Too Much Apple Crisp

B, Edles and I went to the local casual restaurant for breakfast, then took a nice walk up the East River in the rain. B had a few friends come over in the afternoon to hang out, and I spent part of the morning making an apple crisp.

Gonna continue with the fruit challenge after tomorrow, just don't have the mental energy this weekend.

BREAKFAST: 9am, blueberry pancakes, home fries, bacon, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1pm, leftover sauteed broc and spinach over vegan morel risotto, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK 2-6pm, too much apple crisp, a small pumpkin cupcake, 1/2 glass of white wine, roasted almonds, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Apple crisp is simply sliced peeled apples tossed with a bit of brown sugar, salt and lemon juice, and topped with a concoction of flour, sugar, cinnamon and butter, baked until soft on bottom and crisp on top. I was going to serve with ice cream, but a certain wife of mine who shall remain nameless stored the freezer barrel in the cupboard instead of the freezer, so I put a bunch of the ice cream batter (really, a Cream Anglais) and put it into a squeezy bottle to jazz up the squared off crisp. From something as assed-out as melted ice cream to something as elegant as a few swirls of Cream Anglais!

DINNER: 8pm, small amount of Chinese food, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Ordered a brick, but ate only a bit, the rest saved for after my ride tomorrow.

Fruity Week, Day 5

Got through chores in the morning with Edie at my side. One chore was to get back on the fruit challenge. As I stood by the counter gritting, I said to Edie, looking up at me in the carriage peacefully, "I do this so you don't make the same mistakes I did!"

I originally got three kinds of grapes, but the red grapes seem to have disappeared into the endless maw know as my mawful wife. So I got seedless white and seedless black out, as well as kiwi. I've used both in smoothies before, but never actually ate any of them whole and unprocessed.

Grape. It's been my favorite soda flavor from birth. Grape jam is no stranger. Grape juice, and it's sophisticated fermented cousin is a friend. So why haven't I eaten grapes my entire life? Fear of the pulp, fear of the squish factor, fear of papery skin. So when I popped in the first white grape and chewed, it was a bit of relief/surprise. Sweet! Juicy! Smooth tender pulp! Like grape juice coming out of a rehydrated, tender raisin (in c-school, rehydrating raisins in wine was a kick). I....LIKE this! I could not detect any flavor difference in the white or black grapes. I think we have the first winner of Fruit Week. I still have to eat more, but I think this may become a regular item on my to-eat list. Matched with cheese like an apple, yummmm....

Kiwi didn't go so well. I used it in smoothies before for it's slimey consistency and tartness. And eaten straight, yes.....tart and slimy, only broken up by the gritty little seeds studding the flesh. This, I think, was not meant to be eaten straight, but as a counterpoint in a salad or smoothie. One piece was all I needed to learn what it was about. Kiwi, you don't fool me!

AM SNACK: 9:45am, 3 white grapes, 3 black grapes, 1 piece of kiwi

BREAKFAST: 11am, bite of "chocolate chip cookie", street pound cake, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
In the farmer's market I realized I hadn't eaten a real breakfast and was kind of hungry. One stand had a lot of baked goods and I picked up a three-pack of some attractive chocolate chip cookies. Walking out, I took a bite and....BLECHCHCH! WTF? There was a little piece of paper in the bag listing ingredients: flour, smart balance, sugar...wait, what? F@cking smart balance? Hydrogenated vegetable oil with added chemicals to make in "healthy"? And the last ingredient was "vanilla pudding" -- what, kozy shack chemi-pudding? This tasted like a cheap industrial product, a batrayal of the trust I have with the farmer's market.

So at the corner of Union Square, I got a piece of poundcake from a cart. I just made pound cake last week, so this was an interesting contrast. Lighter, hints of vanilla instead of lemon and....no butter, definitely soybean oil or something equally cheap and neutral. This is same lame industrial cooking as the farmer's market cooking, but more honest and cheaper.

LUNCH: 1:45pm, homemade potato leek soup, homemade baked ziti, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Momma-in-law came over and we ate together, before I took off to do some Edie-free food shopping. It's nice to be able to lean over and tie my shoelaces in the middle of the market without twisting Lil' E into a secure pretzel.

