Weekend Report (Toquin')

How often do you see busts sculpted in solid hummus? On Sunday, I went to the Fancy Food Show at Jacob Javitz and sampled some great products (who knew that two juices I despise, mango and carrot, would taste so great together?) while others just tasted like toothpaste water.

I arrived at 8am as a volunteer in the open kitchen of D'Artagnan on the floor of the convention. At first I was a bit concerned, as the chef was running around freaking a bit because he didn't have everything and was just figuring where everything was, but soon he got it in order, a few more students arrived, and he became much more laid back and on the ball. I was given a toque to wear, the tall kind of chef's hat that one expects, for the first time in my life. The four hours flew by in a hot second, and we were just starting to crank out appetizers, samples, and formal plates for the V.I.P.s when my shift was up. They were really cool and gave me a goodie bag that included their cookbook and an Amex gift card. I'm going to rearrange my schedule and volunteer for them again on Tuesday -- good people, good product. Wonder what I could do as an extern for them...

After spending a few hours wandering around the floor (Paul Prudhomme lost a million pounds! Fried cheese is delicious! Most foods marketed as 'healthy' don't taste very good!) still wearing my chef's whites and toque -- several vendors called me 'Chef' and chatted with me about their products -- cool, but I felt a little fraudulent.

Hauled ass by bicycle to Williamsburg for the Unfancy Food Show, where friends with beers greeted me with open arms. About 15 booths in a small backyard beneath the Willamsburg Bridge, some really good Bronx-made veal and foie pate. In particular, talked to the peeps at a booth for Tastebuds, an informal social network for foodie-leaning types, gonna check out their thing at some point

SATURDAY
Just chilled after Friday night's rec class. Took the mountain bike up to Tarrytown, skipped going out to a shmancy restaurant and just read in bed with the Wifey from 5pm till sleep.

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, school-made Israeli couscous, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

SNACKS: 11:30am & 1pm, 1 homemade power bar each, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5 Keeping calorized while on the mountain bike between Yonkers and Tarrytown.

PM SNUNCH: 2pm, 1 slice streetza, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4pm, homemade chocolate soy icecream, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Even though Lady Wife had lots of sweets at a bridal shower earlier in the day, when she saw me take out the ice cream, she flipped and ate a double portion. Oddly enough, she felt ill after and we cancelled our reservation at a nice restaurant later in the evening. Everybody comment and put the shame on B!!

DINNER Pt 1: 5pm, large green salad with Italian dressing, small amount of low salt corn chips, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

DINNER Pt 2: 8pm, singapore chow mei fun, shrimp toast, wonton soup, fizzy grape juice, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

SUNDAY
BREAKFAST: 6:30am, large portion of chocolate homemade icecream, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM TASTINGS: 8am-noon, foi gras, foi truffle mousse, hotdogs made of duck, buffalo, beef and pork, duck and venison bacon, sausson sec, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
While helping at the D'Artignon booth.

PM TASTINGS: noon-2pm, lots of different chocolates, juice concoctions, cheeses, weird meats, a beer, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
At the Fancy Food Show

PM TASTINGS: 3-4pm, veal-foi pate, ice cream, chocolates, a beer, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
At the Unfancy Food Show

DINNER: 5:30pm, shrimp and grilled veg tacos, a beer, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Mexican in Williamsburg.

Weekend Report (HI, I'M A PANCAKE. F@CK YOU!)

FRIDAY
No school today, but woke up extra early to get ready for the 3am call the next day. Spent the morning making mise for a future meal. Made 6 servings of pizza dough to do a three-day cold rise in the fridge. To get rid of the chocolate from school lying around, cooked up a batch of soy-based daily ice cream, only this time using the good milk instead of soy milk, which was not on hand.

AM SNACK: 5:30am, small handful of chocolate pistoles, hunger 3/5

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, fruit smoothie, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Base of whole milk and good yogurt, banana, handfuls of cherries, grapes and blueberries, ice. Forgot the wheat germ and honey. Surprisingly good. Want to get a food processor to purée the fruit properly, then incorporate.

LUNCH: 2pm, handful of baby carrots, shrimp stirfried with unsalted stringbeans and criminis with adame, 2 ears boiled corn with butter and salt, grape soda, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
On assignment from Ilsa, I was to cook a vegetable with a seaweed product replacing salt. I picked up this dried black weed stuff from Whole Foods, which I needed to soak before throwing in the stir-fry. I used sesame oil for the strong nutty flavor, along with diced shallots. It did taste briefly undersalted, but once I got some of the weed in my mouth, it actually tasted pretty good, huh.

