The Restricted Foodie

Sub-prime food posting

2008-09-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while, but I promise there will be many more stories coming shortly. Stay tuned, the eating has not stopped.

All dressed up and nothing to eat

2008-06-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

Every May brings the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, or ICFF to New York. This means lots of furniture and lots of parties (which translates to lots of interesting food). David and I usually exhibit there (he designs eco furniture and lighting) but this year, we decided to work on a large project elsewhere (an eco showhouse in the Hamptons). This also allowed us to have time to go to more of the ICFF parties.

During the ICFF, design stores and design studios all over Manhattan and Brooklyn will have parties every single night. It is great fun and a wonderful way to schmooze and see old friends, but going to these types of parties means that I will be surrounded by “gorgeous nibbly things” (i.e. all of the delicious – and free - appetizers that I can not eat).

I wind up being one of those impossibly annoying people who asks the waiters what every single ingredient in the food is. I try to be discreet and very polite, but I soon find myself inquiring "is it goat cheese, or cow's milk?" Or what grains the bread is made from. Waiters at these events are so patient, I really have great respect for them.

Most of these waiters try to understand food allergies, and will try to be helpful. But, often, you can't trust the answers, and if you are not sure, you have to skip it. It is tough to see all of these beautiful little appetizers going around, and often you think, well, a few of them won't kill me. But, I have learned to eat before I go out (so that I fill up and do not eat every single thing in sight at the parties), and then I can choose wisely, with a clear head (or, rather, a full stomach).

I will wind up doing things such as grabbing a piece of roast beef, rolled up on a miniscule piece of toast, and I just take the toast off and eat the roast beef (and then I collect the pieces of bread in a napkin, very discreetly). It looks weird, and I try not to let anyone see me doing this. I have really gotten quite good at doing this in the stealthiest way possible. Hey, whatever works.

And because so many people in New York are on so many crazy diets, it often does not matter when you find yourself standing in the middle of the room, all dressed up, taking your appetizer apart and putting on your reading glasses to examine each layer inside, one by one (ok, I don't really put on my reading glasses. Most times).

David and I were at a book party for our friend Rob Walker last week (for his great book, "Buying In." Check out more at www.murketing.com), and there was a tray sitting out, with lots of little pieces of toast, topped with roast beef, and teeny tiny garnishes (and yes, I have to figure out what those are, too, but they are usually something leafy or green, so they are probably safe grazing). David and I noticed that someone had eaten about 8 pieces of the roast beef, and left the little pieces of toast on the tray. I wondered if they were on a wheat free diet, or just on something like Atkin's (or just die-hard carnivores?).

Then while we were standing near the tray talking (just talking, we weren’t devouring ALL the appetizers), David noticed that someone had quickly eaten all of the leftover pieces of toast. So we started to watch the tray now and then to see when the roast beef would disappear, and then after that, when the little pieces of bread would disappear. Who were these mysterious (and picky) people? Were they on a diet? Or did they maybe have food allergies, like me? Or just weirdly selective taste buds? I tried to figure out who they were in the crowd, but they were very stealthy (actually, it was just a very good party, and I was distracted much of the time).

It was hours of entertainment, and I felt, well, thank goodness I am definitely not alone.

Family Ties

2008-06-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Father's Day. David and I went to visit my parents in Queens, and we attempted to plan a meal, which is always more "complicated” than one would think. My family has very strange taste in food. Well, actually, they have no taste in food. You would think that this would make life simple, but it doesn’t.

My mother likes things that are extremely bland, and she will order the same dishes at the same two restaurants that she has been going to for decades (shrimp with lobster sauce at the same bland Chinese restaurant in Queens, or a roast beef, corned beef and turkey sandwich on rye from Ben’s deli. Ben’s is excellent, but she gets the same thing every time). My father is a tiny bit more adventurous, but my mother is worried about his cholesterol and his heart (although, really she was worried about this before he ever had heart or cholesterol issues), so she makes him eat bland things also.

If we all go out to a restaurant, my father will let me order a more interesting dish and he will try some of it. My mother won't touch it, always eyeing it with deep suspicion, convinced it will give her a stomach ache. She will also yell at my father, the entire time he is trying something new, saying "it's too spicy, you are going to get sick!" The rest of the family finds this endlessly entertaining.

I have tried to take my parents out for Japanese food (an utter disaster) and Korean barbecue (another disaster), and then I basically gave up.

When I was growing up, I remember my father buying a wok in the '70's and experimenting with Chinese cooking. He did a pretty good job, too. He also used to bake and was interested in various types of food, but my mother never wanted to eat them. And we didn't eat out very often - it was maybe a once a week treat - and we would always get Chinese food, “Jewish deli,” or Italian food (ie, spaghetti and meatballs, or veal parmigiana).

I think that my father once was a secret foodie, but because my mother is obsessed with eating bland food, and is afraid that everything will make her sick, my father just goes with whatever her diet is, and he eats whatever is around. Plus, my father is the type of man who is very happy with eating cake for breakfast. Chocolate cake. So, he is pretty easy to please.

