Food challenge update #3: Experiments become habits
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Even though the site was down last week, I held strong to my challenge. I ate out only a few times—no delivery—and really enjoyed the experiences. Friday lunch was antipasti and pizza from Sette, a little Italian restaurant around the corner which has fabulous food and really great prices—our lunches were only $10 each from the prix fixe menu, and the roasted veggie pizza with ricotta was so good it literally left me speechless. This is something that never happens!
Sunday morning was one of the more amazing brunches of my life at the Rosewater Restaurant—I had potato gratin with sweet yellow pepper sauce, 2 perfectly poached eggs, and a radish salad. It was out of this world—I’m still fondly playing this meal over in my mind several days later.
It’s incredible how ramping down the meals out has really made me appreciate them more. I’ve also noticed that I’m getting a lot pickier. If I’m gonna eat out, I don’t want to grab a cheapy falafel or a burrito—I want something that I’m going to remember.
I’ve been bringing breakfast and lunch to work most every day, as well, and am working out the kinks there. In the past, I made the mistake of underestimating how much I wanted to eat—when I’m eating fruits and veggies, it takes a lot of them to fill me up. Also, I seem to crave something hot at lunchtime. So I’ve been loading up on fruit in the morning, then at lunch having a packaged Indian curry on top of a big bed of lettuce. A few hours later I’ll have a few nuts or a Lara Bar.
All this costs less than $5 a day, and makes me feel great. I’ve had a problem for years where, right at quitting time, I get fall-over tired and yawn outrageously all the way home. This way of eating seems to solve that issue, which means I get a few more productive hours at night. Always a good thing when trying to build the future!
At home, I’ve been doing well at not throwing away much. When I do throw food away, it typically goes in the compost. But after overfeeding the worms once last week and dealing with a truly disgusting smell from the bin, I’ve become more careful about how much food I put in, so have had to throw away some things, like banana peels—I go through a lot of bananas! Still, by the end of the week, my big trash can has only one little grocery-sized bag in it.
The veggie garden is doing great, too, and I added some Swiss chard, my new favorite green. Looking forward to seeing it come up.
How are you doing with your challenge? Are your experiments taking hold and becoming new habits? How are you feeling? How’s your refrigerator smell? :) Let us know in the comments.
I have been kicking butt on the food challenge. We’ve been eating a ton of local foods. I thought we might fall down a bit while my grandma was here, but we didn’t. She brought us a ton of local strawberries and cheese, so that helped.
Almost all our meals have been primarily local and organic foods. I’ve even found local steel cut oats and local couscous.
Some of the local and organic things we’re eating:
Strawberries
Raw snap peas
Salads
Spinach
Greens
Aparagus
Rhubarb
Herbs
Cheese
Milk
Butter
Bread
Steel cut oats
Smoked trout
Eggs
Sausage (bratwurst, cherry pepper sausage, morroccan lamb sausage, wild rice sausage, etc)
Chicken
Red meat (beef and bison)
You can make some pretty yummy meals from all of that.
well the last two weeks have been a time crunch, as I was tying up loose ends at work. there was so much to organize and get rid of before school let out. I did have some leftover food in the school fridge and wondered how to utilize it. I did thaw out some cream cheese frosting that tasted fine. I used it with my Middle school cooking class to frost chocolate cupcakes. the rest of it did get pitched. as for the other leftover perishables, I gave some away took some home and composted what was no longer good to eat.
Purchasing only what I need for a recipe and for a given number of people continues to be a challenge. I’ve gotten better, but playing catchup with ingredients wastes a lot of time I find, as they don’t last long. I continued packing my container of cut fruit and veggies till the last day of school which was last Thursday. I wonder If I’ll be able to keep this up, eating the veggies at home, now that my schedule is changing.
I did eat out a little, beacause I was keeping some very long hours. I did eat some plain ole’ bagels, but also ate salads from my favorite deli near Penn Station: Speedy Deli. I love their salads, although the containers are not recyclable. Last friday I ate out at three great places, enjoying all 3:
Integral Yoga’s hot salad bar—(containers are recycled right there)
Amy’s bread in Chelsea market—I treated myself( end of school year) to old fashioned layer cake with milk chocolate frosting, amazing and completely satisfying.
Sri pra phai—some say its the most authentic Thai food in NYC, it was delicious, spicy and crowded!
Last Sunday, I spent a few hours transplanting seedlings into my garden: 3 kinds of lettuce, basil, cilantro, 3 kinds of tomatoes, cucumbers and pattypan squash. everything looks good, but needs weeding.
Today I picked up my parent’s share of veggies at The Sophia Garden CSA In Amityville,LI. Everything looked fresh and the large garden looked organized & abundant.
For this week I will be away visiting family. I will try to do one of these 3 before I go.
Overall, I want to refocus on using up leftovers and stored food I already have:
buttermilk and sour milk for pancakes.
snipped garlic scapes that my Dad cut to make a pesto.
soak more black beans for a delicious thick sauce with tomatoes, cilantro and dark greens
Megan, the brunch you had at Rosewater makes my mouth water. The photos of food on their site are really gorgeous.
Stella, nice work using so much local produce in your kitchen. I think it so important that you are doing this with your kids, as their taste buds are literally being trained to recognize all these diverse and subtle flavors, creating food memeories that they will have forever. What an eductaion you are blessing them with!
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