In the epilogue of The Art of Eating In, I bemoaned my oversight of home gardening as one of the restaurant-free food subcultures that I explored in its chapters. Thinking that my outdoor space-free residence would eliminate the option, I’d left out the very preface to cooking: growing the stuff. Fortunately, there have been many sage leaders in doing just that, even in the tiniest urban crevices they can find, and their voices are getting some much-deserved attention. Last month, Just Food paid a lively tribute to the pioneering food advocate, Joan Gussow, who at one point during the ceremonies quipped that she’d originally wanted to title her classic memoir, This Organic Life, “Eating My Lawn.” So since writing the book, I’ve been inspired to close the gap between agriculture and what’s on my plate, both in theory and actual, trowel-wielding practice. This time, I am so not alone in my quest.
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I am not the type of person to get my nails done, or have my eyebrows plucked and pruned. If I could figure out how to cut my own hair, I would. Though I enjoy the convenience of it, I have never felt truly comfortable riding in the back of a cab, and get a slight jolt of awkwardness when a hired hand opens a door for me, or takes my bags. Don’t even tempt me with a foot massage from a stranger. Though I know these practices are all perfectly normal in our society, being pampered and served superfluously just makes me feel, deep down, useless and bored.
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You know the saying. If everyone else was jumping off a cliff, would you? It’s a small reminder to use your own head, and not follow the masses mindlessly. So no, of course not. But if you did, or had to — jump off a cliff, take a leap of faith — and all those masses were at your side, it would sure make you feel a little better about it. And that’s what’s gradually happening with not eating out. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s nothing ickier than raising a fork to eye level and finding that intimately human object entwined in your food: hair. All the sudden, it’s like you’re in bed with the chef. And how well that person cleans him or herself, or where he or she has been in the last twenty-four hours — and who that person is — you have no clue. Panic ensues.
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I was out with a small handful of NYC-based food writers the other night. We were on our way to Edible Brooklyn’s food trivia night, so I was feeling quite smug about my smartness in all things food-related right then, especially being among such illustrious company. As we made our way from the West Coast-oriented bar (with, according to my mentors, not enough beer cred for that claim) Pacific Standard to the Australian meat-pie joint, Sheep Station (kitschy, but the fries are among the best), one friend piped up about how food writers always tend to gravitate toward the same items on any given menu. Why was that? she wondered. Eager to impress, I immediately pontificated a theory:

“I think it’s because most menus are cluttered with familiar dishes that they know are going to sell well; then the chef likes to throw in a wildcard here and there, that’s more creative, or unique. The food writer always orders the wildcard.”

“I think you are absolutely right,” she replied, making me beam.
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When Taylor Erkkinen and Harry Rosenblum opened their Williamsburg store for kitchen appliances and cookware in 2006, they’d had a notion about cultivating a community around cooking through occasional classes and demos. But who knew that the educational programs they would hold at the store would soon become The Brooklyn Kitchen’s biggest draw, with classes frequently selling out a day after being announced?
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You can’t exactly sit through a restaurant meal and claim to have the best culinary know-how of a group by pooh-poohing this, or extolling that. Well, maybe you can to an extent, and many people do — and I have, too. But it’s much more convincing, in my opinion, if you walk into a social setting with your own homemade dish, and compare it against those of all the others in the room, who did the same. And that’s what I’m speaking to in this Reason, perhaps long overdue: the competitive aspect of eating in.
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A cook’s gotta do what a cook’s gotta do. That usually includes dealing with the whole vegetable or grain from its raw to fully-cooked and plated states. Sometimes, it means the same for an animal. And the way I see it, all the better for the person cooking it.
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Here comes the check. And there are eight people at the table. But some who ordered appetizers, and some who didn’t. Some who drank eight glasses of wine, some who don’t drink. Some who didn’t eat communal courses due to dietary restrictions, too. How to handle this piece of paper? Pass it around, and see if everyone pays their dues on their own (drunken) accord? Split it up evenly? See if someone decides to be the check calculator, naming the price for each diner? Then, there’s the tip. Do we split up a lump sum percent, or leave it up to each person, and their consideration of the service? How much tip do we leave, anyway?
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My great-grandmother was a keen tatter. Every Christmas, my family took out her tatting: intricate cotton snowflakes, bells, Christmas trees, flowers, all tatted by her own hand. Tatting, I was told by my father, her grandson, was a dying art. It’s a bit similar to crochet, but the particular style of weaving has fallen out of favor through the years, for some reason. I’m aware that knitting and home-sewing have become chic hobbies in recent years, even (or especially) for urban lifestyles, but tatting (and please speak up, any tatting enthusiasts), has not so much. My ancestor’s graceful relics are admired fondly each year, but soon there will just not be enough tatting to go around for future generations to enjoy. And I fear that cooking, at home, not for commercial purposes, is on its way toward eclipse, too.
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“And the food took forever!” a woman said to her friend while riding the elevator of my building.

