Whats Fa Dinna?

Today is Dibs’s birthday, so we celebrated yesterday by having a brunch with friends and dinner with the family.

We met with about 10 folks for brunch at Moto, a really nice and slightly fancy bobo kinda place off the Hewes ST stop of the J. It’s decorated in a “distressed antique” way, but not bad. Lots of rust, old mirrors, random French advertisements, black and white photos, etc. At night, bands play there and they seem to serve pretty decent wine, but I’ve never been there for dinner. The brunch food there is always fantastic, not too expensive, and there are several appealing vegetarian options. It is conveniently located, off our train, and most people like to go there. The only drawbacks: They don’t serve regular coffee, only Americano, which are delicious but are not free to refill. Therefore a brunch at Moto will require supplementary coffee later in the day. Also, there are usually a couple of really unbearable vampire-looking hipsters scrounging around, nursing coke hangovers with the grilled donuts ($4, plate of 3) and espresso. They won’t bite, but will sneer.

Anyhow, I always get one of two things at Moto brunch: the baked apple pancake with crème fraiche and real maple syrup, or the house eggs in creamy tomato sauce with grilled bread and mixed greens. Oh yes, Mot grills their bread and it’s pretty good. Then they put butter all over it and serve it to you with a place of eggs over easy cooked in butter, and doused in a sweet, tomato-y cream sauce. It is goddamn good and this is what Dibs had, so I had bites. I enjoyed the baked apple pancake, which is so buttery that each of your teeth has a little heart attack as you eat it. It’s real good. We settled up after a leisurely hour and a half brunch, just as the place was starting to fill up.
Then we went home to play with our beautiful new kitten Rose.
The fam showed up around 4, and we hung out and opened housewarming/birthday gifts. We now have an officially awesome Cuisinart blender, and I will commence to drinking smoothies and fancy drinks any day now. We decided it was too hot to cook in the house so we went out.
The challenge was to find somewhere nice but not super outrageous, with veggie and meat options, and a fun, hanging-out-with-family-in-NYC vibe. Original plan was to go to Flea Market on Ave A and 8th, where we went for brunch once. It seemed too pricey and also very meat-centered (French cuisine- duhhh.) So we gave a shot to Yuca Bar, catty-corner from our home away from home, the Sidewalk Café. This place definitely isn’t “cool” but it actually did the job quite well- we all got something good, drank some ridiculously boozy sangria (I opted for a Blue Moon). Even though they had a few veg options, we decided it was a splurge and eat fish kinda night, so we did. Curiously, the women all ordered the yucca-encrusted salmon, which came in a saucy mixture of sundried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, corn, tomato, avocado and a bunch of other things. It was quite delicious and very savory. The men ordered the mahi-mahi, which came over a bed of coconut rice with pineapple jalapeno salsa. Very sweet, also very spicy. Mahi mahi is really good, so is salmon for that matter, and having fish once a month or less makes it an even better treat.
All in all it was a pretty fun day. We ate well, hung out with good peoples, etc.

last night we had dinner at Vegetarian Paradise 2, on W 4th street. It’s right next to Red Bamboo, which I haven’t tried yet, but both are owned by the same people, and they both serve totally yummy fake meat pan-asian/soul food fusion. Or something. It’s kinda junk-foody, definitely heavy on the gluten, but mad delicious. We split a scallion pancake, which was very cakelike and tasty, and an order of General Tso’s “chicken.” I thought the Tso’s was decent, but didn’t really have the punch I expect. It was much tangier and more citrusy than I’m used to for that dish, but my expectactions are based on getting really cheap ghetto Chinese food General Tso’s tofu, corn syrup, peanut oil, MSG and all.

This dish was definitely more lovingly prepared than those usually are, but they could hold some love- like putting cut up celery and cucumbers in a hot dish! WHO DOES THAT?!? Otherwise it was good, and we two did not even finish it all so there are leftovers. Tso-tally awesome.

I’d go back to Veg Paradise- the service was exceptionally friendly and fast, ambiance was unobtrusive and relaxed, except for the drop of water that periodically condensed on the ceiling and fell on my head. They didn’t pressure us to buy drinks or dessert, and didn’t mind that we were splitting an entree. All in all, very cool.

Here’s what is not so cool: Late last night, we discovered cockroaches in the apartment, which almost sent me into a catatonic fugue state. We smashed about 20 very tiny baby roaches that appeared to be hatching before our eyes from the faucet fixture, many more escaped, including a larger, more developed baby that scrambled up behind the cupboards. The roaches must have been feasting on the tiny bits of food stuck in our drain catch.

