Duck, Duck, DUCK!

ADDENDA:
Only road about 26 miles yesterday, with a few hours break in the middle at the Bronx Zoo, but it was enough. Slept like a brick last night, a solid 9.5 hours of sleep. Spent the rainy day indoors at home, working up a freelance project, sending out 10s of resumes. Me and B are going to a dinner party of a friend of hers tonight, and she casually mentions this afternoon that we are to bring dessert....but it's ok, we'll buy cupcakes. No way I'm bringing store-bought stuff to a dinner party where someone is cooking, so I made the only thing I could with the ingredients I had laying around the house, an apple crisp.

I really need to hit the supermarket hard - I'm still living off of dinnerfest leftovers!

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, organic chex with good millk, small apple muffin, .75 bowl, hunger 2/5
Woke up around 8, but stomach still felt full from the night before. Muffin was given as a going-away treat from Craft.

LUNCH: 2pm, homemade mac & cheese, seltzer, 2 bowls, hunger 3/5
In the mood for something lighter, but this was in the fridge.

PM SNACK: 5:45pm, handful of pistachios, .25 bowls, hunger 4/5

DINNER APPETIZERS: 8pm, variety of cheeses, crackers, roasted pepper, cocktail shrimp, 1 beer, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 10:30pm, braised duck, slice of fresh moz with tomato and basil, asparagus, apple crumble, sip of grappa, water, 1 bowl, hunger 2/5
Dinner party where dinner was served too late. The duck was ok, but it reminded me of my mother's 'puke chicken', so I just couldn't appreciate it. Everyone said they loved the crisp I brought, who knows what they REALLY thought, he he.

Food Crime Then & Now: Iceberg Lettuce & Sausage Sticks

ADDENDA:
During the course of the day, I sat down to read my hand-written journal from my cross-country bike trek. I wrote down pretty much everything I ate, the good, the bad, especially the ugly, and a lot of thoughts about my parents, whose passings were still very fresh in my mind. Only once, the two subjects crossed. From my Marshfield, Missouri entry:

Heard a piece on the radio about some local hospital improving their food, choked me up, reminded me of the time my mom was hospitalized, her food, sharing pizza & Chinese food with her, bringing her chocolate. God I miss her.

Mom's hospital food was bland and gross, and my mom had no appetite due to the chemo. Still, she would eat bites of the pizza, Chinese & chocolate not because she was hungry, but because it was comforting and it was shared with her son.

The full weight of my mother losing her facilities came to bear due to her bearings in her kitchen. When she started her first course of treatment, they eventually sent her home, and every few days would make her way back to the hospital. I got a call from her one evening at work, a little panicked because she could not remember how to turn off the oven. I immediately left work and rushed to her apartment. When I got there, the oven was off - she had mistaken the clock time on the panel as a temperature. The next day I moved in with her and started making arrangements for home health aides during the day.

My mom was never a good cook, and it was almost a relief that during the time I lived with her, I got to prepare breakfast and dinner (I'd set aside easy stuff to prepare for the aide). I remember one dinner, I was making dried pasta and jarred sauce, and made a simple green salad with most of the stuff I grew up on - carrots, cucumbers, green pepper, celery, onion - and romaine instead of iceberg. I stopped eating iceberg lettuce years before because it tastes like nothing and is nutritionally void. When I served the salad, my mom asked where the iceberg was. I sighed like I was a snotty teenager again, told her this was much healthier, not to mention tastier, and it was HER generation who screwed up our eating habits by making silly stuff like that the standard.

Instead of getting into a raucous (and fun) argument with me about intergenerational food warfare and my silly teenage-like snottiness, she meekly said, "but I like it." I immediately felt horrendously guilty - I knew subconsciously she was dying and these were most likely her last meals (they were), but on the surface I was hoping to introduce her to new things, to things that reflected my way of thinking and seeing things. Suffice to say, for the next month till the end her house saw nothing but iceberg lettuce. I can't eat the stuff today without feeling a little guilty and sad.

Speaking of guilt, sadness, and nutritional corruptness of a generation, today's peeps certainly aren't guilt-free. Some of us have gotten a lot worse than just iceberg lettuce. I think I ranted about this product early on in this blog, but it's worth repeating. This morning I went to my local Pathmark to pick up bulky sundries like cat litter and toilet paper. I used to shop for my main groceries here before Whole Foods and Fresh Direct started up. After picking up my list, I wandered around a few aisles, where I would find the things that in the past I'd be there to buy. Industrial cereals, yick, diet soda, blech, frozen White Castles, ewww. I seriously considered buying something snackable from the freezer case, and I was also keep an open mind about alternative breakfast foods. Of course, the chocolate chip pancake-wrapped sausage on a stick came into my view and stunned me with all the power that it stunned me with months and months ago.

