Get behind me, burger meat

BREAKFAST: 9am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 10am, several pieces of chocolate dipped short bread, .25 bowl, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 3pm, burger, fries, a small portion of tiramisu, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
B ordered a veggie burger, EK ordered some veggie wrap, I almost ordered something less meat-o-centric but just felt like ordering something contradictory. I asked for the burger well done, especially after reading that NY Times article on the beef industry and...it wasn't worth taking my health in my hands to eat chopped meat, straight up.

DINNER: 8pm, sauteed shrimp with sofrito rice, 2 pieces short bread, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

Sofrito revelation

Spent the morning doing laundry, cooking rice n' beans, developing the Thanksgiving menu for the school and cuddling with Lil' E. Went out to lunch in Soho with Y, then met up with B after work and walked home.

BREAKFAST: 9am, pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese and sable, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH 1: 12:45pm, sofrito rice & beans, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
I've thrown around the word 'sofrito' but really haven't gone whole hog on it. I've cooked some of the ingredients of this Spanish cooking base together (onion, bell pepper, garlic, cilantro) but didn't take the last step. I noticed an old jar of commerical sofrito in the fridge at school....and it is a paste, not chunky. Hmmmm.

So I minced and softened a large sweet onion in olive oil, added minced red bell pepper and a wallop of minced garlic. All till almost mushy, hit it with a little wine and cooked off the booze. That all went into a blender with a large handful of cilantro and blended to a paste. BAM! Sofrito. Brown shortgrain rice, 2 cans of black beans, water, bay leaves, salt and a pinch of red pepper into the rice cooker, along with all the slightly-grean sofrito paste.

After an hour of cooking, I ate a small ball and....wow. I usually don't surprise myself, but this is really good, better than rice and beans cooked with chicken stock....maybe not salt pork and pork fat, but a big big flavor.

PM SNACK: 2:15pm, pumpkin donut, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH 2: 3:15pm, sesame noodles, large spinach salad, hijiki soy patty, some frozen vanilla yogurt, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
At Dojo with Y and Edie.

DINNER: 8:30pm, Stouffer's french bread pizza, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Not the healthiest, but the alternate was much worse. I was cooking another batch of shortbread cookies -- I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from everyone who tried them, so wanted to make them again, but with a little bit more attention. But I knew if I was hungry, when they came out a large number would disappear down my maw. The only quick and easy thing I could make while on cookie duty were the frozen pizzas.

EVENING SNACK: 10pm, 4 small wedges of fresh short bread

Winey

Wanted a smoothie, but B went bananas and ate them all. Spent the morning at the restaurant, sipping on wine, then to an informal mother's group in the neighborhood, also sipping on wine. B & I ordered in food, and she suggested cracking open a bottle, but I had to put my foot down.

Randomly started reading a chick-book, about something I find very attractive in women but never quite understood why. Now if I can get B to indulge me....

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, organic cheerioes with organic dead milk, cheesecake, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Cheesecake messed with my sleep again last night, so thought maybe if I STARTED the day with it, it would be a little easier on the back end...

LUNCH: 11am, apple-wood smoked duck confit, farro&sausage, Manhattan Special, .75 bowl, hunger 3/5
At the restaurant. I brought L the farro and kasha, and he had a sample of duck confit from a supplier, so he heated both up in caste iron. L liked the farro, which was nice, because as out-there as he is, his palate is very discerning and honest.

PM SNORT 1: 12:30pm, mouthfuls of 6 different high-end wines
Wine tasting of tasty reds at the resto.

PM SNORT 2: 1 glass of malbec
Tasty red at an informal play group with a bunch of local mommas.

PM SNACK: 4:45pm, hunk of smoked mozzarella, .1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6pm, sushi, tempura, green salad, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Ordered in with the B.

Varnishkes

Spent part of the morning planting garlic cloves in our little plot of garden by the side of the building. Who will enjoy this? The rats or my friends and family? We'll have to wait until spring to find out!

Prepped left overs from last night for Yomomma, who came down to look after Edles while I was away teaching. We made kasha varnishkes, something I never made at home or c-school, but it came out perfectly anyway -- my self-confidence cooking just stepped up a small notch. I've been eating packaged frozens stuff my whole life, it's really nice to be able to replicate it without having done it before, and coming out better than the packaged stuff. Yep, chicken fat vs. soybean oil, there ain't no competition, sorry!

BREAKFAST: 8am, toasted bagel with cream cheese and sable, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Felt queasy from a lack of sleep due to too many pumpkin cookies and cheese cake. Still wanted to eat breakfast.

LUNCH: 12:30pm, large green salad, pea soup, 5 pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6pm, kasha varnishkes, farro & sausage, a couple of juice boxes, a soda, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 9pm, more kasha and farro, a piece of cheese cake, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Wow, cheesecake is still here. Two more slices, two more days to go, unless B wants a piece...

Ooooh cookies!

While in the local crappy supermarket picking up sponges and buttermilk (for pancakes this weekend), I gave a close look at the bags of beans and grains -- I'm doing a class tomorrow on grain, making a simple rice pilaf and a farro & sausage dish. I saw a box of buckwheat, and it made some bells ring -- kasha varnishkes. I have some in the freezer, the same brand I've been eating since my parents introduced it to me as a kid.

