What I Ate in One Year: (and related thoughts)
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Read between November 2 - November 18, 2024
22%
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Nico is training to be a chef at Leiths culinary school in London after graduating from the University of Sussex with a degree in politics. (I am not going to pretend I wasn’t thrilled when he told me he wanted to be a chef instead of a politician.)
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The slower one becomes, the faster time moves. How? Why? Is it because we finally understand time and are now able to gauge how long we’ve got left?
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But now, as opposed to when I was younger, I know what twenty years is. I know what thirty years is. They are nothing. Just a glimpse of life. So, one panics.
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Death was very much a part of my upbringing, not only because it’s a well-discussed subject in southern Italian culture but also because my father’s father was a stonecutter who owned his own monument business. Death was doubly present.
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I’m honored that my name will be chiseled into that granite as well, but I hope someone also plants a tree for me somewhere. An olive tree. Olive trees have so much to offer, and I’d like to be somewhat useful even in death.
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Gnawed on half a croissant, appropriately, watching Matteo’s French assembly, in which all the kids were dressed as animals and sang songs in French about the animals they were dressed as.
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Boiled-then-grilled artichokes, meatballs with a tomato sauce, ricotta with lemon oil, and a hint of black truffle and grilled focaccia were the appetizers we ordered. None of it was particularly good and the focaccia was actually gross. It was toasted on what couldn’t have been a very clean grill or griddle because it tasted like someone had run it over with a burning car.
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In the end, a terrible waste of food and money. And the service was slow. Very. So, time was wasted as well. I don’t mean to complain, but if one is paying a lot for a meal, it should be good food served efficiently, and that’s that.
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Made scrambled eggs with leftover rice and peas and some scallions. A bad version of egg fried rice. Really bad, in fact.
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I toasted half a bagel, then cut it in half again. On one quarter I put a dollop of tuna and some lettuce, and on the other a dollop of cream cheese. Best Jewish deli food I’ve had since I moved here ten years ago.
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I like to have the flavor of wine or beer along with water with a meal, but during the day I don’t want the alcohol. There are some pretty good nonalcoholic beers out there.
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Afterward I made a two-egg omelet cooked in a bit of butter and olive oil. I ate it topped with anchovies and sliced tomato on a buttered warm baguette.
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I puréed it all with an immersion blender, which did a bad job of it. (It has been making a weird sound, so I think it’s broken.)
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The eggplant parmigiana was made with mozzarella, which I don’t usually care for because it makes the dish too heavy, but it was used sparingly and the whole thing was very light.
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Such an interesting decision, Brexit. One can only ask, whose foot were they aiming for?
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We sat in the garden and read a bit, meaning Felicity read an entire book and I looked at Pinterest while the kids jumped on the trampoline.
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I fried up some sliced potatoes in a cast-iron pan, then layered the whole lot in a small baking tin with the previous day’s marinara and some grated Parmigiano and baked it for about thirty minutes. This is the way my father’s family made eggplant parmigiana but this time I just made it without the eggplant.
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However, I did burn the potatoes a bit in my rush to cook them quickly. Impatience.
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I tried to replicate Aurelien’s mayo but the sunflower oil I used was so potent that it tasted dreadful, and I had to dump it, which was frustrating because I’d practically torn a rotator cuff whisking the goddamn stuff.
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My youthful ramblings were sustained by bowls of soup (chicken noodle, split pea) and sandwiches (BLT, turkey club, chicken salad, and of course tuna) eaten in old coffee shops that themselves have since fallen victim to “progress.”
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When did you first realize you liked salmon? Or a hamburger? Or French fries? Or a tomato? Or basil? No one remembers.
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Like so many vegetables these days, tomatoes often taste of nothing. When did that start happening? Things used to taste like what they were. Now something that looks like a tomato or a carrot tastes like just a thought of those things.
Leila Jaafari
Go off.
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I think it might have been besciamella but I can’t be sure. I can be sure, however, of the fact that it was disgusting. I took three bites and hopped on the train feeling I had taken three bites too many.
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It’s as though every morning is their very first morning of their very first day of their very first year of their education.
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She obviously must have forgotten that I was to rub shoulders with royalty this morning, because her only words to me were, “Can you strain that broth I made last night?” As the front door slammed I prayed for her train to be delayed.