Really, any adult who bought this for their kid should be charged with child abuse. Looking through the freezer case, looking at fat and salt-heavy snacks called "Anytimepertizers", Jesus fuck, are we insane? I understand freedom of choice, but if economic activities that are arguably victimless like drug use and prostitution are illegal, shouldn't there be a class of "food crime"? (Personally, I think prostitution and all drugs should be legal and regulated, and so should so-called 'value-added' food products, but that's a rant for a different kind of blog....)

BREAKFAST: 10am, organic cheerios with good milk, banana, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:30pm, homemade mac n' cheese, homemade vanilla ice cream, homemade brownie, homemade seltzer, 3 bowls, hunger 4/5
Boy, I'm stuffed. Three relatively unhealthy foods easily available in large quantities at Pathmark - mac n' cheese, brownies and ice cream, all made from scratch, all simply delicious, even if frozen and in the fridge for a week.

DINNER: 8pm, assorted shared appetizers including beef bone marrow on toast with wine reduction, 1 boiled whole shrimp with touch of cream sauce, artisanel french fries, country pate, misc. vegetables in vinaigrette, saucon sec, mushroom ravioli, chocolate bread pudding, 1 glass wine, herbal tea, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Intense meal at Blue Ribbon bakery in honor of Katya's birthday, with B and 3 others. Read a lot about marrow, seen it on TV, felt like I had it before but upon eating it realized, ahhh, actually, I never ate this before. Presented in a cut shank of bone, the inner marrow is fatty and gelatinous, a cross between warm bacon fat and good butter, really rich and tasty and a bit overpowering if not spread thinly enough. Really tasty, awesomely non-vegetarian looking - when you look at it, you know exactly what your eating, unprocessed and unmediated - you're scooping goo out of the bone, near the joint, straight up. Ain't a burger made up of 20 different cows, ain't mystery meat.

Oh Deer!

ADDENDA:
Spent the morning at the food markets, the afternoon wandering around with B for vegan Chinese (way superior to Chinese Bricks!) and massages, and a nice unique & very personal meal in the evening.

BREAKFAST: 10am, small bowl of organic chex with good milk, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 11:30am, 1 wholewheat saltfree pretzel with good peanut butter, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 12:30pm, vegetarian dimsum including mini lotus leaf rice, mixed gluten, monk dumplings, mock shrimp in rice dough, mashed taro treasure boxes, 1 bit of yuckily sweet red bean cake, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5pm, bowl of veggie booty, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8pm, 3 funky cheeses with bread, olives, baby carrots and ranch dressing, prosciutto, 2 kinds of braised venison over creamed parsnips with roasted baby onions and brusselsprouts, about 1.5 donuts with a little vanilla ice cream, 1 glass champagne, 1 glass red, a few pints of water
My friend Erikka's father is a hunter out in Minnesota, sent her a care package of deer-flesh. Her boyfriend has a professional history in cooking, and whipped up this meal. I think I've eaten venison before, and it was unmemorable. This time, fully paying attention to what I was eating, it was a bit of a revelation. Shawmir grumbled a lot about messing up the meat, not accounting for the lack of connective tissue in one cut. Granted, one of the two kinds of meat on the plate was a little tough, but still thoroughly edible (god knows I suffered through many cooked-till-pale-and-shrivelled lamb chops from my mom to know the meaning of inedibly tough!) and the non-tough meat was just as good as any shmancy cow steak at a bistro. I thought the flavor would be gamey, but it was pleasantly mild, and I kinda caught a uniquely 'deer' flavor.

Early Bike Ride Turns My Head Around

ADDENDA:
Got out of the house by 8am and road over to Park Slope to look after Erikka's cat. Very cute, all rubbin' up on me for the entire time I was there. Then I road up the waterfront of Brooklyn to the 59th St Bridge. Cold and crisp, with minimal traffic, maybe 10 miles. I've forgotten a little just how stress-relieving a bike excursion can be.

After all the holiday hullabaloo and house guests and stress, Betsy has now gone to Boston to be with her mom for the week, my house is empty, and work is deadly quiet. Maybe if the weather cooperates, I'll take the road bike out tomorrow morning to the cat and to work...

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, organic cornflakes with the good milk, hunger 4/5
Nice to wake up with an appetite - it's like being driven by a need for caffeine, only much more satisfying when satiated. I should try it more often.

AM WATERING: 10:30am, 24 oz still

AM SNACK: 10:45am, overly sweet corn muffin, hunger 4/5
Morning bike ride left me hungry. From the company cafeteria. I can taste the corn syrup and stabilizers.