“I know!” he exclaimed. “And then it was, like, cold!”

Forgetting the coldness factor for now, and admitting first-off that dinner parties, supper clubs and all sorts of communal cooking activities can create just the same lags in time for food, when you’re cooking for yourself, the dreaded wait is over.
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Last week, I received half a dozen emails from various supper clubs I’d signed up for the mailing lists of. Each dinner sounded more delectable than the one before: roasted local grass-fed goat loin chops with farro-spinach salad and sweet onion soubise, kombu cured fluke with yuzu, brown butter, wakame and preserved nori, a dinner with a puppetry theatre accompaniment, an Argentinian asado of grilled offal, a backyard barbecue of grilled flank steak with chimicurri and chorizo. And the list goes on.
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pan-fried asparagus tips with lemon

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What can I start you off with? Would you like to hear our specials? What did you decide on? Do you need a few more minutes? Can I get you another drink? Would you like to see our dessert menu? Would you like to Supersize that? Would you like fries with that? Would you like that a la mode? Would you like to have that wrapped up? Are you sure you wouldn’t like any coffee or dessert?
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And ah, the things you’ll cook, and mm, the things you’ll eat. All made by yourself, your friends, and fellow home cooking-happy strangers. When I first began “not eating out in New York,” strictly speaking, many people asked me how I would maintain my social life. My mother in particular, I think, was afraid I’d become something of a hermit, standing over a pot of risotto, stirring contentedly for hours completely lost in my own warped head, or something like that. After a few weeks of, um, stirring contentedly lost in my own warped head, I soon realized that in addition to replacing my food with only homemade fare, I was also going to have to replace a portion of my social activities with… well, I didn’t know with what at first. But yes, I was going to have to get out of the house, and cook elsewhere as much as possible.
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Thanks to everyone who submitted their original, thoughtful and personal Reason for Not Eating Out #27 entries! There were so many good reasons among them — including avoiding the “drunken riff-raff” or the walloping calories of Southern eaten-out specialties. I go the sense that a lot of you are bloggers trapped in a busy person’s body. Should you decide to take up blogging (if you don’t already), I will be your first reader!

I ultimately chose to post Jess Habalou’s ode to cooking and creativity, which made me laugh, nod and learn something new. And without further ado, the first-ever guest-written Reason of the Month post…
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Whoever said, “a watched pot never boils” clearly does not know the joys of cooking. He or she does not understand the tiny miracles of science stirring in every pot, even before it boils. Never saw the blip of creation right as the first bubble formed against its side. It is like not having watched the sun set.
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There are many people who read the phrase “not eating out in New York” as synonymous with “not dating in New York.” And those male species of the lot, I have no use for.

Not to be “difficult” or “stubborn,” two things I have been called, oh, a few times in my romantic repertoire, but there is nothing more pathetic than a person who has forgotten that a date isn’t simply about impressing someone with their Zagat-like city restaurant knowledge.
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This twenty-fourth Reason of the Month for Not Eating Out marks a milestone: Whoa, it’s been two whole years. That’s 187 recipes, 89 ruminations, 10 foodie profiles, several cooking events, a couple videos and whatever other crap I fill these pages of not eating out with later. What better way to celebrate this special eve than by cooking in my blog-birthday suit? (Oh, you were hoping for a photo at the top of this post, too? Well, sorry… )
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I’m serious — stop laughing.

