Friday, January 9, 2009

Thursday staggers towards the good ol' days.

Look, I"m gonna level with you. I'm in the middle of playing a lot of Soul Calibur 2 a la the Gamecube via our Wii. I'm in between rounds of team battle, and at the moment my roommates are clicking away as their sprites swing sharp objects at each other. I'm up to bat in a second, but I just thought I'd take the time to tell you about what I ate yesterday.
If you guessed that I had oatmeal for breakfast, you were right. If you guessed that I stewed a diced apple into a double version of the oatmeal recipe from Tuesday, well that's not guessing, that's stalking, and quite frankly, I'm, well, oddly flattered. All the same, please stop.
I just ran the boys for three rounds, and now I'm spent and it's cold in here so I'm shivering as I type. I could really use a nice bowl of soup like the Italian lentil soup I had for lunch on Thursday. I kept soaking pieces of a multigrain roll in there and then fishing them out all soggy with warm tomato goop.
And then there was the Japanese curry for dinner, also goopy, all coriander and pork fat blended into one of the most delightful, honest, satisfying food stuffs I have found. I added carrots, onions, potatoes, chicken and cabbage to this one, and then had it over rice like someone might have someone else over something in an experience they hopefully both find thoroughly enjoyable. Ok, I have no idea if my curry enjoyed being eaten, but it's a great image, just roll with it.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Wednesday sort of got used to moderation.

The day started off with all good intentions of beginning a new day in my healthy lifestyle. What better way to start a heart-safe diet than with a bowl of oatmeal? 1 cup of oats, a dash of salt, a touch of vanilla, a tablespoon and a half of dark brown sugar and half a tablespoon of butter stewed in 1 3/4 cup of water. It was a very moderate amount of sugar and butter, I promise, and it came out very well. I might up the salt just a bit and perhaps more vanilla, but the end result was a very good bowl of oatmeal. Alright, cardiac success! I'm safe eating a square or two of organic chocolate, right? 86% cacao! nomnomnom.

My first lunch happened around noon, and it was at least modest in proportion if not fairly creamy. The night before I'd stopped into a new bakery in my neighborhood, just to check it out, and the owner was working the counter and was so welcoming that I had a hard time not buying anything, although the quiches leered at me like jilted lovers and layers of pastry seductively parted revealing lascivious peaks of icing. I saw a simple enough pastry on a bed of greens labeled "Chicken Pot Pie $3" and I went for it, figuring at least it was dinner-like, and there WAS a bed of lettuce on the bottom.

In my desperation to get away from the languorous eclairs pouting their sugary promises at me, I didn't stop to wonder why someone would put chicken pot pie on a bed of lettuce. When I got the pot pie home, I couldn't bring myself to eat it for dinner. I had a piece of the lettuce bedding and then put it in the fridge. In the morning, packing for work, though, I thought it would make for a reasonable lunch.

Well it wasn't much of a pie, although there was plenty of chicken. The sauce was more starchy than fatty, even, so I convinced myself it really wasn't that bad for me. For $3 I have to say the portion was a little on the modest side, especially considering that the only pastry involved was a few layers of filo dough over the top. It was on a bed of lettuce because where I assumed in the bakery there was more dough going under the chicken filling, there was nothing. This was particularly disappointing as, for my personal pot pie proclivities, I love the crust along the inside of the pie pan that tries to bake, but just stews in the juices inside making for this saturated pasty mess you have to dig out of the corners of the disposable aluminum pan that cradles most of the single-serving frozen incarnations of this classic.

What was there was very competently done, but I found myself still hungry and finally, by 3pm I could not hold out any longer. While waiting for Duane Reade to fill my prescription for an acid blocker (which i'm not even sure is a good idea) I wandered into a slightly upscale grocery and ended up getting one of their sushi boxes.

Funny, that while waiting for prescription antacids, I end up buying the mixed spicy rolls: spicy salmon, spicy tuna and spicy shrimp. They really weren't that spicy, though. Neither were they very good, but for one brief second, walking back to Duane Reade with just the noise of traffic in my ears, looking down at my take-out sushi with my peripheral vision full of concrete and cars, I felt like I was back in Shinsaibashi. Sadly the feeling passed quickly, largely because even the convenience store sushi in Japan isn't this far off it's peak. Also very sadly, at $6 for the box it's fairly reasonable for sushi in the US, only about twice as much as the same grade of sushi in Japan, as opposed to three times as much, which seems to be about standard in the city. Stil, a far cry better than the sushi in SoHo.

