing really well. I met a friend for vegetarian dim sum, then a slow walk home with a stop in a park to change a diaper.

I carried Edie in a sling all day, and the motion of my walking seemed to lull her to sleep for a lot of the day. It was nice.

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, good granola with dead organic milk, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 11:30am, cream soda, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
When alone in a restaurant with a baby and no ovens working, this is what one grabs.

LUNCH: 1:30pm, vegetarian dim sum, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Almost done with my Chinese food ethnography book. The author gives short thrift to the Chinese Buddhist vegetarian tradition.

DINNER: 5:30pm, leftover shake n' bake chicken and buttery pasta, 1 piece of Stouffers french bread white pizza, Gatorade, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Home with B! We both feel like a weight lifted -- this just may work out after all. I couldn't wait 30 minutes for frozen pizza, so I finished yesterday's leftovers, then shared the pizza with B. This was a new "5 cheese white" version, which I must say, was vastly inferior. It basically tasted like a cross between grilled cheese and the sauce from macaroni & cheese, smashed together with garlic bread. Three flavors I guess people like, but it ain't really pizza...

Last day of summer

Spent the day with B&E -- tomorrow, B goes to work, and the test runs of days with Edie become my work day.

BREAKFAST: 10am, large piece of watermelon, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1pm, falafel platter, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4pm, 2 prepackaged ice cream cone things, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8pm, shake n' bake chicken breast, fresh pasta with mushrooms in a butter-wine reduction, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
A high/low dinner. We three capped off our walk with a shop at the local Pathmark, slow and leisurely, walking down each aisle even if we didn't need anything there. I found a box of "Shake n' Bake Original Chicken", something I had not eaten or even seen since I was a child, it was a new product, and my mom made it for us. I could not remember what it tasted like, but wanted to see...

It's kinda gross, but good. Essentially flour, salt, spices, preservatives, decaking agents and some fats absorbed into it, it's kinda retarded how it gives you a plastic bag to shake the meat in, before you bake it. The flavor is definitely unique, definitely salty, and definitely took me right back to Staten Island as a 10 year old, having dinner served to me from my mom, and thinking that because the leg or thigh I was eating was so stringy and creepy, that I may one day be a vegetarian. I think I need to make my own shake-n-bake mix, it'll be much tastier.

On the high side, I boiled up some of the fresh pasta I made a week or so ago, and in a pan experimented with the concept of buerre blanc. Shallot minced, softened in safflower, then through in a bunch of thin sliced mushrooms and salt. About halfway cooked, I poured in some cooking sake and some distilled white vinegar, and cooked it to almost dry, Added a cold half stick of butter, seasoned. The vinegar makes it, totally makes it, why haven't I been cooking butter sauces with vinegar my whole life? My lord, more than salt, it just made the pasta come alive. I'm gonna start vinegaring all my basic no-recipe sauces, to see what happens.

EVENING SNACK: 11pm, 2 prepackaged ice cream cone things, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
B has been nervous, emotional and stressed about going back to work for weeks now. Me, it just hit me the night before, and lead me to scarf some junk. I'm gonna focus on better eating now that the days stretching out before me are me n' Edles vs. the world....

More brownies, in much larger quantities

B, Edles and I did another shopping/strolling trip to get B ready for work, this time to Park Slope. Wow, lot of strollers competing for space. They need bike lanes AND stroller lanes.

We popped over to Clinton Hill to visit my friend C, who is about 6 months preggers, who are in a new condo with her husband near Bed Stuy. A few days ago, I gave her a produce and equipment list, and when we got in around 3:15pm I got straight to work in their new kitchen, pushing out about 3 courses and an pre-dinner cooler, serving the final desert around 6:15pm. Working 7 or 8 different recipes, from the super casual (lemonade) to the first time since c-school (beurre blanc, from my classroom recipe card) at once was fun, and reminded me a) I enjoy cooking ornately and b) I'm not bad at it. I goofed a few little things, but despite working in an unfamiliar kitchen with a loose pantry, I think everyone was happy.

I've been contemplating projects for the upcoming months involving, among other things, cooking. This meal was a nice reminder that fun is on the horizon. Now if only Edie would start eating stuff I can make for her, now THAT will be amazing...

The problem with pot brownies is that no matter how good it tastes, having more than one dose can lead to an unpleasant time. So I made brownies at C's house using the same recipe, minus the active ingredient.

BREAKFAST: 10am, slice of cold pizza, gatorade, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Pizza is a lunch and dinner food, but whenever it's brought up as a breakfast food, it's "cold pizza from the night before." Fresh-moz pizza a day out is kinda gross, but this pizza was from a slice joint. Still not very good cold, I don't care what nobody says yo.

PM SNACK: 1pm, cherry ice, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, small piece of cheese sandwich, 1 chocolate covered graham cracker , .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 5:45pm, pan fried scallops with beurre blanc, cooked spinach, brown rice pilaf, bruschetta, lemonade, wine, water, brownies, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
First thing when we got to C's house, I made a simple syrup and busted out a pitcher of lemonade. Made the brownies and got them into the oven. Then I set up the pilaf to cook, which would take an hour. Once on, chopped tomatoes and fried a hearty multi-grain bread in olive oil, got out the bruschetta appetizer. Fried a mess of spinach in chicken fat, shallots and garlic, finished with salt. Made beurre blanc: reduce wine and vinegar with shallot, bay leaf and peppercorns. When almost dry, whisk in cubes of cold butter. Strain, season, reserve. Lastly, coated scallops in flower and fried in chicken fat in a cast iron skillet, turned once and finished in the oven.

Once in a blue moon

The family and I made our way to Cobble Hill for wandering and B's back-to-work shopping, then went to my friend K's house (on the same block HVS used to live!) for a nice home-made lunch in a beautiful backyard. K made some superb vittles, all of which I want to recreate myself. I brought a batch of the special brownies I made a few days ago, and within 2 hours realized they were, indeed, quite strong.

We parted close to 6pm, and made our way home by subway. On the walk from the subway, we ordered a pizza from our local slice shop -- I've never ordered a pizza from there, but it seemed like the ideal food for my state.

I enjoyed the brownie, but it incapacitated me a bit more than I had hoped -- a proper amount is half a brownie, not a whole. I really have no desire to indulge again any time soon, so I imagine I'll bury a couple in the back of my freezer and give the rest away. B was great, but being stoned was kinda like leaving all the responsibility on her shoulders. Which is fine because we talked it through beforehand, but at the same time it's not a place I want to visit more than once in a blue moon.

BREAKFAST: 10am, pumpernickel bagel with peanut butter, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 1pm, Boylan's grape soda, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 3pm, Asian chicken salad, watermelon and avocado salad, mint ice tea, 2-3 glasses of wine, a magical brownie, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7:30pm, 4 slices of pizza, 2 bowl, hunger 4/5