Dried Fruit, Wine, Beer and Pine cones: A (Mostly) Edible Weekend
One of the greatest pleasures in my life is reading New York Magazine. I look forward to my issue every Monday (though since my move in October, I have yet to receive an issue at my new address … I hope my crazy ex-landlord is enjoying the crosswords.) NYMag’s food blog, Grub Street, has a great feature called “New York Diet,” in which they ask random celebrities to record a week of their New York Diet. It’s super fascinating, except for when they interview models, in which case it’s just kind of boring and sad.
I’ve been asked a lot lately about my own eating habits, so I thought that recording my own New York Diet would be a fun way to feed curiosity. That, and I was curious as to just how much dried fruit I actually eat (it’s a lot, apparently.) But since my attention span is not long enough to keep track of a whole week, I opted for a mini-version of the real thing – Friday to Sunday of this week.
12/18/2009
When I got to work at 7, I had a cup of coffee. We brew Starbucks in the kitchen. I usually take my coffee black, but I prefer my afternoon coffee to be milky and creamy. I worked for an hour and a half, and then Javier made arroz con leche for us all. I put cinnamon in mine and then accidentally dropped it on the floor. The dishwasher cleaned it up for me, but I didn’t get to eat any of it before it dropped so I stole my chef’s rice and ate that, plus a handful of dried cranberries. Throughout the morning, I drank sparkling water.
At noon, we took a break for lunch in the cafeteria. I had a salad with arugula, beets, more cranberries and goat cheese with balsamic vinaigrette. I don’t usually have hot food for lunch at work, mostly because I’m a salad monster … I love greens. Maybe that’s a holdover from my vegetarian years.
Right after lunch, I worked on a cheese platter and ate some cave-aged blue because it was there and looked nice and moldy. It wasn’t bad, but definitely a bit drier and grainier than I like my blue cheeses – I prefer them to be oozing and raunchy.
Midafternoon, I worked on a crudite platter. It’s not traditional, but we steam our crudite so they’re a little soft before plating. Our steamer was broken, though, so I blanched and shocked them all. That took a while, so I boredom-snacked on some raw carrots, cauliflower and icicle radishes while they cooked. I made a black truffle and an herb dip to go with them, so I was tasting those too. I drank more sparkling water all afternoon.
I left work at 5 and when I got home, I was so sleepy from the night before (I was at FCI until 11) that I took a nap until 8:30. When I woke up, I warmed up a pot of leftover butternut squash soup I had made that morning for the lunch event. I ate that in bed with some pumpkin seeds I toasted with butter, sage and salt. To drink, I had a beer. Sweetwater graciously sent me a few samples in the mail, so I tried the Festive Ale. It was nice and boozy with lots of pumpkin pie-type spices. I’m glad I got to try it, but I am also really looking forward to tasting the 420. After that, I watched TV in bed – I love How I Met Your Mother and 30 Rock; I don’t have a television, so I watch them on hulu – and ate a bar of pear chocolate. It’s not good chocolate; the first ingredient is sugar, but it was there and when you’re watching TV you tend to munch … I ended up eating the whole thing and then went to sleep.
12/19/2009
My sister called me at 8:30 and asked if I wanted to meet at the Union Square Market to do our Christmas shopping. I hadn’t bought anything yet, so I really needed to. Also, I just love the market. I bundled up and got there at about 10:30. It was bitter out – truly cold – so the first thing we did was buy hot cider. She got apple and I got pear – I guess I was still thinking about that pear chocolate bar. We also both got chocolate chip pumpkin bread. I was really looking forward to it, but to be honest, it was pretty disappointing. The bread was so cold, and I kept thinking how much better it would be warm, with a generous pat of butter melting over it.
We did a lot of shopping – I bought gifts for my contest, as well as Christmas presents for my parents. My sister chatted up a cute guy at one of the stands, so we parted ways at 12:30 so she could give him her number (and now she has a date with him this Wednesday!) I was so cold that I got another cup of cider and traveled back uptown.
I took a quick nap and then got ready for class at FCI. I go to school every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday night. I got there a bit early, so I sat in the computer lab with friends and ate some raisins.
