The great thing about teaching on Tuesdays and Thursdays is that it takes the pressure off of Sunday. There was work I probably could and should have done today, but nothing that had to be done that couldn't be figured out tomorrow or really at any time between now and Thursday. I can't always do this, but I'm glad I could today.
Prospect Park was lovely. Came in at Grand Army Plaza as per usual, walked all the way down past Wollman Rink to the southernmost end of the lake. The sky was beautiful. What I like about Prospect Park--and what puts it over Central Park for me--is that there are places where you really can feel like you're somewhere else other than New York. And there's something incredibly soothing for me in watching the last light of the sunset play on watersurfaces. Wandered back up along the eastern edge of the park, past the Lefferts House and the Zoo. It was almost dark when I got back to Grand Army Plaza and I could look in all the apartments without feeling as alienated as I sometimes do. I'm more or less always in one of two frames of mind when I leave Prospect Park: either I'm asking myself why I don't go there more often, or I'm feeling crushed and alone because of all the people there with other people. Today it was the former, and I'm glad of it.
On my way home I stopped at one of the wine shops on Vanderbilt because I just didn't think it was right to drink white wine with the lamb I was planning to make. I think this was a good move.
And, finally, because I haven't dinner blogged in so long: tonight I roasted a tiny leg of lamb I got from one of the Greenmarket stands--it's pretty awesome that they sell them in less than 1/2 pound cuts, and even with that I still have enough for a second meal. I roasted it with a red wine / olive oil / worcheshire sauce with onions, garlic, cumin, and dried cranberries and left it pretty rare. Yummy. Complimented it with a variation on my usual sauteed Brussels sprouts that included apples, some smashed blue potatoes (not my favorite way to prepare them, I decided, but tasty), and half an acorn squash. I'm going to have to get a bigger and sharper knife if I'm going to continue to make squash a part of my life.
And now I think maybe this can be an early night, that maybe I'll be ready to get back to work for real in the morning.
Did I mention that I handed in my prospectus last Wednesday? I handed in my prospectus last Wednesday.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
11.09.2008
6.22.2008
Dinner Blogging, Weekend Miscellany
So I ran out of time last night to do anything more than heat up a bit more turkey sausage with kale and onions. Tonight, however, I took a more leisurely approach, and this was the final result:
We have a rib steak (or a third of one--it's rich enough that what I had there was the perfect size), seasoned with worcheshire sauce, salt, and red pepper flakes and pan seared, served over blanched garlic scapes (tasty!). The salad is kale, snap peas, blueberries, and cherries in a basic vinaigrette. The reheated sourdough bread was mighty tasty. So, nothing too fancy, but certainly a nice change of pace for me. If I'm feeling ambitious tomorrow night, I may try the other pork chop with the cherries in some combination. Other than that, though, I won't be having dinner home again until Friday--if, that is, my plans hold up better than they did last week. (I have reason to be hopeful about this.) My other project of the night, relatedly, is going to be to make enough spaghetti (with more of the turkey sausage, kale, etc., in a sauce) to eat for lunch throughout the week, hopefully reducing my need to a.) think about this when I have so much else going on; and, b.) eat in the cafeteria at school, which is quite often a dismal crapshoot. (For some reason, they're really all about inappropriately heavy meals throughout the summer--think, like, pot roast when it's 95 degrees outside.) I really need to get a draft of the sublime thing done by Thursday (my personal deadline, since it's when The Poet's coming back--when I'm actually going to see him again, I don't know).
So much for food. Now for the miscellany.
