People Make Me Laugh

It would be wrong of me not to share some of the bizarre foodie sites I have stumbled upon in the past couple of days.

It started with this one.  Serious Eats never fails me!  I actually went to a lecture at the 92Y last week, featuring Dan Barber, Tom Colicchio, Jacque Torres, and Andre Soltner.  Perhaps I should start sketching my own tattoo?

 

eonline.com

And, if you're brave, I highly recommend this one.  It's both hilarious AND appalling.  Gotta love it!

Photographically Challenged Eating

I have very few photos to share, because I keep forgetting I have a blog!  Unless I'm cooking, I often forget my camera.  But I can't let two amazing meals from this past weekend go unmentioned.  That would just be wrong.

Friday night: Moustache Pitza.  Katie and I went on an adventure to the West Village on a very, very cold night to check out this restaurant and then to go to a friend's birthday party in the neighborhood.  Let me just say that we had a legume FEAST, which expanded in my stomach later and rendered me incapable of finishing even a single beer.  A Blue Moon, at that.  Pathetic.  Anyway, dinner was worth it.  Amazing.  Check out the menu -- we ordered hummus, a spinach and chickpea salad, the chicken kebab plate (with the most incredible lentil puree), and a seafood pitza.  Sound like way too much food for 2 people?  It probably was.  I kid you not, my coworker asked, "So were you there with a big group?  Like 10 people?"  Er, yeah... But we had no problem polishing off every last morsel.  SO GOOD.  I think my favorites were the  spinach and chickpea salad (ah, memories of Espana) and the pitza, plus the lentil puree!

Saturday night: Foodie event at Buttermilk Channel!  

[photos from www.buttermilkchannelnyc.com]

Alex and I have a laundry list of foodie restaurants to visit, so we've started trying to do one every weekend.  I loved everything about Buttermilk Channel from the space to the decor to the popovers.  It was such a lovely dining experience.  Maybe I could live without the wait and the sketchy subway station.  They focus on fresh and seasonal ingredients, which always makes me happy.  Alex, Joanna, Katie, and I all ordered different things, which is so rare for us!  We shared baby turnips and brussels sprouts with mustard and bacon as an appetizer (with popovers! drool!), and I had a perfect Kelso Honey Nut Brown beer.  I love sweet dark beers.  For my entree, I had the duck meatloaf, which is just totally out of character.  But I've gotten into the habit of asking for waiter/waitress recommendations, especially if a restaurant is well known for a certain dish.  This was a much appreciated recommendation.  The jus (Joanna's word of the night) was outrageous.  My friends ordered the scallops (my runner up), the lamb salad, and a soup/salad combo.  We're good sharers, so I had a bite of everything. Delicious!  We decided to go nuts and ordered dessert too!  Bread pudding, pecan pie sundae (GAH!), and 4 spoons.  And not a drop left behind.  Alex, do you have my duck photo?  [As a side note, I adore ducks.  Not sure why, but they're just the best animal.  I felt a little sad eating one.  But not that sad.]

Two of the things we ordered were featured in the website gallery!  My duck on the left (except replace the green stuff with parsnip puree and a darker jus), and the pecan pie sundae on the right.

  

After dinner we waddled back to my apt, where my roommate was having people over for a holiday party. We continued to eat (oops), although in our defense we only attacked the fresh fruit.  Sooo, I ate a lot this weekend.  It was amazing.

Sunday I continued the foodfest at my parents' house, where we celebrated Chanukah with brisket and latkes!  Brisket is not a photogenic dish, but here is my dad manning the latke pan.

Blackberry photo.  Blech.  But awesome latkes!  These were classics: potato, onion, matzo meal, and a horrifying amount of canola oil.  Mmmm tastes like Chanukah.

This weekend may include a visit to  Locanda Verde as the foodie adventure of the week.  CANNOT WAIT!  It's Robert DeNiro's newest and Alex and I are pumped.  Hopefully it will fit into the plans!

Let's start at the very beginning...

Welcome, readers! I am jumping on the blog bandwagon, and I am very excited to do so! This is my very first blog baby, and like any new parent, I am nervous, excited, and horribly confused. I have no idea this thing works, so please be patient as I delve into the wide world of blogging. "What to Expect When You're Expecting: The Blog Edition"?

I have started this blog with the intention of documenting my lifestyle while I'm on the road for work, although I'm cool with whatever it morphs into. My job as a consultant has taken me all over the US, to places such as Toledo, OH, Dallas, TX, and Salt Lake City, UT. People who don't travel often use airport time as an excuse to splurge a little. But when you visit airports twice a week, that splurge isn't a once-in-a-while treat anymore; it's a basic part of your diet. Noticing myself fall into a pattern of giant bags of "trail mix" (read: chocolate chips and peanuts), and grande soy lattes every time I flew, I realized that I needed to accept flying as a normal part of my life. That means eating on the road the same way I would want to eat if I were at home. Let me tell you, it's not always easy when you go from airport to office to hotel and back, starting Monday and ending Thursday. My job makes it hard to stay true to my roots as a healthy eater and a runner.

A little about my eating habits: I am a health nut, a foodie, and an adventurous eater. Growing up, my family was always centered around food. At breakfast we planned lunch, and at lunch we planned dinner. As soon as the words, "I'm hungry," were uttered by me or my brother, granola bars, apples, and pretzels appeared seemingly out of the woodwork. My brother and I were good eaters as kids, so I learned about a lot of different foods and styles of cooking early on. And, like any good Jewish family, we loved to eat. Correction: love to eat. We had healthy appetites, but we also had healthy palates. I grew up thinking fat free frozen yogurt was synonymous with ice cream, and I didn't even know people could or would put butter on pancakes until I went to IHOP for the first time in 6th grade.

I love food, and I love cooking, but at age 24, I do definitely struggle with striking a balance between food-love and body-love. Eating is great and fun and exciting, but I also need to feel good about the end result. So in day to day life I am a pretty healthy eater (nicknames have included VP Tofu and Fiber Queen). I am an oatmeal/salad/fruit/whole-grain/flaxseed eating machine. I like whole foods and real food. I also have a pretty serious sweet tooth, so I always have room for dessert, especially chocolate. I never pass on a glass of wine, and I'll usually try the signature dish at a new restaurant, even if we're talking about an artisanal bacon bar (more to come on that later this week).

That covers food (ha, well, it covers as much as I will talk about now). As for running... I started running during my junior year at Cornell after a few years of straight ellipticizing and StairMastering, mostly in preparation for my semester abroad in Sevilla, Spain. I knew that the chances of me joining a gym there would be slim (not a part of their culture), so I decided to bite the bullet and grudgingly get on a treadmill, because if I could get myself to be a runner, then I would always be able to exercise, no matter where I was in the world. And it worked. I ran all over Sevilla, and worked up to a good pace, fighting off the bread and olive oil calories, too. I am proud to call myself a runner now, after working my way up from that awful first mile on the treadmill at Helen Newman Fitness Center, through my first 5K, through my first HALF MARATHON this past May. It's been a great hobby for me, and a surefire challenge. And, of course, it gives me a little more leeway to indulge in my foodie habits, which are hard to put to rest living in a city like New York.

So there you go. PS I'm long-winded, if you didn't get that yet. :) My main goal here is to give a glimpse into the life of a foodie runner (who is also a smart, strong woman! right, Rachel?), who often doesn't have the luxury of access to my own kitchen during the week. Check out what I have to say about life "on the run", and pleeease give me some feedback! And tell me when I write too much. Seriously. May the journey begin!