LUNCH: 2pm, .5 lb organic cow burger on wholewheat bun, side of vinegary slaw, hunger 4/5
The HVS and I hit up Better Burger on 9th ave over 42nd St. I'm about 1/2 way through the Omnivore's Dilemma, reading about the meaning/meaninglessness of what we accept to be 'organic' - the author uses the example of an organic TV dinner as how an organic analogue of something at the end of a long industrial food chain is just that - something at the end of a long industrial food chain, just with less pesticide and petroleum-based fertilizer. I imagine the organic fast-food burger is in a similar bucket.

The burger itself tasted surprisingly salty, almost unpleasantly so, and tasted a bit gamey, not what I expect from a burger.

PM WATERING: 2:45pm, 24 oz still
Feel a bit parched from the morning ride. Really feel good from it.

PM SNACK: 5pm, homemade vanilla soy ice cream, hunger 4/5
Dinner with a friend is late tonight, so I was gonna get some donuts as a special afternoon sweet snack, but remembered the Donut Plant is closed Mondays. I plan to make soy ice cream for the HVS this weekend, so it occurred to me to try making it as a trial run before presenting it for mass consumption.

Surprised how good this tasted - like tofutti, but without the fakey aftertaste. Only 4 ingredients - tofu, plain unsweetened soy milk, maple syrup, vanilla extract, all organic. Came out of the machine kinda like softserve.

PM SNACK: 7pm, handful of tortilla chips, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 9pm, shrimp butter masala, a little eggplant curry, rice and nan, 1 potato samosa, muligatawany soup, water, 1 glass red wine, hunger 4/5
Nice dinner with a friend, makes the holidays much more tolerable.

Not the book to read when feeling down

ADDENDA:
Going to movies/dinner tonight with peeps, so I took the bus to work this morning, finally getting back into "The Omnivore's Dilemma" after a pause. Great book, but not a happy read. Reading about the wet-milling of corn to make those 20 extra ingredients that appear on the label of a processed food. The industrial food complex just seems so....inescapable. But as they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so I better move on and finish book, hopefully it proffers a sunny side!

BREAKFAST: 8am, 4 pancakes, 6 strips of bacon, hunger 4/5
Sleeping 10 hours and no sweets the day before will do this to you. The bacon is the organic nitrite-free kind from the farmer's market. Amazing how much tastier and, ummm, baconier it is than the stuff I got served in Vegas.

AM WATERING: 9:45am, 24 oz still

BP: 10:15am, 130/84

LUNCH: 1pm, chickpeas, black lentils, saag paneer, rice, naan, yogurt sauce, raw onion, hunger 4/5
Kept reading over lunch, it just gets scarier. Now he's recounting the history of the 'super-sized' meal, and our evolved predilection not to eat till we're full, but to eat as much as possible to get ready for the lean times that don't come anymore.

PM WATERING: 3:30pm, 24 oz still

PM DRUGGING: 3:30pm, 2 extra strength tylenol
Feel a little parched, headachey, almost a pre-fever state. Thought the sleep last night would knock out whatever was up, but I guess I better take it easy this weekend. If I get sick, it's all Sumner Redstone's fault!

PM SNACK: 6:15pm, 1 saltless wholewheat pretzel, half bag of salty popcorn, hunger 4/5
At da movies

DINNER: 9pm, pasta with pesto, few bites of wild boar lasagne, chickpea pancake thing, few bites of duck salami, 1 glass presecco, water, hunger 4/5
Nice dinner with B & Danny in Hell's Kitchen. Good upbeat way to close down an otherwise crappy week, due to work.

EVENING SNACK: 11:15pm, salad, 2 slices cheeseless mushroom pizza, hunger 4/5
Still hungry. Kinda craving sugar, but the chocolate in the cupboard will keep me up. Ate these left overs, very satisfying.

Stomach in my Stomach (Sunday)

ADDENDA:
I know I loosen up on the food obsession on the weekends, but this was not a normal Sunday - for today was Betsy's bridal shower, and I had no idea of what that entailed, food or otherwise...

BREAKFAST: 10am, 3 pancakes and 3 pieces bacon, hunger 4/5.
Residual hunger from yesterday's ride, good thick sleep. This was my opportunity to make pancakes from scratch for Betsy and her mom, experimented with adding more milk and whipping the eggs in the mixer, they came out fantastic (my horn: toot toot!) Really good vibe to cook for B's mom. When my mom was ill and I was taking care of her, I made pancakes and bacon often, it reminded us of when my dad would cook breakfast.

AM SNACK: 11:30am, medium wedge of watermelon, hunger 3/5.
B and Momma gone, alone. B implied there would be food at the bridal thing, so I resisted eating a full lunch.

