Shopping, cooking, and eating: day 7 (the final diary day!)

I thought it was going to be a 100 percent eating day, but I did end up in a grocery store after dinner. Here's the list:

• the other apple I bought on Saturday
• two mandarins
• some of the Indian potato stew I made yesterday, over rice from the rice cooker; I thought this would hold me to dinner, but it didn't, so while out at the café working, I had to eat...
• a "raisin bran" muffin, which was the only thing that wasn't basically cake or pastry; doubtless it had some refined flour, but it didn't give me any refined-sugar headache or anything
• a bunch of corn chips that came with my friend/work buddy A.'s burrito (please note that this is not the same A. at whose apartment I ate lots of things on day 2)
• huge glass of genmai cha and a refill on the hot water with the same teabag (the café version of the bottomless cup, essentially)
  
• then, dinner with my date, D. (of the crag rangoon–infested meal with the other A.): a cup of lentil soup and a piece of (white flour) bread that was kinda herby and very soft, yum
• some nachos (chips, black beans, salsa, cheese, sour cream, a pepperoncini on top that he didn't want so I ate it happily)
• part of a quesadilla (white flour tortilla, cheese, salsa, with ample evidence that there was meat grease [mmmmm...] on the grill where it was cooked)
• a glass of house red
  
• post-dinner shopping trip: Fig Newmans (low-fat, which was not my choice but D.'s 'cause the full-fat ones were also wheat free, and he rejected the barley flour therein); Tuscan three cheese–flavored Kettle Chips (also per D.), Pirate's Booty (my idea), six granny smith apples (D. insisted on six even though I assured him I would be at the farmers market many times before he was at my house enough times to eat six apples, but whatever; they're from Washington, which is not that far away)
• midnight snack: some Fig Newmans and a couple of the chips, which were not good—too sweet; give me salt and vinegar any day

Not really a banner day for my food choices. Thank gawd this diary week is over. As much as I relish the obsessive documentation of everything I put in my body, it's a little...much.

Shopping, cooking, and eating: day 3, part 2

First, there was some more afternoon snacking:

• a blood orange from the farmers market a week ago Tuesday
• a piece of cornbread toast
• more tea
  

Dinner was not in fact Parkway nachos, but Parkway vegetarian pizza instead (they have vegan pizza there, but that fake cheese is...not okay; there is good, relatively unprocessed fake cheese
in the world, but this is not it). And some popcorn with butter and garlic salt. I should just rename the Parkway the Dairy of Unknown Provenance Hut. (Sometime soon I will explain more fully my feelings about fake cheese, soygurt, and the like, and my feeling that real can be more sustainable/ethical even if it means animal products.) Oh, and a glass of cheap sangiovese.

And now, two hours after getting home, I'm hungry again. My friend J. (okay, it is now officially clear that I have too many friends whose names start with J; this is not the same J. who I went to the Parkway with on Tuesday, neither is it the same J. who asked for the shopping-cooking-eating diary nor Boston J.) thought that an eight-inch pie was enough for the two of us to share. I was skeptical but figured I'd go with it; portion control has never been my strong point. And now I say: curses, J.! I might need to eat some more toast with Earth Balance before bed or my rumbling stomach will keep me awake.

Oh, and we saw Volver. It was pretty great.

Shopping, cooking, and eating: day 2, part 2

Dinner last night was veggie potstickers, tofu with string beans, and brown rice from the Yum Yum House. I was still over at A.'s apartment—my date D. came to pick me up and we ended up ordering in. A. ate sweet and sour tofu and crab rangoon (yes, I'll explain what that is in a minute) and D. ate egg rolls and chicken chow mein, which, as a special bonus, came for free because the YYH has one of those buy-two-entrees-get-free-noodles dealies.

And then there was the prodigious after-dinner snacking:

• a whole lot of the Trader Joe's version of Pirate's Booty
• some milk chocolate with hazelnuts
• and, um, a piece of A.'s crab rangoon, which is like a fried wonton filled with cream cheese and fake crab (pollack, D. declared, and he was seconded by A.'s ex-boyfriend A., who had stopped by to...oh, forget it, I'm not explaining the whole situation, this isn't that kind of blog), and seasoned with chives and pepper. How did this happen? Well, A. wasn't gonna eat it, and she offered it to me. I recoiled in horror (I've eaten crab rangoon before, in my I'll-eat-anything, never-really-thought-about-where-it-came-from days, and it's just...weird), and D. made some comment that reminded me of the time last week when I ate bacon-flavored squeeze cheese on a Ritz cracker at his house (and no, I'm not explaining that one, either, 'cause nor is it that kind of blog), after which he said, "I win!" Of course I took that as a challenge, and since the thing was gonna get thrown out if I didn't eat it (D. is allergic to shellfish, and even though it was really pollack he wasn't gonna do it) I saw it as more of a freegan moment than a breaking of the rules. Physically I think I felt worse due to the fried aspect than the cheese/pollack aspect. But, regardless, it was so not a good choice to put that in my mouth. Thankfully I had already forbidden D. to say "I win" after.
  