Cooking for myself is always about being good to myself. Never have I heard myself complain, ‘the service is really crappy’ when referring to my own dining room, because there, I’ll set the house rules. If I want my food prompt, I’ll make it prompt. If I want to carry out a languid, leisurely affair, I might uncork a bottle of wine, put on a record and Zen out to the task of slicing onions. Saying the service is crappy is like saying, ‘I’m crappy,’ and who wants to feel like that? Sure, it’s easy to be critical of oneself when it comes to the food, but gruff? Negligent? These things simply do not exist.
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Recently, the New York City Board of Health passed a law requiring restaurants with more than fifteen locations to publish the calorie count of their menu offerings for customers to see. I commend this, and applaud those restaurants who’ve already complied, as begrudgingly as some may have done so. I wouldn’t want to have to go through the extra work to find out what the exact nutritional toll of the recipes on this blog might be, for whatever reason. And personally, I’d be pretty embarrassed if I found out that my recent cupcake recipe, for instance, amounted to 780 calories and 36 grams of fat a pop, like those at the beloved bakery Crumbs.

But then, would they ever be — really?
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Getting into the topic of the bottom-rung, low-wage, mostly immigrant workforce in a restaurant is slippery business. Dishsoapy-slippery.

Everyone knows it: the restaurant industry is fueled by these underpaid, undocumented and often mistreated workers who receive little or no benefits and often work two or three jobs literally around the clock. Food service is no egalitarian utopia, okay. The same goes for any other capitalist enterprise in today’s global economy, perhaps. But unlike with buying clothes from major retailers that were manufactured by kidnapped children in developing countries at slave wages (if any), the social dichotomy in a restaurant is right under our noses every day, three times a day in fact for anyone who eats out that much.
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I couldn’t resist compounding this very attractive reason for not eating out with all the rest, even though it has less to do with eating than it does writing about it. For instance, I could go on not eating out for a lifetime and die fairly happily, I think. But half the fun of this whole experience has been about sharing the obsession with… you. Is it worth my while to do without blogging? Absolutely. But if a tree belches his food-infatuated ramblings out into the forest and no one hears it, does he really belch it out at all?
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In the words of Roy Orbison, only the lonely know the way I feel tonight. I’m putting my feet up on a coffee table, pulling a blanket up to my chin, trying to decide which channel to turn on, or which of the eight magazines in front of me to pick up and look through, then relinquishing in contented inactivity, the only sounds in the entire apartment from stock simmering on the stove, ever so lightly, underneath the pot’s lid. The aroma creeps into my nose. It’s probably not the way poor Roy felt when he sang it, but I feel great tonight. Dum dum dum dumdy-doo-wah.
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Here’s a moment where I really wish that a friend of mine had executed her idea to write a parallel blog to mine called, “Not Having Sex in New York.” The plan was, we would be able to compare and contrast the relative advantages or disadvantages of both plights and the unique revelations we each discovered.

I still have much to wonder about what it would be like only having sex in a strange city, country or town, where one found oneself for various reasons — work or pleasure. Alas, I can only offer you my side of the story, the only-eating-out-when-out-of-town one. Ho-hum.
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There’s a beautifully vague term found frequently in recipes: “Add salt to taste.” Or perhaps, “Salt and pepper to taste.” Usually hidden at the end of a recipe like an unwelcome guest, these tiny words go against the grain of everything that a recipe is — suggesting freedom, not followership, discernment, not exactitude, you, not them. But who could deny its importance to cooking? Read the rest of this entry »

Many people have asked me over time how I manage to “not eat out” around the clock. Just what am I eating when it’s not one of the recipes published on this blog? (Much of the time, the plain answer is noodles — spaghetti, noodle soup, fried noodles; noodles.) It’s true that I don’t broadcast my every cooking failure or success here, which therefore makes it hard to grasp the extent to which my cooking ceases to be fun, experimental and imaginative, and instead becomes necessary motions performed in order to live. This coming year, I plan to work harder on this. But looking back on this year — an entire year, in fact — of not eating out, what does seem clear is how much my cooking has improved.
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You know what time of the month it is? No? Reason for Not Eating Out rant time?… Well, that’s okay. I don’t even know when the correct time of the month to post one of these things is myself, and I think I may have skipped a month altogether sometime in the summer. But hey — that’s okay. Because I make up the rules. This is exactly what my Reason for Not Eating Out #14 is all about. In the eloquent words of our president, I’m the decision maker here. Moi! (Okay, maybe he didn’t say “moi.”)
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I have this problem often with clothes. I’ll conjure up exactly the pair of pants, for instance, that I want in my head, down to the weft and stretchiness of the twill and exact shade of, say, cerulean blue and go off on a desperate search to find them, which always (obviously) ends in failure. I am picky with a capital P. Unfortunately, I never owned a sewing machine or dress pattern, and barely know how to sew a button back onto my clothing when it falls off. Holes? I can’t do that. I am poor at clothesmaking with a capital P.
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One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.

