it's here.

with a huge slice of shira's chocolate chip pumpkin bread, a stack of midterms to grade, and cold, rainy weather, it officially became fall.

pretty sure i am getting myself a new, giant scarf from here.

liz + ina

everything i want in one place: 30 rock and the barefoot contessa. big smiles.

can't stop, won't stop

still breakfast tacos over here. fresh corn tortillas as well.

ready for thanksgiving, when blake provides me with tacos every day i am in austin.

the BIGGEST

i have the BIGGEST craving for luby's today. i want the luann platter of my youth: fried chicken with mashed potatoes and macaroni & cheese, a butter roll, and an iced tea.

i would substitute the chicken for fried okra in my adult life.

and i'm back

i joined a CSA. today's excitement: bok choy, kale, squash, edamame, turnip.

definitely getting out of that food rut.

fat kids.

it's unfortunate that we have to do studies to prove this fact, but:

The University of Minnesota's Project Eat, under the direction of Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, continues to publish influential survey results showing, for example, that kids eat better when they have family dinners, are involved in food preparation and don't watch so much TV.

there's also this:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 34 percent of American adults are obese, up sharply over the past decade. Another 34 percent are overweight.

read the whole article here.

this really leads into my big idea that we cut down on bureaucracy and stigma towards kids who get free and reduced lunch by providing free lunch (family style) to all elementary school kids. i am positive (though i have yet to do the research) that it would cost about the same as figuring out who gets what and how and at what price. maybe even hire cafeteria workers who can cook... i know it's sounds a bit communist but i am positive i am onto something...

muscadined.

muscadine grapes are hard to eat, but tasty as hell. the local delights have seeds, which we are not so used to anymore, as grapes have seemingly been mutated to be seedless for at least my lifetime. muscadine grapes also have a thick skin. really thick.

thick enough for many people not to eat it, which is exactly what i eventually learned to do.

they are awesome, like drinking the best grape juice or a mild wine. but you have to work.
i would love to go back to this meal, of toasted sourdough with melted white cheddar, tomatoes, and sprouts, with sauteed spinach and onions. and the grapes. i think i am going to make dinner now, but i know there are no sprouts in the fridge, which is frustrating because this photograph makes me crave them.

wait, what?

tina just sent me an email that said, "spam is the number one food in hawaii."

i am not really sure what to do with this information but it makes me uncomfortable.

bitter melon.

i bought a bitter melon yesterday in the farmers' market. it was so weird-looking and pretty. and the farmer told me how to cook it and everything.

it was WAY too bitter. i spit it out and threw away all the pieces from dinner.

be careful. watch that melon (which is really not a melon at all).

miniature food book.

so i have a handful of these little books (from paragraph cove) that are approximately one inch by one inch. the paper is inconsistent--some of the pages are lined, or graph paper, or a map, and so forth.

i drew little food pictures in one today for my friend, lindsey. i have included the highlights; i am not an incredible artist, but i think it's pretty cute.


she's in paris with her girlfriend. i hope that, when she sees it, she says, "je l'adore!"

ERGH.

the corn farmers want to change the name of HFCS to corn sugar.

seriously, i could hurt someone; this makes me incredibly angry.

heaven.

i almost forgot that i LOVE sprouts. especially in a hot sandwich. when i worked at a cafe in college, we made one vegetarian sandwich and it had avocado, swiss, tomatoes, sprouts, and dijon mustard, toasted on a baguette. this morning's sandwich was reminiscent of that one, but with a fried egg (obviously).

sourdough with havarti (which reminds me of liz), sprouts, avocado, and fried egg.

i am crazy looking here because i am un-caffeinated and starving. i have since recovered.

i can't be trusted.

i got salsa in my library book.

round-up.

sometimes, i forget to post the deliciousness and then i see all the photographs in my iphoto and curse myself. lots of sandwiches and coffee and breakfast and some eggs that are not fried.

august 29th: "the say goodbye to summer." rye toast with quark, granny smith apple, slice of cantaloupe, hard-boiled egg, salad of okra, peppers, and the last of the summer corn.

september 4th: "tastes like breakfast at 503." fried egg sandwich with arugula and tomato on whole wheat, with carrots, round yellow cucumber, and avocado.
september 7th: "the greasiest." grilled cheese with cheddar and tomato, black-eyed peas with onions and serrano, purple and gold potatoes with garlic and olive oil and sea salt.
september 9th: "a once-diet breakfast." salad of tomato, cucumber, carrots, and red leaf lettuce, with a hard-boiled egg, cantaloupe, and pear.
and soon, my findings on food safety. i've got to keep up on the policy front. i don't want to fall behind on the blog when i am learning so much. today's just not the day i want to think about the government.