CAKE FOR BREAKFAST

When I was growing up, my father and I would wake up early and take Pepperidge Farm chocolate cake out of the freezer, and eat it for breakfast. We were both deliriously happy (being all sugared up at 8 am is nothing but FUN), until my mother came in and had a coronary about it. Of course that didn’t stop us from repeating the food felony over and over.

THE SAGA OF THE FAMILY BARBECUE

For this past Father's Day, David and I wanted to barbecue. We live in an apartment without any terrace or outdoor space, and we always ask my parents if we can barbecue whenever the weather allows (note: we do all of the cooking, whenever we see my family. Part of this is because we want to get my parents to try new foods, and part of this - a strong part of this - is because we want to eat something that actually tastes good).

Every time we go to a family dinner at my parents, we put one ingredient in the salad that they are not used to. This is not to be mean, it's just a way of making life interesting (and making our food interesting). Plus, it always makes for good stories later on.

The "mystery ingredient" always causes deep concern and provokes fear, and very long discussions amongst the entire family. I have three uncles and they (and their families) all react the same way as my mother. But David and I keep trying "new" things in the salad: things that will not make them sick, and things that we can explain to them easily.

Every item has created a new, if predictable complication. Orange peppers once caused a furor. Yellow tomatoes caused an uproar, and nobody believed that they were not a form of some spicy, exotic hot pepper (and we kept explaining that we added those in because they were less acidic. Nobody believed us). Mushrooms created a 30 minute argument. Avocadoes created maybe the biggest scandal. Everyone was convinced I had put the vegetable equivalent of blowfish inside the salad, trying to kill us all.

GAZPACHO ON RYE?

My parents had a party when my nephew Dylan was born. I made gazpacho (which I can make well. As I've said, I can chop, blend, boil, bake and, occasionally, broil. I do not like to cook, but I can make enough things with those skills. And I do especially like making gazpacho, since it doesn't feel like I am "cooking").

My parents put out a spread of roast beef, corned beef, turkey and rye bread for the party. I brought the gazpacho in a giant bowl, and set it down near the sandwiches, along with some bowls.

My uncles started dipping their small plastic knives in the gazpacho, and spreading it on the rye bread. I had no idea what they were doing.

I walked over to one of them, to ask what he thought he was eating, and he said, "Lori, this is very good Russian dressing. A little spicy, but not bad."

I explained that it was gazpacho. A GIANT BOWL of gazpacho, not a giant bowl of Russian dressing. My uncle had no idea what I was talking about.

When I told him what it was, he said, "Oh, is that too spicy?"

I said, "You've been eating it; you tell me."

He said, "well, it's a little spicy. Maybe I shouldn't have any more."

It is astonishing that I even want to eat at all.

IT’S TOO MUCH BOTHER

So, this past weekend, planning the menu for my parents was impossible. The barbecue discussion created a huge drama.

My mother said what she always says:

"It's too much bother."

I said what I always say:

"Mom, how is it too much work, if we are doing everything, and you are doing NOTHING?"

We usually give in to them, but I wanted to make something special for Father's day. And, I selfishly wanted to use the barbecue, which nobody else ever uses. My parents had gotten rid of their barbecue years ago, and instead would bring a George Foreman grill outside.

I explained that this was not barbecuing; this was simply grilling on a George Foreman grill.

My mother said that taking the grill outside, officially made it a "barbecue."

David and I gave them another barbecue a few years ago, which they never use. It now lives in my parents' backyard shed, along with the wood chips we get from Whole Foods (instead of charcoal). My mom was worried about the charcoal (and in reality, I should not be using regular charcoal and lighter fluid, that stuff is quite nasty, when you stop and think about it), so we now use the wood chips and start the fire with newspaper in a metal can “chimney,” which works just fine.

David and I finally convinced my parents to let us bring food to grill outside yesterday, and then my mother said "you kids eat what you want. Your father and I are picking up Jewish deli."

By the way, all cold cuts in our household are called "Jewish deli." This type of food used to be called "food from the appetizing store," but now it is just called "Jewish deli."

So, after much, much, much, MUCH debate with my parents, I gave up (and lost my voice). David and I picked up salmon and swordfish at Whole Foods, and then we made kabobs and David grilled them, just for ourselves. I got a bit extra so that my parents could at least taste what we were cooking.

By the time we got to my parents (at 4pm), my mother said that she could not wait for us to eat dinner, and wound up eating her turkey and roast beef sandwich indoors, with my dad, while we were grilling outside.

This is typical of my family. Everyone eats something different, and they all eat at different times. But, everyone will get absolutely crazy, if you suggest that this is not a "family dinner."

My mother will say "what are you talking about? We are a close family, we all get along!"

Strangely, we all DO get along. With all of the crazy arguments about food, we honestly do love each other and are good to each other and get along. There is a lot of laughter and a wonderful, communal sense of humor in our family. But, we do not have family dinners. And, my family is crazy. I know that all families are crazy, and this is just the way in which my own particular family shows their craziness. Once I realized that, life became much easier to deal with. It could absolutely be much worse.