Shopping, cooking, and eating: day 2

First things first. The update on yesterday's dinner: J. and I went to see Little Children at the Parkway instead of roasting vegetables. So I ate a Left Turn at Albuquerque Combo, which broke three of the rules, but not in the worst way. (This ridiculously named dish is a basket of veggies—broccoli, carrots, cucumber, cherry tomatoes—with olives, pita, hummus, baba ghanoush, and some kind of ranch-esque dip. The pita was white flour, the dip had dairy of unknown provenance, and the cucumber and tomatoes doubtless came from Mexico.)

Oh, and since I was soooo hungry by the time we got to the theater (and I knew the food would take a while), I also had a bowl of popcorn. At the Parkway they do it right: air-popped with real butter (yeah, okay, I know: dairy of unknown provenance; but really, I think no matter what it's better than the usual factory-produced chemical fake butter you find in most movie theaters).

So. Day 2. No shopping at all. This morning I used my rice cooker to make some of the rice I bought yesterday, and roasted all the veggies I was going to roast last night (procedure [too simple to even call a recipe]: cut brussels sprouts in half/broccoli and cauliflower into florets/sweet potatoes and parsnips into chinks; smoosh it all around with some olive oil on a cookie sheet; roast at 500° for 12 minutes; stir/turn all veggies; roast for 6-10 more minutes).

So far I have eaten:

• a bowl of the rice I bought yesterday, with some olive oil, salt, and pepper (breakfast)
  
• a bottomless cup of the same green tea I drink every day
  
• a bowl of roasted veggies with more rice (breakfast part 2)
  
• more roasted veggies (lunch)
• I also attempted to eat an orange out of my friend A.'s fruit bowl, but it tasted like a grapefruit that someone puked on, so I spit it out and threw the rest away, which is something I never, ever do

Dinner is a big open question right now.

On a completely other topic—well, not completely—someone just hipped me to this cute lil video about real vs. fake food.

I had a 100% vegan Sunday—

But my Monday has gotten off to a less-than-auspicious start. And it's not even 1:00 a.m.

See, tonight I found myself needing to have dinner at midnight, and there's only one place I know where that can happen in a way that's at all appealing: the Mexicali Rose. Nothing there's vegan or even remotely not-factory-farmed, but I figured a cheese enchilada would be better than going to bed hungry.

So I get there, settle in with my magazine and my big basket of the best chips on earth, and place my order: one red enchilada with cheese, along with the usual insane mound o' rice and beans. When it comes, it's all good and cheesy on top. Like a cheese enchilada should be. Except when I dig in I find that it's not cheese inside, it's ground beef.

Of course, I could send it back. I ordered cheese. Getting the totally wrong food is pretty much the only reason I would ever think it's acceptable to send something back. And I have actually sent things back before (okay, one time) when they had meat in them and weren't supposed to. But I don't. And, moment of truth: It was only a teeny-weeny bit because I didn't want to be a pain in my waiter's ass. Part of me was pretty psyched. Even though I thought the ribs would last me a good six months, I was happy to be eating the beef—especially since I didn't have to have any ethical conversation with myself before ordering it. Because I didn't order it.

And then the lunch that made me want to start writing...

Yesterday I ate a big plate of meat for lunch. Barbecued ribs from Flints, to be exact. Not organic, not locally or sustainably produced, not at all in line with anything about the way I say I eat.

And. It. Was. Good. Not just that, but I felt good afterwards, too. I've been recovering from a nasty bout with the zombie flu, and my energy has been looooow. A big plate o' meat seemed like just the ticket.

And I had already been planning to eat some meat: curried goat with my new friend D. I was justifying this because, hey, there's no real goat industry in this country, so the meat is likely produced on a relatively small scale. And, of course, with handy-dandy rule no. 8. I've only eaten goat a few times in my life, but damn is it tasty. And you don't see it around the menu every day. When D. and I were having our first lunch together two weeks ago (I kept it veggie then, but not vegan—we were at the Mexicali Rose, where absolutely nothing at all is vegan; I guess in the last post I forgot rule no. 9, which is: If you've gotta eat, you've gotta eat, and you might as well like it), I mentioned a taste for goat, and she told me about her favorite Caribbean place not too far from my house. Obviously we had to go.

Anyway, the goat place was closed. Apparently it's run by stoners. No surprise they run late. We tried another Caribbean place, but it was closed, too. The sign on the door said they were catering some reggae show in Santa Cruz.

By then I was starving (I skipped breakfast in preparation for the heavy meatiness), and primed for meat. D. was thrilled that Flints was still around and might actually be open. It seemed like fate.

And I ate the ribs and I was happy—even though your very much face-to-face with what meat is when you're eating it right off the bone. There were sinews. That tasted good. Oh, my.

As a pretty extreme example in the long line of things I choose to eat that I quote don't eat anymore unquote, it's makin' me think: Is it chickenshit of me to say I have these rules when I break them so much? How can I balance my own needs with the needs of others (meatpackers, farmworkers, people who live near polluting feedlots, cows) and with my own ethics? Am I just not trying hard enough?