girls gone wild.

in which lindsey and i talk about candy via gchat. (please understand that is only part of the conversation. i HAD to post it. it's too good. the nerdiest.)

me: one beer

lindsey: ONE beer?

me: one big beer.

lindsey: a growler?

me: if i buy a lot, i drink a lot.

no

like 20 oz

lindsey: like me and ice cream

8:39 PM or me and M&ms

or me and any reasonable crunchy chocolate

me: anyone and m&ms

lindsey: totally

me: those things are addicting

lindsey: they are!

the pretzel m&m's!

me: my parents used to keep big bags of them in the freezer

lindsey: i could eat them by the bucket

me: the regular kind

lindsey: so crunchy salty sweet

mmmm

or the almond ones...

anything except the peanut butter ones. disgusting. really. why do they taste like that? ugh.

plain ones are also great.

8:40 PM me: my mom gave me a bag of the pretzel ones and yelena and i ate them at the bar one night

lindsey: the crunchy rice krispie m*m was evil

me: like children

lindsey: YUMMMMM

me: you have tried so many!!

lindsey: that sounds so good and so nauseating

they have coconut m&ms too

me: eh.

lindsey: they are great!

the pretzel ones are my favorite

me: i like pretzel, peanut, peanut butter. that's it.

lindsey: what else do they have? dark chocolate ones.

me: the plain are my fave.

lindsey: also, flavored ones in "premium" size.

8:41 PM me: oh yes, dark choc.

lindsey: minty, or cherry.

me: the best.

lindsey: i miss the tan colored plain ones

me: me too

lindsey: i'm sad they added blue

me: my absolute favorite

lindsey: mine too

me: i hate blue

lindsey: i voted in the color choice poll

i wanted violet

me: i think i chose purple

8:42 PM i guess violet

i also hate red

lindsey: lol

me: i think they taste weird.

lindsey: i like chocolate as you know, so i think the brown ones are my favorite. the dark brown.

me: but i am sure it is psychosomatic

lindsey: but i don't really care about the color.

8:43 PM me: yes, i like the brown ones, too.

or yellow.

why? who knows?

when we were in middle school, we heard the green ones made you horny

lindsey: have you tried chocolate skittles? i am too scared to try them.

i don't even like skittles normally, so there's little incentive.

me: i almost spit out my beer when i wrote that

lindsey: LMAO

fancy fancy.

right before i left new york, i purchased the new moleskine recipe journal. i felt as though i needed a place to keep all the random recipes, instead of in a jumble of a box of cut-outs, xeroxes, and emails. so, as i cook them, i am going to write them in the journal and recycle the paper scrap. i started today, with tina's banana bread recipe. i've made this recipe a million times and it took me 30 minutes to find it.

i am pretty sure my friend liz would be happy about this planned organization. she probably thinks my current system is actually not a system at all.

back to the grind.

fully into school at this point: finished week three, which included a policy analysis on food safety and the first economics problem set. i am now onto reading heart of power, which is this smart, thorough-yet-not-too-long history of healthcare from fdr to obama. i am ready for the part when lbj forces everyone to do everything he wants. he's my favorite bully.

and every weekday breakfast is yogurt: usually plain, full fat. sometimes greek, if it is on sale. i am still eating a lot of brown cow yogurt, waxing poetic about milk thistle.

a sweet one.

so i took my jar of honey over to shira's and stood in her kitchen and ate it with apples and round challah and explained rosh hashanah to her roommate. then we went to durham and ate falafel and had a really sephardic holiday overall.

of course i spilled honey in my purse on the way over. it was only a little bit of honey bit a whole lot of sticky.

l'shana tova.

like 5 minutes ago.

shira asks, "you are eating a sandwich for breakfast?" my response, "it's a fried egg sandwich." "oh," she says, " i love those."

labor day means friends come over for coffee on a weekday morning.

the babies.

no, not human babies. baby carrots.

i hate baby carrots. (yes, i found the only photograph in my library with baby carrots.) they are weird and watery and wasteful, as the producers take naturally-sized carrots and slim them into a hand-held shape. what a waste of delicious.

a bunch of carrot farmers, as they call themselves, are rebranding baby carrots to be competitive with junk food. this, on some level, is really awesome. maybe kids will eat more carrots instead of combos or pork rinds or doritos or whatever they eat these days. but the advertising is to trick them into it. i guess that's what all advertising does, right? go here.

and then! they became "the world's most xtreme snack." and will have an iphone app. god forbid.

they are CARROTS. delicious, delicious carrots. not a video game.

out in front.

tracy and i were WAY ahead of the curve on this infused liquor craziness. let's look back.

go here. and here. the nytimes "tipsy diaries" have nothing on us. oh, frank bruni.