Eat. Drink. Be Merry.

I was reminded today of some people's obsession with nutrition, as opposed to healthfulness.

A company sent the magazine a resveratrol-packed chocolate bar that claims to have a bajillion times as many antioxidants as red wine, blueberries, açai and goji berries and chemotherapy combined (or something like that). This bar will cure your as-yet-nonexistent cancer, just by you looking at it. It will lower your blood sugar. Then it will save the world.

I have thought for years that a relative of mine has orthorexia (only I didn't know it was called that until recently), and I wonder how much it is compounded by her work in the nutrition field. When I was a youngster, I remember, she was making almost-no-fat meals out of a cookbook by Dean Ornish, and I noted aloud that his name sounded suspiciously like "denourish." As the low-carb fads came around a few years ago, she tried those as well in attempts to get her "numbers" (cholesterol levels, blood sugar, other leading bad-stuff indicators) down. All this, mind you, for a 5'1" woman who I've never seen weigh more than 115 pounds. I'd be surprised if she's been over 100 in the past five years.

She has developed a type of pre-diabetes (as I understand it), and feels betrayed since she has always "done everything right," and she doesn't "deserve" this. (Do people with full-blown diabetes "deserve" it?) Well, she's never enjoyed just chilling out. Her blood pressure has been high despite exercise. But then, she won't exercise because it makes her lose too much weight. She's so fixated on this constellation of numbers...

I can't imagine living like that. Not eating this food or that food because it's a "carb bomb" (as she called a Thanksgiving dish my brother prepared last month). Have a taste, and enjoy it, and a glass of wine, and enjoy it. Watch those blood pressure numbers fall. And don't buy in (literally and figuratively) to ostensible "health foods" just because they market to your anxieties. If you want chocolate, eat some damn chocolate. And enjoy it.

A life spent tripping over numbers and eating by "rules" just doesn't sound that fulfilling to me (although one friend in particular manages her diabetes exceptionally well, and eats pretty well too). Yeah, I've gained 20 pounds back since moving to New York. I chalk that up to eating and drinking more, and exercising much, much less. And I'm trying to find a balance there. But I'm not going to turn to fake, "value-added" food to save me.

Of course there are soooo many people who are legitimately struggling with disease (e.g. diabetes) or weight as a real health and lifestyle problem. And I hope that each of them finds the combination of lifestyle factors that work for them to be happy, and healthy, and pain- and disease-free. But it's a slap in the face to people who have actual problems to see someone who is basically fine counting calories and agonizing over a "carb bomb."

So eat real food. And enjoy it.

Home sweet garden

If I figure out a way to buy a house in the next year, it will be because I want a real food garden. I'll probably end up spending all of my money on plants and seeds and garden-y stuff, and I'll crash on the floor of a woefully underfurnished room in a sleeping bag.

But I'll have squash next year, dammit!

Would having chickens be going too far?

Guess I should get the yard first, before I think of the chickens.

This book has done a number on me.

A victory, of sorts

That looks so gross. But it's *my* gross. Thyme and parsley from my little pots that sit on the kitchen floor. The rest of it is fixings for chicken stock, which will become chicken soup tonight.

Last night, I finally got the chicken (his name was Gary, by the way) in the slow cooker with onion, carrots and celery. The recipe called for a parsnip and another vegetable I can't remember. Didn't have them, so I ignored that part. I feel really ridiculous for needing a recipe to make chicken stock in the first place. I mean, really. It's hot chicken water. How do you screw that up?

The recipe also called for a bay leaf, parsley and thyme. Alright, I thought. I have a package of bay leaves that have been in the back of the fridge for almost a year. It's dry in there, and they still look great, so I used a couple. You can sub extra bay leaves for a parsnip and that other mystery vegetable, right? Totally.

It was exciting though, to find that the parsley that hadn't been growing so great outside has really done better since I moved the pots inside about two weeks ago. So that's in there, kinda hugging the right side of the slow cooker insert.