But, we do not have family dinners.

David did a wonderful job with the kabobs, he added peppers and onions and tomatoes to them, and we sat outside and ate them, while my parents sat and watched, marveling at David’s grilling skills. (Speaking of David’s culinary skills, he even made a wonderful marinade with wheat free tamari, just for me. Now that’s love)!

I made my mother taste the salmon and then the swordfish and she said "Oh, that's delicious."

I said, "will you eat this next time?"

And she said, "Of course." Then she paused and said, "Well, if it's not too spicy."

We then brought out dessert, which everyone ate at the same time, in the same place (this happens in our family with desserts, because we all have huge sweet tooths and dessert seems to be far more important to eat together).

Dessert usually consists of flourless chocolate cake for both me and my sister-in-law, Jennifer (she often picks it up at great bakeries in Park Slope, or I sometimes pick it up on the Lower East Side at How Sweet It Is, which used to also be a great wheat free bakery called Happy Happy Happy), and then my parents will pick up a cake from their favorite place: Waldbaum's. They honestly aren't that bad (although, the frosting-to-cake ratio is way too high, it’s like having a little bit of hot dog with your ketchup), but I always want to get my family something “nicer,” but in their minds, nothing is nicer than Waldbaum’s.

The family dinners are getting even more anarchistic. At one recent gathering, each of us picked up different foods. My brother and his wife picked up deli at Ben's in Bayside; my brother's kids (my little niece and nephew) each had THEIR own cuisine (hot dogs for one, pizza with the cheese removed for the other – not to be confused with cheeseless pizza, which my nephew tells me is not the same. And I sort of get that); David and I decided not to argue with my family about food (for once) and picked up dinner at Joe's Shanghai in Flushing (unlike the Manhattan branch, there is rarely a line here); and here is the best part - my parents picked up deli at Ben's as well, but they got hungry before we all got to the house, so they picked up the food hours beforehand, and ate before we all arrived.

I have often brought this topic up with my mother and the conversation goes like this:

ME: Mom, why can’t you wait for the whole family to sit down and eat?”

MOM: I have to eat the minute I’m hungry, or else I will die of hunger.

ME: Why can't you just eat an apple or a banana or even half a sandwich, before we come over, to hold you until we all eat together?

She then looks at me as if I am utterly crazy; as if I’d just asked her to remove the plastic coverings from the sofa.

CHICK OF THE SEA

My mother is very food obsessed. She is not, though, a foodie. These are very different things, or at least they are in my family. As I said, she does not try anything new, and is afraid of everything. She often says “I like it, but it disagrees with me.” And often, she is referring to something that she has never tried in her life.

But she will obsessively buy whatever she likes, and she is always afraid that she will run out of things. Whenever tuna is on sale, she will buy it. Lots of it. She usually has an average of about 74 cans of tuna, stored in the basement, at all times. She is very upset now, because of all of the mercury warnings in tuna. She has to eat less tuna, which she used to eat every single day, and so she is terribly sad over the fact that she can't continue to buy tuna whenever it is on sale. She hates to miss a sale on tuna.

Whenever my mother is eating a meal, she will start talking about what she is going to eat for her next meal. Or, she will ask you what you are going to eat next. I often don't know what I want to eat, until a half hour beforehand. So having this type of conversation with my mother never goes well.

I think that it truly is a miracle that I want to eat any interesting food at all, but I think a lot of foodies come from families like this. David is a foodie, in a low key sort of way, but his family is very interested in food. His sister Karen is an amazing chef, and so is her husband (I introduced them. I knew that they were perfect for each other when he was trying to impress her on their first date, and he made his own pasta for her). I love going food shopping with Karen, it is one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen. She will pick up things that I don't recognize, and say "what's this? And, how can we cook it?" I had never thought about food that way, until I met her.

I think it is hard to live in New York without being obsessed with food, one way or another. There is so much possibility around every corner. The question is whether you fear it or seek it out.

So close I could smell it

2008-06-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

I had a birthday party last week and many friends showed up with food. My friend Polly gave me a dark chocolate Scottie dog. It looked like it was from Li-Lac chocolates, and it was too beautiful to eat, but I can't ever stay away from dark chocolate, so I ate it very quickly, while greeting guests and introducing it around. I could not put it down. Thank god I can eat dark chocolate again, on my diet. I have gone through phases where I have had to cut it out completely (most recently, a few months ago, and then again, last year for many months), and I find that to be the toughest thing. Not being able to eat chocolate is the one thing that I find utterly depressing. I can do without bread (though it is often hard, especially while walking down certain blocks in New York, where you can smell the bread baking). I can do without ice cream (although, I get to have sorbet, which is often a good substitute), I can even do without cheese (and now that I can have goat and sheep cheese, life is much better). The last 2 times I cut out dark chocolate, nothing in my health changed, I was still getting migraines or headaches and just felt as thought I had lost my entire sense of humor (even though David kept reassuring me that I was still very funny and witty. Although, I think he did that, because I asked him "am I still funny and witty?" about 20 times a day). I added the dark chocolate back in about a month ago, and so far, so good.

