Fat Guy

The photo is of the dish being cooked. The kale was cooked through when done. It just tasted lousy. I'd probably chop it if I did it again, though, which I doubt I will. I've only ever had one memorable kale dish, which was a Caesar-type salad made with Tuscan kale at the restaurant Il Buco here in New York City. But I'm thinking Tuscan kale is just a lot better-tasting than the stuff from our friend's CSA. I can't imagine anything being done to this stuff to make it taste good, short of preparations that completely mask its flavor and texture (e.g., hidden ingredient in a smoothie).

Breakfast today was a repeat of yesterday: yogurt and cereal. For lunch I made grilled-cheese sandwiches for the family, on nine-grain bread. Possibly the best perk of teaching at the International Culinary Center/French Culinary Institute is the incredible access I have to bread from the baking program. My freezer, which is quite large by the standards of New York City apartments, is full of an embarrassing variety of the stuff. Dinner was Middle Eastern, a cuisine that lends itself readily to vegetarianism. My favorite local place is called Hummus Place. We had hummus with favas, falafel, and shakshouka haloumi (eggs, tomatoes, peppers and haloumi cheese). Here's today's CSA haul:

He loves peanut sauce. I have no idea how to make peanut sauce or what gado-gado is!

According to the newsletter it will consist of: peas collard greens Chinese cabbage kohlrabi basil red spring onions summer squash/zucchini lettuce broccoli

I was hoping to do a big production of soups and/or bean dishes, but it has been super hot the past couple of days. If I catch a break this weekend I'll do that, though.

I started off the day with a Chobani Greek-style yogurt and a bowl of cereal with milk. These are two of my four most typical breakfast items, the others being fruit smoothies and straight-up fruit. Very, very, very occasionally I have eggs or a bagel with cream cheese. So I'm already a vegetarian at breakfast almost year-round, if you allow for dairy. A few times a year I might have bacon, sausage or other breakfast meats, but that kind of meal slows me down way too early in the day. My worst episode every of acid reflux was a few years back on a road trip when I ate eggs-and-meat for breakfast four days in a row. I thought I wasn't going to make it, and I resolved to eat that sort of breakfast rarely and only on days when I'd be able to sit around a lot. Tomorrow I'm picking up our friend's CSA share so for lunch today I prepared some of the remnants of last Wednesday's haul: kale, spinach and garlic scapes, plus a box of supermarket mushrooms in a stir fry. It was terrible. I had about one bite of each component. Even Ellen, my wife, who is very forgiving of culinary experimentation, found it difficult to eat. Dinner was a little challenging. We had Vietnamese takeout at a family gathering, and I wasn't prepared to talk about the whole vegetarian-week thing. The only truly vegetarian dish was a mixed-vegetable fried rice, which I ate a ton of. I also ate some sticky rice, and I picked the chicken out of a summer roll and ate that. Plus ice cream and oatmeal cookies for dessert. My grocery shopping at Fairway is pretty much limited to what I can carry on the subway. This morning's haul is pictured above. Here's what I brought home this evening:

I haven't planned any meals. I'm winging it, and I welcome input. I'll post about what I eat, which probably won't be all that remarkable. Over the years I've been eating less meat. Recently, I've been wondering if I need to eat it at all. There was one particular incident that galvanized my thinking on this, and I'll get to that -- we have a whole week to cover everything. Overall, though, it seems unnecessary to kill animals for food for adult humans in this day and age, it is inefficient energy- and land-wise to raise meat, and it's probably not all that healthy to eat a lot of it. So I figured I'd give a no-meat diet a try for a week.

I'm hoping to be able to come and if I do I'll be taking a room. By when would you need to know for sure?

Who will join me in eating vegetarian for a week? My decision to give this a try stems from a variety of causes, which I'll discuss more as the week unfolds. In short, there are health, ethical and environmental reasons. It's also something some people challenged me to do -- and I like a challenge. Not that I expect this to be a huge challenge. I'm not going to eat vegan. I'm going to do ovo-lacto and I'm not going to be terribly concerned about secondary ingredients such as fish sauce in an otherwise vegetarian Southeast Asian dish in a restaurant. This morning I went shopping and acquired a bunch of vegetables and other non-meat stuff. This afternoon I'll get more. And tomorrow I'm picking up a friend's CSA share. So, who's in?

I think the number of pitfalls on the Congee Village menu is so great as to make it hard to classify as a good restaurant. Then again, you can get a good meal there if you have all the information, so maybe that's all that matters. Jing Fong is like that too. Actually so are a lot of places. I'm surprised you didn't do well at Oriental Garden. But I actually think the best meal I had in Manhattan Chinatown in the past year was at Cantoon Garden, right next door to Jing Fong on Elizabeth. I keep meaning to post about it. I, on the other hand, have never really loved NY Noodle Town. I don't think the noodles are all that great, and for roast meats I've been using O.K. 218 on Grand Street with good results, especially when you factor in price.

