Off ta Bahstahn

ADDENDA:
Taking the train this afternoon with B to Boston to hang with her mom at the old homestead together for the last time. I remember the last time I went to the home I grew up in, it was to move furniture into my first rental in Manhattan. That was probably my first big life change in regards to realizing my parents were not only getting older, but possibly mortal, too.

ANYWAY, I look forward to it.

I'm currently reading the book of Kevin Smith's personal blog, of whose film work I am a fan but not a big fan of his self-absorbed writing. However, I'm shocked/horrified by what he writes about....what he eats. He wakes up and rolls out to McDonalds/Baja Fresh/Carl Jrs/Quiznos to get breakfast for his family, and when they go out for breakfast they go to a deli. And he, being a big fat ass, snacks on 'low carb ice cream' and diet soda. WTF? This is an intelligent dude with lots of money and a great career and happy family and friends and an (apparently) sunny disposition, so why is he eating like a cracked-out garbage truck? Shit, looks like he's eating garbage on the cover!

Speaking of fat asses, after breakfast I weighed 235, same as ever. I guess that feeling of lightness was just that, a feeling.

BREAKFAST: 9:30 am, good yogurt with nuts, honey and vanilla, half a gus soda, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
Felt the urge for a shot of sugar, but even though the soda is relatively low sugar, half a 12 oz bottle was enough.

LUNCH: 12:30, a few pieces of bread and olive oil, margherita pizza, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Brunch in Brooklyn with a friend at Savoia, has a wood-burning oven. The crust had a nice chew and char, but the small pools of boring hard moz kinda made it mediocre.

DINNER: 5pm, 3 inira, 2 summer rolls, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Eh japanese in Penn Station

SNACK: 7pm, whole wheat pretzels with good peanut butter, .5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Train, brought with.

SNACK: 9pm, bag of potatochips, super-sized snickers bar, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Train, bought on. Thought it was a normal sized candy bar till I sat down with it and say it had 3 servings to it. Inspired by reading the Kevin Smith book, where I find he is on the Atkins diet, hence sausage patties from McD's in the morning and steaks in the evenings, and lowcarb frozen pizza and ice cream in the middle, yechchchch!

SNACK: midnight, half a bagel and half a bialy with hummus, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Snickity snack with B and her momma.

Back to the Old House, err, Office

ADDENDA:
Getting excited about Dinnerfest, lots of positive response. Starting to realize how much work it's going to be, which makes it more exciting.

Went to the office today to get some samples to send to some employers who contacted me recently. Brought lunch and ended up in the lunch corner of the office with ex-fellow coworkers, shooting the shit. Rather than being depressing, it was the opposite, it was really good to see those folks and they seemed genuinely happy to see me.

When I left the house this morning into the bitter cold, my moods elevated and I had a certain feeling of....lightness. Going to weigh myself tomorrow to see if it's based in anything.

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, nuts, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
Really, quantity-wise a half bowl, but the Fage is so rich and flavorful and dense, it feels like a full bowl.

LUNCH: 2pm, leftover homemade pasta & ragu, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, baby carrots, red pepper, cucumber, ranch dressing, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8:30pm, pernil with blackbeans, white rice, fried plantains, 3 greeeasy churros with dulce de leche, 1 whiskey sour, water, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Good time in Brooklyn with a friend and her new boyfriend, good vibe all around. This was a favorite restaurant of theirs, and when the waitress asked if we wanted an appetizer, both said no, the portions are large. They were right, my plate had about 3 bowls on it, and ate about 2/3 of it to save room for desert, which came off the 'light' part of the desert menu. I dunno, any fried dough that squirts grease in your mouth when you first bite it is a bit of stretch to call 'light'. Maybe because it came with 4 short fried sticks instead of 6 huge ones?

I didn't like the pernil (like the Chinese pork the other night, too much fat and the meat was stringy) - I think I just don't like braised meats in general...though I do like me a Cuban sandwich, I should try to make one....

Cafe Wildberger's Dinnerfest 2008!!

ADDENDA:
Betsy is leaving town to help her mother organize moving from Boston to NY - she'll be away from Saturday, March 8 to Thursday, March 13th. Last night, over dinner with Corinna, we were doing the run down of how our lives were, what was going on etc, and the one thing I expressed concern over is the week Betsy is going to go away - it's going to be lonely.

My mom on occasion would leave town on work trips, leaving my dad alone, who retired a few years before her due to health reasons. I would make a point of seeing him every day in those periods, and each visit was centered around food. One day he would make his day based on coming to midtown to eat at the cheap but good corporate cafeteria at the law firm I was designing at, then a digestive walk after. Another day I would pop by his apartment for dinner, either cook up a simple pasta and sauce from a jar, or order in Chinese, then TV or sitting around reading together. If it was a weekend, we'd go to the Village for either a movie, a museum, a play, an opera or shopping for books and music, but always a meal in a restaurant.

We never spoke much, I always thought he was just naturally quiet, though now that I'm married, I've come to realize that we were BOTH similar in our quietness. Alone together was our favorite way of being. I have no regrets, for when we did talk on that rare occasion, all that needed to be said was said.

He only said it once, but it kinda opened my eyes. Over some simple dinner in his apartment, he said to me, "Noah, don't tell her, but I really miss your mother. Even her yelling and nagging." I kind of knew he did, but for him to say it, to quote the Flaming Lips, a spoonful weighed a ton.

In the year my mom was alive after my dad passed away, she retired and for the brief window after she got over her grieving and before she was diagnoses with cancer, she started to come visit me at work once a week to the corporate cafeteria. After the meal, going down in the elevator for our digestive walk, she made some crack about dad (we both had very dark senses of humor and we greatly enjoyed making very inappropriate comments about dad's eccentricities, especially in his dotage.), which made me remember what he had said that time. In that elevator, I told her, you know, I remember when your way on a trip, dad said this. She didn't reply, and looked straight ahead at the closed elevator doors. I could tell she was holding back tears. For the first time, her silence was equally potent to my fathers.

ANYWAY, back to last night with Corinna. After mentioning my upcoming loneliness, we discussed her and her husband coming over for dinner - why not during that time? It's not ideal with B away, but still. Then the flash of memory of meals with my parents when the other was away and....why don't I have dinner with friends every night B is away? Why, I should cook every night, challenge myself in a new way - if I'm going to engage Culinary School properly and maybe even work in and around a kitchen, I have to do it in a concentrated way.

So in the next day or two, I'll be sending out an email to my friends inviting them to come over for a good dinner one night between Saturday and Wednesday. There will be one pizza night and one vegan night, the other three nights given to a pasta, a meat and a fish. Each night will have a starter and a dessert. Left overs will be reused the following night (risotto one night will be the next night's arrancini, etc.), though some dishes (like vanilla icecream) will be stretched to 2 nights. Hmmmmm.....the mind boggles.

BREAKFAST: 11am, organic cornflakes with good milk, .75 bowls, hunger 3/5
Woke up late, then B called inviting me over for lunch, within two hours. Wake up, lazy bones!

LUNCH #1: 12:30pm, tomato soup, 1 piece bread, 1.25 bowls, hunger 3/5
Lunch at Bar Stuzzini, not hungry. Betsy ordered this good-looking fried artichokes, but I just wasn't feelin' on fried food. I ordered 'tomato and bread soup', but the soup came surprisingly bread-free.

LUNCH #2: 3pm, baby carrots and red pepper spears with sea salt, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Rather than sprinkling the clumpy salt, I filled the bowl up with water and salted it, then poured off the water after 10 seconds. The veg is lightly and evenly salted.

LUNCH #3: 4:30pm, leftover risotto, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Damn, I love leftovers sometimes. Sitting in the fridge a few days softened the rice a little.