That little chocolate Scottie kept me away from the fabulous looking red velvet cupcakes that I had brought for the party. They were from Sugar Sweet Sunshine, and had chocolate almond frosting. They are one of the most perfect desserts. They have the most wonderful balance of texture and taste, and they are so pretty as well. I can't eat the wheat (not to mention whatever dye they use to make the red in the red velvet), so I had to stay away from them. More frustrating still, I have developed a keen, some might say super-natural, sense of smell, and the things I can't eat smell the strongest to me now. So I could smell the chocolate almond frosting from across the room (really, truly, this isn't psychological. David is amazed at how I can smell something from around the corner, or from outside. He says that it's my superpower, to which I have said that I can't yet decide if I should use it for good or for evil...only time will tell)!

I would love to use my super-sense of smell to stop people from wearing too much perfume. I am allergic to perfume, and I used to love it, but always wore just tiny bits of it. Now, if I am on the subway, and someone is sitting near me with perfume on, I will have to move far from them.

Back to the party, my friend Kate and her little boy Danny, baked the most wonderful cake for the party. Kate showed up juggling Danny, her baby Sarah, and a cake, looking utterly calm and unfazed after a full day of work, too. She is truly Wonder Woman. Maybe she could join my Justice League of superheroes (if I could only design a proper costume for someone who has super sense of smell)!

I threw the party at a bar on the Lower East Side called Fontana's. Since they have a back room with red walls and zebra striped booths, I somehow decided that the party had a Rockabilly theme, and I asked everyone to wear red and black. I rented "High School Confidential," and had it projected on a wall of the bar. My friend Phil made a fantastic mix of Rockabilly and punk music, and I also made a mix of my own, from a boxed Rockabilly set called "Rockin' Bones," which my friend Billy sent me for my birthday.

Kate and Danny's cake kept with the theme, and was decorated with red and black details (Danny is not even 3 years old yet, but he is quite the excellent baker!).

Another group of friends brought dumplings from Chinatown (the bar was lovely enough to let us bring food in for the party). I could not eat the cake, the cupcakes, or the dumplings, and I did a good job ignoring them all. I am also not supposed to eat a lot of grains right now, of any kind, but am allowed a little rice. So David picked up some rice and pork in Chinatown, and I had a little bit of it before the party and it was quite good. It was from a nameless place around Christie and Broome St. There are loads of good places way down there, stretching below Delancey. Many of these places specialize in really unusual food. David and I have gone into some of them. We just sort of wander and try to follow the local crowds.

The block on Eldridge Street which houses the Eldridge St Synagogue, has many Chinese hand-pulled Fujian noodle joints (although the noodles are wheat, in most cases). The menus are usually in Chinese without any translation, and sometimes you will not be welcome, unless you can say something in Chinese (even a 'hello' will often get you in the door). One night, David and I went into a restaurant where nobody spoke English, except for a 7 or 8 year old girl who was there. So she translated for us, and was happy to help.

The party was great, and I was very happy with my dark chocolate Scottie dog. I'm also not supposed to drink alcohol right now (and it gives me headaches anyway), and I am staying away from things like concentrated fruit juices, because they are loaded with high fructose corn syrup and way too much sugar and often have preservatives. And soda is out of the question (I used to be a Coca Cola addict, and was even a food snob about that. I would not drink Pepsi, only Coke. I once worked in a design studio, where the owner of the studio, came into our daily 8:30am meetings, drinking a bottle of Coke. We were all grossed out by this, but I kind of understood it. I never drank coffee, so it made sense to me. But now Coke is something that I pretty much never touch).

So I stuck with seltzer at the bar (not really any other choices), and before I left the apartment, I had a Knudsen's natural ginger ale, which is the best thing in the world if you like ginger (which I do).

This is one of the rare food areas where David and I disagree - I can even eat raw ginger, but he doesn't love it at all. In general, we have quite similar taste in food: we both hate olives but love olive oil, and we both dislike cilantro, but I think it is because most restaurants load it on and don't know how to use it. But David is on a low cholesterol diet, and I am on a wheat free, dairy free diet, which usually includes no corn, soy, vinegar, sugars, mushrooms, most grains, or anything else that could cause inflammation in my system...so often, David and I eat completely different things. At times, he will make wheat pasta and I will make brown rice pasta (or, when I am eating corn, I can make corn pasta, which tastes better). Sometimes, we have very different dinners, but we try to overlap them, and at least have a few side dishes in common.

I have a friend Jean, whose family has all different diets. Her kids have food allergies, her husband is a vegetarian and she always wants to eat different things than them. So she winds up working a demanding full time job and then coming home and making four different meals for dinner. She loves to cook (and is wonderful at it), but she has to be very creative, every single night. She was even part of an article in the NY Times talking about this. She is another Wonder Woman. I'm telling you, I need to start a new Justice League. I've got the people lined up and ready for it.