DINNER: 6pm, mushroom pate, mushroom spaetzle, chocolate caramel tarte with chocolate sorbet, 2 pieces bread and butter, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 3/5

SATURDAY
Up at 3am with my friend E. Rode to the start at Penn Station. E needed cigarettes and caffeine, and did not want to wait on line for the free coffee. So we shuffled over to McDonald's in our bike gear and waited in line with all the drunk, crazy and flagrantly omnisexual customers -- the line at a midtown McDonald's at 4 in the morning is hardly typical.

I haven't eaten anything from McD's in quite a while. I ordered the pancakes and sausage, which came in an old-school styrofoam clamshell. The last time I had pancakes and sausage at McDonald's, it was really early in the morning, I was with my mom, and we were waiting with a bunch of women for a bus to take us to Washington DC to march for a woman's right to choice. In an early morning pinch, crap is ok. However, today these pancakes tasted artificially tender, like a soft side of rubber, and the flavor was really LOUD, like HI, I'M A PANCAKE. F@CK YOU! Like a cartoon drawing of a pancake, instead of the real thing.

As you can see by the list below, during the bike ride to Montauk, just kept on piling it in at the rest stops. Not without thought, but with a very specific goal of a) keeping my bloodsugar level and b) never getting hungry. One thing not listed was about 120oz of water, which was a constant through the ride, due to a hydration pack on my back -- they look geeky and but it keeps me level.

One thing I did NOT eat on this ride, which I usually do, is Gatorade. After Ilsa admonished me that this stuff is just liquid candy with salt, I played around with alternatives, but none were really effective other than....lots of water and the right amount of food.

One big mistake I made was over-indulging in the food at the end. E was pretty miserable and crying because she forgot to refill her water bottle 25 miles back, and maybe hit the ride a little bit too hard early on and didn't save any juice for the end. I was up and running about shoving down as much food as possible, and got down a big plate of pasta and, uh, four burgers. The burgers were in a braising liquid, and were nice and juicy. When we got back to the hotel, I did not move far from the toilet until the next morning. Lesson learned: when my body is compromised (by, say, a lack of sleep and riding 109 miles on a bicycle), do NOT eat chopped meat.

AM SNACK: 3:15am, banana, hunger 2/5

AM SNACK: 4:15am, 1 Boston creme donut, one piece of poundcake, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 4:45am, one half of a McDonalds pancake and sausage, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 6:30am, one chocolate donut, .33 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 8:30am, 2 pieces of olive focaccia, pbj on graham crackers, handful of chocolates, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 10:30am, 1 piece of focaccia, pbj on graham crackers, handful of chocolates, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 12:30pm, 2 large pieces of apple pie, whipped cream, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

LINNER: 2:30pm, 4 small juicy hamburgers, plate of pasta in meat sauce, 1 beer, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 9pm, portion of french fries, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

SUNDAY
Lazy day in Montauk. Went to a popular pancake house for breakfast, was surprised to find that the pancakes were strictly mediocre. In fact, all the food in Montauk kinda sucked. Rich people have low standards, as long as it's expensive.

BREAKFAST: 8am, 2.5 pancakes with bacon and home fries, apple juice, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1pm, fried fish sandwich with fries, large icecream sunday, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, slice of streetza, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7:30pm, half a rib plate, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

Weekend Report (North Forkin')

The weekend flew by like a blur, no time (or computer!) to record my every bite. B and I went to Shelter Island to get away from the NYC madness and quietly celebrate her birthday together. Breakfasts consisted of our Inn's continental spread -- I haven't eaten Kellogg's cereal in a long time, and my hippie all-whole grain all-organic versions actually do taste better.

Riding my road bike each morning made me hungry. We hit up a really pretentious, douchey restaurant on the water Saturday afternoon that made me glad I'm not wealthy -- too much money seems to go hand in hand with a lack of imagination in many things, including dining. Too much ice cream indulgence in the afternoon.

Easily, the highlight of the weekend, gastronomically and otherwise, was visiting B's friends in the North Fork, who happened to be staying at a family friend's home with 3 other un-ugly and single female friends (pictured here with B, blurred because I'm a crap photogr....they're anonymous!). This clutch of ladies spent the day collecting local ingredients, and made a mighty meal honoring B's birthday. First course were bubbly cocktails with bits of rhubarb and mint, and goat ricotta and rhubarb compote crostini (pictured above). The main course was a broiled blackfish fillet with walnut pesto, fresh micro green salad with cute little pea shoots and haricot verts. Dinner was topped off with this really decadent (and homemade) chocolate pie involving a caramel layer and fleur de del sprinkled on top. Spending the night with five purty ladies in a real-life raunchy version of Sex & the City didn't hurt, either.