Then, for dinner, I swear on my colon, I ate a salad. It was the asian chicken salad from Vynl. I know that there was more chicken than all the collected plant matter in the salad, but the chopped salad just sounded terrible, and the next healthiest salad was the greek, which I figured would be too rich. Besides being hard to actually get onto my fork, the asian chicken salad was pretty good. It's candy salad, covered in wontons, dressing and chicken, but there was some actual lettuce in there. Just like you should not come off of antidepressants suddenly, also one should not just start eating real salads. Your colon needs time to properly...

Oh who am I kidding? I could have ordered the chopped salad, but what I really wanted was the buttermilk fried chicken. Asian chicken salad was a compromise, but as much processed sugar as was in the dressing, I might have been better off with the meatloaf, and at least I wouldn't have this latent anxiety over not eating what I want to eat. As it was, I still had a minor swelling of the chest pains as dinner drew to a close. Maybe I ate too fast or I was laughing too hard, but I feel like I might as well have ordered a steak. I mean, I can imagine eating healthier and enjoying it, but everytime I look at my options I can't seem to find the right foods.

Thursday, I want to enjoy what I eat!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Tuesday I was forced to admit my own mortality.

I have here chronicled many abuses of the stomach over the past months. I have reported both the glorious and the grotesque in garrulous gastronomical detail. I have tried to champion simple, sturdy foods, primarily those sporting lots of butter and heavy cream. The past two weeks have been full to bursting, as has your humble author, with all manner of culinary delight that I had hoped to share with you in thoroughly photo-documented detail. Those photos are still coming, but a grey cloud hangs over my memory of their heart-warming delight.

This might have more immediately to do with what I ate Monday night, rather than the two weeks prior, but my body has none the less made it fairly clear that a change is in order.

Yesterday morning, as I finished my daily hygiene routine, I was struck with a pang of pain in the center of my chest that soon developed into a dull, squeezing pain across the breadth of my chest. I laid down a minute, relaxed, and the pain subsided. I took stock of my internal signs and didn't seem to see any reason not to go to work, although I was quite a bit freaked out.

Later that morning, around 10:30 or so, the chest pains return and are more severe and prolonged. I am very worried at this point and manage to get myself to a cardiologist, who can find no fault with my EKG readings. She's not sure what's wrong, but many tests have been ordered and I was given a stern talking-to in regards to my lifestyle. In addition to my cardiologist, many of my friends and family who are familiar with the way I eat have also chimed in about what I should or should not be doing. It's made me a bit paranoid about what i should be doing about my possible heart condition or severe gastric distress that possibly led to the chest pains which at least were not a possible heart attack.

I left the cardiologist's office and stumbled past halal carts and fast food joints at a loss for ways to satisfy my heart and my stomach at the same time. In a daze at the possibility that the way I eat might lead to my untimely death, I stumbled through the Whole Foods salad bar, filling a small paper carton with spoonfuls of various grains and legumes and whatnots. I remember getting some of their quinoa salad with toasted almonds and dried blueberries, i love that stuff, then there was their orzo, some tortellini in a pesto, the thai peanut noodles, some chick peas, some black bean salad...
Looking back, it probably wasn't the healthiest of lunches. A lot of the things I ate were saturated with oils and/or cream. I was not off to a great start.

For dinner I was beside myself trying to figure out something I'd like to eat that wouldn't kill me. I snacked on a handful of goldfish crackers as I contemplated what I could make from the groceries of my former life. At the behest of a concerned friend I ate an apple, that was better than I expected it to be. I forgot that I like apples. then there was a piece of Dark German Wheat toast with a little natural peanut butter. I know the peanut butter has a lot of fat and sugar in it, but this was "organic" (shoot me now) and I didn't use very much of it. I just couldn't eat dry toast. I went to bed still quite a bit hungry, but at least there was hope for tomorro.