Many of my friends get me dark chocolate, because they know that the only sweets I can eat are dark chocolate, sorbet (including Ciao Bella chocolate sorbet, which is my favorite. I also love Uncle Louie G's in Park Slope), or flourless chocolate cake (depending on where I buy it - there used to be a wonderful bakery on Allen St called "Happy Happy Happy," which was wheat free or dairy free, and I loved going there because everything was delicious, plus it was so much fun to say "Happy Happy Happy." But now I will go to Babycakes on Broome St, or will carefully ask about ingredients at other bakeries). I am lucky to live in a city where I can find these things so easily.

My friend Mimi (a wonderful chef) recently got me chocolate by Vere, and another type of chocolate by a company called Azure, which was so good, I scarfed it all down immediately, even though I was trying to savor it. (I am bad at saving food for later, particularly when it comes to chocolate).

It was wildly expensive and very special. I liked the Azure a bit more. It was more of a solid dark chocolate, and Mimi likes the Vere more, which is loaded with all sorts of nuts, banana, cayenne, etc. I want to try other flavors of the Vere now, and compare notes, because I need to "investigate further." They were both quite good, and they are both gluten free.

GLUTEN FOR PUNISHMENT

Another friend, Susan, told me to make a chocolate paste with agave, and put it on fruit, and then you can have completely sugar-free chocolate. That sounds quite wonderful, since I try to eat only natural sugar, or unbleached sugar (but in reality, I should eat only natural sugars). I am going to try it.

All in all, it was a great party, and I didn't spend a lot of time worrying about food. I made sure to eat beforehand (even though I hate eating early, I am a late night type of person) so that I didn't wind up starving and, therefore, eating all of the cake, and then ending up in bed with headaches and muscle aches for the next bunch of days. I am not a terribly disciplined person when it comes to food. I tend to live for the moment and leap into things. So I have had to learn to eat before I leave the apartment, or carry food with me. Otherwise, I will fall right off of my health diet and will pay for it later.

*Editors Note: After this posting, I was told by my dear friend Polly, that she got the delicious chocolate Scottie dog at Martine's on E 82nd St. www.martineschocolates.com

Hot Tomato

2008-06-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

There has been an outbreak of salmonella in tomatoes, so for the last few days, nobody has been eating them. The odd thing is, on the first day of the news announcement in New York, it was reported that the bad tomatoes were found in McDonald's. McDonald's is someplace which is not on my radar, or in my friends' worlds. Although I am sure I have some friends who secretly sneak in a Big Mac now and then, or succumb to their french fries once in a blue moon, I think that for the most part, many Manhattanites were not really worried, reading that we could just eat the local, organic tomatoes, or eat tomatoes on the vine, and be just fine. My parents, of course, called me immediately to make sure the poisoned fruit was emptied from our ‘fridge. They were convinced that our entire apartment was riddled with salmonella.

I think that most New Yorkers were acting quite snobbish about it, feeling that, of course the tomatoes at McDonald's would certainly be the ones that would be bad, since they are sprayed with pesticides and might even secretly be made of some fake, red dye #2, tomato-tasting chemical, which already had poison in it.

I went out to lunch at Barbossa on Elizabeth St with my friend Carol the day after the salmonella story broke, and the restaurant was serving tomatoes on everything. My scrambled eggs with calabreza sausage and onions (delicious!) was topped with tomatoes. My salad had tomatoes. Carol had a hot stew-like dish topped with tomatoes. We were gripped with fear, staring at the tomatoes. We didn't know what to do.

This is the weird thing about New Yorkers: you can be pushy as hell in all sorts of situations, but when you get a dish with potentially poisoned food included, you wonder if you should bother the waiter, and ask him about it.

We wound up asking the waiter (yes, we ended up being pushy New Yorkers after all. Hey, we're not idiots.), who assured us that they were local, and ripened on the vine (which was the type that was supposedly ok to eat), and that he had eaten some hours ago that day, and was fine. Carol and I looked the waiter up and down and joked that he didn’t look pale or sickly. I ate my tomatoes, trying to ignore my deep feelings of guilt. Yet, I didn't want to eat just scrambled eggs - I felt like I didn't want to have one more thing taken off of my diet. I rely on things like tomatoes to make my food more interesting. When you are told that you can't eat wheat, dairy, sugar, corn, soy, vinegar, or mushrooms, you have to find the allure and the joy in simple foods. So, to me, tomatoes have become very, very fascinating.

In the local delis, there is an absence of vibrant red color from the salad bar. I went in there today, to ask the guy behind the counter to make me a salad. This is one of those places on every street corner in Manhattan, you pick out which lettuce you want, and then add the ingredients. I would rather do it myself, but more and more places like this are getting rid of their open air salad bars, and putting them behind a counter, with one or two people working there. It seems cleaner this way.

My friends and I often joke about how many people per day must cough and sneeze in the open air salad bar, and when you really think about it, I'm sure it's pretty disgusting.