PM SNACKS: 2-4pm, a few crustless finger sandwiches, fancy chocolate cookies, a piece of coconut cake, a little mozz & tomato salad, a few bites of a gingerman cookie, a few chocolate pocky, a couple of glasses of seltzer.
When I nervously entered B's cousin's house (Hi Cathy! Hi Janet!), Momma quickly grabbed me by the arm and threw me to the wolves, but not before an impromptu photo session. Someone behind me stuck a gingerbread man cookie in my hand, and not knowing the significance of it, promptly bit it's arm off - I was hungry! A few crustly sandwiches, some yummy cookies, the gourmet fumes of a party well presented. The meet n' greet aspect, like a bike ride, kept my stomach tight n' quiet, fortunately, but the sweets did give me a headache after a bit. I found there was a matching bride-cookie, uneaten - doh! Good thing I didn't eat the head. The paraplegic groom and the well-dressed bride cookie came home with me and B.

On two side notes, I was surprised when Janet told me she was reading this blog. A) I haven't really advertised it, but I keep in public to help me stay honest and B) it's kinda boring, isn't it? But it was really nice talking to her about it and her own diet dilemmas. I told her that I obsess about everything that goes into my mouth here, on my blog, so I don't have to obsess about it at all other times - that never really occurred to me till it popped out of my mouth! And on a second side note, during a conversation with another about the diet this person ate to lose weight, she mentioned something called 'diet bread'. That gave me the heeby-jeebies on a few different levels. Not quite sure why yet, but maybe I'll work it with Ilsa!

LUNCH: 6pm, 3/4 of potato spinach kinish with mustard. 3/4 of a can of diet Sprite.
Not starving, but knew I was going to be hungry soon, and dinner wouldn't be until later. This was the last can of Sprite in the house, couldn't finish it because it just tasted.....thin and chemically bitter under a false sweetness.

DINNER: 9:45pm, (add the adjective 'wonderful to al the following) a few pieces of bread, 2 marinated chickpea bruschetta, a large portion of warm tripe a la parmegiano, a bit of green salad, a fistful of tender cold green and white beans, beef cheek ravioli with truffles and a goose liver reduction, pistachio chocolate semifreddo, 5 little samplings of different sorbets, one glass presseco, lots of water.
This was a meal to remember, to celebrate life with, to bond with and recognize life-long friends. My BFF Tamar took me out to a dinner of my choice to celebrate the end of my bachelorhood, as she originally couldn't make my bachelor party. I was a bit tentative about choosing a restaurant, as Tamar is a strict vegan (she eats no animal products what-so-ever). I love and respect that about her, and enjoy changing up and eating vegan-friendly when I'm out with her, but if given a choice of any restaurant, it'll by default probably involve tasty animals.

So I threw out Babbo, Batali's premier spot, and she scored reservations. I've never been, and had an idea of what to expect judging from his television shows, writings, cook books and interviews I've taken in over the years. I did know I would have to eat stuff I didn't normally go for, and that stuff would not be shared with Tamar. I know Ilsa wants me to expand my palate, but I don't think this is what she had in mind.

Everything was exceptionally fresh and well presented. The waiter was mercifully totally prepared to arrange a menu to suite Tamar's needs, and she was pleased as punch, which made the shared enjoyment of this meal more so. Uhhh, pleasing. The green bean appetiser was cold, but the beans were blanched then iced to a perfect crisp but not fibrous consistency - I gotta dig up the technique in the cook book. I've never eaten tripe, so this was a challenge. The portion was surprisingly large (I guess it's not flying out of the kitchen!) and looked really good, like little strips of a cross between fajita meat and octopus, bathed in a fresh tomato sauce with just a sprinkling of cheese on top. Putting it in my mouth, my first thought was, "Hmmm, tastes like what a zoo's monkey cage smells like!" - very gamy to the point of funk curling up my nose a little. The feel, the bite of the meet was wonderfully moist and just the right amount of springiness. The grilled bread that came with it cut the funk nicely, and before I knew it the plate was gone, and my stomach was full of stomach. Next time I have Chinatown dimsum, I'm definitely gonna join Danny for a selection of tripes (a cow does have 4 stomachs, after all!)

The beef cheek ravioli is as signature Batali dish, so I had it thinking, hey, how weird can a beef ravioli be? Again, gamey. This cut of meat is very flavorful, and how it was prepared with the liver and truffle seemed to accent the gaminess rather than hide it. The pasta wrapper had a nice bite to it that was similar (but somehow better) than the pasta I've made....something to aspire to.

I didn't know what a semifreddo was (why not just go the whole freddo?) but the pistachio chocolate thing (a pistachio mouse with a chocolate shell over a thin chocolate cookie surrounded by a pistachio sauce) was really good, and thankfully not gamy at all. Despite not eating most of the day, I was beyond stuffed and slowly pedalled my way home. Tamar is da bomb. I hope something good happens to her soon, so I can take her (and B) back there soon.