Sick. more on that later, I’m sure.

So after a fitful night’s sleep of digesting pure wheat gluten, and having nightmares about roaches crawling into my ears, I slept in and grabbed a delicious Polish donut from the bakery for my ride to work. I intend to finish my unremarkable egg salada sandwich, with the health bread and the sundried tomatoes, for lunch.

I have been peeling through my bookshelves lately, trying to settle on something to actually read cover to cover. One of my failed attempts was a macrobiotic primer, written for American idiots by an American idiot who found it his calling to interpret the will of Macro-God Michio Kushi. So I gave up on that book pretty quickly, but not without trying, for half a day, to do the good work of Kushi and eat macrobiotically.

I should add that I think macrobiotics is amazing, a great idea for anyone to try if they are unsatisfied with their health, mood, outlook or appearance. I loosely kept the diet for almost two months and ever since I have tried to base my diet on whole grain foods, fresh vegetables and soyfoods. A year of employment in a fancy French-style bakery-café put a significant damper on that. But nobody’s perfect, and now that I’m a 9-5er I have much more control over my diet once again. Also with the Hearty Roots veggie order coming in full swing every two weeks, we have a vast supply of local, organic produce.

So anyway. I went to the health food store near my work, found pre-made macro vegetarian noodle and rice dishes which weren’t all that expensive, and tried one out. It was delicious seasoned brown rice with vegges and seaweeds and smoked TVP or tofu floating around in there. I had that for lunch, then remembered the Jarlsburg, romesco and arugula sandwich I had packed in my bag. Drat. I had that as an afternoon snack, completely negating any attempt to reduce caloric intake, eat only pure, whole foods, and avoid dairy. This delicious and seemingly healthy sandwich broke all the laws of macrobiotics.

So anyway, that was that. The next day I had leftover tofu scramble and rice (not bad, not bad) that we made Sunday morning after a long and steamy hunt through Ridgewood, NY for some tofu. Flashback to Sunday: We discovered tofu at the Stop n Shop on Myrtle Ave, past Fresh Pond, along with scads of other delicious, exhuberant fake meats like Gimme Lean! and SmartBacon. We had a total bean feast that day- tofu scramble with tempeh bacon chopped up in it, black beans, toast. Then we went to a vegan BBQ down the street and ate smart dogs and portobello burgers. I wanted to barf all over the place and felt especially bloated on Monday, but damn, fake meat tastes good and i don’t do it all that much.

Fast forward to the present (actually, past- it’s Thursday!) evening (Tuesday) we had a light dinner at Bonobo’s Vegetarian restaurant, a raw vegan café in Gramercy. It’s pricey, terribly lit, sterile and the hum of the machines in there makes me immediately tweak out and get psycho, but they make a delicious salad and you can get all kinds of weird, delicious “nutmeat” pates and patties and things all up on it. I like the food there so much but I always feel a little bit funny afterwards, like I’m the guy in that movie Altered States and because I’m depriving my body/mind/mouth of the usual bad-for-me things, I’m sort of slowly reverting into a moneylike state. I guess that’s the idea of calling a place Bonobo’s. So we ate that, and of course, a few hungry hours later in the same neighborhood, found ourselves scarfing multiple orders of fries from the infinitely more romantic Shake Shack.

So much for macrobiotic eating.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a week, dear reader(s?). I have been very busy at work, doing all kinds of actual work at the computer, using my break time to actually eat meals instead of just hanging out and blogging.

I’ve eaten many things since the last post,and while I’d love to share them all with you as promised, I can’t quite remember what all of them were. I’ll try keeping a diary and at least posting a “Digestive Digest” regularly.

I have not had any homecooked anything since yesterday afternoon. Monday morning, we enjoyed some delicious homemade Italian wheat bread from a newly discovered local bakery. I am a fan- the Polish bakery, while on our block and very cheap, does not make bread that compares to this stuff. And even this stuff ain’t great. We also had the usual French Press coffee and bleary-eyed early morning conversation.

For lunch, I brought delicious leftovers of steamed millet and red lentil dal. Many of my coworkers ogled my dogfood-looking food with curiosity and a fair amount of disgust, but only one had the courage to ask. Sometimes you just have to be the weird hippie in the office who’s eating a mushy pile of ancient grains and pulses, seasoned with Bragg’s and nutritional yeast, that you bought in bulk from the co-op.

Anyway, that was the most wholesome and nutritious thing I’ve eaten all week.