DINNER: 8:30pm, homemade ragu bolognese over homemade linguine with parm, lemon seltzer, 1.75 bowls, hunger 4/5
It took 2.5 hours from pulling the ingredients to eating, but was an fun meal to prep. The sauce is from the Batali cookbook, with pork, veal and pancetta, milk and white wine, oil and onion, celery and carrot, and a small bullet of tomato paste. Simmered for 1.5 hours, it thickened up nicely. Finished it with sea salt and pepper, and is surprisingly tasty in that slightly funky, meaty round way. The pasta, all egg and bread flour, was as toothsome as ever.

Eating one bowl was easy, and fully intended to eat a full 2nd, but as I was eating it started feeling full. Now I wish I waited between bowls, would of probably eaten less.

Eating Out With Friends

BREAKFAST: 10am, 5 small pancakes and 4 strips bacon, water, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Heavy, yes, but it's from my own mix from scratch and it just satisfies. The four strips of bacon was just as satisfying as 7 - it's the American in me that says if 7 satisfys, then 14 will do doubly!

LUNCH #1: 2pm, 1 huge slice of 'Zen' vegan pizza, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Went out to the movies with Yana, who due to work in retail has days off during the week. Before hand, went to this 'healthy' pizza place that I used to hit up all the time when I was vegan. Had 1 slace, but it was huge, and thick, as it is topped with plenty of miso-marinated tofu, vegetables, and a green-tea infused crust. Felt like a lot of food.

And let's be straight, this was not pizza. Even the crust had no chew to it, it was like a quick bread topped with all sorts of non-pizza related stuff.

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, half bag of popcorn, 2 small but intense Japanese chocolates, 1.5 bowls, hunger 3/5
Yana had these chocolates her sister sent her from Japan, you can't get them here. I think them cows they feed beer and massage all day, they must of used the milk from them happy cows to make these chocolates....intense.

LUNCH #2: 4:30pm, 5 pork & chive dumplings, 1 bowl, hunger 2/5
After the movie, we went for a snack, her idea, I wasn't hungry and ate to be friendly. Five dumplings for $2 on 14th Street off of 3rd.

DINNER: 8:30pm, 1 piece white bean bruscetta, half a portobello mushroom salad, quarter portion of fresh spinach pasta in lamb ragu, half portion of crusted cod, bite of broccoli rabe, dark chocolate terrine, 1 glass presecco, water, 2 bowls, hunger 3/5
Met with Corinna for dinner - she's one of my best friends in the universe. Unfortunately due to us both being adults (and married to other peeps), we don't see each other as often as I'd like, but when we do get together, she just makes me happy to be alive - she's an inspirational person like dat. She just got news that an academic paper she's been working on just got a deal to be published, so to celebrate we went to Po in the West Village.

Talking about getting together again, she inspired me to come up with an idea....more on it tomorrow!

Pilafed!

ADDENDA:
As I was searching for an afternoon snack, I found the container of the soy icecream I made yesterday. It literally had a smear of ice cream along the side, and that's it - it made up a very shallow spoonsful. Ladies & gentlemen, my wife, Betsy!!

BREAKFAST: 10am, organic cheerios with good milk, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
Tried a new brand of yogurt, but it look like baby's spit-up, tasted oddly bland and made me queazy. Fage it is for now.

LUNCH: 2pm, bowl of cucumber, baby carrots and red pepper with a little ranch, bowl of homemade rice pilaf, 24 oz still water, 1.75 bowls, hunger 4/5
The definition of a pilaf is a grain that is sauteed before cooking in a liquid. I grew up with pilaf out of a box, made on a stove boiled in water, tons of sodium. I took long grain brown rice and sauted it in butter with red onion, garlic and mushrooms, then plopped it in the rice cooker with lots of vegetable broth and more butter. The thing that impressed me was yes, it smelled 'pilafy' - the stuff I grew up on was an industrial imitation. However, the rice was weirdly hard and slightly undercooked. Still, very yummy and filling. Maybe stick with a recipe and use a white rice or do it on a stove next time.

PM SNACK: 5pm, boca burger on toasted sprouted whole wheat w/ ketchup, 1 meager spoonful of soy ice cream, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7:30pm, a few bites of fish jerky, a few bits of chinese sweet pickled cabbage, 4 pork soup dumplings, a bite of braised pork in special sauce, a few bites of boiled taro in scallion sauce, several flounder fish sticks wrapped in seaweed, brown rice, water, cup of sesame ice cream, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Dinner in a Shanghai joint with Yana, she ordered the real stuff and the real stuff was grrrross! The fish jerky actually looked like smoked short ribs, except it has little sharp bones in it and tastes like marinated, dry funky tuna. The cabbage was a scary sweet version of coleslaw. The dumplings were ok, but were oily and tasted a bit too much like woosterchire sauce. The braised short ribs glowed red and were 85% pure gelatinous back fat with a little stringy meat attached to it, and the taro were kind of like boiled potatoes with a weird consistency. The odd fishsticks were OK, except that the frying kind of eliminated the seaweed flavor, and the fish was very fishy. We jetted across the way to the Chinatown Ice Cream factory after to put a cap on it.

EVENING SNACK: 12:30am, rice pilaf, .75 bowls, hunger 4/5
Didn't eat enough at dinner.

Lagged

BREAKFAST #1: 3:30am, small bowl of organic chex with good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
After falling asleep so early, woke up after 8 hours of sleep and couldn't go back. Feel weird, like jet lag. Took a bath and watched a movie.

BREAKFAST #2: 7am, 1 mutsu apple, a piece of raw milk ementhaller cheese, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Damn, I forgot how good this is - the apple was the right tart/sweet level and crisp as a juicy cracker, the cheese was wonderfully mild tasting with a silky sharp finish. This should be a regular breakfast option!

LUNCH: Noon, homemade cheese ravioli with pizza sauce, homemade roasted broccoli, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Took a 3 hour nap then made lunch for B & me. Roasted brocolli from a recipe I saw on tee-vee, with panko crumbs, garlic, olive oil, salt & pepper and a bit of cheddar, really straight forward.

I need to make proper pasta sauce and bank it in the freezer. Still, B said that the raviolis were as good as any she ever had in a restaurant, which made me happy. The sauce would of been a disaster, but the raviolis themselves were pretty good, pat myself on the back. etc.

PM SNACK: 2pm, homemade chocolate soy ice cream, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Needed something sweet, the only thing I had the ingredients to lying around was soy icecream. Was tempted to eat a 2nd bowl, but figured I should save some for B. However, scraping out the barrel ended up accounting for another half a bowl.
PM SNACK: 5pm, several handfuls of popcorn, .25 bowl, hunger 3/5

DINNER: 8pm, vegan singapore mei fun, a couple of small vegan appetizers, water, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Dinner out with B & the HVS at Wild Ginger on Broome, a good meal. Portions seemed nicely constrained, but definitely more than one bowl. Went back home and served them soy ice cream, didn't have any myself because there was no craving. The HVS had 2nds, which I found very complementary.

Betsy is a 10

ADDENDA:
Ten brownies, that is! When I got home last night, my freshly baked tray of mediocre brownies were demolished. She blames a "friend" who "came over", but we know the truth.

MORNING SNACK: 8am, 2 brownies, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Woke up to go the farmers market. No milk for cereal. Needed a kick in the pants. After sleeping all I want the past few weeks, it was a good vibe to force myself up and hop on the bike to the market.

BREAKFAST: 10am, organic raisin bran with good milk, 1 bowl hunger 4/5
Tried a new cereal, not diggin' it.

AM SNACK: 11am, 2 brownies,seltzer, .25 bowls hunger 3/5
Cranky, waiting to start the day while Betsy does her thing.

LUNCH: 1:15pm, BLT on rye with mustard & mayo, pickle & slaw, small handful of fries, water, 1.5 bowls, hunger 3/5
Lunch at a diner with B & her aunt and uncle. The old school perception of a portion of bacon is 2, maybe 3 slices. I counted at least 6 on the sandwich.