SNICKLEDINNER: 7pm, small green salad, sauteed spinach & broccoli over sofrito morel brown rice, vegan mint chip ice cream, 2 glasses wine, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
It's nice when you cook a meal with out a recipe, kinda decide how you want it to come out midway through, and it comes out just as you wanted. I had a half gallon of morel mushroom stock sitting in my freezer for ever, waiting for a vegetarian meal to prop up. I made a wallop of sofrito (slow cooked onion, bell pepper, garlic, cilantro) and put that in the rice cooker with the stock and short grain brown sushi rice. After cooking for over an hour, a shake of salt and it was singing.

T wasn't going to be over for another hour or so, so I large-sliced a couple of onions and caramelized them over low heat. Added sliced shitake, garlic, sake, a bag of spinach, and small-cut florets of broccoli, which I blanched and shocked earlier. Finished with sesame oil and chicken fat (KIDDING!) and sesame seeds, seasoned with salt, and damn if it didn't taste pretty good. The sweetness of the onions really played well with the greenery. Sweet balances bitter.

The starch in the rice really exploded, making the rice more risotto-like, which was perfect for the strength of the morel stock. The stock lent a low, broad base, kinda like when you're watching Star Trek Next Gen and the low hum of engines are always in the background. Anyway, I digress. T brought some ice cream, that was soft and ready to go outta the tub, a perfect way to end a meal.

Fruity Fail

Woke up early, got back to sleep, woke up again, had to get out of the house to get to the restaurant with Edie. Had to get back home to drop Edie off so I could meet L for some restaurant business, then we went to dinner at the 2nd Ave Deli. I was planning to do some fruit exploration in the evening, but my stomach was full and the queasiness that peach gave me was fresh in my mind so I passed. Tomorrow I shall resume.

However, I DID eat my share of fruit today with a smoothie, avocado in my sushi roll, and an apple donut!

BREAKFAST 1: 5am, organic cheerios with dead organic milk, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Woke up and could not get back to sleep for a few hours.

BREAKFAST 2: 8:30am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Used up the rest of the fresh blueberries along with the rest of the usual suspects.

AM SNACK: 11:30am, Manhattan Special, .25 bowl, hunger 3/5

PM SNACK: 1:30pm, meatball

LUNCH: 2:30pm, small try of sushi roll, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, donut, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
From Donut Plant, apple cinnamon flavor -- does that count as a fruit?

DINNER: 5:30pm, half a pastrami sandwich, matzoh ball soup, fries, health salad, pickles, water, a drop of Cel-Rey soda, a shot of chocolate soda, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

Fruity Week, Day 3

So while Edie continued to sleep, I mad myself a plate of fruit this morning -- orange, pear and peach. The first thing I noticed while peeling the orange was being transported back to hanging out in my parents' living room with my dad. He would snack on oranges all the time, all over the place, but the main place was on his Eames lounge chair listening to classical or klezmer, and reading a novel, while eating a fragrant orange that he bought in quantity in Chinatown for cheap. Just peeling it released a big orange smell that said Papa.

First down was the pear, the least scary as it looks like a deformed apple. The flesh is firm. This Bartlett pear wasn't very sweet, and wasn't very juicy. Hints of vanilla. A little bit mealy. Overall unpleasant, but very edible and not very challenging.

Next up was the orange. The first thing I noticed about it was that it looked like a big knot of pulp -- which it is, I guess. Not appealing. I put it in my mouth and started chewing, and the gush of juice coated my mouth, very pleasant -- almost made up for the chewy pulp it left behind. Soft, pliable, easy to swallow. Surprised how more complex it is than juice -- there is the sweetness, but another big note of bitterness, which allowed the 'orangeness' to blossom in the middle.