I’ve been waiting weeks to share this milestone with you: My first birthday in the blogosphere. The real one-year anniversary for this blog flew by sometime in early September while the redesign was still in the works, so the party had to wait. So now it’s time to break out the big balloons and silly string, let the honking toys a-herald one successful year of not eating out. Oh, and check out my new look.
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Thursday night, my friend K was reading a book at home when she received a desperate phone call from a friend, who will remain known as X.

X: “I’m at Planet Thai, and I don’t have enough cash to pay the bill, and I have ten dollars in my bank account but I get paid tomorrow, and they don’t take Amex. Can I swing by and borrow some cash?”

Now, I don’t have to point out the obvious errs of eating out when you simply don’t have the money to. Or maybe I do. Because I have a feeling that just about everyone in New York has a friend who lives by paycheck to paycheck. The personality in question often goes to the movies, eats out, buys you drinks or rounds of drinks at the same time. You know this person. Even if you don’t know that he or she is living by paycheck to paycheck.
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“You go, girl. Yeah, have that extra scoop of ice cream. Damn straight. You made it, after all.”

That’s my chorus of you-go-girl girls in the back of my mind. They like to cheer, so I try to give them every opportunity to. They can be so feisty if I don’t:

“I hope you enjoyed every minute of throwing away your quarters to skee-ball all night. And what was that whole margarita thing after 5 drinks for? Do you NEED to wake up at 3pm the next day so that you can get zero accomplished and watch TV all day? Or should I say evening?”
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dandelion greens, wood sorrel and second-year burdock stem in a soy vinaigrette made with wild garlic and hedge mustard, all foraged from Prospect Park (except liquids)

The food of this city is bountiful. It’s brimming with so much, and in such great variety, that you will never be keep up with it all, no matter how addicted you are to Eater. Think I’m just talking about restaurants and specialty shops? Try its wildlife sometime. It’s fabulous.

This weekend I attended not one but two foraging tours of Prospect Park: one led by “Wildman” Steve Brill and one by Tim Vireo Keating, director of Rainforest Relief and forager of 30 years. I can’t say this is normal for a single weekend, since Tim Keating’s tour was an infrequent event organized by the Wetlands Activism Collective — but Wildman gives regular tours all throughout the tri-state area. Prospect Park in Brooklyn is definitely one of my closest and largest parks, and now it’s also one of my closest and largest groceries.

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I’ve long put off reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and have for the past few days been soaking up that matte, darkly clad book like a parched sponge. Far be it from the only up-to-date source on the current industrialized food system that we live on, but sometimes it just takes thrusting yourself into the pages of an engaging book to make you really wake up and say boy, do I have a lot of dilemmas. As Kermit would have put it, sheesh. Read the rest of this entry »

I love food in film. I love food television. There has been much said about the semiotics of food in media — specifically on sex and food media. Now why is that? Well, you can read an encyclopedia entry on the term “food porn” now, and you can also check out a recent article in Harper’s magazine all about food on TV and its sexual connotations. But if you ask me, plain and simple, it’s because making food is just sexy. There has not been nearly enough acceded, in my opinion, on said potential of actually cooking together, or cooking for someone.
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I have never been a very delicate eater, I’ll just put that on the table. Along with my elbow, lots of crumbs, and all the salt and pepper that missed the plate. I wish I could blame this completely on a “cultural clash” of sorts, as if to say that when one is raised in a half Chinese, half American household, I’m as confused about rules concerning handling bones at the table or holding a bowl to one’s mouth as I am about my identity. Nah…
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Here’s what I ate on Sunday:

Chicken chilaquiles with green sauce and black beans for brunch made by Sam and Richard.

Baked brie and mango spread on crackers for a dinner appetizer made by Sean and Meredith.
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Five months of not eating out in New York is almost an anniversary. I should do something very elaborate next month to celebrate the half-year point, but for now, another meditation on why it’s so great to not eat out. This was supposed to be the Reason of the Month for December, but I’ve gotten a little behind myself.