Weekend Report (Extra Lips, Hold the Buttholes, Please)

On Sunday, B & I attended the James Beard Awards a Lincoln Center. That morning, I joined a classmate in getting on line at 9:30am for the 11am sale of student tickets. We were first on line, and it's fortunate -- they only had 50 student tickets for sale, each person could buy 2, and there were more than 25 peeps on that line by 11am. Student tickets were $50 a pop, which sounds like a lot, but being that a full-priced ticket is $500 and includes an all-you-can-eat-and-booze gourmet buffet, it's actually quite a deal. And I got to walk my lady down a red carpet, something a dude should do for his wifey at least once in a while. I searched Flickr for some porny food shots of some of the stuff I ate, but only found red-carpet shots....with me right in the background! I'd post them here, except I'm anonymous, remember?

Oddly enough, our student tickets put us in a box very close to the stage with an excellent view of he proceedings. Three hours long, it was a bit of a snooze fest punctuated by some sincerely beautiful clips of old-school American restaurants and their owners, and some interesting speeches from writers and humanitarians, and the Godfather of French cooking, Jaques Pepin.

Once over, I rocketed out of the gate with an appetite to seriously eat, and was handily defeated by waaaay too much good food everywhere. So this is how rich people eat. More details below.

On Saturday, I got in spandex and on the bike and threw my yoga mat on my back and made it up Central Park to practice yoga with the HVS, where she was doing an outdoor class. It was nice and refreshing to stretch out in the park, and made me look forward to seeing the effect of a yoga class right before a formal ride. Rode home, picked up my friend E and we did a loop around the waterfront of Brooklyn, spending some time on the beach in the Rockaways. We ate at Nathan's in Coney Island -- not much of an ass-meat eater anymore, but that stuff just tastes right. Not the greatest bike food, though.

On Monday, I slept in for the first time in a long time, waking up at 8:30am, not hungry at all. The scale says I'm 224 for a third week in a row, grrr. I almost want it to say I'm heavier to motivate me to do something more aggressive. I shaved off my beard yesterday, and the deep slope from my chin to my neck is a reminder why losing a few more pounds wouldn't hurt.

Recently subscribed to a journal called Meat Paper and got the first issue. Really interesting articles about urban farmers, pork in Israel, the magic of food-styling meat for the camera, as well as some....odder bits.

SATURDAY
BREAKFAST: 6:30am, granola with skim milk, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
Out of the good milk, used some of the grass-fed, organic skim milk that B got at Fairway last week (it's homogenized and pasteurized, so it can keep for a month, instead of the week the good milk gets.) It had a creepy bluish tinge, and tasted and felt similar to water in my mouth. More importantly, the granola which I usually love kind of tasted...bland. The granola is pretty low-salt, but eating it with this milk without the fat to kinda louden the flavor, it just tasted a bit dead and sawdusty. Huh.

AM SNACK: 11:30am, homemade powerbar, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
On bike ride.

LUNCH #1: 12:00pm, 1 hotdog with kraut and onions, a handful of cheesefries, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
When E asked me what I wanted at Nathan's while we were in Coney Island on our bikes, I said one hotdog, extra lips, hold the buttholes. Hotdogs are nasty things when you think about it, but it's a traditional Brooklyn food in a traditional Brooklyn place, so no harm in a small indulgence. However, the toxic yellow goo called 'cheeze' on the fries...

LUNCH #2: 3pm, onion bagel with lettuce, tomato, onion and butter, small packet of sunchips, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
At the Bay-Gull store in Broadchannel.

PM SNACK: 5:15pm, small cup of homemade chocolate soy icecream, .25 cup, hunger 4/5
It would of been more if B hadn't eaten the entire container except this sliver.

DINNER: 8pm, rigatoni with meatballs, bruschetta, bread, 1 beer, water, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
With B and her friends in Tribeca. Pasta sauce horribly sweet, too hungry to pass it up, though.

SUNDAY:
BREAKFAST: 7am, carrot and celery sticks with hummus, piece of edamer cheese, water, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 10am, literally 1 bite of good donut, hunger 3/5
In line for student tickets for the James Beard awards, started talking to some students from the C.I.A., all young n' chirpy and psyched to be there (they travelled down from Poughkeepsie to get on line.) I couldn't help but share 2 of the best donuts in NYC with them.

AM SNACK: 12 noon, Boylan's Grape Soda, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
This grape soda is the soda of my youth. Sweetened by cane sugar, the grape flavor has absolutely nothing to do with what a grape tastes like, but a very interesting idea of what "grape" is. I suspect this flavor is what turned me off most fruit to this day -- the fake thing just tastes so good. Makes me think I should force myself to eat more fruit and retrain myself, as I'm not 10 years old anymore.