PM SNACK: 3pm, a small handful of crackers, cheese, dip, .25 bowls, hunger 3/5
At an art gallery.

DINNER: 6pm, baby carrots, cucumber slices and some red pepper spears with sea salt, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Fell asleep at 7pm, didn't get around to eating more!

Bakin' Brownies!

ADDENDA:
While I was up late last night, thought about the ridiculous cookies I ate last night - there is a strong sense memory associated - I used to love them as a kid, used to scarf entire (large) boxes of them in one sitting in college. They just tastes like home. They also taste weirdly inauthentic, a certain shmudgy quality to it's base flavor that just doesn't taste right. Reading the label, there is about 25 ingredients, 15 of which I wouldn't of dreamt of using if I was making them myself.

So I found some simple recipes for brownies, which I happen to have all the ingredients in the house...later today, my first crack at brownies - my mom used to make them from a mix, but according to the recipe, looks ridiculously simple...

That calzone from last night looks freakishly large this morning, though it went down easy. I made a slightly smaller one for B, which she finished without too much struggle either. I needed to use the big plates, and still it hung off the sides. I should of made 4 calzones instead of 2, and saved one 1 two as left overs...

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, raw cashews, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 1:30pm, homemade cheese ravioli dressed with olive oil, grated cheese, salt & pepper, quart of tap water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Lesson learned - add salt to the water for pasta, do not sprinkle it on after, as it'll be nasty. The pasta itself, even after freezing overnight, was absolutely fantastic - these toothsome pillows of fluffy clean-tasting spinachy cheese were a little overwhelmed by the oil and salt I through over the top. Got a big bag left in the freezer to romance B with later this weekend, though...will top it right then!

PM SNACK: 2:15pm, homemade brownies, .5 bowls, hunger 3/5
Surprisingly disappointing. A little bit more cakelike than I like, too sweet, not chocolatey enough, and slightly gritty because I forgot to disolve the sugar in the butter before beating in the dry ingredients. Still, I'm sure B will tear through the pan in a blink of an eye...

DINNER #1: 7:15pm, fried battered fish sandwich on brioche bun, french fries, pickle, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Not the meal I was hoping to share with Ilsa for the first time, but we (and a bunch of other friends) waited for 45 minutes at a weird Japanese business man lunch place but was just too crowdd.

DINNER #2: 11:30pm, 2 octopus balls, spicy pork & kimchee, 2 pieces asparagus wrapped in bacon, 2 chicken "meet" balls, small dish of surprisingly bitter green tea ice cream, 2 glasses saki, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
Some of us went back after the show to the weird sake bar, and got seated after half an hour. We weren't that hungry, so avoided the more esoteric things on the menu I was previously looking forward to (fried gizzards, spagetti with ketchup) We were served some sea urchin that was oddly brown which I avoided.

This food over all was kinda gross, with strong sauces and smokey cooking methods to cover the fact that the ingredients were cheap cuts of meat and 2nd-rate staples. But, alas, it was dirt cheap and the saki was strong.

EVENING SNACK: 2:15am, 1 brownie, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

Bowl Me Over

ADDENDA:
Had my bi-weekly with Ilsa last night. Of late our consultations have swung more towards my employment situation and more general matters, and now it's swinging back more on to our original topics at hand - mah big fat ass!

She pulls out a bowl. It is a ceramic 6.75" wide, 2" deep round bowl that holds about 2.5 cups of liquid when filled to the brim. This bowl is my new measure of portion. For now, I just need to be aware of how many bowls I'm eating a day.

My first thought was how many slices of pizza I could fold into the bowl. The second was, "Wow, that would hold a whole lotta bacon!" At home, I will eat out of it or measure from it, when I'm out at a less-fancy place, I may bring it at the risk of looking totally insane, but out with friends or nicer places, I'll just guestimate how many bowls I'm eating. Last night at the Turkish restaurant me and B ate at, I busted out the bowl and eye-balled the meal against the bowl. It's safe to say I ate 2 full bowls of food, though if there was an appetizer and dessert and drink, it probably would of added a bowl and a half.

This blog was originally a temporary tool to be used with Ilsa, but the thinking it's made me do has me continuing. However, I think this bowl is a tool which will help me with my thinking, but will not be a permanent fixture in my dining habits. Though if it is, maybe I should draw face on it, and attach legs and arms!

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, Noah's decadent Oatmeal (pictured above), 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
To inaugurate the bowl, I made organic slow-cooking oatmeal with whole unhomogenized milk (2 to 1 with water), grass fed butter, sea salt, unrefined cane sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. I used 1 cup of oats to 1.75 cups of liquid, which according to the cannister is two servings. As you can see in the picture, it filled the bowl but was not an obscene serving.

LUNCH: 2:15pm, homemade chirashi with tuna, 24 oz still water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Went shopping properly at WF today. Picked up a piece of tuna steak, and already had all the ingredients at home to make sushi rice. After washing the California sushi rice several times, put it in the cooker. I then cooked the rice dressing, which is rice vinegar, sugar, salt and mirin (a clear brewed flavored soy product) Plopped the cooked rice in a big wooden bowl, but an electric fan over it (instead of the traditional fanning by hand) and cut the dressing into it slowly, trying to keep the rice from becoming wet.

I took the tune and cut strips against the grain. The rice was a bit too wet, so rather than attempt sushi-style, I plopped the rice into the bowl and laid the fish on top, chirashi-style. I reconstituted some wasabi powder (really, horseradish) for a little punch in the corner of the bowl.

I wouldn't say this was very good. First and foremost, the fish was not fresh at all. Secondly, I overdressed the rice and it tasted REALLY tangy and strong. I used organic unrefined sugar, which gave a dingy tint to the white rice. The rice was a bit too sticky and wet, and I didn't let it cool enough. I've read about how sushi chefs will spend years just cooking the rice before moving on to cutting fish, which takes another few years, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

Still, making it myself was a little bit eye-openning. That vinegar/salt/sugar mix that flavors the rice really cuts nicely against the flavor of raw fish. When the fish is fresh and the rice done properly, it's really subtle - what was good about mine is all the parts were yelling so loudly, making how they fit together apparent (and apparent how out of wack they were in my creation!)

DINNER: 7:15pm, homemade mushroom cheese calzone, extra tomato sauce, water, 12 entemann's chocolate chip cookies, 3 bowls, hunger 4/5
I find the process of making ravioli is extremely wasteful, when the shapes are cut out of the form, a lot of excess dough goes into the trash. I did have extra filling that I couldn't bare to trash, but it wasn't enough for another batch of dough. Then it hit me - real calzones! The filling (ricotta, bufalla moz, parm, spinach, parsley, garlic, nutmeg, salt and pepper, egg) is perfect for a real calzone, not the stuffed pizza I played with before.

Bought a small box of cookies, felt a craving. It LOOKS like a single-serving box, as it's 1/4 the size of a normal Entenmann's box, but according to the label, a serving is 3 cookies. B had 2 cookies, but that still left me with 12, a full 4 servings! How the hell is 3 tiny cookies a serving?

PM SNACK: 12:30, 1 whole wheat pretzel with good peanut butter, hunger 4/5 Insomnia kept me up till 3, B thinks it was the cookies but I think it was more emotional.

Kosher Kashews

BREAKFAST: 10am, good yogurt with honey and vanilla, hunger 3/5
Turns out my raw cashews were kosher!

PM SNACK: 1:15pm, boca burger on sprouted whole wheat bread with ketchup, hunger 4/5
Boca burgers are weirdly tasty. 98% of them are made up of soy flour and wheat gluten. Still, they taste grilled even when microwaved, yet there are no weird liquid smoke ingredients or anything like that.

This was a freezer-fishing product, funny, a year ago it would of been a frozen pizza or a frozen buritto.

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, slice from the local, hunger 4/5
Unpleasantly salty tasting. It wasn't more salty than usual, just didn't pick up on it before.

