I recently had the good fortune to visit the Italian food emporium Eataly in New York. The original store is in Torino, where I did my jr year abroad, so I knew of the store for a while and I couldn't wait to try the American store, being run by the Batali-Bastianich team. There is a roof-top beer garden with home brewed beers by Sam Calagione's Dog Fish Head brewery. There are 3 restaurants and a huge food store, with butchers, fish, a wine store and a school. There is a great cafe with pastries and gelato in the front. It is a fantastic place that everyone who loves food should visit.
It got me thinking about Italy and the way real Italians eat. There is an Italian paradox as well as a French one, you have to wonder how Italians eat pasta and bread all day and don't get fat. We have good family friends who live in Rome and Umbria and they recently visited us for a month. I had the chance to see their eating habits up close and it was very educational.
They eat three full meals a day. They sit down at the table and eat slowly, they enjoy their food. They don't read or text or watch tv when they eat. I don't think an Italian has ever eaten in the car. They eat everything, but they also cook everything, they don't buy prepared or processed food. Everything is whole and home cooked. They rarely eat out but when they do, they go to good restaurants and enjoy it. They aren't constantly stopping for a coffee. They think our constant stopping at Dunks and Starbucks is ridiculous. They don't eat between meals at all. They don't snack, they don't feel the need to crunch on something or have something to sip on ALL DAY LONG. They don't drink water/tea/soda all day. They use little or no garlic. They eat small portions. When I say small, I don't mean tiny, I mean normal portions, not huge american ones. They eat sugar, dairy and meat, but it is all whole and home made, nothing is processed. They have a short espresso every day after lunch and enjoy their conversation. I ate a bowl of miso soup one day at 11am because I had breakfast at 7 and I was starving and they looked at me like I was nuts. They don't eat a half pound of pasta per person like we do in Italian restaurants. They cook one pound for 5 adults and that's it. They don't have a cheat day or go out on cocktail benders because they eat all kinds of foods and drink wine every day so they don't feel deprived at the end of the week.
This is somewhat how my grandparents ate (minus the wine and espresso) and is how my mother cooked dinner at night when I was a kid and is what she does when she has dinner parties now. My husband wants me to "cook lite" and make sandwiches for dinner and it is hard for me to wrap my brain around that. I'm still trying to bridge the gap between "Italy Italian" ways of eating and making simple food for my family. Maybe we just need to move to Italy so my husband and kids come home for lunch every day and there are no chicken nuggets and frozen waffles at the grocery store and we have to eat pasta and a little bistecca for lunch.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
The highs and the lows of cooking
A week ago today I was honored to be spending the entire day cooking at the James Beard House in New York's Greenwich Village. The JB Foundation is located in his old home and it has been preserved as he had used it, in his honor. Chefs who are asked to cook there know that it is one of the great honors that can be bestowed on a chef and they prepare for it in earnest. The members of the foundation and the general public are the guests of honor on your appointed night and they are die-hard food and chef experts. I was asked to accompany a former colleague to help with his special dinner, and he had amassed a stellar group of chefs to help him execute his vision on this night. It was fun, an honor, and a privilege to be there. The menu was very specialized Piedmontese cusine and it was all delicious and beautiful. I was able to spend three days in New York by myself, making the rounds to the latest great food shops and restaurants and it was a great time. http://jamesbeard.org/index.php?q=events_beardhouse_022712
Re-entry back home was tough after living the life in New York for a few days. I got right back on the dinner schedule of blt night and taco night. Then my husband told me he is tired of our dinner routine and he wants me to make more salads for dinner, and at that, he just wants a small salad for dinner. We are going on vacation this week and then when we come home, I need to do a new dinner plan with shopping lists because I can't make three dinners anymore. One for me, a salad for him and then something for the kids. All of the family meal suggestion books don't work for us because my husband and kids are very picky and aren't going to eat "fun angel hair pasta with peas, mint and shrimp."
The more people I talk to about this, the more I hear that dinner time is a battle ground for many families. I'm thinking about discontinuing "dinner" at our house, or 86-ing it as they say in restaurants. Lunch is fine and so is breakfast. After years of ingraining in to me and my cousins the importance of cooking and "the family meal," my grandmother, later in life and after I was married and trying to make the right dinners for my husband, told me that it was "perfectly all right and perfectly nutritious to have a nice bowl of cold cereal for dinner." Information that would have been helpful when I first started dating my husband and I was making a huge effort to cook gourmet meals. When we were dating and first married, we were busy with work and I had a regular 5:45pm yoga class, I probably managed to cook a big gourmet dinner once or twice a week. After we had kids and I was home to cook gourmet every night, it eventually became too much for him and he wanted me to cut back and cook "light" and then very simply and now to just make small salads or small sandwiches. I really don't know how to cook light or over-simply because I spent years executing complicated dinners to go out hot and perfectly all at once in high end restaurants. It is simply not possible for me to make soup and salad for dinner. So I think dinner is over. We are going to have breakfast or lunch for "dinner" and see if that works.