LUNCH: 1pm, home made pizza, water, hunger 4/5
Had two pieces of dough that rose for a second day in the fridge. There was a farmer's market on my street, very small, but they had a cheese-monger who was selling artisenal low-moisture mozzarella, so I picked up a bit. Through a can of tomatos in the blender with olive oil, garlic, salt, sugar, balsamic and a dash of herb to create a fresh raw sauce, and prepped some garlic slices, basil and baby tomatoes for topping. The second day of rising made all the difference, the flavor of the dough was perfectly yeasty, puffed up nicely on the edges, and took on char in all the right places.

PM SNACK: 4pm, homemade power bar, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Napped for a couple of hours before heading out to the James Beard Awards

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, caramels, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
The award's sponsor, Lexus, gave away really gourmet boxes of caramels before the awards, which was clever, as you need something to get a few thousand hungry wealth people through 3 hours of awards. They had me fill out a survey on how I felt about the Lexus brand, which I can sum up as thus: I'd rather be on a bike than a yuppie land boat.

DINNER: 8:30pm - 10:30pm, James Beard Awards Buffet, 3 bowls, hunger 4/5 at the beginning, 1/5 by the end
The lobby, balcony and entrance floor of Avery Fischer Hall in Lincoln Center was set up as a huge gourmet buffet, and once the ceremonies were over, we hit the food as hard as possible. It was quite easy to eat more than $50 worth of food. I can't recount everything I sampled, but a few stand out above the other. Easily the best were one table that was doing duck sliders and lamb sliders, two meats I've only come to appreciate since starting c-school. There was a hazelnut pork terrine that looked like slabs of marbled and squared poo that not many people were eating, but tasted fantastic. Small rounds of fresh pasta in a nutty, woodsy walnut pesto just screamed. One table which had the longest wait was corn masa tamales topped with a fragrant lima bean salad and chopped grilled and cured pork, absolutely gob-smacking. Green & Black had a tasting table of organic chocolate, where I greedily tried each one of their flavors without fully cleansing my mouth before the next bite. Soft shell crab on an avocado couli, a few different cheese tables with all sorts of handcrafted goodies, rhubarb gelato with strawberry compote, buffalo empanadas, amazing smoked cod chowder, razor clam butter soup YUMM, avocado sherbet. There was free flowing champagne, wine and mixed drinks, but all the food kinds of locked me down. I could name the stuff I DIDN'T eat because I was too full by the end. I kinda wanted to hang out, but my stomach demanded me to leave.

MONDAY
LUNCH: 1pm, rigatoni with sun dried tomatoes and shallots in olive oil and white wine reduction, topped with fresh moz and parm, 2 bowls, water, hunger 4/5
Slept in, just not hungry after last night's feast. Just through in what I had on hand, turned out ok -- sun dried tomatoes are an overpowering flavor, next time I cook with them I'll be a bit more conservative.

DINNER: 7pm, grilled jumbo tiger shrimp marinated in butter and garlic, roasted broccoli in panko, boiled corn on the cob, large green salad with olive oil and vinegar, half pint of cashew-cream gelato, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
It's not so bad spending most of the days indoors in a stupidly hot day when you can cook fun food. It was a bummer, however, when B came in while I was eating, and freaked out about all the smoke and excess heat in the apartment. I was enjoying my food too much to notice.

Weekend Report (No Energy Bars, Just Pork, No Gatorade, Just Lambrusco)

Friday night I went to the NYC Bicycle Film Festival to see two hours of collected shorts. Inevitably, the topic of my new love (food) came smack up against my ongoing love (bikes) in interesting ways. One short was a mock-anthropological documentary of the "waffle bike", in which the researcher created a bicycle outfitted with everything needed to make waffles, including a waffle iron, refrigerator, prep station, chicken coop, machete, 2 shotguns, a sound system that only played a Farsi call-to-prayer and a gas generator (to run all the electronics, not move the bike) We see him ride from Manhattan to Brooklyn to a corner-store chicken coop to collect his chickens, then see him on the corner making waffles on his bike with very fresh eggs.



Even cooler was a more traditional doc on Balorda, an annual Italian festival where people dress in outlandish costumes, ride creatively decorated and mechanically adventurous bikes in a parade, then eat and drink and dance until they pretty much lose their minds. Here is a Youtube clip which unfortunately doesn't have subtitles, but you can get the bike/food vibe. The short-haired, round headed dude is basically saying, "At Balorda, we do not drink Gatorade, only Lambrusco! At Balorda, we do not eat energy bars, only pork!" That big pot of pulled braised pork looks gooooood....