For my tomato-less salad today, everything I had to choose from was green or beige. They didn't have carrots either, so it was just lettuce, peppers, cucumbers and chicken. Not that it wasn't edible (although these places tend to drown the salad in the dressing, so you have to explicitly tell them not to, and then you look like a crazy, picky New Yorker). The salad gave me a desperately needed fix of protein and greens, but I really would have loved a little bright red color in there, both for my eyes and my tastebuds.

Mister Softee

2008-06-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

I am currently going to physical therapy 2x a week, right near the Flatiron building. I walk from the Lower East Side, and usually walk back unless I need to get back to work quickly. It has been very hot out lately, and this time of year I always pass the Mister Softee truck on Fifth Ave and 17th St.

No matter what time it is, there is always a long line. People who look like they are way too highbrow for this sort of thing, are standing in line. People who are texting and yelling into their cell phones are waiting in line. Children are screaming impatiently, waiting in line. People who look like they don't eat at all, let alone eat Mister Softee, are standing in their Louboutin heels, waiting for their swirled ooze of whatever it is that puts the softee in there. I’m sure there’s a bit of crack in there somewhere.

I find Mister Softee is a great equalizer in the city, you see every type of person, dressed in every possible style, all different ages, all different income brackets, waiting for that one half-chocolate, half-vanilla custard cone, in the shape of a cat’s head, with sprinkles. (Note: ordering this is not nearly as obnoxious as ordering a “half-caf, half-decaf soy latte”).

I am extremely annoyed that I can't eat Mister Softee anymore. I am not part of that group who can just wander over to the truck and chat with the man inside, and enjoy the ice cream. That is one of the things that I just can't have. In this case, I can't even cheat on my health diet once in a while. I get splitting sinus headaches from it, which lead to migraines and sinus infections, sometimes from just one cone. I have actually gotten fevers from Mister Softee.

Yes, it is made from all sorts of crap, but it's nostalgic, and I want to stand in line with everyone else and see what they are getting.

Often, after getting depressed from the sight of the Mister Softee truck, I wind up walking over to Mott Street, and buying Ciao Bella chocolate sorbet, which has no milk in it. It consoles me, because I can even get chocolate and raspberry sorbet, sometimes with sprinkles, which tastes pretty amazing. And once in a while, I can cheat, and have their gelato too. Green tea, or hazelnut gelato, with chocolate sorbet, is just heaven, but I can only have this maybe once or twice a year, on a day when I don’t have any sinus problems at all (which is rare). And I justify it by saying that half of it is sorbet, so I am only having a little bit of milk in the gelato (sort of like eating a cheeseburger and ordering a Tab. It’s the cosmic balance of guilt). I don't do this often, but I love when I can stray and have a little gelato, even just a taste.

The experience at Ciao Bella is very different from Mister Softee. There are always people on line at Ciao Bella, too, but it feels as though you are in a small neighborhood in Paris (where I once got the most beautiful sorbet, sculpted into a giant flower), or Florence (where I recently tasted the most incredible granita, which is basically naturally flavored ices, but the fruit, coffee and chocolate flavors were just out of this world).

Ciao Bella makes me happy, but it does not trigger any memories of childhood - growing up in Queens in the 60's and 70's, we did not ever hear words like "gelato." But, the people who work at Ciao Bella are always sweet, and you can easily get into conversations with them about the neighborhood, so you feel like you are still at a neighborhood place. There are sometimes little old ladies who sit in beach chairs outside of the store, and I love seeing them; it is the last remnant of when this neighborhood was Little Italy, before it became NoLIta. And at least Ciao Bella's sorbet doesn't put me in bed with a migraine for two days.

I do wonder what will become nostalgia for city kids who are growing up now? Maybe $5 cones of green tea and hazelnut gelato at Ciao Bella? Maybe red velvet cupcakes with chocolate almond icing at Sugar Sweet Sunshine? Chocolate chip and peanut butter ices at Uncle Louis G’s in Park Slope?

It’s much more sophisticated than Mister Softee, but I hope that these desserts strike a chord in children like my little nieces and nephews, and become a memorable staple of their childhood.

Playing with your food

2008-06-11T11:21:00.001-07:00

I am one of those obsessed New York City foodies, who will try any food once, with no fear. If there is an interesting restaurant, but you have to take three subways and a bus to try their jello flambe, I am there. I spend way too much time on sites like Chowhound, but when I look up at the clock and realize how much time has passed, I don't regret the time spent; I feel like I have learned something new from a group of friends.

I used to play and sing jazz standards at a piano bar inside a Chinese restaurant near Wall St (that would take a whole 'nother blog to explain), and each night, after the crowd left, the staffers would sit down to a "real" Chinese meal. The bartender and I were the only people at the table who were not from China (and who were not somehow related to the owner), and everything we ate in those after hours meals was too "strange" or "exotic" to be included in the Americanized menu. I ate things that I did not recognize, always tasting them first, and asking questions later.