For some time, the word “holiday” hasn’t had to refer to a day of religious observation. And they’re seldom celebrated in a very holy fashion. But I can’t seem to think of any holiday that would be better spent by going out to eat, with the possible exception of Valentine’s Day. What could be more blasphemous than a restaurant’s rendition of roast turkey on Thanksgiving, or potato latkes on Hannukah? Regardless of religion, what most major holidays have in common is the tradition of cooking at home, with family. I think of them as a time when everyone, whether or not they do the actual cooking, appreciate the art of home cooking.
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Blogs Adam on The Amateur Gourmet after trekking up to Sarabeth’s on Central Park South for a brunch of a single waffle that cost $14:

“That’s an outrageous amount of money to pay for a can of pumpkin mixed with flour and egg and sugar and plopped into a waffle iron, flipped on to a plate and topped with sour cream and honey and pumpkin seeds and strawberries. But it’s an indulgence that seems to be worth indulging in. We know we can probably make brunch food at home (and investing in a waffle iron could probably save you a fortune for all the waffles you wouldn’t have to order on Sunday mornings) but that’s not the point. The point of brunch is that it’s social, it’s communal: when you stand with the crowd on Central Park South waiting to savor the sweetness of syrup and pastry and strong bitter coffee, you feel like you’re part of the world. And after you’re seated and your food comes and it starts to rain you join everyone in laughing and running inside.”

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I was looking through some old notes I’d scribbled down several months ago, and almost laughed out loud when I read this:

“Today’s gripe is about how some take-out places add filler to your dishes in the form of peeled, chopped broccoli stems. Now I love including broccoli stems in dishes with broccoli crowns already in them; and it’s a good thing these restaurants all know that stems are only really edible once you strip off the tougher layer of skin on their outsides. What’s left inside is a firm, mild palette to soak up the flavor of the dish. But should it be served in my cashew chicken? No. Should it be served instead of actual broccoli crowns? No.”

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It’s now been almost two months since I began this blog and hence, not eating out in New York. My first taste of restaurant food when I landed in Los Angeles last week during vacation was an awkward reintroduction, to say the least. We went to a less-than-great Shanghai-style restaurant, and for the rest of the evening I had a battle with stomach cramps. Mind you, I never get sick from eating out. I’ve eaten plenty of street meat, any combination of dairy, fast food, seafood, and street food in China, and do not get sick.I hadn’t originally considered any physical effects of not eating out. But after LA, I can’t help but suspect that I may be healthier. Either that, or just more vulnerable to foreign bacteria and things. While I’m not about to pull a Morgan Spurlock and trace each step of my physical journey, I am interested in the practical pros and cons as I continue not eating out in New York, so to each recipe posted from here on, I’m adding these new features:

Cost Calculator: because time equals money and you’ve just spent both

Health Factor: simplified scale of one to ten brownie points (ten being the worst)

Note to cooks everywhere: don’t eat bagged spinach right now…

One of the reasons I don’t eat out anymore: gimmicks that restaurants think are worth a damn but that even the staff doesn’t expect you to buy into.

I went to The Living Room last night to see one of my favorite local bands, Matty Charles and the Valentines, who was playing with Austin and Kristin, and Gloria Deluxe. Austin and Kristin totally blew me away. They sounded more polished and professional than anything I’ve seen live in a long time, really wonderful. Gloria Deluxe, I’m afraid, my companion Ben couldn’t stay awake for. It’s the same thing that happened last time we went to see the Valentines when she was headlining. But even more than not feeling like staying out late, though, was the fact that the Living Room was really packed, and kind of annoying. Actually, most of the annoyance was coming from an acquaintance of Ben and mine, who was completely trashed and kept hooting in the middle of songs, slapping his knees and tapping on glasses, and punching us in the knees and shouting our names.
Getting back to the restaurant gimmick, though. The Living Room had this little bar menu with appetizers like zucchini fries and chicken fingers, and a few sandwich selections. Whenever the waitress brought a food order to the few people at tables that did order, it came in this completely kitsched-out white paper bag, inside of which was a plain white Chinese take-out carton, with the fries or whatever inside. The waitress, bless her soul for being the only server in that whole crowded room, would approach the table with the paper bag and just take the Chinese carton right out of it in front of them and crumple up the bag, keeping it to take back with her. The confused diner would then be sitting with their carton of finger food wondering what the whole gimmick was to begin with.

Restaurants, please, concentrate on what you do best. And if it’s obviously being a music venue, please don’t feel the need to waste lots of plain white paper bags for your audiences’ sake.