Saturday evening I met the wifey, her momma, the HVS and three other of wifey's friends to catch the Sex & the City movie on opening weekend on the Upper East Side, Ground Zero of the demographic this move appeals to. I made too many butter cream frosted cupcakes this morning for B's book club, so I brought a dozen to the movie theater. After everyone in our group had their fair share, I couldn't help but notice several women around us (and yes, the theater was mostly women) eye-balling the cupcakes, so I offered them some, explaining that I was with 7 women but had 12 cupcakes, and don't worry: I'm a culinary student and the cupcakes are mostly organic. Funny, it was easy to be friendly with absolute strangers like this, something new to me. Of the four offered, two women took me up on the offer.

SATURDAY
BREAKFAST: 6:30am, banana, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 8am, 1 chocolate unfrosted cupcake, batter, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla butter cream frosting for B's book club.

AM SNACK: 10:00am, another cupcake, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1pm, 3 small grilled cheese with gruyere and onion on super hippy bread, big spinach salad, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5pm, yet another cupcake, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8:30pm, crab cakes with fries, quarter of a turkey club, a few spoonfuls of creamed spinach and mashed potatoes, 1 beer, water, hunger 4/5
Got oddly hungry after eating the crab cakes. Nice being able to appreciate the presentation and quality of the cakes, after learning them this past week.

SUNDAY
BREAKFAST: 7:15am, granola with good milk, 1 cupcake, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
If I didn't eat the cupcake, it would need to be tossed. I'm the human garbage can. :(

LUNCH: 12:45pm, turkey on a kaiser roll, potato chips, 5 pieces of rugellah, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Lunch at a corner grocery in Putnam county with my bro and his family.

PM SNACK: 5pm, 2 pieces of french bread and olive oil, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7pm, sauteed pork loin with mushroom demiglace, 3 corn on the cobb, grape fizzy lizzy, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
I seared the thick piece of pork loin after trimming the fat and seasoning with salt and pepper. It was a good 2-inches thick, and I also seared it on it's sides, then popped it in the over at 325 for about 5 minutes. When it came out, it was well-done but still relatively juicy, I think maybe if I didn't use the oven it would have been closer to the rare I like.

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, 1 beer
Out in Greenpoint with E, watching the hepster do their hep thing.

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, 1 slice streetza, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
On the way home realized I was hungry, that dinner wasn't as big as I thought. Kinda craving sweet, thinking of the cupcake and the rugallah, I think it kinda primed the pump to eat more sugar, gotta nip that in the bud. Though I just got a huge 20 lb watermelon in the fridge...

Weekend Report (Fasted Food)

Early Monday morning, the scale reads 224. I'm a bit amazed by this, as I don't look much different, but I do feel a little bit stronger on the bike.

The laxative tea of Friday night was pretty gentle on my system. I was too tired from a day of yoga and volunteer orientations to let hunger keep me up. During the day Saturday, stayed in and did chores and homework. My mother in law came over and I prepped a bowl of onion soup for her, fried some whole wheat bread in butter with a little salt and chopped it in triangles and garnished the soup with it, after wiping the sides of the bowl (I didn't have any cheese on hand.)

The main thing I noticed from the fast, other than hunger, is a slightly starchy coating in my mouth that tastes kind of.....good. Mildly sweet, vaguely fermented like the smell of freshly risen dough.

SATURDAY
UNBREAKFAST: 7:30pm, pint of 'lemonade', hunger 4/5
The pinch of cayenne gives it a little kick, and the maple syrup gives a nice woody overtone to the sweetness. Sipped it over 3 hours.

BREAK-FAST: 2pm, bowl of onion soup with 2 pieces wholewheat bread fried in butter, saltless saltines with good peanutbutter, 1.5 bowls, hunger 5/5
As B was napping, I was prepping some infused garlic olive oil for dinner when a drop got on my tongue. That just made me snap, and out out came the school-made onion soup, which was fantastic. Felt ferociously hungry after the soup, popped in about 6 crackers smeared with a bit of peanut butter. Still really hungry, but holding myself back from gorging, lest I bear the fury of a Nutritionist Scorned. Ilsa specifically told me to take it easy coming off this fast.

LUNCH: 3pm, 1.5 homemade pizzas, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Had two lumps of dough in the freezer, one I made with newly infused garlic olive oil, the other made with roasted tomato couli from school. Not quite as good as the wholefoods dough, but good.

DINNER: 7pm, pint of pork fried rice, shrimp egg roll, 2/3 of a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream, quart of water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Woke up from a 2 hour nap, feeling out of sorts and craving comfort food.

SUNDAY
BREAKFAST: 6:15am, good yogurt with nuts, honey, vanilla, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 8am, half a freshly baked homemade lemon muffin, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 11am, bagel with PB&J, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Free food on the Tour de Brooklyn was scant, but for an 18 mile ride, how much food do you really need?