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For the palace event I had chosen to wear a cream-colored linen double-breasted muted-plaid suit, a white shirt, a brown tie, brown socks, and brown shoes.
Leila Jaafari
Only he could pull that off.
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I loathe the fact that our world has become so casual. So many people wear the same thing for a night out on the town or to the theater that they wear around the house, which most often is a T-shirt and jeans or even sweatpants.
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Let’s face it: adults today dress like children. I’m not suggesting that one don a three-piece suit every day, but anything other than shorts, sneakers, and T-shirts plastered with oversize logos or catchphrases like “I used to drink, but that was hours ago,” or “Shit I don’t have time for” followed by a list of that “shit” would be a step in the right direction.
28%
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I thanked him, and then he asked how many children I had. I told him I have five, and he said, “Well, they keep you young.” And I said, “Do they?” and he laughed heartily. (I could feel a friendship budding.)
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When I arrived home, they weren’t impressed at all. And they kept calling me Mummy. Rabble.
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I had oatmeal in the lounge and some orange juice and a croissant. I tried the tater tot things again and they were crisper this time. I love a potato cooked in any way, shape, or form.
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He’s ridiculously Italian. He just lives in Dublin. Christ, they’re everywhere.
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The caperberry itself is the fruit of the bush, and capers are the unopened buds of the flowers. Salted or brined, they have been part of the Mediterranean diet for centuries.
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I can’t really remember him eating anything other than fried eggs, toast, hamburgers, and steaks very well done, and potatoes in some form or another. No fish, no salads, no veg, and no wine. Only beer and lots of cigarettes.
29%
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It’s not only the travel itself that’s tiring, it’s the packing and unpacking that is equally so and, frankly, boring.
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We would also stop at Caldor, a now defunct chain of department stores. Caldor was the northeastern US’s postwar general store, and I loved wandering its well-stocked aisles, which held everything from clothing to tools, cookware, sports equipment, fishing gear, tents, sneakers, camping stoves, bicycles, bows and their arrows, BB guns, and a wide array of rifles and handguns.
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The food was very good, but there was so much of it that my stomach shut down after the third course and I could not eat the beautiful tagliata that the chef brought out.
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This evening we ate in a restaurant that was terrible. Actually, fucking terrible. It was so bad that I can’t even remember what I didn’t eat.
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All I can say is that things had spun out of control, because he had clearly lost all sense of what good food is supposed to be. Besides that, everything was served on oversize, slightly concave rectangular plates, which is a sure sign that the food will be awful. If you see those in any restaurant, do not cross that threshold.
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Then just make good food. Simply.
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If anyone wants or needs more than that, they should reassess their values.
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The decanting of liquids and creams into the appropriate-size containers if one is traveling with only carry-on luggage takes far too long. But inevitably, no matter how thorough one has been, there is one tube or bottle or sharp object that one has forgotten at the bottom of a bag that gets discovered by the scanner, and the embarrassing process of a blue-gloved security officer rifling through one’s intimate garments begins.
31%
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We always pack pasta, canned tomato, beans, a five-liter can of our favorite olive oil, the largest saucepan I have, risotto rice, wine, booze, a set of kitchen tongs, and my favorite knife. (I stupidly forgot to pack Parmigiano and kosher salt.)
Leila Jaafari
He's Glamping.
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It’s a strange thing about many British houses: all the money goes into the edifice and the garden, but the kitchen is an afterthought.
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I know parenting is never easy and every kid is different, but children need and want structure, and it is our obligation to give it to them. I am hardly perfect as a parent, but I always try my best to be fun, fair, and firm, and sometimes I’m successful.
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This morning Anita made a frittata, which she burned because she had put milk in it (not necessary at all and I should have said something) and didn’t move it continuously. We salvaged it by cutting off the unintended char and it was pretty good.
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For breakfast: eggs poached in marinara with a side of asparagus. Delicious.
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Our food was delayed for an inordinate amount of time because a customer had spilled a beer over the computer system or something, a fact that we only found out about upon our departure.
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As we waited and waited and waited, we did find it strange that no staff member ever alerted us that there would be a delay or explained what had happened.
32%
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In the end the owner’s apologies were tepid at best and he didn’t do what any good restaurateur would do, which is not charge for the wine or the dessert or something by way of compensating us for the long wait.