I just paused writing to pick my son up from pre-school. I was talking after with a mom who just moved here to the Boston area from California. She is as sweet and nice as can be and we started to talk about summer vacation plans. She said she wants her first summer here to feature the quintessential New England vacation and she asked me about New Hampshire and Maine lake areas because they love lake vacations. I told her it was all beautiful and she wouldn't have a hard time finding a good place. She said, "all I care about is NOT cooking dinner every night. I do like to cook but I am so sick of my kids saying yuck every night when I feed them and I need a vacation from that."
Re-entry back home was tough after living the life in New York for a few days. I got right back on the dinner schedule of blt night and taco night. Then my husband told me he is tired of our dinner routine and he wants me to make more salads for dinner, and at that, he just wants a small salad for dinner. We are going on vacation this week and then when we come home, I need to do a new dinner plan with shopping lists because I can't make three dinners anymore. One for me, a salad for him and then something for the kids. All of the family meal suggestion books don't work for us because my husband and kids are very picky and aren't going to eat "fun angel hair pasta with peas, mint and shrimp."
The more people I talk to about this, the more I hear that dinner time is a battle ground for many families. I'm thinking about discontinuing "dinner" at our house, or 86-ing it as they say in restaurants. Lunch is fine and so is breakfast. After years of ingraining in to me and my cousins the importance of cooking and "the family meal," my grandmother, later in life and after I was married and trying to make the right dinners for my husband, told me that it was "perfectly all right and perfectly nutritious to have a nice bowl of cold cereal for dinner." Information that would have been helpful when I first started dating my husband and I was making a huge effort to cook gourmet meals. When we were dating and first married, we were busy with work and I had a regular 5:45pm yoga class, I probably managed to cook a big gourmet dinner once or twice a week. After we had kids and I was home to cook gourmet every night, it eventually became too much for him and he wanted me to cut back and cook "light" and then very simply and now to just make small salads or small sandwiches. I really don't know how to cook light or over-simply because I spent years executing complicated dinners to go out hot and perfectly all at once in high end restaurants. It is simply not possible for me to make soup and salad for dinner. So I think dinner is over. We are going to have breakfast or lunch for "dinner" and see if that works.
I just paused writing to pick my son up from pre-school. I was talking after with a mom who just moved here to the Boston area from California. She is as sweet and nice as can be and we started to talk about summer vacation plans. She said she wants her first summer here to feature the quintessential New England vacation and she asked me about New Hampshire and Maine lake areas because they love lake vacations. I told her it was all beautiful and she wouldn't have a hard time finding a good place. She said, "all I care about is NOT cooking dinner every night. I do like to cook but I am so sick of my kids saying yuck every night when I feed them and I need a vacation from that."
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Martha Stewart and Pinterest
My town library has a magazine recycling program where people bring their magazines when they are done reading them and other people can take them home to read themselves. Last week they had a pile of new-ish Martha Stewart Living magazines and when I got home to read them, I realized that I had not opened one since I got married. And I was a serious devotee. My bridal registry and wedding were right out of Martha central casting. I read it for years when I was single, planning the life that I would have, full of both soigne and simple "down east" dinner parties, second homes, and general gingham trimmed happenings everywhere you looked. When I got engaged it was full Martha ahead, creamy blues and creamy browns with peonies and hydrangeas galore.
What took me most by surprise by the magazine was how I had completely forgotten how it sucks you in and makes you want to "settle down" and create a home and a family. Martha failed me by not adding to her "make it beautiful" mantra the fact that without household help and boatloads of money you can't make it beautiful. Believe me, I know how to do it, I could bust out the perfect home or wedding or event for someone willing to pay me, but Martha isn't real life. Martha failed to prepare us all for the simple fact that there just isn't time when you work and have kids and have to run a home without help to make it beautiful. You can keep your home and family clean and fed while your kids are small but that's it.
Martha should have taught us the art, that I have mastered, of three minutes to yourself. Or how much you can get done with a little quiet time in your head during two or three hours to yourself. When you have small kids you need to simplify and streamline everything. Don't expect to have days on end to yourself to redo your house so it looks like Turkey Hill. You can expect to carve out a small amount of time to go online or read a little or work on your mp3 player play lists.