PM DRINKING: 1pm, 2.5 pints of beer, hunger 4/5
After ride drinks with a few friends at Gowanus Yacht Club, nice outdoor patio. Haven't drunk this much in a long time, got somewhere between buzzed and drunk on a sunny holiday afternoon.

LUNCH: 3pm, philly cheese steak, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Came with a large side of fries that I pawned off on others. A while ago Ilsa made me cut out fries -- if I'm going to down a cheese steak after being told to take it easy after a 1 day fast, this was the least I could do!

PM SNACK: 4pm, cherry ice, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8pm, 4 homemade lemon muffins with good butter, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
My lemon muffins are mighty fine. There, I said it.

MONDAY
BREAKFAST: 6:15am, organic chex with good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 7:30am, apple, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 9:30am, 2 donuts, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Fresh donuts from a farm stand in the dark heart of New Jersey while cycling. This place has a lot of fresh produce and other baked goods, but with the sun shining down on it so beautifully, it beckoned like a Donut Camelot.

AM SNACK: 10:30am, seaweed salad, seseame noodles, 1 small piece of toblerone, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Bigger snack at the halfway point of the ride in Nyack. Food wasn't very good, way too salty, did not finish it.

PM SNACK: 1pm, 20oz of gatorade
Near the GWB, stopped by gas station to down this drink, definitely helped me keep my energy up.

LUNCH: 2:30pm, shrimp in garlic sauce with black beans and yellow rice, quart of water, 3 bowls, hunger 4/5
Ordered in.

DINNER: 8pm, asparagus, hummus and cucumber, half a cuban with kimchi and queso fresca, a few bites of rice ball and panzanela salad, water, 1 bowl, hunger 2/5
Dinner out in the 'hood with B, really nice to get her sick butt out of the house a little.

Weekend Report (Let's Get Ready to Mmmmmake Mmmmmuffins!!!!)

ADDENDA:
I've made this recipe for lemon muffins three times, each to great success. I modified the recipe by replacing the flour with whole wheat pastry flour, and used brown sugar with extra lemon zest on top for a slightly crunchy caramelized bite. But this time I tried what I did for the pizza dough: measure the ingredients by weight instead of volume. (This is the most accurate way to measure flour, which tends to be dense or airy or "foofy," making volume-measurement inaccurate.) Two cups is 16oz, a full pound. My pastry flour, kept in the back of the freezer, was pushed down and really clumpy and dense, but by weighing, it didn't matter....

Instead of a batter, it became a dough when I folded in the wet with the dry (you fold instead of mix to prevent creating gluten, which will make the muffins tough). Surprisingly, the muffins DID rise in the oven, but were extremely dense and dry. Failure. Being that this recipe worked before, my only guess is that the recipe-author not measured by weight, and ended up using a lot less flour.

SATURDAY
AM SNACK: 3am, homemade powerbar, .25 bowl, hunger 3/5
Woke up at 2am after 5 hours sleep, just psyched to be up, take apart and clean my bicycle, then bake muffins. I'm sure I look totally bonkers from the outside.

BREAKFAST: 5:45am, 3 leaden lemon muffins, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 11:30pm, spinach salad with homemade vinaigrette, 2 pancakes, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
All the salad from the farmers market, except the carrots. Pancakes out of the freezer. Mmmm, buttermilk....

PM SNACK: 2pm, vegan chocolate chip cookie, 1/4 pint of vegan chocolate hazelnut gelato, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
A movie afternoon with the HVS. The weird cashew-cream gelato was shockingly good, like what Tofutti should taste like if it wasn't mainly flavored by emulsifiers and chemicals.

DINNER: 6:45pm, pheasant sausage in mushroom demi-glace over fresh pasta, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Sausage was pre-cooked, too mild a flavor, and the fat in it tasted a bit too chunky - will not make that mistake again. Cut time on the pasta by letting the dough hook knead it in the mixer, made the final product a bit tougher than I like. I made an espagnole sauce before the movie, burned my mirepoix once and started over. Didn't have tomato paste, gotta get one of those fancy tubes so I can have small amounts on hand. After the movie, simmered it with an equal amount of veal/beef stock and reduced by half, threw in mushrooms and shallots. The stock was out of a carton, ok but nothing like the good stock we made in class. Got the sauce to nappe consistency, hit it with sea salt, but the flavor was just ok. Definitely would not serve this in a restaurant (or let Chef sample it,) but hey, it's my first mother and derivative sauce at home!

Ate more than usual, need that carbo-load for the 100 mile bike ride tomorrow...

SUNDAY
Today was a blur. I woke at 3am, had a half a dense lemon muffin, pedalled over to Penn Station and hopped a train with all the other people in spandex to Babylon, and road 100 miles to Montauk. It was a great day, and got to ride with a friend.