That's the place I saw on Bayard, across from Nice/New Green Bo. I think it replaced Yeah Shanghai. There has also been one in the Flushing Mall for a while.

Pretty sure Zabb Elee is owned by the same people as Sea and Peep. When we were at Sea there was a sign up, visit our other restaurants...

I think it's too easy to dismiss Chinese in Manhattan, but when looked at as a whole there is a lot more going on than a lot of people assume. I've spent a considerable amount of time in Flushing these past few years, and while there's some wonderful food there that you can't really get in Manhattan, there's also wonderful food in Manhattan that you can't get in Flushing. I think when it comes to the newer immingrant groups you do better in Flushing, so for example the Northeast (Dongbei) places in Flushing are not yet being duplicated well in Manhattan (though I just walked by a new place on Bayard the other day and need to check it out). Whereas, for Cantonese and seafood there's some great stuff in Manhattan Chinatown, such as Cantoon Garden and Oriental Garden. I still love Nice Green Bo (formerly New Green Bo) for having the best price/quality ration for Shanghainese I've ever heard of. And I agree that Manhattan Chinatown street food and hole-in-the-wall food has improved a lot in the past few years. Also elsewhere in Manhattan you have excellent Sichuan -- I think both Szechuan Gourmet and Lan Sheng in Manhattan are better than Spicy & Tasty in Flushing.

It seems to me that the overall quality of Thai food in New York City has been increasing. Just a few years ago I though most neighborhood-level places were terrible and you could only get decent Thai food at a few destination places. Now I feel like many neighborhood places are doing good food. I've posted before about how I think Sookk, on the Upper West Side, does a great job. There are other places on the UWS that I think are quite good: Thai Market and Land chief among them. I just ate at Sea Thai in Williamsburg and thought it was terrific -- and I feel the same about its sister restaurant, Peep, in SoHo. What are some of your neighborhood favorites, and do you agree or disagree that NYC Thai has been improving steadily?

What's the procedure for making corn chowder?

So, assuming I'm not going to shell out for electrostatic air cleaners, I can't cook outside, and I'm not going to wipe down every surface of the kitchen all the time, does anybody have strategies I might not have thought of?

You can get corn year-round in the US these days, but where I live (Northeast and Mid-Atlantic area) you really get a lot of local corn from July through the fall. It will only take me about a week to get bored of eating it on the cob, and from there my repertoire of dishes made with fresh corn is pretty limited. My wife, Ellen, makes excellent savory corn pancakes, so that will get us through a few more meals. What next?

Anybody had any luck with any of the eco-friendly dish soaps, detergents and other kitchen cleaning products out there on the market? I've been doing pretty well with Trader Joe's dishwasher detergent and general-purpose cleaning spray (for countertops, etc.) and they claim to be eco-friendly and have the additional benefit of being cheap.

A discussion around the family lunch table leads me to come here for authoritative answers: What are the proper definitions of and differences between jelly, jam and related products?

Isn't it standard procedure in Montreal to slice and butter a bagel and place it face-down on the griddle to toast?

The last time I was at Ess-a-Bagel, one of New York City's classic bagel bakeries, I noticed a sign, "We do not toast bagels." A little Googling reveals many diatribes against toasting bagels: "Real New Yorkers don't toast bagels," we are told. "Toasting a good bagel is bastardizing a beautiful thing." All my life I've heard this. And I like toasted bagels. My credentials as a New Yorker are second to none. About 99% of bagels out there are improved by toasting. The 1% that taste good untoasted aren't harmed by it -- it's just another way to enjoy a bagel. Am I crazy (on this point at least)?

I thought the last time I bought a CSA share would be my last summer of community supported agriculture. My own unpredictable schedule and needs weren't compatible with having a predetermined weekly selection of produce. This summer, however, a friend with a CSA share asked me to take over her share for six weeks. So starting this past Wednesday I mounted a limited CSA re-engagement. I notice nobody has started a 2011 CSA topic, so I figured I would. This week, which is week five of the season for this CSA, we got: Two types of lettuce Baby onions Curly kale Komatsuna Cilantro Peas Purslane Garlic scapes We had some of the lettuce and purslane in a salad last night, and we ate all the peas. I'm still figuring out what to do with the rest.

Correct.

I was out today with someone, an eGullet person actually -- I won't specifically say it was Chris Hennes -- and I noticed that before he tasted his food he would smell it. As a theoretical matter this makes sense for many reasons. But it has never been part of my routing. I wanted to get a read on whether I'm the only person here who doesn't do this, or he's the only one who does.

Poly coated. What's your strategy? Posted from my handheld using the Tapatalk app. Want to use eG Forums on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry? Get started at http://egullet.org/tapatalk