Last was the peach. I remember being scolded by my mom many times, why don't you just try this peach? It's so juicy and sweet! This was easily the hardest. Looking at the flesh, it looks like nothing I like to eat. A weird redness where the pit was. Skin is vaguely fuzzy. Flesh has a sheen. I popped one piece in my mouth. First thing I noticed was the consistency -- skin was a little tough and papery, the flesh was a bit slimy and gelatinous. Flavor, a tone of peachiness, mostly sweet. I chewed it fully and swallowed, followed by an exclamation of "yuck!" to Edie. I put another slice in my mouth and it popped back out, I just couldn't get myself to close my mouth. I took it to the sink to cut it into smaller pieces. Popped a smaller piece in my mouth and again it popped out! Damn, this is like trying to feed a baby, except I'm the baby!

Conclusion, pears are neither here nor there. Oranges, I think with more experience I could learn to like them. Peaches, I just don't like, and now I can say I've really tried one and I KNOW I don't like them.

AM SNACK: 9am, orange, pear, peach, .15 bowl, hunger 3/5

BREAKFAST: 10am, pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 12:45pm, baked ziti, mint ice cream, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACKING: boiled shrimp, a few spoonfuls of various mayonnaise, a few tastes of vegetable soup, coca cola, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
The vegetable soup we made in school was really big-tasting, and completely vegan -- I brought home a pint for HVS this Friday...

DINNER: 8pm, Stouffers French bread pizza, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Ahhh, the opposite of peaches!

Fruity Week, Day 2

Edie powered through 2 bottles of breast milk and 3 bottles of formula, a new Edie World's Record for quantity eaten in one day. In a week or two, we're going to start with a little bit of solid food.....

Woke up wiped out. Hung around the house doing laundry and prepping for class tomorrow before going out for lunch and the baby drop in at the community center. Picked up ingredients for a baked ziti, as I needed to use the tomato sauce I made weeks ago or watch it go bad.

EVIL SNACK: 10pm the night before, a few ounces of dark chocolate
Why do I not remember that when I do this, it keeps me up for hours? Didn't get to bed until I watched most of Schindler's List on cable and read a scary story in New York magazine about circumcision....

BREAKFAST: 8:45am, 16 blueberries, 3 blackberries, 3 raspberries, smoothie with those three, frozen cherries, banana, milk, yogurt, flax, vanilla sugar, salt, ice, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
The blueberries were the most familiar. The first taste was surprisingly bitter, but by the second, the sweetness came in and balanced it nicely. Between the two opposite tastes, a distinct flavor came through, nice. I would eat these when these are at the height of their season.

Blackberries were sour with almost no sweetness that I could detect. The little nodules that make up the body of the berry kinda weirded me out, like a face that can't be seen due to the overwhelming dense forest of juicy pimples that are waiting to squirt at you. The consistency wasn't so bad, after one chew the nodules became undifferentiated pulp, no big squirt. However, there is a dry bit of grit that holds the berry together that is a bit unpleasant.

Raspberries are of similar structure, but like blueberries, have nicely competing sweet/sour tones where a particular 'raspberry' flavor calls out in the middle. I think I've only had this flavor in jams -- for some reason I associate it with artificial berry flavor, though this is as real as it gets.

The smoothie is jazzed up with a teaspoon of vanilla sugar, to get over the blackberry bump. However, those damn blackberries lent a slight grit to my otherwise smooth smoothie that was just sucky.

Conclusion of the fruit experiment: blueberries could be a regular snack when in seasons. Raspberries are gonna get bought in the frozen form and added to my smoothie regime. Blackberries, there must be SOMETHING people like about these things -- must try again next summer when they're back in season. Otherwise, not gonna bother.

LUNCH: 12:45pm, fish ball with rice noodle, 2 lotus leaf wraps, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Food from the Chinese cart at the corner of East Broadway and Rutgers. Weird, cheap ethnic food makes our city great. Sat in the park with Edie eating, enjoying the mild weather and the mysterious fish balls.

PM SNACK: 1:45pm, 1 "zebra" cookie
At the baby drop in, the leader brings home baked goods every time. This was a simply merranguy chocolate cookie dusted with confectioners sugar before baking so when all the cracks form, it looks like black lines on the white surface.