I feel like I had a couple of small epiphanies yesterday. I received two phone calls in rapid succession late in the afternoon. After the first phone call, which was pleasant and relaxed, I hung up the phone with a smile on my face, feeling a little bit lighter all around. The second phone call was much more frustrating, seemingly at cross purposes, leaving much unresolved, and when it ended abruptly, my stomach hurt a little bit. One of these phone calls was from The Poet. The other was from K. And it did in fact occur to me that, if these are the two men I feel myself torn between at the moment, then I'm with the better one. What I said about The Poet when I first met him was that he didn't seem to have many issues, he was divided but not conflicted. K. is all conflict and contradiction, and it's been pulling me in. I need to figure out what to do about that. I had a later moment last night when I suddenly felt very protective of my life, thinking maybe this certain freedom isn't so bad all the time and maybe I only talk about exit strategies with The Poet for other people's benefit. The other side of this is just not having seen him for two weeks and not seeing him again for at least another week. I try not to make judgements about people when they're away.
The second epiphany had to do with "Hospital" and realizing how this crazy, weirdly repetitive play has an enormous amount to do with sort of grounding me each summer--it's comforting in its mix of strangeness and familiarity, and the end of the doctor sequence in last night's episode really brought that home to me.
After the play, I got drunk and....talked about my blog. Possibly a bad strategic move.
My internet continues to suck. Not only is it not fun to watch tv in 2-minute segments (about all I can get to buffer), everything is slow, and I've lost access completely a couple of times today. Stupid Verizon, but I don't really have the time to deal with that this week, either.
I'm a bit at loose ends for the writing I need to be doing. I'm not sure that reading De Man is making me less nervous, either.
We have a rib steak (or a third of one--it's rich enough that what I had there was the perfect size), seasoned with worcheshire sauce, salt, and red pepper flakes and pan seared, served over blanched garlic scapes (tasty!). The salad is kale, snap peas, blueberries, and cherries in a basic vinaigrette. The reheated sourdough bread was mighty tasty. So, nothing too fancy, but certainly a nice change of pace for me. If I'm feeling ambitious tomorrow night, I may try the other pork chop with the cherries in some combination. Other than that, though, I won't be having dinner home again until Friday--if, that is, my plans hold up better than they did last week. (I have reason to be hopeful about this.) My other project of the night, relatedly, is going to be to make enough spaghetti (with more of the turkey sausage, kale, etc., in a sauce) to eat for lunch throughout the week, hopefully reducing my need to a.) think about this when I have so much else going on; and, b.) eat in the cafeteria at school, which is quite often a dismal crapshoot. (For some reason, they're really all about inappropriately heavy meals throughout the summer--think, like, pot roast when it's 95 degrees outside.) I really need to get a draft of the sublime thing done by Thursday (my personal deadline, since it's when The Poet's coming back--when I'm actually going to see him again, I don't know).
So much for food. Now for the miscellany.
I feel like I had a couple of small epiphanies yesterday. I received two phone calls in rapid succession late in the afternoon. After the first phone call, which was pleasant and relaxed, I hung up the phone with a smile on my face, feeling a little bit lighter all around. The second phone call was much more frustrating, seemingly at cross purposes, leaving much unresolved, and when it ended abruptly, my stomach hurt a little bit. One of these phone calls was from The Poet. The other was from K. And it did in fact occur to me that, if these are the two men I feel myself torn between at the moment, then I'm with the better one. What I said about The Poet when I first met him was that he didn't seem to have many issues, he was divided but not conflicted. K. is all conflict and contradiction, and it's been pulling me in. I need to figure out what to do about that. I had a later moment last night when I suddenly felt very protective of my life, thinking maybe this certain freedom isn't so bad all the time and maybe I only talk about exit strategies with The Poet for other people's benefit. The other side of this is just not having seen him for two weeks and not seeing him again for at least another week. I try not to make judgements about people when they're away.
The second epiphany had to do with "Hospital" and realizing how this crazy, weirdly repetitive play has an enormous amount to do with sort of grounding me each summer--it's comforting in its mix of strangeness and familiarity, and the end of the doctor sequence in last night's episode really brought that home to me.
After the play, I got drunk and....talked about my blog. Possibly a bad strategic move.
My internet continues to suck. Not only is it not fun to watch tv in 2-minute segments (about all I can get to buffer), everything is slow, and I've lost access completely a couple of times today. Stupid Verizon, but I don't really have the time to deal with that this week, either.