The thyme, well, it hasn't done so hot since the move. It was in a pot with some insane, ravenous chocolate mint, and I think the mint might have screwed things up for the whole pot. Roots running around the perimeter of the pot are a bad thing, right? At any rate, the mint seems to have burned itself out, and there were still teeny sprigs of green thyme. They're in the mix too, right on top. Poor baby thyme. You get your own pot next time.

So it's all sitting and stewing as I type. Hopefully the joint's not burned down when I finally get home tonight, and making soup is easy. At least I don't need a recipe for that.

It's been too long...

I used to blog in the mornings or early afternoons before leaving for my 4 or 5 p.m. shifts at the newspaper. I'd make coffee, maybe an egg or some yogurt concoction, then settle in for a morning of paying bills and snuggling with the dog and reading blogs and news. A couple days a week, I'd go for a hike with my puppy, Leo, either up Mount Beacon down to Dennings Point. Once in a while, I even made real food, like bread or scones, before heading in to work.

But then I got a day job—my dream job—for which the hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. I catch the train at 7 in the morning and get home around 7 at night. I love everything about it.

The pace of the work suits me—no more 11:28 p.m. anxiety attacks while someone wants to change a headline and my boss is telling me to just send the page.

I'm smitten with a good deal of the content—the best hot cocoa in the world, anyone?

I learn something new every day—even if it's just that ATMs at Duane Reade are fee-free to me.

The train ride is often breathtakingly beautiful—pink fog rising from the Hudson this morning, stellar sunsets for the past two months (not anymore, of course, with the expiration of daylight savings time).

I'm exposed to things I'd never have the chance to try anywhere else—a fancy-schmancy French wine from 1995 that showed me what "elegant" means. Balsamic vinegars from Italy that poured like motor oil, aged 12, 25, and 100 or more years.

But getting home at 7 means that adventurous cooking goes on the back-burner (so to speak), a little bit. After two months in this schedule, I think I'm getting used to it, and will be able to figure out a routine that involves more cooking. Once my weekend days opened up, I got roped into (often literally: we climb) more adventures in the great outdoors. Now that the weather has chilled substantially, I look forward to spending more days in the kitchen. That said, I've saved a fair bit of money by making quick dinners at home, even if, like last night, it's just mashed sweet potatoes and stir-fried frozen veggies with Asian-inspired seasoning. That was on the table before 8, and I even played ball with Leo for a while.

I did some freezer-oriented cooking a month or so ago. I had really ambitious plans one day to make vegetable lasagna, butternut squash-apple soup, sweet potato chili, a spicy carrot-cabbage Chinese kimchi kinda thing, and ... and I can't remember what else. I took a picture of the table laden with all the food I planned to cook that day. I'll put it up here when I get home (if I remember).

It probably goes without saying if you know me, but I didn't quite get through everything on the table. I got the lasagna and chili done and frozen, and the butternut squash roasted (it's easier to prepare if it's cooked first). We went through the lasagna pretty quickly. There are still two big yogurt containers full of chili in the freezer. Unfortunately, the squash didn't get made into soup until its already-roasted freshness was already questionable, and it just tasted "off" no matter what I added to the soup. Also unfortunately, that will finally get chucked tonight so I can use the big pot for chicken soup.

There's most of a roasted chicken in the fridge, see, and I don't want it to meet the same fate as the squash. Since B and Leo will be at B's parents' place tonight to celebrate his sister's birthday, I have an empty kitchen to work with. Can't wait!

Coming soon... A roundup of some of the awesome and not-so-awesome (but usually cheap) places I've had lunch since starting the new job, and thoughts about agriculture/farming/conscientiousness since reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." It's amazing. And what happened to that garden on the back deck, anyway?

Results may vary...

I made stuffed, fried squash blossoms last night from this post at thekitchn.com.