PM TEA: 5:15pm, half a cup of crappy lipton, no sugar

DINNER: 8:30pm, donner kebab with rice pilaf and roasted potatoes, onion salad, babaganoush and hummus, water, hunger 4/5

Tots of Fury

ADDENDA:
My sister-in-law and her 4 tots of fury are coming to spend the day and sleep over. I see kosher food in my future...

BREAKFAST: 10:45am, organic cheerios with good milk, hunger 3/5
Got a solid 9 hours of sleep.

LUNCH: 1pm, one peanut butter sandwich on the whitest kosher rye bread ever, water, hunger 4/5
Their mother, Rebecca, went to the local kosher market and served up yogurts, bananas and creamcheese on 'Jewish Rye', which had no seeds, no tang and was kinda like an oval white bread. I toasted a couple of pieces and put my own good peanut butter on it.

I took them to the American Museum of Natural History, which my own mother would take me and my brother to regularly - though she'd say, "OK, meet back in an hour!" and we'd all seperate and wander around by ourselves. I see now what a luxury that must of been for a mom with two tots, an hour of quiet alone in the museum. Between the schools being out and the four kids pulling in four different directions, what a headache!

We came in through the subway entrance on the lower level, and the first thing to confront us was not a dinosaur or a mammoth, but the cafeteria. I remember eating their on a school trip as a child, and thinking even then how crappy the food was!

After a couple hours in the museum, we took the kids into Central Park to run up and down the big rocks (another thing our mom would indulge us in - I see now it's an effective tool to run our batteries down!) I found myself starving - one peanut butter sandwich not a lunch make. I was tempted to buy a pretzel or something from a vendor, but I felt awkward buying something for myself that I couldn't share with the four children I was with.

DINNER: 5:45pm, horrible kosher pastrami sandwich, lots of pickles and slaw, 1 chocolate chip cookie, 1 bite of overly sweet chocolate cake, hunger 4.5/5
We went to the local kosher deli in my neighborhood, which happens to be named "Noah's Ark". I've only been their a small handful of times, the majority with my parents when my brother has been in town. The only two that stand out was a few days afte my father died, my mom, my aunt and my brother went there. A few months after my mother died, I was their to meet a few collegues of hers who run many of the Jewish social services in the area, so they could express how highly they thought of her over pickles and rye.

I must say the food is quite horrible. The pastrami was thin, dry and shockingly flavorless - and very pink, meaning health-destroying nitrates were added for no reason other than color. Three of the 4 kids got 'kids meal', which I were shocked to find were medium-sized adult portions - I would of been happy with the amount of food on the plate. One kid got a turkey sandwich, which was almost the exact same size of my own sandwich - WTF?!

Presidential Pancakes

BREAKFAST: 11am, 4 pancakes, 7 strips of bacon, 1/2 GuS soda, hunger 4/5
Slept well after initial insomnia, dreams were less crazed and stressed than the last few nights. I made a batch of pancake mix from scratch, then made pancakes, using up left-over heavy whipping cream and folding in some whipped egg whites. Oh boy, the extra dairy fat giving unctuous density balances by the airy eggwhites made for an over the top pancake (whose mix was 100% white whole wheat which gives a pleasantly strong wheat flavor and unrefined organic can sugar, which gives a subtle caramel richness without being too loudly sweet). I fried up farmer's market non-nitrate bacon, which now thinking about it, could probably eaten 1/2 the amount and still would of been happy.

After, had half a meyer-lemon soda, very tasty and not too sweet. Probably could of skipped that for a pint of water.

LUNCH: 2:15pm, string hopper kotta with prawn curry, various fried appetizer thingies, water, hunger 3/5
Sri Lanken food on Staten Island with some old friends and their new baby. Kind of like Indian food with a slight African twist. String hopper kotta was bits of rice vermicelli in an onion/garlic/tomato dry sauce, really yummy and spicy.

I grew up on Staten Island, and it was heartening to see an area I knew very well as a kid having a little bit of culture, something I instinctively missed but didn't quite know it yet then.

DINNER: 9pm, boca burger on whole wheat sprouted toast, small amount of baby carrots with ranch, chocolate babka.
I finished the babka, ate too much of it, but it is very much a comfort food. Had no problem falling asleep soon after midnight.

The Lost Weekend

ADDENDA:
From Friday to Sunday I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the surrounding areas visiting Betsy's father in the hospital and assisted living facility he lives in, along with Betsy's brother and of course, Betsy. Visiting a hospital to visit an ailing parent was a bit of an unexpected stressor, bringing up a lot of emotions and sense memories of what it was like to visit my own parents in the hospital, and all the drama surrounding the many entrances and exits to hospitalization and home life. The old poets had it right - the end is very much a twilight.

I'm not going to recount here blow-for-blow what I ate over the weekend, other than to say that two factors lead me to eat the crappiest I have eaten since starting this blog: 1 is the stress I just mentioned, 2 is the over-abundance of crap and poor quality food available in this region of the midwest. The first night there, on the way to the hotel from the airport, we stopped off the high way to a place called Stivers, a real burgers-n-shit kind of place, which very much reminded me of a lot of the honky-tonk kinds of bar/diners I lived off while biking cross country.

At the hospital, I went down to the cafeteria for breaks and ate foods out of the vending machine with literally hundreds of ingredients. I must admit, unlike before thinking about food, I really tasted what I was eating. The microwave 'deep dish' pizza out of the vending machine was both really really delicious and really really disgusting - it wasn't so much pizza as it was "pizza", an amazing cartoon simulation of what you'd hope pizza to be if you never really had a good one. There was a certain something in it's taste and texture that was really appealing for the first few bites, but as you get to the end you feel a little bit ill. How can they offer this in a hospital?

On Saturday I was so out of my mind from lack of sleep and overpowering emotions, I found myself badly needing to focus so I drank 2/3 of a 20oz bottle of diet coke, my first diet coke in who knows how long. The first couple of swigs very much had a lot of memories attached to it - I drank many of them at meals with my dad, who also drank it often. But after that, it just tasted acidy and medicinal - which was why I was drinking it, to get that caffiene.

Towards leaving time on Sunday, we sat down to some delivered pizzas and diet coke at the assisted living facility - it was B's dad's birthday, and like myself, find no food more worthy of celebrating with than pizza. The home even provided a vanilla-vanilla sheet cake. The pizza was ok, a bit doughy and generic, and I had a small cup of diet coke - the sweet bubbliness of it went well with the pizza - I think I should maybe make a homemade organic-cane sugar soda that will be specifically designed to compliment pizza!

Sunday night, finally home, at some yogurt and nuts because dinner never happened and my whole system felt jacked, needed something real to just chill on. Had a splitting headache at 2 in the morning, pretty sure from dehydration. Quite glad I know that I have a regimen of good foods that I can eat the next week to be able to get my head back on straight.

Valentine's Day is for (Chocolate) Lovers

ADDENDA:
Had insomnia again last night, was up till 2. Was it because of the not-small, not-large portion of (high quality) sweets I ate in the afternoon? I think it may be partly that, partly a lack of employment, he he.

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, raw cashews, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 2:15pm, half a pizza at Patsy's, hunger 4/5
Spent the afternoon with Marc, my friend Ellen's new fiance from Helsinki. He's a chef, and just spent the last couple of days on a try out for Daniel Boloud. Interesting talking to him about his experiences.

PM DRINK: 4:45pm, 1.5 pints of Newcastle at Fraunces Tavern
With Marc & Ellen.

DINNER: braised wheat gruten, curry rice vermicelli, spicy stringbeans, spinach dumplings, sticky rice, 8 pieces of fancy chocolate, some soy icecream, water, hunger 4/5
Ordered in vegan food with my B.