The real thing is some serious Jewish Eastern European soul food -- like matzo farfel, it's a bit of a delivery system for chicken fat. I looked up some recipes on the iPhone and it's really dirt simple -- cook some buckwheat in stock to fluffy. Caramelize some onions in chicken fat. Toss with egg bow tie noodles. Season with salt and lots of black pepper. We already have the fat, stock and the onion at school, so I'm gonna bring in some egg noodle and buckwheat as a bonus recipe...

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Two new elements to the standard smoothie: frozen organic raspberries and a teaspoon of homemade vanilla extract. This was a seismic shift to the flavor profile. All of a sudden, it tastes somewhere between fruit punch and a red lollipop (in a good way.) Curious what pineapple would do to this mix.

LUNCH: noon, Stouffer's french bread pizza, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6pm, spinach linguine with pumpkin, spinach and bacon, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, a small wedge of cheesecake, 1 glass of wine, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
B's friend A came over and we baked pumpkin chocolate chip cookies together from a Southern recipe. Shortening instead of butter, a wallop of freshly pureed pumpkin, they came out nice. We took bets as to how long it would take B to start mowing down the cookies -- A said 15 seconds, I said 30. When B got home and saw the cookies, it was about 8 seconds before she was gobbling. If she skipped the "OOO COOKIES!" shout, she probably could of gotten it down to 5...

I sauteed some pumpkin chunks with bacon lardons and some spinach, spiked it with wine reduction, grated parm, a shake of thyme and basil, mixed in a beaten egg at the end. Pretty groovy.

The cookies were OK, but it was the cheesecake that got me. Ahhh, sweet reward!

Cheesecake, it's a hell of a drug

Today B, E & I went to our little plot in the building's garden and laid down a raised bed of soil. This week, we plant garlic for the spring.

Got some cooking done. In the morning, made a batch of spinach linguine from scratch, took apart a few small pumpkins and roasted the flesh, as well as the seeds tossed in peanut oil, sea salt and paprika. The pumpkin will become pumpkin cookies and an ingredient in a pasta dish tomorrow. In the afternoon, I made split-pea soup from the recipe we did early on in c-school. We did it with lamb bacon we cured ourselves, so I replaced that with a beautifully fragrant piece of locally sourced (from a farm down state) slab bacon from Marlow & Daughters, which I had to pop over to to pick up some farro for Wednesday's class. I made one big batch with all the yummy stuff, bacon lardons, bacon fat and chicken stock, and another for B, with, ummm, water and salt. Fneh. I guess it can live in the freezer until the HVS comes over for another snickle conference...

BREAKFAST: 9:45am, toasted pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese and sable, 1 bowl, hunger 4.5

AM SNACK: 11:45am, small wedge of cheesecake, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
I'm determined to make this 8" cheesecake last. E brought it over last night. She told the story of when we were dating, my parents took us to a nice dinner in the East Village, then we popped over to Venerios for cookies and tea. My parents treated us to a small cheesecake to take home (E was living with me at the time.) When we got home, I busted open the cheesecake, but E did not want any. The next day, she went to eat some cheesecake and....it was gone. I had eaten it in one sitting. She was quite shocked, to say the least. That's the kind of thing I did back then. Cheesecake, it's a hell of a drug.

Last night with dinner I had a wedge, ate half of E's wedge, then caught B with the box, spooning cheesecake into her mouth, without thought of portion or control. So this morning while cooking other things, I slice the remaining cake into 5 pieces, ate one (because it looked so damn good), wrapped the remaining four in parchment, placed it on it's cardboard doily and into a plastic freezer bag, and into the locked freezer in the hallway. My challenge:

• Make this cheesecake last all week.
• No more than 1 piece a day.
• Share it with my wife.

Oy.

LUNCH: 4pm, hot dog with mustard, onion and kraut on whole wheat bun, large green salad, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

SNINNER: 6:15pm, puree of pea soup, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Damn this was good. Chicken stock and bacon playing against the rootsy/grassy flavor of the peas, with a few crisp hunks of bacon cubes giving a little texture....

Hypnotized

Woke up at what is now 4am, thought about riding bike, but it was raining. Fell back asleep 9ish, woke up at 11 and found us too lazy and hypnotized by Edie to even order in. Kitchen is out of almost everything, had to use a scrap of cheese to top a bagel, toasted in the broiler.

We eventually rolled out in the early afternoon, stopping for donut deliciousness on the way. Weird how B was insistent she would not eat any sweets on the way, and within 50 feet of the donut shop she started getting really excited about the idea of a pumpkin donut. Go figure.

Bought a lot of ingredients for several dishes this week, but on this lazy Sunday evening, E came over bearing, of all things, a cheese cake! We ate some freshly made salad, ordered in Malaysian, then had a little cheese cake.

BREAKFAST 1: 4am, organic chex with organic dead milk, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 11:30am, toasted pumpernickel bagel with cheddar, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 2pm, donut, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5pm, potato chips, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7pm, green salad, roti kanai, shrimp puff, Singapore noodles, cheese cake, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5