Sometimes I was a bit disgusted after hearing what I had just eaten (like pigeon, caught who knows where, or some sort of gelatinous crablike creature that I’d never seen before, or since), but I had to remain very polite since it would have been bad to throw up in front of everyone once I found out what I had just ate. Occasionally disturbing, but mostly I found it fascinating.

I tend to love 'food adventures,' where you seek out some hole-in-the-wall (the kind that’s getting harder and harder to find in NYC), as opposed to going to a fancy restaurant for dinner. Not that it isn't wonderful to go for a very expensive meal at a place where they really know what they are doing - a wildly expensive meal at Jewel Bako a few years ago was such an transcendent experience, it is imprinted in my mind for life - and I smile, whenever I pass by the restaurant, or hear its name, as if it is a wonderful old friend. But you have to be creative to be able to eat interesting food on a budget. It is a challenge and it is often, a treasure hunt. Plus, my husband and I work as designers/artists, and the self-employed don’t get expense accounts. Our budget usually leans more towards what we call "wonderful dives," as opposed to blowing a few hundred dollars on dinner.

I’LL HAVE FRIED DUMPLINGS WITH THAT, PLEASE

One of my favorite food experiences was taking my husband, David, out for his birthday a few years ago, and going to a place called "Fried Dumpling," on Allen Street on the Lower East Side. The menu had, yes, fried dumplings. Not much else. Basically, the menu said "fried dumpling, fried dumpling, fried dumpling, pork bun." David and I found this just hilarious.

We had about 6 dumplings, somewhere around 8 pork buns, and about 4 scallion pancakes (the only other thing on the menu): enough to really fill us up, and we wound up spending only $3.50. We ate standing up. There were about 4 seats in the place (all were taken), and a counter to lean on, and David and I got a bit giggly over the whole thing. We had somehow figured out a secret way to eat nearly for free in New York, without resorting to freegan-ism.

Then we went to the Pink Pony nearby for chocolate cake and capuccino, and it wound up costing six times the cost of our "dinner." We did, however, get to sit down.

THE GIRL IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE

For the last 20+ years, I have had terrible allergies, migraines, and muscle aches, and have had to alter my diet severely. At first, I tended to ignore it, or cheated on the diet constantly, and continued to suffer. Now, I avoid wheat and dairy, and I am supposed to use processed sugar in extreme moderation, which is the toughest part. I have actually managed to go completely sugar free at times in my life, but it wasn’t pretty. (I was once on a diet which did not even allow fruit, and I was somehow able to do this for nearly a year.)

I am also supposed to avoid a majority of other things that cause inflammation (including most grains and anything that is fermented or could be moldy, such as mushrooms or vinegars). Also on the list are high-allergy foods, things like soy, which used to be good for you, but is now so over-processed, that it has become bad for many people.

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED COOKING?

I love food, but I am not a cook at all. I have gotten to the point where I can blend, boil or bake, but I am just not into much more than that. In fact it can be dangerous. I do like the group experience, the social aspect of cooking with friends, and I make an excellent sous-chef. But I need someone to tell me what to do. I have taken cooking classes and have fully enjoyed them. However, I wind up getting back to my apartment, immobilized, realizing that I can make a fabulous dinner for 12, but not for two.

So this blog could easily be called "The Restricted Cook-ie." But being challenged as a chef (ok, even as a short order cook), are restrictions that I can overcome. My food restrictions, on the other hand, have become a reluctant part of my life. They are a feature, not a bug.

GROWING UP BLANDLY

I grew up in one of those Eastern European New York Jewish families, where nobody cooked with any seasonings - it was the blandest diet imaginable. The only "exciting" digestive experiences were when we would go out for Chinese food in Queens (which was usually bad, but better than what we ate on the other six nights of the week), or when my grandmother would make blintzes which, though exotic, were somehow heavier than the sum of their ingredients, and were burned and blackened beyond recognition. (Until I discovered real blintzes, while sitting next to Joey Ramone at the Kiev circa 1977, I had no idea what they were supposed to taste like.) My grandma Esther would often call and excitedly say "I'm coming over, I made blintzes," and I would run to the window and watch my little elderly grandmother, walking down the street, carrying what looked like rocks in a giant sack on her back.

I seriously think she lived until a ripe old age because she got so much exercise carrying those things over to our house. Each one must have weighed about five pounds.

Other than the blintzes, there wasn't anything unusual in our diets growing up. Boiled chicken with no seasoning, iceberg lettuce, canned fruit “cocktail” and the occasional excursion to Scottie’s Pizza on Utopia Parkway...these were the typical foods of the time. Shrimp in a basket was considered “most unusual” by my family, and therefore, we didn’t go near it.

THE GREAT SPRINKLE CONSPIRACY

My grandmother in Brooklyn was a better cook, and her apartment always smelled good, but I never learned how to cook from her because she would tyrannically chase everyone out of the kitchen. She had wonderful dinners every Sunday, and all I remember is that the house would smell like chicken soup and salt (which was quite a lovely smell, actually), and every single Sunday, she would bake a chocolate cake with clear icing, with rainbow sprinkles embedded into nearly every inch of the icing. To this day, I have such a fondness for sprinkles, I get all vehrklempt when I see them in the supermarket, because it reminds me of the efforts that my grandmother made, every single Sunday, to make a huge meal for us while having no money. Not only did she feed us, she also fed whoever was in the neighborhood, whoever was down on their luck. We often would sit down to dinner with strangers, and we would ask my grandmother who was sitting at the table with us, and she would say, “someone who needs a meal.”