Mine did not look anything like theirs (the photo, above). It's possible, though, that what mine lacked in looks, they made up for in flavor...

Drool-worthy summer inspiration

It's really hot. Like, sweating-while-sitting-still hot. Yeah, I could turn on the air conditioner, but it's all the way upstairs and any move away from this seat would be just. too. much. effort.

So this'll be a roundup, of sorts.

Cruising Thekitchn.com this morning, I have been so inspired by posts about and gorgeous pictures of salads: cabbage, macaroni, beet... I was reminded of what a geek I am when I saw this book, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee. I literally drooled while I was reading the post. Maybe the science-y stuff in this book could explain exactly what neurotransmitter synapse caused me to salivate over a reference work. Or, I might just be a sleep-deprived nerd.

Reading through my favorite food blogs, instead of getting into the kitchen and making something refreshing like a kickass spicy Chinese cabbage/carrot/pickled chili salad, reminded me of this article at the New York Times last month. I hope I'm not becoming one of those people who are "out of the kitchen, onto the couch"; reading about food instead of doing something with it. I don't even own a TV, so maybe I'm somewhere in the middle? Believe me, I'd rather be cooking. It's just that the kitchen has no air flow. No, it's worse: It has negative air flow. All the hot air in the apartment goes there to hang out, and like some dinner guests, it doesn't know when to just leave.

I have had a fair amount of food interaction this summer:

In July I made awesome strawberry-sour cream scones (recipe here). It was still raining every day at that point, so using the oven was not so painful.


My vindaloo spices. I think getting them prepped for the cooking is my favorite part of making that dish.


The Latin American festival at Beacon's Riverfront Park:


Where I come from, "Latin American festival" likely means a huge event with a ton of Mexican food, with at least one vendor for each of the country's distinct regions, plus Central American and South American booths. Roaming mariachis, and the Chilean folk music Inti-Illimani guys, and the Peruvian pan flute players, and tiny wrinkled Guatemalan ladies selling brightly colored cloths. So it felt strange to go to a smallish event, with booths mainly representing Caribbean nations such as the Dominican Republic and Cuba, and Puerto Rico of course. Welcome to New York, Cali girl... Of course the food was amazing. This was actually the second of two plates B and I shared (and maybe Leo got some too).


I had a rare weekend off after the hecticness (hecticity?) of the past few weeks, and I needed to get out of town. B found a bouldering area near a lake in the Adirondacks. I stuffed a bottle of wine in my backpack for Saturday night. It was worth the extra weight.


Wild blueberry bushes covered the area where we camped. The ones I picked Sunday morning were just what the Quaker Instant Oatmeal needed. (Well, it needed a lot of help, but the berries were a great start.)

Comfort food

photo source

I'm nearing the end of a pretty trying 10-day stretch. There have been some lows, but to be fair, some highs too (including meeting extended family in Boston). This afternoon, I only had a few minutes to concoct something to eat between finishing errands and leaving for work at 3. It was raining and at only 70 degrees felt a little chilly (how pathetic, I know), so I wanted something comforting...

I cooked a Chinese stir-fry last night and made extra rice. There were leftover garlicky-gingery sautéed veggies from something else a few days ago. Perfect.

After I mixed those and heated them through, I cracked an egg over the top, stirred it and put a lid on the disgusting-looking mixture, then took the dog out. (I'm all about being efficient.) When I came back in from the rain, the egg was cooked perfectly. Added a little sriracha and soy sauce and I was set... (Then I made an egg for Leo. He's the most spoiled dog ever, I swear.)

I'm not sure why I have an Asian comfort food. It's not like I had a sweet little grandma whipping up congee for me (although mine did have lemon drops). You'd think it'd be something like mashed potatoes and beef stew or something, with my Euro-mutt roots. Of course, those sound good too.

Lately, some readers have e-mailed comments to me... Why not post them instead and share your favorite comfort foods? I'll make cookies for the most unusual one.