I'm a bit at loose ends for the writing I need to be doing. I'm not sure that reading De Man is making me less nervous, either.
6.21.2008
Food and possibility
For the record, there was a bit more drama about the subjects raised in the last post that lasted throughout much of last night and which (coupled with a marked slowdown of my internet speed which makes it difficult to watch tv online) made me even more wretched--and not insignificantly, more angry--than I was in the afternoon. But this post isn't about that. This post is about food.
The one thing that has given me consistent and reliable pleasure in this already-tumultuous summer is going to the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza on Saturdays. In fact, the one Saturday this month where I've been the most wretched is the one when I didn't go to the Greenmarket. I don't think those things are entirely unrelated. I mean, granted, it isn't really about the shopping experience per se. I do tend to hurry a little bit, being one of the only people there alone, not really interested in dodging bikes, strollers, and couples. But there are moments of joy even here--seeing what fruits and vegetables are in season, daring myself to take new things home and see what I can do with them, and getting different "treats" to take back. It's of course a little bit on the expensive side, but I've been doing a better job of actually cooking balanced meals for myself, and it means I can skip some of the more cringe-worthy sections of my Key Food. I'm not disciplined enough to eat entirely at the Greenmarket--as a single person, that would be especially hard, and I admit to liking to have certain vegetables (peppers, brussels sprouts, spinach) around even when they are not in season. I also can't really afford to buy everything local / organic, as I'm living on basically "nothing a year" (as they say in Vanity Fair) at the moment. But I do think it's worth it, especially for things like meat and bread, and as one result I've ended up eating slightly less meat but more interesting kinds of meat when I do, cutting out chicken breasts (not intentionally, but there are more interesting things to spend money on and I've never liked the ones at my grocery store), and only really eating processed food when it comes from Target. Of course, this also sometimes means that I run out of food that can be easily prepared by the end of the week. Last night for dinner I basically had a granola bar and a handful of dried fruit. Granted, I had a big lunch, but still...
Anyway. The real Greenmarket happiness comes when I get home and can survey the week's takings. And, of course, the cooking. The high point of this week was the night I made a pork chop from the Flying Pigs Farm, following the simple instructions they provided. It was the.most.amazing.pork.chop I have ever eaten. Incredibly flavorful and juicy, nothing akin to the dried out kind of cardboardy chops I remember from my childhood. I have a second one in my freezer for when I want a treat again. As sides for this meal, I made some oven-roasted asparagus, sauteed spinach with red pepper, and potato pancakes but with shredded zucchini instead of potatoes. The rest of the week was downhill from there. I wish I'd thought to take a picture of it. Actually, maybe I should start doing that--but it would require having actual batteries for my digital camera.
I do think I like the sense of possibility that going to the Greenmarket provides. I've never really liked Fridays, and I've had a vexed relationship to the weekends. Given the state of my life right now, Friday afternoon brings not relief but a sense of all the work that I didn't get done during the week, a kind of lethargy that isn't relaxation, the sense of falling back into invisibility. Sometimes it's not always this bad, but that feeling is always there around the edges.
And I think this is why, even before I broke up with the Ex, even before I discovered the joys of the greenmarket, I would often find myself cooking semi-complicated meals and listening to the radio on Saturday nights.
This week's possibilities from the Greenmarket are as follows:
cherries
blueberries (some of which I plan to freeze)
peaches
kale
young onions (one of my earliest and most favorite greenmarket discoveries)
garlic scapes
a loaf of sourdough (usually I'm much better about getting something in the multigrain family, but every now and then....)
a grass-fed eye steak
turkey sausage
a garlic, goat cheese, and rosemary foccacia
Plus, I still have snap peas left over from last week. Lunch was a bit of turkey sausage, about half the foccacia, and a peach. Dinner (before I, most likely, go into Manhattan to see the second episode of "Hospital" at the Axis Company), I think, is going to be a bit of the steak, some kale, and some of the garlic scapes. So, yay.