OK

ADDENDA:
Woke up at 8:30 after last night's insomnia, which kept me up till 1am. Weird thing is, the insomnia was even-tempered. I wasn't depressed or stressed out. I have concerns for B because she's under a lot of stress due to family issues, and I'm still actively looking for work and thinking about culinary school coming up (I signed up officially, btw - starting either late March or late April, depending on available seats) In the moment, things are ok, just need to stay focused.

BREAKFAST: 10am, organic cornflakes with good milk, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 1:30pm, camarones al mojo de ago, chips and guac, water, hunger 4/5
Went out to eat at La Palapa on 6th with a friend (in retail, she has 2 weekdays off), strictly mediocre. Shrimp in a gluey sharp garlic sauce reeking of uncooked-off alcohol.

PM SNACK: 3:45pm, half a big chocolate chip cookie, half a baggie of dark chocolate covered corn flakes, water, hunger 4/5
We went and stocked up at Jaques Torres for the holiday tomorrow, then stuffed ourselves at a movie. Indulgent, but like alcohol, if you do it socially you don't feel as guilty!

DINNER: 8:45pm, baby carrots with a dash of ranch dressing, medium portion of reheated wholewheat pasta with italian sausage, mushrooms and onion, hunger 3/5

Feel Better Soon, HVS!

ADDENDA:
This GuS soda stuff has something to it. It's made with cane-sugar, not corn syrup, and it's lightly sweetened, which allows the actual flavor of the intended taste to speak loudly. Today in the news, a lot of noise was made about this study - it suggests that people who eat a lot of artificial sweetener gain more weight than people who consume normal sugar because it encourages them to eat more.

I must say that consuming normal sugar, whether in a baked good or a soda , is always more satisfying 15-20 minutes after eating than an artificial, which keeps me wanting sugar after consuming...

The Meeting of the HVS with featured honored guest Ilsa was to take place tonight, but must be delayed due to the illness of the chapter high-commander.....

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, 2 pieces whole wheat sprouted toast with shmear of spicey homemade hummus, 1 GuS soda, hunger 4/5
Freezer-fishing for breakfast, will shop later today. Soda gave a nice tweak to start the day off, though after having one last night too, I shall not make this a habit.

AM WATERING: 11am, 12 oz bottle

AM WATERING: noon, 3 pints tap

LUNCH: 1pm, huge-ass buritto with beef & pork, small handfull of chips, water, hunger 4.5/5
Spent the morning in a classic NYC scenario - rented a U-Haul truck with a friend then moved a California King bed and mattress from a high-rise on the UES (service elevator) to a 4-story walk up in Park Slope. All the smaller bits and headboard were no problem. The matress took some work on one particular steep bend in the staircase, but with a lot of shoulder and creative bending, we got it up. The base, however, was one solid piece and just would not fit. When I left around 4pm, my friend was still waiting on the carpenter to come and cut it in half.

On the way back from returning the truck, Erikka took me to lunch at a California-style buritto place. I was quite starving but I was still shocked when it arrived - it was almost as big as my head!! I set in to it thinking I would be proud to write in this blog that I left a good half of it over, but it went down easy. I felt satisfied but not painfully full or sleepy after. However, it's now almost 6pm and I still feel quite full, he.

DINNER: 8pm, homemade pizza with bufalla, mushrooms and onions, homemade chocolate soy icecream and store-bought chocolate babka, water, hunger 4/5
The two pizzas I made for me and B were the best yet. I think partly it's because of the bit extra balsamic I added to the raw tomato sauce made it a lot brighter in a surprising way, and partly because after watching a dorky TV show on making pizza, I let the dough rest for about 5 minutes after kneading a little before rolling out, made it nice and thin.

Got the right ratio of sauce to crust, where the crust was super thin but still had three visible layers - the bottom, which is brown and crispy, the middle, which looks like nice leavened bread with lots of little air pockets, and the top which is a little mushy and cratered where the sauce and it's olive oil makes a nice pillowy pad for all the toppings. All that an a tenth of an inch!

The soy icecream also got a little closer to perfection. I used unsweetened baking chocolate and upped the amount of maple syrup a little. Upped the vanilla and cocoa powder, and added a dash of cinamon. Blended for an extra few minutes at liquify, then left in the fridge for the first time (about 20 minutes). The final result was chocolatier, smoother and more ice-creamy than before.

Betsy claimed she was having just one small ramekin of icecream and a small piece of babka, bu after finishing she ran back to the kitchen and started spooning ice cream into her mouth straight from the machine. When I stopped her, she grabbed the babka and ran across the apartment, threatening to throw the babka out the window if she didn't get more ice cream. I was able to talk her off the ledge with a little bit more ice cream and a couple bites of babka. Both items are now safely under lock and key in the mini-freezer... if B wasn't so darn cute, I'd say she was a bit dangerous when it came to desert!

Smaller Portions

ADDENDA:
Got good sleep, but woke up with a thumping headache, don't know what that's about. I suspect I may be dehydrated? Gonna spend the day active, whether it's job-search or not. Laundry and cleaning the house, bike repair, research book shelf construction, meeting a friend of a friend at 5:30 to help with the assembly of a newsletter.

Weighed myself this morning: 233, I'll assume the 2lb loss is just a natural up-and-down, maybe from being dehydrated, he he. Gonna focus on small portions today. While eating last night's Japanese, the tray of fried tempura appetizer, something I've eaten many times before, just seemed irrationally large for a starter - with a bowl of rice to cut the greasiness, it could of been a meal in itself.

AM DRUGGING: 8:30am, 2 tylenol

BREAKFAST: 10am, homemade pancakes, hunger 4/5
Out of milk and yogurt, used the left over eggwhites and half and half from the ice cream (which B has gobbled up!) The pancakes were flat and dense, but very tasty, the extra fat communicating the graininess of the whole wheat flower in the mix.

AM WATERING: 11:30am, 24 oz tap

LUNCH: 3pm, whole wheat pasta with sweet italian sausage & olive oil, baby carrots & ranch dressing, water, hunger 4/5
Spent a good part of the morning following job leads and sending out resumes. Went out to buy bike tubes and picked up an onion and mushrooms to cook up with dry pasta and some non-nitrate sausages I had hidden in the freezer. Sweated the veg together with a dash of salt and woostechire, made an excellent compliment to the wheaty pasta. Made what was once one large portion for myself, ate half and feel perfectly satisfied.

The sausages were pre-cooked and not so great, but good enough. I sprinkled dried basil about 5 minutes before finishing, and finished the dish with a splash of extra-virgin olive oil and freshly grated parm-reg. Upon thinking about, a squeeze of lemon and a shake of wine would of made this dish a lot more interesting.

DINNER: 8pm, falafel platter with humus, babaganoush, couscous, 1 pita, hunger 4/5
On the way home from helping a friend of a friend with some graphics matters, swung by Cafe Rakka on St. Marks for falafel. I used to go here in high school to eat and thought it was the coolest thing in the world, weird Middle Eastern food, cheap as dirt. It's not so weird anymore, but still pretty cool - I guess for a teenager, I didn't have it ALL wrong.

As I was eating this evening, I thought of what brought me here as a kid. My mom introduced me to falafel as a child, the food she remembered from living in Israel. To find this falafel joint independently of her...but still very much of her - like a step towards adulthood. Finding my way, with my recent thoughts of career-changing, I'm still at it.

And I didn't order a spinach pie, extra falafel balls or something sweet to go with it. It was still enough!

EVENING SNACK: 10:30pm, 1 grape GuS soda, hunger 4/5
Craving sweet, feeling a but hungry. Didn't eat sweets today, so it's not too indulgent.

Sunday, Calmer

ADDENDA:
No plans, me and B in da howse. Had strange dreams last night, slept a good 10 hours. Me and B napping in fits. Thinking a lot of the future, though I just watched an episode of 'Heroes' (cheesy, I know) where the arch-villain proclaims that one who pursues happiness is grounded in the present, while he who pursues meaning is obsessed with the past and future. In that case, I should be rather happy, as the present is pretty good. Wonderful wife, great home, good friends, interesting prospects for future doings, and the relatively new discovery of one of the most satisfying food stuffs known to man, grilled cheese....