These days, I strongly believe that there is a sprinkle conspiracy in Manhattan. It is very hard to find sprinkles anywhere. (Not that I’m supposed to be eating them of course.) Are sprinkles considered too lowbrow and unfashionable, when you can buy designer cupcakes at 2 in the morning? (Hmmm. Those designer cupcakes DO have sprinkles, actually. Where in the world do they get them?).

Just try asking for sprinkles in a Manhattan supermarket, and see what kind of reaction you get. (The tiny vial of organic ones at Whole Foods don’t count. They taste like a pure spoonful of sugar, mixed with raw spaghetti.)

WHY DO THEY CALL IT A BREAKFRONT, ANYWAY?

In my parents' house, salt was a "spice," and just locating salt or pepper in their cabinets was a great accomplishment. I have repeatedly bought my parents little metal boxes of pepper to keep in the house for when I come over (out of gastronomic self preservation, we sometimes do the cooking), and whenever I look for them, they say "oh, we never use them, we keep them way in the back of the cabinet...somewhere."

There are two delicate crystal salt and pepper containers in my parents' glass cabinet in their living room. This is their "breakfront," which refers to a piece of furniture that is only owned by people who are over 70. Or, if they are under 70, they don't call it a "breakfront," they just call it a "cabinet." It is a piece of furniture which displays one's best china, tchotkes, crystal, a few assorted menorahs, out of date postage stamps, etc. In my parents' breakfront, the salt and pepper shakers both have salt in them (there is no such thing as pepper - mention it, and my mother will scream "Pepper is too spicy! Don't use it!"), and that salt has been in those crystal shakers since, oh, around 1972. I think that I filled those for my parents, when I was about 10, and they never used them. My husband David, has been brave enough to use them, but he is the only one in the family that will brave the "breakfront" and use the carbon dated salt.

EARLY FOOD EXPLORATIONS

My only food adventures during high school were when my brother and I would go late at night for Chinese food in Manhattan's Chinatown. Keith is 3 years older and so he had a drivers license. We would run out at 1 or 2 in the morning, and zip over there with no traffic in about 20 minutes. Sun Lok Kee on Mott St was our favorite destination to have "real" Chinese food. No matter what time of the night it was, the place was always crowded, and it was terribly exciting to eat things with actual spices, and try to visually figure out what others were ordering so we could try them, too.

When I got to college in Manhattan, I was only 20 minutes away from home, but a whole new world of food opened up for me. Back then (in 1980), it was not as easy to seek out exotic places on every block or in every neighborhood, however, they were there if you looked hard enough. I tried the new craze of sushi for the first time at Japonica on University Place (along with trying sake for the first time), and it was one of my fondest food memories, being with a group of college students, trying to act very "adult," and having a friend (who, being from LA, and already well versed in the ways of sushi joints), show me how to use the chopsticks. (Chopsticks were NEVER used with the Chinese food in Queens. At least not where we went.) I felt like the only person in Manhattan who didn’t know how to use chopsticks and I remember another classmate laughing at me because of this. My LA friend David, said of our LA sushi-file, “oh please, like he’s Mr. Sophisticated?,” and made me feel much better. Queens felt very far away from Manhattan during that time period.

From there, it was on to the Indian and Ukrainian neighborhoods in the East Village, Middle Eastern food in the west village (on a block which used to have nearly nothing but Falafel joints, side by side – It was immortalized in a favorite Mark Alan Stamaty cartoon in the Village Voice at the time), Ethiopian food in Soho, Dominican food on the Lower East Side, and many other adventures.

I knew I was a foodie when I was dating a Portuguese boy, who I just could not break up with, because he cooked so well. He would me make these amazing paella type dishes with chorizo and yellow rice and very fresh vegetables. They were all his mother's recipes, which I found endearing. But I realized almost immediately that despite being a wonderful chef, he was a terrible boyfriend, and I would have to stop seeing him. I did miss the food, though.

MIND OVER MARZIPAN

All of the food-adventuring has had to change over the last few decades, I have had to look at food in an entirely different way. I have been on the wheat free, dairy free diet for so long, and although I fall off the wagon at times, I am constantly trying to figure out how to still eat interesting food in this town, with the limitations placed upon me. In spite of seemingly endless lists of restrictions, some of which seem to have been purposely aimed at my favorite cravings and comforts (oh for some sprinkles, with a bit of ice cream on the side), I somehow manage to get out there and find things that I can actually enjoy. I am hoping that this blog will encourage people to enjoy their life (and their meals), rather than complain about what they "can't" eat. May your organic non-dairy gluten-free glass of fresh squeezed juice be half full.