green things with bacon

Moving day was the easiest thing ever because I have nice friends. I carried like 2 boxes and handed out water, like one of those people on the sidelines at marathons and stuff. It made me feel involved without having to actually put in any physical effort. Now I have a real room with 4 walls instead of 3 walls and a cubicle divider, and I live near stores that sell more than chips, old cans of beans, and tall boys. Instead of eating chips for breakfast or waiting until I get to work to eat, I can make my own food again. I even started drinking coffee every morning because it makes me feel like a grown ass woman to drink my coffee and eat my eggs while I watch all the Pratt kids clogging up Myrtle with their portfolio bags. Aw, college kids. 

Oh, and there's a pizza place right on the corner...just in case. Oh my god, finally.

Self explanatory breakfast

Dinosaur kale salad with golden raisins, lil bits of bacon, walnuts, and pecorino romano.

I'm moving on Monday, which I'm really pumped about but I'm also totally dreading it. I've been trying to pack since last weekend since I'm sure I own more stuff than I think I do. But here I am a week later, with moving day looming over me, and I've only packed two boxes. I keep putting it off every hour, then every evening, then every afternoon...it's stupid. This is how I procrastinate:

I forget what's in here, I let the bartender decide. I do remember two things though: cucumber gin and beet juice. Remember when I used to hate beets? Dark times!

Kale pesto at Dudley's

At least when I put off important life tasks, I do it the right way.

noodles, three ways

Noodles are one of those foods that I have very low standards for--it takes a really crappy kind of noodle to make me not want to eat it. Not sure if that's a good thing, but noodles are like pizza and french fries. Even when it's bad, it's still good enough to eat. I swear, white starch foods are nature's crack. But luckily, there's no shortage of good noodles here in New York, so it's not often that I have to put up with too-soft noodles. That's usually when I cook them myself. Oops.

Knife sliced noodles with minced pork at Lam Zhou. I'm not sure what was in the sauce, but it tasted a lot like jajang myun.

 I didn't see knife-sliced noodles on the menu, but I just asked and the really grumpy lady said they make them. Being grouchy must be a prerequisite to working in any Chinatown establishment. The fact that I'm part Chinese and don't know how to say anything Chinese (besides thank you, happy New Year, and my last name) probably doesn't help.

Hand pulled noodles with oxtail

 

Oh, and Cocoron again. 

Soba is my ideal noodle because it's buckwheat and doesn't make my guts want to explode from fullness if I eat too much. Well, maybe it would, but I've never eaten piles and piles of soba. It feels too a little too classy to be the kind of food to shovel endlessly into my mouth.

 A new bodega opened on my corner a few months back. It's the most exciting thing to happen to my neighborhood since I moved in two years ago. They have kombucha and dairy-free ice cream and those Xochitil tortilla chips--it's been a dream. I guess that also says a little bit about what's happening to my neighborhood...thanks to the kombucha-drinking, kale-chip eating art school graduates like myself. Anyway, the best part about this new bodega is that I can finally start having bodega sandwiches again. My old usual bodega has been on a steady decline from "gross but tolerable" to "tolerable while intoxicated" to "so gross that you will die if you set foot in here." It really put a cramp in my breakfast sandwich cravings, which recently has involved adding lettuce and tomato to my bacon, egg, and cheese.

But it's all good now that the new bodega is here. I'm almost sad that I'm going to have to leave it when I move in two weeks.

But the move will bring me a little closer to Paisano's. I ordered a sandwich there for the first time, just for kicks. Everything but the bread was perfect.

 

Speck, pickled red peppers, harvati, and a little bit of oil and vinegar

This week is all about reality checks and keeping things in perspective before freaking out about them. And making peace with stupid things that should be left alone. I don't know what that has to do with any of this food, but I want to sound like I'm being thoughtful and wise, self-help book style. Is it working?

The best self-help method is to eat good food, which is something I do very well. I went to the Lobster Joint in Greenpoint, but there's one in the Lower East Side now, really close to my job. Actually a little bit too close. I know lobster rolls are expensive, but the Lobster Joint has a really good happy hour from 4 to 7. $4 sliders (lobster, fried oyster, crab cake), $4 beers, $4 cocktails, and some other stuff that I didn't bother looking at. Three lobster sliders comes out to just $12, but I'd say its the same amount of food as the lobster roll, which is $17.

 But that $17 also gets you all the sides. Chips are worth it, the pickle is worth it, the coleslaw is not. Not bad, just not exciting on it's own. It works better in a sandwich.

A slightly different photo of my sliders. From the right: fried oysters, coleslaw, a little tartar sauce; basically a lobster roll on a mini bun; mini crab cake and coleslaw. The Lobster Joint gets the frying right--crispy exterior, soft and/or flaky interior, and not greasy. The oyster slider was pretty good, but with choices like the crab cake and lobster, I won't get it again. Probably. Maybe.

Oh and I went to Cocoron last week.

 Their soba is so perfect.

I've been going through this phase (a really long phase) where I wake up in the middle of the night starving like crazy. And I can't go back to sleep unless I eat something. This is a huge reason why I haven't kept much food in the house lately, but I'm determined when I'm hungry, and I always find a way to eat something. It's usually not so bad, like I'll eat a few crackers and fall back asleep with crumbs on my face. But then sometimes it gets weird. One night I ate 2 bananas and a sheet of nori. I don't know why this is happening.

Maybe it's because I like to eat things like guacamole-topped, cheese-filled hot dogs during my waking hours and that just won't keep me full through the night. **Sidenote: I didn't know there was cheese in the hot dog til after I bit into it, but...I wasn't against it.

Or maybe because I eat things like this stupid radish and sweet pea salad to counteract the cheese filled hot dog. I tried to pretend it was awesome, but it was just okay and I was still feelin' crummy from the cheese dog. Besides, salad doesn't really keep you full either. So then 3 am rolls around and I'm hungry all over again. It's a vicious cycle that I've found myself stuck in.

oops

I don't know why, but this week I somehow spent over 24 hours without eating, and if you know me, I have to eat like every 3 hours to stay sane. So it would be pretty accurate to say that this was one of the worst things that has ever happened to me. True trauma.

But that made my first meal of the day even better--cheeseburger at Dudley's and truffle fries. I'm not sure how I managed to order this, since I was pretty delirious by the time I got there. I regret not eating all the fries.