BRUNCH: 1:30pm, 3 small superhippy grilled cheese with raw milk gruyer and emmenthaller, small bowl of Betsy's sweet potato soup, 1/2 bottle of cherry seltzer, hunger 4/5
Fried bread, melty cheese, crisp and gooey, salty and savory, funky and straight all in each mouthful. B's soup is a bit sweet for my own taste, but it's a simple broad flavor that is direct and authentic. The perfect chillin'-in-the-hood meal after soaking in the tub with the Sunday Times.

PM SNACK: 5:15pm, moderate piece of apple crumble, hunger 4/5
I thought about half the tray was left, but it seems some curly haired nymph snuck in and devoured all but one piece....

DINNER: 7pm, tempura starter, sushi deluxe combo, nori roll, water, hunger 4/5
Lazy night on the sofa with B, no place or time for cooking!

Saturday Calm

ADDENDA:
Yesterday was a great day. Getting out on the bike with a friendly face reminded me of all the good hours I've spent travelling by pedal power, and cooking a semi-decent meal for 8 was a new and fun challenge which I really enjoyed.

I haven't taken a proper bike ride since mid November, a long time for me. One thing Ilsa advised is that I get off my ass and do some things that make me happy. Biking is probably healthier than prozac.

This past week, I've been sending out resumes for project management work, watching too much TV, and I toured the French Culinary Institute and sat in on a class and spoke with career-advisement peeps at the Institute for Culinary Education. I think whatever happens with work, I'll be going to culinary school at the ICE either full time in late March or early May, or if a job manifests going to the ICE part time in the evening. It's exciting and frightening, as the future is uncertain and fuzzy.

BREAKFAST: 11am, 4 potato pancakes with creme fraiche, 1 piece of apple crumble.
The ice cream is just too rich this early.

PM SNACK: 1pm, handful of roasted buttery salty nuts, hunger 4/5
Make yer gay jokes here!

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, small ramekin of vanilla ice cream, hunger 4/5
This is the first ice cream I've made that is still really good after hardening in the freezer - it seems with enough air whipped into it, it doesn't get soooo stiff when hardened.

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, 3 potato pancakes, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3:45pm, 1 slice streetza, hunger 4/5
From my local, nice and minimally cheesy.

PM SNACK: 4:45pm, a few handfuls of popcorn, hunger 3/5
Went to the movies with B to see 'Juno', I walked out after the first 30 minutes, as I found it overbearing and highschoolish.

DINNER #1: 7:30pm, brussel sprouts, shrimp with chorizo, pork empinada, gnochi, venison, hunger 3/5
Tapas bar with B & her friend Dana. Food was tasty, but small portions with large prices attached, and it was so LOOOOUD in there. I don't like brussel sprouts, but I ate a small bunch - I thought if I go to culinary school, I'm going to probably have to try a lot of foods I'd otherwise avoid - it's good to get out of my comfort zone. The sprouts were eh, an earthy sharp bitter undertone I don't dig too much.

DINNER #2: 10:15pm, pint pork fried rice, grape 'GUS' soda, hunger 4/5
What an odd eating day. Needed some comfort food, but no way I was gonna do the Chinese brick - I've come to realize they make me feel crappy for a day afterwards. But a small pint of fried rice hit the spot after that twee tapas food.

I bought a 4 of this soda at WF, to meet my hankering for both candy and soda. Damn, it's good in a straight-up way. Maybe culinary/management will help me think of my own niche produc to unleash upon the world...

Book Club Dinner for 8

BREAKFAST: 8am, wholegrain organic chex with good milk, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 10:45am, 2 pieces superhippy bread with freshly homemade hummus, hunger 3/5
About to pedal out to Coney with cousin-in-law, this should help power me through till lunch.

PM SNACK: 1:45pm, half a large chocolate chip walnut cookie, hunger 4/5
Jenni works in a bakery, she helped make this ridiculously large cookie herself. Though it was half a cookie, it was about 1.5 cookies in real life. We ate it on a bench on the Coney Island boardwalk, birds and seagulls begging us for crumbs.

LUNCH: 4pm, half a pastrami on rye, half a portion of fries, half a side of pickles, lots of water, hunger 4/5
Road out to Coney on the commuter back with Jenni, was a lot of fun giving a bit of a saddle-eyed tour of the city to a newcomer. Her goal was to experience Katz's, so off we went at the end of the ride. We shared what was intended to be a meal for one, but it easily satisfied our hunger, with fries left over.

DINNER: 8:30pm, potato latkes with creme fraiche, roasted nuts, fresh hummus with veg, raw millk cheeses, apple crumble and home made french vanilla icecream, 1 glass presecco, water, seltzer, hunger 4/5
Betsy's book club rolled through, and as the support crew, I made dinner for everyone. The last time B hosted, she was living in Brooklyn and the food consisted of ordering in pizzas. I saw this as a great opportunity to try to cook something a little bit nicer for a larger group of people (I usually just cook for 3 or 4 at the most).

The beginings were easy, I whipped up fresh hummus before the bike ride, quickly got the apple crips into the oven before showering after the ride. After the shower, ran the potatoes and onions throught the rotary grater of the mixer, salted it down to sweat it, and stuck it in the fridge, ready to fry. I winged it with the roasted nuts, using butter with a drop of soy and worstchester, salt and dried rosemary.

The day before I cooked the mix for the ice cream (2.5 cups of half & half, 2.5 cups of heavy cream, 8 egg yolks, 1 cup sugar, 4 tb of vanilla, 1/4 teaspoon salt) which freaked me out a little - I slightly overheated it and the eggs on the bottom started curdling and smelling like my greatest enemy, scrambled eggs. Torwards the end of the evening, I plated the crisp, and used ramekins to hold what would be a quick-melting icecream. Everyone said the meal was good but I knew it was just ok, the pancakes were a little bit too greasy and not enough salt. However, the ice cream....it was easily the best vanilla ice cream I've had in recent memories. The richness, the deep flavor, creaminess...some one remarked how 'clean' it tasted, which someone sounds suitable. Really over the top.

Finding My Portion

ADDENDA:
Not feeling well today. Woke up at 8 with B, but no energy, need to be close to the bathroom most of the day. Got out to Wholefoods for shopping, was fun, but found myself drained when I got back.

BREAKFAST: 9am, organic wholegrain cheerios with good milk, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 1pm, left over roast potatoes with merguez sausage, water, hunger 4/5
Dumped the container onto a plate and zapped it. When I sat down I realized this is a good 3 lbs of food - probably not a reasonable portion, though I could see myself eating the whole thing. After eating a little more than half, I felt content (though not full) and stopped. I imagine a 2nd small lunch may be needed later.

PM SNACK: 5pm, good yogurt with honey, hunger 4/5
Despite shopping for tomorrow night's blow-out meal, didn't pick up anything lunch-worthy!

DINNER: 6:30pm, 5/8s of a large Margerita DOC pizza, 3 pieces of chocolate babka, 1 beer, hunger 4/5
Nice romantic evening at home with the B, nice cap to a day where I was feeling crappy and down. Never drank beer out of a wine glass before! Ordered the pizza from Isabella's, really good, but because it's so thin and the cheese is so sparse (but pleasingly so), eating 5 slices is more like the caloric equivalent of eating 2 street slices. The chocolate babka (purchased from Wholefoods) was good, but not as good as 2nd Ave Deli - would like to maybe try to make my own.

An hour or so later, I was feeling nippy and looked for the left over babka but Betsy claimed she ate the whole thing! I'm not quite sure if I believe her...