My new mantra is: I WILL NOT LET PINTEREST SUCK ME IN AND MAKE ME PLAN FOR HOMES AND TRAVEL AND DECORATING THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
I recently read a marketing report on who are the main users of Pinterest, the new social media internet sensation that is like living in an Etsy community but you don't really have to buy anything, just share and like beautiful things that you love or catch your eye. http://pinterest.com/ The majority of users are female high school graduates aged 18-34 who are unemployed or work part time. Basically, not the people who will actually use Pinterest or Martha to plan or decorate their second home, but the people who are dreaming of a better, more beautiful world they will someday inhabit. Just like me and Martha before I got married and lived in the real world of babies and bills and cleaning and constant dish washing and family drama and living in a very isolating town where people don't come out of their houses, nevermind the 4th of July picnics I thought I would be throwing with red and white ric rac trimmed napkins from Brimfield.
What took me most by surprise by the magazine was how I had completely forgotten how it sucks you in and makes you want to "settle down" and create a home and a family. Martha failed me by not adding to her "make it beautiful" mantra the fact that without household help and boatloads of money you can't make it beautiful. Believe me, I know how to do it, I could bust out the perfect home or wedding or event for someone willing to pay me, but Martha isn't real life. Martha failed to prepare us all for the simple fact that there just isn't time when you work and have kids and have to run a home without help to make it beautiful. You can keep your home and family clean and fed while your kids are small but that's it.
Martha should have taught us the art, that I have mastered, of three minutes to yourself. Or how much you can get done with a little quiet time in your head during two or three hours to yourself. When you have small kids you need to simplify and streamline everything. Don't expect to have days on end to yourself to redo your house so it looks like Turkey Hill. You can expect to carve out a small amount of time to go online or read a little or work on your mp3 player play lists.
My new mantra is: I WILL NOT LET PINTEREST SUCK ME IN AND MAKE ME PLAN FOR HOMES AND TRAVEL AND DECORATING THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
I recently read a marketing report on who are the main users of Pinterest, the new social media internet sensation that is like living in an Etsy community but you don't really have to buy anything, just share and like beautiful things that you love or catch your eye. http://pinterest.com/ The majority of users are female high school graduates aged 18-34 who are unemployed or work part time. Basically, not the people who will actually use Pinterest or Martha to plan or decorate their second home, but the people who are dreaming of a better, more beautiful world they will someday inhabit. Just like me and Martha before I got married and lived in the real world of babies and bills and cleaning and constant dish washing and family drama and living in a very isolating town where people don't come out of their houses, nevermind the 4th of July picnics I thought I would be throwing with red and white ric rac trimmed napkins from Brimfield.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Veganista Salad
I know fish isn't vegan but I'm going to call what I've been doing "vegan" because I can't stand the pretentious word "pescatarian," defined as someone who will eat fish but nothing else from an "animal." Since the beginning of September I haven't had in my regular diet any sugar, dairy, eggs or meat of any kind, except for a few emergency tuna salad sandwiches with mayo while traveling in places where there was nothing else. I did eat a few mini bite sized snickers bars at Halloween. I do feel a lot better but I haven't lost any weight. I'm trying to eat as little bread/crackers/pasta as possible but it's hard not to use these as quick fixes when I'm busy and eating fish, fruit and veg means cooking almost everything myself. I have been cooking a lot of Quinoa which is great and I highly recommend it. It is a complete protein that works like rice or cous cous in a dish.
I've been doing the co-dependent freak show of cooking 3 meals every night, one for my husband, one for my kids, and my "veganista salad," as my family calls my veggie style dinner. Some nights my husband and kids eat the same thing but it is rough going. If you wonder how you could ever give up meat, dairy and eggs, it is hard if you don't really want to, and I do want to because I started totally skeeving all of it. No idea why, maybe my body was telling me something, but heart disease and diabetes are all over my family and animal products don't always work well with those diseases, so let's see how long I keep skeeving and I'll go from there. I'm not making a statement or being green.
If you look at a family photo of my dad's side of the family, many of us from all the generations have Asian-y almond-y shaped eyes. My mother is convinced that when Marco Polo brought some Asian men back to Venice, they propagated in the area where my father's family is from and that's why we look like we do and many of us have problems with meat and dairy. Don't get me started with alcohol. Many Asians and Native Americans (originally from Asia) have bad physical reactions to alcohol and therefore don't drink much. If they do drink it causes problems more readily. I can't drink at all because it makes me totally sick the next day, a glass of wine does me in like drinking a bottle of tequila during an all night dead show bender.