At the rest stops, kind of mindless shovelled in the food. At Penn Station, had a monstrous (easily 5x the size of my muffins) baked good and a slice of cake. At the first rest stop 20 miles in, snarfed some good food, including spinach pie with hummus, corn chips, baklava, a tiny piece of cheese cake and cookies. 50 miles in, people had already eaten all the good food and was left with fruit and cake. 70 miles in was a free ice cream truck, so had a cone and a few chocolates, but wasn't very hungry. At the end of the ride, had to rush to make the train and skipped the dinner on offer. On the sleepy train ride home, stuffed in half a bagel and a banana nut Odwalla bar, kinda gross. Back at Penn, had a couple of slices of pizza, definitely hit the spot.

Weekend Report (Flavorful Humanism)

ADDENDA:
Went to the farmer's market on Saturday morning, was a virtual plant & flower show. It's all very nice, but I want stuff I can eat.

Saw the documentary "Young@Heart" Saturday evening, a beautiful account of a chorus composed of old people singing punk and alternative songs. The singing was clearly keeping them motivated to simply stay alive. I think a show of old people cooking the dishes they remember from their salad days (no pun, no pun!) and their parents would be a fascinating work of culinary anthropology and, umm, flavorful humanism. I despise Coldplay, but fell hard for Fred Little and his Johnny Cash-like baritone:


I bet he has a wicked recipe for smothered pork n' onions....

SATURDAY
BREAKFAST: 7am, good granola with good milk, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 11am, handful of baby carrots with hummus, small handful of Frito's, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Forgot to put Fritos on the chili pie last night.

LUNCH: 1:15pm, vegetarian dim sum, small cup of sesame ice cream, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Had a few assorted small dishes, including kale wrapped in rice dough. For years, my friend Danny and I would frequent this joint, and he would order the kale and I would order the fried dough - they looked the same, but very different on the inside. Bitter vegetables, yech. This time, I tried the kale and.... didn't hate it.

DINNER: 7:30pm, yucca cracklings, 2 pieces wholewheat bread with butter, spring vegetable ravioli appetizer, coconut encrusted tempe with millet polenta and bok choy, a little portion of vegan deserts, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Went back to Broadway East with B and the HVS, again the food was outstanding and interesting. After all the meat this past week, good to have 2 vegan meals in a row.

SUNDAY
BREAKFAST: 9:30am, 1 apple, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 10:30am, 3 bites of apple crumble, hunger 4/5
My ever-lovin' wife B mentioned yesterday that she had some apple crumble. I asked, did you finish it? She said no, I left a piece for you. The 1-foot-square ceramic dish of apple crumble was sliced evenly into 9 pieces. After Friday's dinner, a full one third was left. I assumed that B left me a full 1/9th square. When I peeked, her idea of 'a piece' was scraps in the corner. She had eaten almost a full third of the crumble in one sitting. I promised her I'd blog about it so the WHOLE WORLD knows B eats like a naughty 9 year old boy!!

LUNCH: 1pm, assorted dinner rolls, tomato and onion with steak sauce, piece of thick cut bacon, two pieces of porterhouse steak, creamed spinach, home fries, water, half an ice cream sunday with whipped cream, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Mother's day meal with B and her mom and bro at Peter Luger's in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Totally not feeling it. The service was good, the shrimp and bacon appetizers were excellent, the beef-steak tomatoes were oddly ripe and flavorful, and the house steak sauce complemented it wonderfully. We ordered a steak for 2, which was definitely more than enough to feed the four of us with a small amount of leftovers. They only serve porterhouse steaks, and we got it medium rare, nicely red and juicy but firm in the middle. I had two slices, about 8oz, the recommended portion by the gov -- I counted about 12 normal portions in this 'steak for 2.' I took the t-bone and with my steak knife got some marrow out and sucked it down with a peace of bread, it was really tasty. The dessert was excessive, but comforting.

After spending the last week studying and listening to lectures about meat, I was distinctly underwhelmed by Peter Luger's. The house-aged steak was tender and nicely browned, but it wasn't as transcendent as the price would suggest. I suspect at some point, with some key tools, I'll be able to make a better steak at home for half the price.

DINNER: 8pm, red pepper with hummus, vegetarian chili over brown long grain rice with Guinness-marbled cheddar and crumbled Fritos, 1 bowl, hunger 2/5
Friend stopped by, whipped up a nice quick dinner. Totally not hungry, very easy to eat a small portion.

Weekend Report (Chemistry Set in a Can)

In Ironman, the big cartoon action movie that opened up this weekend, the super-rich, super-genius, super-fit main character is seen scarfing Burger King burgers and "New York" pizza before he becomes a good guy. After he sees the light, we see him drinking an icky green "health" shake.

