Back in 2010-2011ish I had a horrible office job. Actually it wasn’t just an office, it was a call center for a hotel chain and I talked to roughly 80 people per day (a millennial nightmare!). I often volunteered to take the 6:45am-3pm shift, if only because the lines weren’t so busy before 8am and I knew that statistically, I would get yelled at less. During that one relatively quiet hour I read* three food blogs: Smitten Kitchen, La Tartine Gourmande and Not Eating Out in New York.
They all had a huge influence on my career in food media, but as you could probably already guess: it’s Not Eating Out in New York that stuck with me the most. I don’t eat out a lot these days for three main reasons:
money, honey
I was very ill in 2022 and ended up with permanent nerve damage, some of which I suspect extends into my digestive tract. The stabbing pain it causes is frequently triggered by meals with a high ratio of fat, meaning most restaurant meals are going to upset my stomach. Sometimes really delicious food is worth it! But most of the time it’s easier to cook for myself and know I’m going to go to bed pain-free.
I’ve never been able to wrap my head around wasting food. If there’s food at home, I feel deeply obligated to eat it before it goes bad. And there’s always something that needs to get used up, isn’t there?
What needs to get used up today is Spring vegetables. The peas are sending out shoots in every direction and where there is nothing but thin air, they grab onto neighboring pea plants and start to wrestle. Tonight I’ll trim away those neighborly disputes and stir-fry them hot and fast with tat soi from a few rows over.
I’ll serve the veg with white rice, chili crisp, and a dish from deeeeeep in the NEOINY archives: steamed eggs. I think I’ll sub in stock for the water because as I learned yesterday, the bottom drawer of my upstairs freezer is apparently where jars of liquid go to die. Along with the chickpea broth I used last night, I found an undated Weck labeled, “beef, leek and mushroom.” That makes a lot of sense with eggs and white pepper, don’t you think? A grapefruit Spindrift and half a blue dream gummy as a little treat on the side because it’s Friday, baby!
P.S. If you don’t follow Cathy’s dog Doug, why are you even on Instagram?
*I also built a standing desk out of printer paper boxes, doodled all over it with colorful markers and “drove everyone crazy,” a direct quote from my most senior boss. Restaurant people like me are really unemployable in any other industry!