I just finished reading Dr. Christiane Northrup's Women's Bodies Women's Wisdom, and Mother Daughter Wisdom. I highly recommend both to women of all ages. One thing she studied is that the further people are removed in generations from a hunter gatherer system of eating, the easier it is for them to eat mass produced and processed food and not gain a pound or have it effect their health as much as it would a person closer in generations to a hunt/gather way of life. My great grandparents ate hunt/gather which makes me close to the source. Many skinny waspy supermodels haven't had a family in the field in hundreds of years. This isn't an exact science but her theory makes sense.
Michael Pollan also asserts that you shouldn't eat anything that your great grandmother would't recognize. My next quest is to give up salt. I already started to use Herbamare instead of sea salt to season food when I cook and I don't notice the difference. The biggest challenges are when we order pizza, if I make a big crispy roast chicken, and of course, bacon.
I've been doing the co-dependent freak show of cooking 3 meals every night, one for my husband, one for my kids, and my "veganista salad," as my family calls my veggie style dinner. Some nights my husband and kids eat the same thing but it is rough going. If you wonder how you could ever give up meat, dairy and eggs, it is hard if you don't really want to, and I do want to because I started totally skeeving all of it. No idea why, maybe my body was telling me something, but heart disease and diabetes are all over my family and animal products don't always work well with those diseases, so let's see how long I keep skeeving and I'll go from there. I'm not making a statement or being green.
If you look at a family photo of my dad's side of the family, many of us from all the generations have Asian-y almond-y shaped eyes. My mother is convinced that when Marco Polo brought some Asian men back to Venice, they propagated in the area where my father's family is from and that's why we look like we do and many of us have problems with meat and dairy. Don't get me started with alcohol. Many Asians and Native Americans (originally from Asia) have bad physical reactions to alcohol and therefore don't drink much. If they do drink it causes problems more readily. I can't drink at all because it makes me totally sick the next day, a glass of wine does me in like drinking a bottle of tequila during an all night dead show bender.
I just finished reading Dr. Christiane Northrup's Women's Bodies Women's Wisdom, and Mother Daughter Wisdom. I highly recommend both to women of all ages. One thing she studied is that the further people are removed in generations from a hunter gatherer system of eating, the easier it is for them to eat mass produced and processed food and not gain a pound or have it effect their health as much as it would a person closer in generations to a hunt/gather way of life. My great grandparents ate hunt/gather which makes me close to the source. Many skinny waspy supermodels haven't had a family in the field in hundreds of years. This isn't an exact science but her theory makes sense.
Michael Pollan also asserts that you shouldn't eat anything that your great grandmother would't recognize. My next quest is to give up salt. I already started to use Herbamare instead of sea salt to season food when I cook and I don't notice the difference. The biggest challenges are when we order pizza, if I make a big crispy roast chicken, and of course, bacon.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Seizing Summer
I'm back at my blog, sorry about the delay and sorry about the weird amazon ad, I'm working on fixing it. Many years ago one of my best friends told me that as a New Englander, you have to seize July, you have to take it and show it who's boss, because the weather turns a little funny in August and you have to squeeze as much summer out of July just in case. I did the cape (bourne, sandwich, mashnee, cataument and pocasset only), maine (damariscotta/pemaquid/bremen baby), the vineyard (up island) and squeezed in a little marblehead, duxbury, and public garden swan boat action. Ate a lot of lobster, got my kids nice and brown and cuddled and fed and improved their swimming in the mix. I wanted to take advantage of this summer because I am doing a full time job search after a few years of consulting part time while I have been home with the kids.
My son still eats nothing and my daughter is still dreamy and sweet and a pretty good eater these days, she is much hungrier after so much swimming. Tonight I was craving spicy asian so I went off the reservation and made coconut green curry cod with broccoli and water chestnuts and jasmine rice for me and the great husbando. He loved it and actually said, "this dinner makes me happy". But just as long as I don't cook gourmet every night...(hi Gina)
This summer I have been doing an elimination diet to try and solve insomnia and other ailments and so far I am off sugar, eggs, dairy, and I eat almost no meat. I've been cooking a lot of fish for dinner and I do feel a lot better, the sugar and dairy have proven to be bad news even in small amounts. Lunch is salad with tuna or leftovers, breakfast is blueberries and kashi with rice milk, hummus and veg for snacks, and watermelon for dessert. I don't tortutre myself with this if I go out for a nice dinner. (a nice piece of...)
