Category: Ruminations

I like the Rain Man-style review in the middle of this Pinkberry lawsuit article:

In a class-action lawsuit filed last year, Pinkberry -- which operates roughly 50 stores in California and New York -- was accused of misrepresenting its product as "frozen yogurt" and making bogus health claims, including that the dessert (which comes in three flavors: plain, which is very sour; green tea, which is chalky; and coffee, uncommonly delicious) was "all-natural."

Number of search results in Google news for downer cows: 462

Many of you may wonder, what happened to the Ganda we once knew and loved?  Has she been lobotomized?  Is she a frakking Cylon?  Has she been listening to too much NPR? 

The answers to those questions are: I'm right here, no, I wouldn't tell you if I were, and probably.

None of that can explain this sort of sea change I've been feeling lately. A confluence of events has conspired to unseat me  -- an election year/leap year, the tanking economy, the rising cost of food, turning 30, hormonal shifts, pollen counts, star alignments, tight underwear, god knows what else.  This hiatus has been an incubation period for a new experiment I've been thinking about for a while.  I know it's not going to make sense. It's sort of antithetical to everything this blog was always about.  It's probably going to alienate my core readership, if my total neglect over the last few months didn't already do that.  But it's an idea that I'm finally ready to get cracking on.

It's called The Abstain Project.  It's just what you might imagine.  Every so often, I will abstain from something, and I'll report on the effect of the abstinence.  I'll keep abstaining until I can't take it anymore.  It's really about setting up a parameter and seeing where I come up against obstacles, and finding out whether or not the obstacles are too much for me.  Like a rolling permaLent.

The point is not to become someone who abstains completely from all things; the point is more to see what I can live without and what I can't live without.  And to find out what life is like for someone who chooses, or has no choice but, to live without.

What really clinched it for me was probably this episode of This American Life, which chronicles the realities of modern pig farming.  (Extra bonus which made me never want to go to another wiener house -- the disgusting choads in Act Two who are probably the same dumbass mfs who think race is not an issue in this country anymore.)

I know, I know, I spent the last four years pushing reckless gluttony and guilt-free hedonism.  But I'm wondering if a different kind of pleasure can be gleaned from life, one that comes not through consumption but through abstinence.  And hey, if I try veganism and decide it's a crock, I can denounce it from the high horse of experience.  But what if it isn't?

I don't think I'll be able to give up all meat, but I might try to, just to see how long I can go without.  Dairy and eggs?  Soy and all soy products?  Certainly would be a challenge.  Alcohol?  Well, that probably wouldn't be too hard, but I don't think I'd enjoy it much.  Fruits and vegetables?  Now there's a real challenge.  Refined sugar?  Seems horrifying, but maybe it clears the head. Eating out? E-mail?  Cell phone?  Lots of possibilities.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.   First things first -- I'm going to cut out beef for now.  Too easy, I know, but I feel like I need to ease myself into the project if I'm going to sustain it.   I'm sure I'll fall off the wagon with certain things; I don't expect refined sugar to be off the table for more than 2 days.  But it should be a wacky little ride.  And at least now I'll have something to talk about.

Where have I been?  Well, out trying to actually have analog-style human contact.  And working out.  And going to the opera.  And, sadly, still eating a lot of Korean takeout on the subway.  I've been suffering from a bit of internet fatigue.  My job and its distance from my home have conspired to keep me out of the kitchen.  As much as I love food, I don't have the energy to chase obscure outer boro restos or cheflebrities anymore.

I started blogging in 2004 to try and get legit food writing gigs.  Once I got the legit food writing gigs, the dream started fraying.  I started eating crap in service of reviews I had to write.  I felt the need to quantify every food experience I had because I knew I'd be expected to voice an opinion.  Even my friends started worrying about what I'd think of their cooking. 