DINNER: 6pm, large green salad, homemade baked ziti, small quantity of homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

Fruity Week, Day 1

Day one of the 3-fruit-a-day challenge was easy: banana, tomato, avocado. It had to be, as that was what I had on hand. However, on the way home from a day out, I stopped by the market and picked up a whole mess of fruit. Some vaguely familiar, some make me wonder how to even cut into them. From most comfortable to most cringe worthy:

Pineapple
Pear
Mango
Orange
Grapefruit
Kiwi
Three kinds of grapes
blueberries
blackberries
raspberries
Peach
Papaya
Pomegranate

I skipped on strawberries and plums because the thought of putting them in my mouth made me gag. I'm going to attempt a minimum of three bites of each fruit unprocessed, and a minimum of a 1/2 cup serving processed into a smoothie. Peach is making me feel a little queasy, now that I think about it. This is gonna be a challenge, he he he.

BREAKFAST: 8am, banana, last piece of pound cake, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Banana was good n' familiar. Noticed how as I chewed it, it's slime factor increased, not in a bad way, just in a....familiar but strange way. It's why it's such a good base for a smoothie, I guess.

Too bad pound cakes don't grow on trees, or this challenge would have been a lot easier.

LUNCH: 1pm, croque monsieur, small amount of potato chips, diet coke, pink peppercorn bread pudding, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Out at a little cafe in Astoria with Edie and friends. The sandwich was good, the crisp toasted bread being the star of the show, the thin slice of ham barely there, just giving a nice porcine note. Didn't particularly want the coke, but it came with the meal, that or the corn syrup version. The bread pudding, something I usually don't eat, was actually really interesting, sweet and peppery. Are peppercorns considered a fruit?

DINNER: 6:30pm, large green salad with plum tomato and avocado, small piece of pork loin sauteed in chicken fat and potato leek soup, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
So thanks to Buttery Peanut, I got 2 more easy fruits in today, tomato and avocado diced and mixed into my salad. Tomato is known to me, but I've never used avocado in this way -- I had it on hand because B loves it in her salad. It lent a creaminess to the more crunchy, fibrous surroundings which was pretty nice. I may do this again in the future, voluntarily!

Feeling fruity

In this evening's Simpsons, the entire town except the family turns into zombies because of burgers made from cows who were on all-cow diets. Bart is in his bedroom, windows boarded up, complaining, "I'm so hungry, there is nothing to eat", then says, "except that", and the camera pans to his side table, with a bowl of ripe, sparkly fruit.

Starting tomorrow and ending Saturday, I will attempt to eat at least a part of three fruits a day. I've been relatively fruit-o-phobic my entire life, and have only upped my fruit consumption as an adult by processing it into things like smoothies and pies. Apples and bananas are about it, things like grapes have always turned my off by their....squishiness. Oranges too....pulpy. Peaches too....hairy. This week I will attempt to eat around the produce aisle.

Rented a car and went up into Peekskill to visit my parent's grave site, the fist time with Edie on the outside of B's belly, and strapped to mine. Despite the rain, we gathered with my brother's family (5 kids and counting) and popped over the the general store at Tompkin's Corners. They have a small back room the 10 of us piled into, and then....all the lights went out. Outages in upstate during bad weather is not all uncommon, and the proprietor had electric lanterns to light the dark room. Quite romantic, eating processed turkey with 6 children and a couple of orthodox Jews in a darkened room...

BREAKFAST: 8:15am, toasted onion bagel with cram cheese and sable, rootbeer, 1.26 bowl, hunger 4/5
I was give a bottle of good IBC rootbeer earlier this week, but had to put it aside due to sugar fasting. I can understand while sweet things (donuts, muffins) are such popular breakfast items -- it really gives a lift to waking up.

LUNCH: 1pm, turkey & swiss on a roll, potato chips, diet coke, chocolate chip cookies, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
At the general store in Peekskill where I used to buy candy from as a child.

PM SNACK: 5pm, slice of streetza, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Riding my bike home from the car rental, I went down Bleeker, past many, many pizza places -- John's, Keste, Monster. Went to the Pizza Box, an old school joint that's been there forever and enjoyed a standard street slice.

DINNER: 7:45pm, potato leek soup with sauteed shrimp, a few pseudo-healthy Betsy cookies, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5