My father-in-law stayed with us over the weekend. I made some KICK-ASS pancakes from scratch, using my mix and replacing milk with buttermilk, and it made all the difference. I've had so-called buttermilk pancakes from a store-bought mix where you just add water, but the flavor and mouth feel that real buttermilk gives, it's quite intense.

Following my FIL's lead, we pretty much followed the Evil Ironman diet on Saturday, with Chinese in Chinatown for lunch, and a nice buffalla moz pizza ordered in for dinner.

Sunday was a wackadoo eating day. I woke up at 6, snarfed 2 pancakes out of the freezer and a large cup of homemade ice cream, then road out into the fog and did the 5 Boro Bike Tour through the city. Ate a baggie of pretzels here, a few bananas there. Near the end they were giving out all sorts of new-fangled power drinks, including this horrible-looking Snapple thing that had just about as much sugar and calories as soda, but with a chemistry set thrown in.

Speaking of chemistry sets, I did drink a low-calorie sports drink called FRS. Here is the ingredients list:

Water, White Grape Juice Concentrate, Orange Juice Concentrate, Inulin, Citric
Acid, Natural Orange Flavors, Quercetin, Ascorbic Acid, Gum Arabic, Locust Bean
Gum, Green Tea Extract, Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate (Vit E), Sucralose, Caffeine,
Niacinamide (B3), Natural Lemon Flavor, Beta Carotene (for color), Pyridoxine
Hydrochloride (B6), Thiamin Hydrochloride (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Cyanocobalamin
(B12)

Ten percent juice, about half a cup of coffee's worth of caffeine. Tasted very sweet and strangely oily. Inulin is a plant byproduct that is subtly sweet and has about 25% the calories of sugar, and has a minimal impact on blood sugar (see wiki) Is this the Gatorade replacement I've been looking for, or just an overpriced chemistry kit in a can?

Filleted a wild-caught red-snapper Sunday night as practice and broiled the fillets in butter and Herbes de Provence. $13 worth of fish got me two very skimpy fillets, which tells me that either Wholefoods is wildly overpriced or I really need to practice more.

Weights and Measures/Blanching and Shocking (Dicey Dices)

The day opened with a quiz on sanitation and herb ID. Ten herbs were spread out around the room with numbers for identifying, and the multiple choice questions were no big deal. Upon review of the answers, I somehow mistook Cilantro for Chervil. Ninety-five percent ain't bad.

An ounce is an ounce is an ounce, unless you're measuring volume (the amount of space a material takes up), then it's a fluid ounce. Today's lecture defined the English Standard series of measures for weight (lbs and ozs) and volume (tsp to G), and the simple math need to convert recipes to larger or smaller amounts. Lip service was given to the metric system -- if a chef were to give you a recipe in metrics, all measures in the kitchen would be metric so there would be no need to waste time and lessen accuracy with conversion.

Chef M discussed blanching, defined as boiling in salted water until just-cooked. This reduces strong flavors or smells, sets color, makes skins easier to remove, and prepares vegetables for other cooking methods that may not otherwise cook thoroughly on their own. We proceeded to dice a large amount of potatoes; prepped haricot vertes and broccoli; blanch the vegetables and shock them in ice baths (to stop the cooking); and boil the potatoes before running them through a food mill. The vegetables were thrown into a hot pan with a little bit of water and butter, then coated (or, as the method is known, glazed). Copious amounts of cream, butter, and salt went in to the potatoes. According to Chef M, you keep adding salt until it tastes 'good' -- not necessarily salty, but right before that point.

At the end of class, potatoes were distributed for us to take home and practice on. My diced potatoes were relatively cubical, and the chef complimented me on a nice dice. One other student's dice was weirdly flat and chip-like -- how does someone mess this up? I'm going to practice on my taters tonight and try to dice them with some speed; in a real-life situation, I'm not going to have all the time in the world to achieve a nice dice so my boss can pat me on the back.

ADDENDA:
Speaking of weights & measures, I tipped the scales at 229 this morning, a pound up from last week. A few people who read this blog congratulated me on my 7lb weight loss, but I shrugged it off -- I didn't really try too hard and know it'll fluctuate with water, the weather, etc.

As I was engraving all my tools with a symbol to indicate my ownership (as every student's tools are identical), I dropped the bread knife by accident. It bounced off my leg and I barely gave it a notice. As I picked up the next blade to engrave, I noticed a not-small trickle of red down my thigh. Damn, these things are sharp!

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, organic cheerios with good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 9am, fresh french bread, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM TASTING: 11:15am, broccoli and haricot vertes with