And then there were the odd relationships I began to have with the people in the tiny food world. You know how it goes: a P.R. rep invites you to an event where you will be leaned upon to write about whatever is being pushed.  You see all the familiar faces -- the food editors, the freelance writers, the bloggers, everyone smiling and chummy over their cocktails.  This is the village it takes to create the content people want.  I'm sure that the majority of those writers are able to navigate the murky waters with honor and dignity.  (And I mean it -- there are lots of writers whose opinions I trust precisely because they're not scenesters and they've got the cojones to say whatever they want to say -- Robert Sietsema, Regina Schrambling and Adam Platt are just a few.)  But without the protection of complete obscurity, I can't.  I'm ultimately someone who wants to make other people happy.  I may not have the stomach for this kind of work.  While I've never been a fan of Amanda Hesser's writing, these days I can't really participate in the schadenfreude surrounding the fallout of her now infamous Spice Market review.  I don't live with the illusion that writers are sequestered from the people or things they write about. 

Anyway, there are so many people blogging with the kind of stamina I used to have when I had a less rigorous schedule.  I can't keep up the pace, and I'm not going to try to anymore. I don't want to sell myself as an expert.  I want to participate in my life more and observe less.

I've put out my fair share of negative energy over the years -- after all, the tag line for this blog was "eating and complaining in nyc".  But I'm not interested in being a critic anymore.  And I'm realizing that a sister just has to blog for herself, or there won't be anything to talk about.

So for starters, I finally upgraded to Movable Type 4.1.  We'll see how this goes.  The old system was just weighing my build time down.  Of course, I really only half know what I'm doing with the tech stuff, so posting this post may entirely break my site. 

And I've gone with one of MT's stable out-of-the-box templates, which I will be tweaking some as the weeks go by and I have a little more time. Again, I'm going to go at my glacial pace because I want this to be fun again.

You Are What You Eat will return sporadically, whenever I can get people to participate.

And I'll still talk about my life through my food.  Maybe I just need spring to give birth to green things so I can get back into it.  But I may talk about music.  Or the election.  Or puppies, rainbows and unicorns.  I guess we'll see. 

Or, as my friend Jeanne calls it, "Singles Awareness Day".

In case you missed my squeaky WNYC debut this morning:

And for the lovers:

[from La Doug.]

Damn. Gourmet.com's shmancy party made me feel like a gauche-ass freeloader. The fete was thrown at Bar Boulud, with Daniel Boulud himself holding court for a gathering of chefs, writers, editors, and buttoned up bloggers. Patés galore (my favorite being the guinea hen), a line snaking through the stainless steel kitchen, a succulent boudin noir, and enough chefs to program PBS for five straight Sundays. By the end of the night, they were practically pouring the syrah down our throats. The blond wood and fish-scale covered railroad space was quite comf and roomy. I'll have to check out Bar Boulud for pre-Met nosh.

As someone who's worked in online for almost ten years now (yikes), I've lived through the days of Aeron chairs for all to being treated like the flowers in the attic. These days, attention is being paid to dotcom, and this party seemed to say, quite clearly, Gourmet.com is Gourmet. Obvs we are not enjoying the same economic boom we were during the first internet bubble, but the bloggers are being taken very seriously. By now, I see a lot of familiar faces at these things and I wonder -- if I started this blog in 2007 instead of 2004, would I still be able to get my name on this guest list? Ten years from now (hell, three years from now), will I be supplanted by the pepper sprouts in some uncharted new medium?

Meanwhile, they kept running these clips of David Pasternack pulling the foreskin off a giant penis.

Here are some pics before I go to bed.

My friend Janet's going to pinch hit for me while I've got my nose to the grindstone at work. Please be kind to her.

Lemon out.

Some of us are back in our hometowns, unwrapping gifts, sipping eggnog by a crackling fireplace, quibbling lovingly with family members, escaping the house at night to get drunk with high school buddies, brining turkeys and baking Christmas cookies as Josh Groban's dickless lilt puts Grandma to sleep, fa la la la la and a bottle of rum.