Other good things: someone came to fix my soap dish, it's not so hot that I have to have the air conditioner on, and the slowness of my internet connection makes it more likely that I will do work than watch television. I'm trying to be grateful for small things.
The one thing that has given me consistent and reliable pleasure in this already-tumultuous summer is going to the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza on Saturdays. In fact, the one Saturday this month where I've been the most wretched is the one when I didn't go to the Greenmarket. I don't think those things are entirely unrelated. I mean, granted, it isn't really about the shopping experience per se. I do tend to hurry a little bit, being one of the only people there alone, not really interested in dodging bikes, strollers, and couples. But there are moments of joy even here--seeing what fruits and vegetables are in season, daring myself to take new things home and see what I can do with them, and getting different "treats" to take back. It's of course a little bit on the expensive side, but I've been doing a better job of actually cooking balanced meals for myself, and it means I can skip some of the more cringe-worthy sections of my Key Food. I'm not disciplined enough to eat entirely at the Greenmarket--as a single person, that would be especially hard, and I admit to liking to have certain vegetables (peppers, brussels sprouts, spinach) around even when they are not in season. I also can't really afford to buy everything local / organic, as I'm living on basically "nothing a year" (as they say in Vanity Fair) at the moment. But I do think it's worth it, especially for things like meat and bread, and as one result I've ended up eating slightly less meat but more interesting kinds of meat when I do, cutting out chicken breasts (not intentionally, but there are more interesting things to spend money on and I've never liked the ones at my grocery store), and only really eating processed food when it comes from Target. Of course, this also sometimes means that I run out of food that can be easily prepared by the end of the week. Last night for dinner I basically had a granola bar and a handful of dried fruit. Granted, I had a big lunch, but still...
Anyway. The real Greenmarket happiness comes when I get home and can survey the week's takings. And, of course, the cooking. The high point of this week was the night I made a pork chop from the Flying Pigs Farm, following the simple instructions they provided. It was the.most.amazing.pork.chop I have ever eaten. Incredibly flavorful and juicy, nothing akin to the dried out kind of cardboardy chops I remember from my childhood. I have a second one in my freezer for when I want a treat again. As sides for this meal, I made some oven-roasted asparagus, sauteed spinach with red pepper, and potato pancakes but with shredded zucchini instead of potatoes. The rest of the week was downhill from there. I wish I'd thought to take a picture of it. Actually, maybe I should start doing that--but it would require having actual batteries for my digital camera.
I do think I like the sense of possibility that going to the Greenmarket provides. I've never really liked Fridays, and I've had a vexed relationship to the weekends. Given the state of my life right now, Friday afternoon brings not relief but a sense of all the work that I didn't get done during the week, a kind of lethargy that isn't relaxation, the sense of falling back into invisibility. Sometimes it's not always this bad, but that feeling is always there around the edges.
And I think this is why, even before I broke up with the Ex, even before I discovered the joys of the greenmarket, I would often find myself cooking semi-complicated meals and listening to the radio on Saturday nights.
This week's possibilities from the Greenmarket are as follows:
cherries
blueberries (some of which I plan to freeze)
peaches
kale
young onions (one of my earliest and most favorite greenmarket discoveries)
garlic scapes
a loaf of sourdough (usually I'm much better about getting something in the multigrain family, but every now and then....)
a grass-fed eye steak
turkey sausage
a garlic, goat cheese, and rosemary foccacia
Plus, I still have snap peas left over from last week. Lunch was a bit of turkey sausage, about half the foccacia, and a peach. Dinner (before I, most likely, go into Manhattan to see the second episode of "Hospital" at the Axis Company), I think, is going to be a bit of the steak, some kale, and some of the garlic scapes. So, yay.
Other good things: someone came to fix my soap dish, it's not so hot that I have to have the air conditioner on, and the slowness of my internet connection makes it more likely that I will do work than watch television. I'm trying to be grateful for small things.
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