Portion Control

ADDENDA:
Met with Ilsa last night for the first time after an intended break. After talking about more general issues, focused on the food - now is the time to perhaps think about weight control - I can eat all the healthy food I want, the bottom line my blood pressure would be best served by slimming down a little.

How does one judge portions correctly? Ilsa is thinking of having me eat all meals out of a certain sized bowl. Thinking of breaking out the free weights out of the closet. Try to do a proper ride once a week, now that my schedule is opened.

BREAKFAST: 9:45am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla and raw nuts, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 3pm, eggplant parm with pasta in red sauce, 2 rolls, water, herbal tea, hunger 4/5
Audited a class at ICE then spoke to a career advisor there. A lot to mull. Went to Patsy's on 23rd, didn't feel like pizza but it was good to be able to sit quietly in a restaurant for a couple of hours and read the paper.

I ordered a lunch special, and on the face of it, it was a lot of food. Still, what is an appropriate portion?

PM SNACK: 6pm, Boylans orange soda, hunger 3/5
170 calories in just 12 ounces! Still, felt maximum enjoyment from this candy drink - I really taste the difference with cane sugar in soda - it's the sweetener of my youth.

DINNER: 9:30pm, tangy shrimp with funky brown basmanti, water, hunger 4/5
Stirfried some raw frozen shrimp with whatever was in the cupboard, the main flavor being vinegar, balanced with some soy, a pinch of sugar, a dash of curry powder, some corn starch, with roasted sesame seeds and cooked in sesame oil. It came out surprisingly well - seems a strict 2 minutes cooking is about right for shrimp this size before it gets tough. Used vegetable stock as the liquid in the rice, and through some dried porcini into the cooker for shits n' giggles. The rice cooker nicely hydrated the mushroom and gave the rice a wonderfully deep meaty (but vegetarian) flavor. Still a little bland, but on the right track.

Thinking About Bacon

ADDENDA:
The other night when I was speaking to Caroline, the FCI graduate, she mentioned she made her own bacon. Last night when feeling snacky, I fried up 5 pieces of good lower-salt non-nitrite porky goodness, and it was so satisfying.

Make my own bacon - hmmmm. Caroline recommended a book on charcuterie, claims it changed her life. I rember while travelling through Colorado, Kansas and Missouri, every little bo-funk diner's bacon was different than the next. Different smoke flavors, different cuts, different thicknesses, some were more like ham or British bacon - every one delicious. Just as one could obsess about the characteristics of pizza in NYC, you could do the same thing out there for bacon. BBQ too, but that's a whole 'nuther thing.

I imagine books have been written about bacon, as looking back over the threads of my life, bacon runs an interesting line. Growin up Jewish in a non-religious household, we did not keep kosher but bacon and pork sausage was a very rare occurance. I remember mom experimenting with some trendy minced & formed bacon-like substance that was supposed to be healthier that was just nasty. Dad, who would hide pork sausage in the back of the freezer, would make us breakfast of pancakes and bacon when my mom wasn't around - I guess that's why I have such a strong emotional connection to my own pancakes n' bacon.

Today, I'm visiting the FCI for a tour after work, and auditing classes at the ICE tomorrow. I wonder if they teach you how to make bacon.

BREAKFAST: 7:45am, organic cornflakes with good milk, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 10am, 4oz of rootbeer, hunger 3/5
Needed a shot of sugar to focus on the task at hand.

LUNCH: 1:30, vegetable ravioli in butter and parm reg, water, hunger 4/5
Boiled up a bunch of frozen ravioli I bought from the market near the Food Network. Very spinachy, B would of loved them.

PM SNACKS: 2-3pm, 1 little crunchy chocolate square, 2 amuse bouches, a couple of crunchy tiny pastry sticks, hunger 3/5
As I was on the tour of the French Culinary Institute, the guide, the chefs and the students kept offering me food. I stuck to the small stuff, but I easily could of wolfed down a lot more. A small sampling of eating habits to come?

PM SNACK: 4pm, half a fresh baguette, hunger 3/5
They grind their own flour at the FCI and this baguette was definitely what I remember from when I wandered outside of Paris city center in search of a simple cheap breakfast back when I was a broke student...

DINNER: 8pm, burger and tater tots, hunger 4/5
Dinner in at my brother-in-law's house, from a limited diner menu. I always enjoy eating horrendously after meeting Ilsa!

Floating

ADDENDA:
A very intense weekend, to say the least. The eating day skidded to a halt yesterday, and ended up eating 'breakfast' late in the evening while reviewing Superbowl commercials - made me feel like I should have a big plate of something greezy in front of me!

This morning woke up at 7:45 after a good night of sleep, spoke with my financial advisor about the future, set up some class auditing and career councilling at the ICE. Feel better about things, but still unclear. I almost feel guilty about it, but I'm looking forward to wrapping up at work tomorrow morning so I can go home....and cook!

LUNCH: 1pm, fresh bread, marinated asparigi, portobellos and tomatoey eggplant, fresh fettucine with meat sauce, chocolate gelato, carbonated water, hunger 4/5
Lunch in midtown with the HVS at 45 Bond, the fancy business lunch place off of Times Square. Really good to just go over and recap the weekend and my thoughts on culinary and work to someone who understands, whose been there with me but not every moment. I've also been talking and confiding in Betsy, but that's more of an upclose, ongoing thing, y'know?

The pasta was really good, a nice firm and silky bite, the meat sauce was pleasantly gamey, that balance of pork, beef and veal that Italian cuisine does so well. The marinated vegetables were great, though the eggplant stuff was a bit too vinegary to my taste. I wonder if that's just my personal taste or if the cook made a mistake - is that dish supposed to be vinegary?

DINNER: 7pm, homemade roasted mixed fingerlings with cipolinni onions, merguez sausage, 5 little vegan cookies, water, hunger 4/5
Used a bunch of green market ingredients to make the potatoes. Ran out of olive oil, and found that it's MUCH better when there isn't much excess oil.

EVENING SNACK: 10:45pm, 5 slices fresh bacon, hunger 4/5
Wanted a savory snack. Whole house smelled porky, good thing B was asleep.

Moody

ADDENDA:
Good sleep. Long Island is nice, but I'm glad I don't live there. Grateful to be married. Feel unsettled about my future, professionally. Constantly thinking, weighing.

BREAKFAST: 10am, organic cheerios with good milk, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:45pm, coleslaw, 3 pickles, pastrami on rye, small amount of kasha varnishkes, water, hunger 4/5
Went to look at apartments with B & her mom, then to a deli on the UWS. Not the greatest deli, but a lot of fun to take a parent out, a lot of bittersweet emotions about the ceremony of going out to eat with my own parents. As a very elderly woman struggled to get in the door with both her walker and her health aide, I found myself remembering a lot of the details of my parent's extended illnesses, but B snapped me back into the present! I like the present with B.

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, chocolate cake, water, hunger 2/5
Small family gathering of B's clan for a birthday, skipped the champagne, just not hungry. Was nice/anxiety-producing to talk about my job situation/culinary thoughts with a bunch of peeps, though.

EVENING SNACK: 8PM, small green salad hunger 3/5

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, super hippy bread with peanut butter, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 11:30pm, good yogurt with honey and vanilla, hunger 4/5
I'm not good at not eating dinner.

Be My Own Chef

ADDENDA:
Saw this corny advert that said 'Be Your Own Chef', while I was pedaling by and in deep thought about culinary school. A lot percolating...

AM SNACK: 8:30am, 3 vegan cookie things, hunger 4/5

BREAKFAST: 10am, ham & cheese on a croissant, water, hunger 4/5
At Orchard 88 with friends who are staying with us for the weekend. Sandwich was small, greezy and a big ham and funky cheese flavor. Very frenchy.

PM SNACK: 1pm, veggie booty, hunger 4/5
Went to the farmers market and WF, made a big salad, but felt too lazy to eat any.