I’m on the family meal rotation at school, so we made salmon cakes, green beans almondine, wild and brown rice with dried sour cherries and a green and fruit salad. I filleted one of the salmon for the burgers – there were four to fillet. I had never filleted a big fish before, so that was a good learning experience, and especially helpful that we were going to grind it up after it got filleted, in case I messed up. My classmate Sherry was making the rice, and I took some cherries from her and ate them after I finished the salmon. After that, I made a remoulade for the cakes. I kept tasting and tasting it with Chef Ryan, and we knew something was wrong, but couldn’t figure out what. Finally, we added tarragon and it was much better. After serving the meal, we took a break and ate. I had one salmon cake without remoulade because I was sick of it at that point. I also had a salad with pink peppercorn vinaigrette, some rice and a huge serving of green beans. The beans were really great – a buttery, salty heart attack. I drank ice water.
For the rest of the night, we began prep for Tuesday’s family meal. We marinated boneless leg of lamb with garlic puree and rosemary. While we were working, my friend Krista brought over some espresso ice cream she made, and I had a few spoonfuls of that. Lacey gave me a chunk of peanut butter cookie dough, and I ate that too.
The blizzard was in full-force when I left school, so I went straight home. There I ate some extra almonds leftover from the beans and had a glass of plum wine that I bought at the market that morning.
12/20/2009
I woke up late on Sunday morning and went to Starbucks for coffee. I got my usual – short, skim, no whip, extra hot pumpkin spice latte. I guess I kind of take the drink and suck all of the fun out of it. But it makes the calorie count a lot more palatable. By the way, until I moved to the city, I had no clue that “short” cups existed at Starbucks. It makes the fact that “smalls” are called “tall” make a lot more sense!
I brought the coffee home and caught up on email while I drank that and ate a green salad with more pink peppercorn dressing.
After that, I ran a few errands and met Lacey in Central Park. We walked around The Boathouse and watched families sledding and building snowmen. It was the funniest thing, an army of snowmen. I used to make them in my backyard, but when you live in the city, I guess you have to improvise. I grabbed an espresso on the way home and drank that as I walked back to my apartment.
Then I showered and got ready for the evening – I was going to Le Bernardin’s Christmas party with Ron. I couldn’t decide what to wear and ended up making us quite late. But I gave him a Sweetwater 420 while I changed and changed outfits so I don’t think he was too angry. The restaurant looks absolutely beautiful this time of year, and I like that the decorations are more “winter forest” themed than some “Santa and Rudolph” nonsense. There are glittery pine cones everywhere, and I may or may not have liberated one from a centerpiece. I hope that admitting that won’t get me banned. It was really small.
The party was catered, and we had some dim sum-type food, though it was presented on a buffet. Ron and I both had glasses of white wine and a few snacks. I ate two potstickers, two spring rolls, and a cube of beef. I also had a bite of salmon. Later in the evening, the party moved upstairs to one of the private dining rooms, where we all danced and drank more wine. Ron kept saying he is an awful dancer, but he’s not that bad – he’s about as good a dancer as I am a cook. I ate a bite of an espresso cream puff but passed on the rest of dessert.
I kept getting told that I wasn’t allowed to write anything about the night, and I promised I wouldn’t, but I’m also a dirty liar. Actually, there wasn’t a scandalous thing to report – a Le Bernardin party is just what you’d dream it to be – a room full of gracious, funny conversationalists. And there were glittery pine cones, so I really did have a great time.
When I got home, I had a few handfuls of raisins and dried cranberries then fell asleep, promising myself I’d go running in the morning. (And run I did.)
You are at your best as a writer when you find a theme (or an excuse) and make a blog entry out of it. These three days read like a good article, not a list.
As a beer-centric fan, and as one who came of age in Atlanta, I have had Sweetwater’s offerings and they are fantastic. You are lucky to have received some favors from them. As you grow as a food eater and writer, I’m sure you’ll give as much honor to beer as wine, like you have done quite a bit in your blog so far. Beer is the new black, baby!
The one other comment I have is about your last three paragraphs – your self-deprecating comments are classy, appropriate and germane to the story. You are a great writer. Cheers.