Whats Fa Dinna?

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.

Lately I’ve taken a liking to this fancy bakery/cafe near work, in Hell’s Kitchen, called Amy’s Bread.
The place serves the exact fare, at the exact ( outrageous) prices as my old place of employment, Metropolitan Bakery in Philadelphia. This is perhaps why I go there. Last week I ventured inside, came away with a tiny (but delicious) mozzerella sandwich on olive ficelle, a very delicious oatmeal raisin cookie, and a coffee, but lost about $9 in the deal. Today I resolved to go back to Amy’s Bread and find something delicious that wouldn’t run me more than $5. Success: the soup and roll cost $4.88 with tax. I opted for the delicous-sounding Creamy Tomato, eagerly awaiting the moment when I could sit in the playground on 47th st. (where I eat my lunch, weather permitting) when to my dismay I noticed a little sign behind the register with the soup’s ingredients.

Foolishly, I had forgotten to ask/observe whether or not the soup was vegetarian. It wasn’t. And as I walked away from the register with my warm little bag of lunch, I decided that a little chicken stock won’t kill me and I already bought the stuff anyway. Plus it also had orzo in it, my favorite kind of pasta for putting in soup. If the chef had the insight to add orzo, s/he must have enough sense to know when chicken stock is really necessary.

And so, head hung with bad-vegetarian shame, I sat down at the little park and consumed the delicious creamy tomato soup with orzo and a whole wheat French roll, while an insubordinate child ran around throwing those little paper poppers all over the place despite the half-hearted protests of his pillhead rich mother. She mostly tuned him out and chatted with a few of her equally negligent friends on a neighboring bench. I would have accompanied the meal with a few pages ofbut did not want to drip the red, chickeny soup on Dan’s nice new book that he lent me.

Now I’m back at my desk, wondering whether or not I’ll develop a stomachache, diarrhea, or worse, that two-day appendix/spleen soreness that I got last time I “accidentally” ate a BLT.

In order to facilitate this blog, the amazing Dibson T. Hoffweiler has purchased and set up whatsfadinna.com for me! This is my third attempt to get this blog on the road, along with a stint on Myspace and Blogspot. Hopefully I can finally get it together and write every day, bringing you, dear readers, news of my daily caloric intake. Since I am no longer employed in the restaurant business, and instead work at a computer all day and live with a person who owns and operates two computers, who also subscribes to the internet instead of stealing wireless, this should be considerably easier. I look forward to our times together, readers, when you can rely on me to tell you all about everything I eat, every day.