In regard to the delay in posting, right after I started the blog I had a rough month, I fell down the stairs and sprained my ankle, had a tooth pulled and lost a dear first cousin all in one week and I didn't have the mojo to be on here in addition to getting my kids through the stressful end of school. My daughter starts first grade and she is getting so grown up, I hope she has a better experience with first grade than she did with kindergarten. She first experienced mean kids which broke my heart, and she first experienced feeling truly famished after school. I had kept her steadily fed 24/7 for 5 1/2 years and when she went to school she basically starved all day because all she could eat were goldfish, juice boxes, raisins, and soy nut butter and jelly sandwiches. This is a kid who ate penne pesto with chicken for lunch at home. Onward.
My son still eats nothing and my daughter is still dreamy and sweet and a pretty good eater these days, she is much hungrier after so much swimming. Tonight I was craving spicy asian so I went off the reservation and made coconut green curry cod with broccoli and water chestnuts and jasmine rice for me and the great husbando. He loved it and actually said, "this dinner makes me happy". But just as long as I don't cook gourmet every night...(hi Gina)
This summer I have been doing an elimination diet to try and solve insomnia and other ailments and so far I am off sugar, eggs, dairy, and I eat almost no meat. I've been cooking a lot of fish for dinner and I do feel a lot better, the sugar and dairy have proven to be bad news even in small amounts. Lunch is salad with tuna or leftovers, breakfast is blueberries and kashi with rice milk, hummus and veg for snacks, and watermelon for dessert. I don't tortutre myself with this if I go out for a nice dinner. (a nice piece of...)
In regard to the delay in posting, right after I started the blog I had a rough month, I fell down the stairs and sprained my ankle, had a tooth pulled and lost a dear first cousin all in one week and I didn't have the mojo to be on here in addition to getting my kids through the stressful end of school. My daughter starts first grade and she is getting so grown up, I hope she has a better experience with first grade than she did with kindergarten. She first experienced mean kids which broke my heart, and she first experienced feeling truly famished after school. I had kept her steadily fed 24/7 for 5 1/2 years and when she went to school she basically starved all day because all she could eat were goldfish, juice boxes, raisins, and soy nut butter and jelly sandwiches. This is a kid who ate penne pesto with chicken for lunch at home. Onward.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Jimmy crack corn and I don't care.
Right now my preschool age son is watching Bee Movie with a big bottle of water (healthy) and he is eating yogurt covered raisins (fruit!) all natural corn chips (vegetable?!) and Morningstar Farm veg breakfast sausage (protein/veg?!). I don't care that it's 9:30 in the morning and he is eating chips. Why? Because I sprained my ankle, I cant walk on it and things are just falling by the wayside.
My mom was here the last two days to run logistics while I was on the couch staying off my leg. Last night was wildcard night so we made a big pot roast right after lunch and left it in the oven all day to braise for dinner. I add red wine, carrots and potatoes to mine, which I think qualifies as a fruit and two vegetables. That being said, my son only will eat the meat and gravy (golden mushroom campbells soup base with pan drippings to create the gravy) but I think with all the wine stewed into the meat and the trace elements of mushroom in the gravy, he is actually getting a fruit AND a vegetable (wine and mushrooms) with his pot roast meat. My daughter will eat the meat and carrots with potatoes, which is a great way to get your kids some veg, kids love pot roast and you can play around with different veg in it until you find a combo your kids will like. When my son was a baby he ate the carrot and potato with his meat, but once he was old enough to notice the color in the carrots, now he runs shrieking out of the room and hides his face in the living room pillows if I put a pot roasted carrot on his dish.
My daughter is so starving when she comes home from school at 3:30 because there are so few options I can send her to school with for her snack and lunch because of severe allergies among her classmates. I think I'll give her a little pot roast sampler as her snack to fill her up today, it is a comfort food kind of day.
My mom was here the last two days to run logistics while I was on the couch staying off my leg. Last night was wildcard night so we made a big pot roast right after lunch and left it in the oven all day to braise for dinner. I add red wine, carrots and potatoes to mine, which I think qualifies as a fruit and two vegetables. That being said, my son only will eat the meat and gravy (golden mushroom campbells soup base with pan drippings to create the gravy) but I think with all the wine stewed into the meat and the trace elements of mushroom in the gravy, he is actually getting a fruit AND a vegetable (wine and mushrooms) with his pot roast meat. My daughter will eat the meat and carrots with potatoes, which is a great way to get your kids some veg, kids love pot roast and you can play around with different veg in it until you find a combo your kids will like. When my son was a baby he ate the carrot and potato with his meat, but once he was old enough to notice the color in the carrots, now he runs shrieking out of the room and hides his face in the living room pillows if I put a pot roasted carrot on his dish.
My daughter is so starving when she comes home from school at 3:30 because there are so few options I can send her to school with for her snack and lunch because of severe allergies among her classmates. I think I'll give her a little pot roast sampler as her snack to fill her up today, it is a comfort food kind of day.
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