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, 1 saltless wholewheat pretzel, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 4:30pm, 1.5 mixed empinades, 1 piece salty chocolate cake, hunger 4/5
Ate the leftovers at the end of Reeve's baby shower.

PM SNACK: 6pm, 1 slice streetza, hunger 4/5
Hungry on the way out to a L.I. party. Near the Flatbush LIRR, this rather dirty looking slice joint had a thin, wonderfully snappy crust with just a hint of chew. An unexpected delight.

EVENING SNACKS: 8pm, a few slices snausage, little bits of various fancy cheeses, a few water crackers and onion dip, 1 beer, hunger 4/5
The hostess did a diploma at the French Culinary Institute, chewed on her ear about her experiences and thoughts through the night.

EVENING SNACK: 12:15am, 1 Gus Grape soda, hunger 4/5
After getting home and having such a weird eating day, just needed....something. This lightly sweetened soda was nice...but makes me think I could make it myself.

Culinary?

ADDENDA:
Met with an admissions director at the Institute of Culinary Education this morning before work. Sat and spoke for about an hour, then gave me a tour of the facility. Though I stuck to my questions about job placement and career advisement, my gut reaction while seeing cooking classes in session was, "Oh my. This looks like an obscene amount of fun!" I'm considering getting a double diploma in culinary arts and management. Well, if I do pull the trigger, it should make for a very interesting blog...

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, raw cashews, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1pm, curry pork cutlet with rice, miso soup, hunger 4/5
Nice having a work-day lunch with Erikka.

PM WATERING: 3:30pm, 24 oz still

DINNER: 7pm, leftover homemade baked ziti, baby carrots with crappy WF guac, homemade chocolate soy ice cream, hunger 4/5
Baked pastas freeze exceptionally well and come back to life in the microwave without a hitch - gotta make a new batch with the idea of individual frozen servings. Felt the urge for more food and sweets after, so cobbled together the ingredients and busted out the ice cream attachment for the mixer. From deciding I wanted it to eating it was under 15 minutes. I upped the maple syrup and threw in a dash of vanilla extract, it really made the flavor pop.

EVENING SNACK: 10:15pm, bowl of veggie booty, hunger 4/5

The Unwork Work Daze

ADDENDA:
Back at the old job, at the old desk, till Tuesday as a consultant. Left my adult sippy cup here, there was some mildew in it, yuk. I feel a bit bummed being back here, but easy money is easy money, even if it's not a 'career move'.

I've realized the emotions I'm feeling - it's like you have a big break up with your significant other, you spend a month feeling low about it, doing healthy things to constructively move on, then all of a sudden you find yourself back together with your ex for an extended weekend of bonking - it's nice, it LOOKS the same, but you know everything has changed, and the weekend of bonking is going to pass and you'll be right back where you started.

BREAKFAST: 10am, bowl of organic wholewheat chex with good milk, hunger 3/5

AM WATERING: noon, 24oz water

LUNCH: 2:30 lamb on pita, hunger 4.5/5
Almost forgot to eat, but started getting dizzyheaded - how the hell do people forget to eat?! It's like forgetting to breathe! (So sayeth the chubby dude...) Nice to go back to an old favored lunch spot. Watching the 4 guys in the little cart, a tight team...

DINNER: 7pm, crusty bread with fresh ricotta and tomato broth, margerita pizza appetizer, polenta and mushroom appetizer, 2 ginormous meatballs in tomato sauce, shared warm chocolate cake and ammeretto icecream, 1 glass presecco, water, hunger 4/5
Nice relaxing dinner out with the wifey at Apizz in the 'hood. Very good food, very charming room.

Arancini, bambini!

BREAKFAST: 9am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, raw cashews, hunger 3/5

BP 11:30am: 133/90
Haven't been very physical lately, my plan to intensify yoga routed by my employment situation. Too cold to ride.

LUNCH: 1pm, homemade arancini with homemade tomato sauce, water, hunger 4/5
Did a search to find the best way to reheat gluey cold risotto - most said either microwave it or pan heat with a bit of stock. One person said there is NO way to bring risotto back to life - the traditional way of using leftover risotto is to make arancini - rice balls. Basically you mix an egg into the cold risotto, ball it up around a stuffing (I had some mozz lying around), dredge in flour, bath it in egg, coat it in crumbs (I just used wholewheat flour) then deep fry till golden (I only had olive oil around) They actually came out pretty good, though a bit loose and messy - this method of cooking is definitely a feel-thing. I feel like I'm sketching, trying to develop a feel for the tools of this art - only I get to eat the art and judge pretty immediately if it's good or not!

DINNER: 7pm, 2 shrimp spring rolls, baby carrots with guacamole, 1 small piece of thai peanut marinaded mahi mahi, 1 slice chocolate cake, hunger 4/5
Wow, this is my first mid-meal post! After the arancini, I cleaned up then installed myself on the couch to digest, where I promptly fell asleep. I woke up feeling guilty - lazy & unemployed, sleeping the afternoon away when I was planning to make some pro-active motions towards the situation. So I forced myself out of the house at 5pm, rode over to Chelsea Market to buy a new houseplant. Food Network is based there, and I wandered the market looking at people who probably worked there, feeling a bit crummy. Found an Italian-supply shop, wandered in and found a really good price on bufalla moz.

On the way home, stopped by Whole Foods just to buy dinner for tonight. The greezy arancini still rolling around in my stomach, I had to think long and hard about what I wanted to eat...and what I came up with was....carrots and cake (not carrot cake, I hate that stuff!) So I got a bag of baby carrots, some house-made guac (not very good, surprisingly), a palm piece of raw fish, and a container of 2 fresh spring rolls. When I got home, popped the fish in the oven and ate the carrots, guac and rolls. Waiting for the fish to be ready before the cake....

It was tempting to buy some prepared heat n' eat thing, as I didn't feel like cooking, but baking a piece of pre-marinated fish isn't really cooking....and pre-cooked fish is by far always not that great.

EVENING DRUGGING: 10:30pm, 2 tumms
Lots of fried food doesn't agree with me, I'm coming to realize...

Pancakes just keep getting better

ADDENDA:
Betsy made a crack about the other day when I was feeling crappier, worried I was overeating - referred to the pasta I made for lunch as a very large serving and the Thai food I ordered for dinner as a 'brick' - a term I usually reserve for the obscenely dense bricks that Chinese take out comes in. I imagine when I focus on lowering my weight, I'll have to focus not only on making good healthy food, but eating less of it, too....

Still stuffy, but feel a lot better. Slept a little fitfully, but OK.

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, home made pancakes and bacon, hunger 4/5
Used whipped eggwhites as a fluffing agent again, I must say these are some of the best pancakes I ever made/ate. Bacon is organic and uncured from WF, salty but reasonably so.

LUNCH: 12:15pm, homemade baked ziti, water, hunger 4/5
Katya came over to use my computer, made lunch. Actually, it's a baked penne but whose to nit-pick. The sauce was homemade but frozen, and mixed a buffala mozz with fresh cow because WF was out of the good stuff. Came out pretty damn good, pretty too. Bread crumbs were freshly made, too.

Still got a ton of risotto. Guess I'll freeze this jam for when I have less time to cook!

LUNCH #2: 4pm, small green salad, small portion of baked ziti, hunger 4/5
Granted, the portion of ziti I had for lunch was small, I was feeling a bit guilty after B expressed her concern about portion size. But Dinner ain't till 7ish, and I'm hungry. Better a bunch of small meals then a few biggies, right?

DINNER: 6:30pm, sushi platter, water, 1 piece of multigrain bread with weird vegetable spread, hunger 4/5
Nice dinner outwith some colleagues/friends from the old job. Ironically, got a call during dinner, will be going to the office for a freelance project Thurs-Tues.

EVENING SNACK: 10:30, small bowl of risotto, hunger 4/5
Not enough for dinner. Found some interesting recipes of what to do with gluey risotto, looks good for an interesting lunch tomorrow...