And some of us are battling the stomach flu alone in Sunset Park, drinking watered down ginger ale, trying to keep bowls of thin rice congee down, crying our eyes out watching our Netflixed Love Actually* on repeat, and flipping channels in a vain attempt to get away from that relentless, toothy holiday pox Rachael Ray as she shills crackers/donuts/stoups.

So since some of us are totally in the holiday spirit this year, we thought we'd put together a list of the top five loneliest places to eat in NYC. We've excluded the ramen bars and pizza joints -- those places were designed for singletons just like you, so you always feel as if you're dining in solidarity.

No, no, the following places make you feel worse than you did when you walked in. They serve to remind you, with every practical bite, that you have no one to go home and have dinner with. That in your life, dinner is not a social event, but a functional refueling. If you find yourself in any of these places, take a look around you. You could:
A.) find another loser like yourself and no longer be lonely, or
B.) join me for dinner and give me grief for putting the blog on hold.

And don't be too hard on yourself -- top ramen over the sink in your underwear is still worse. So is straight up alcoholism.

The Top Five Loneliest Places to Eat in NYC

In descending order:

5. Any Taco Bell, but especially a Taco Bell Express. The seats bolted to the floor, the harsh overheads, the dubious, dubious meat, the sweaty, runny beans, the browning lettuce -- what did you do to make you hate yourself this much?

4. Katz's. You're drunk and you want to eat something before you get on the train so you don't ralph in the tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn. But you get your pastrami sandwich, ask for fries, and the guy yells at you to go to the other station. And you sit down at the service only tables and get yelled at by the waiter to move to one of the gazillion other empty tables. And then (because you're drunk), you lose your ticket and you get yelled at by the burly bouncer type at the door who demands an extortive fine. All of which serve to remind you that you are alone, you are pathetic, and you'll never be a REAL New Yorker.

3. Anywhere that serves any kind of tube meat or has "dogs" in the name. Seriously, think about what you look like.

2. Woorijip. You are a lonely fuck if you are eating steam table rice cakes with disposable chopsticks from a foam tray at Woorijip. And if you have forgotten what a sad, lonely fuck you are, just look at the sad, lonely fucks around you, looking minty green under the harsh fluorescents, sitting on their low stools along the bar in the front of the dining room, yelling about their therapy sessions into their cell phones as they stuff their traps with cold, tacky jap chae.

1. The subway. Nasty. What, you're too hungry to wait the 30 minutes it's gonna take you to get home? Or you want to make sure you eat a little something before you start drinking tonight? Those platforms are depositories for all manner of bodily fluids and excretions. Which, of course, you know and generally block out for sanity's sake. But while you're eating? You know better. And if you forget, the smells are easy reminders that drunkards know no discrimination when it comes to finding a place to take a piss (or toss their cookies). The subway car seems marginally better than the platform, but that seat was probably just vacated by a homeless guy who finished jerking off the stop before you got on. And for god's sake, put a glove on before you touch that pole.

Bonus: The other day I was in Shanghai Mong trying their ja jang myun/ramen combo. There's this little circular room where a little lip of a bar juts out from the wall, and about ten single diners can enjoy their meals with their backs to the center of the circle. The great thing is that at about every other seat, there's a mirror at face height that says, "You Are a Princess". I like to imagine all of these gruff Korean businessmen going in for a sweat-inducing bowl of spicy seafood noodle soup and having to stare back at their own visages framed in these curlicued "You Are a Princess" mirrors. Ha ha ha...ha...ahem...this is how I get my kicks these days.

*Is there a better Xmas rom-com? I don't think so. What a dehydrator.

I'm working myself to the bone right now and am probably only going to update very sporadically until February, when we relaunch the website I'm working on for my day job. Check out the blogroll -- plenty of good reading there. Please come back in Feb. when hopefully a few more brain cells have regenerated.