Mangia!

There is something about Sunday night that means something to me. This time of year especially, my relationship with Sunday night is a catch-22. There are the “Sunday blues” as my mother referred to them when I was growing up since all of a sudden I would get a stomach ache after the sun went down (every week). Her theory was that it was because the weekend was over and I was getting anxious about school the next day. I think I still get a small case of Sunday night blues sometimes. No one likes the weekend to end, but maybe it was because Sunday was so much fun at the same time that added insult to injury. In my house, I grew up with Sundays as a part of my family culture. My dad would spend the day in the living room screaming at the NFL games on TV. The house would be filled with the noise of the crowds cheering on TV, the musical football theme songs the channels would play, and my dad literally lying on the floor and screaming “no no no!” if the Jets blew it. My mom would be in the kitchen making baked ziti, and my dad would wander into the kitchen every now and then to check on the sauce. I spent the day doing homework, playing in the fall leaves, (or snow), and wandering into the kitchen every now and then to dip a piece of italian bread into the pot of sauce. I frequently did this with my friend Kristen, who spent many Sundays with me at my house. We would even do our homework together just so we could keep our play dates. Dinner time was always baked ziti with lots of sauce, bread, and salad. As I got older I was able to add red wine to my dinner menu. Friends were always allowed to eat with us, and most of the time they did. It was the only night of the week that we ate in the dining room, and dinner sometimes lasted 3 hours. The sun goes down early this time of year, and cold dark nights only made staying in the house and getting full that much more fun.

Something about Sunday has stuck with me, despite the fact that I don’t have my own family yet to make sauce for. I know maybe 4 things about football, yet many weeks I have the games on in my apartment mainly for the comfortable background noise. I still get a little anxious about Monday morning being the awful day that follows fall/winter Sundays, but I still love to eat a lot and then crawl under covers for hours of rest. I don’t make a baked ziti for myself, but here is what I made last night: a healthy girls Sunday night dinner where pasta doesn’t have to be excluded and I get three servings of vegetables (yes, three!)

I begin with my three vegetables: garlic, spinach, and tomato. I cook my whole wheat elbow pasta, and put to the side in the colander. In a separate pan, I heat extra virgin olive oil.








Once heated I add the spinach, tomato and garlic and sauté on medium heat until the spinach and tomato are wilted and before the garlic starts to darken.













(all finished being heated)














I pour the pasta back into the pot and then add the contents from the pan, and marry the ingredients on very low heat to allow the flavors to carry into the pasta (about 3 minutes). Pour into dish, sprinkle black pepper on top and enjoy.












This meal is so easy, took less than 20 minutes to make, and is super healthy! In my new revised Sunday night dinner I had 2 servings of whole grains, three servings of vegetables, and 2 servings of healthy fat (from the olive oil). There are no added sugars, no artificial ingredients, and no preservatives in this meal. This is my wonderful way of keeping tradition, while adjusting for my dietary desires. :)



Here's to cold dark nights that are neither cold, nor dark.

a saturday night that made my heart smile

I stopped babysitting at the end of summer 2009. I was beginning the never ending journey that would be graduate school, and starting a new job as a tutor in Ft Greene Brooklyn. For a while I had returned to “corporate life” (although my corporate experiencesworking for high end fitness companies certainly weren’t typical). But when one mom texted me randomly that her now 7 year old daughter had been asking about me, I surrendered to my belief that “I’m too old to be babysitting” and told her to keep me in mind. All the kids I once watched are growing up; I suppose I am growing up too. Weird. The little girls father has a PhD in Public Health, and I find her parents to be more like mentors and friends who offer me only the best advice, rather than a couple I “sit for”. They are a great family, and I was so happy to hear from them.

So, one recent Saturday night I found myself on Park Avenue with some crazy Saturday night plans. There was the 7 year old little girl who is well spoken, dramatic, and bright; her Wheaton terrier dog named ginger, and myself. And I had so much fun with this amazing and special young lady.
For starters she could be my little sister, or my daughter in another universe. She is tall, with skinny limbs, and has blonde hair (like I had as a kid). She wears glasses and says “Oh my god you HAVE to see this!” in a dramatic fashion, also reminding me of myself when I was her age, (and well, still). She hugs me as soon as I walk into the apartment and leads me into her room where she has games already picked out for us. I told her that because it is Saturday night we can do much more then on a school night, and that it was going to be a fabulous girls night. She loved this idea. Mom and Dad took off (she says to me: “mom and dad are having a DATE, and she uses her fingers to put quotations around the word “date”) and after making bead necklaces for an hour, we were ready for dinner. Time to order the Chinese food.
When dinner arrived, I told her to have a seat while I made her plate. She likes chicken and broccoli. I had a plate of vegetables, tofu, and cashews. We had white rice and brown rice in cartons. I scooped brown rice onto her plate. “Can I have some white rice too?” she asks. “Yes you can, but I am going to give you half and half and you need to eat both ok? Because the brown rice is where all the nutrients are so you can stay healthy”. “Ok!” she says. Just like that. And as she scooped the brown rice up with her fork she even sang “Yum Yum, I am eating my VITAMINS”. That-a-girl. I am so proud. Over dinner we chat.

Me: “Have you been to a slumber party yet?”

“No, what do you do at a slumber party?”

“Oh it’s great! You’ll start going to them soon, maybe next year. One of your friends will have a birthday party, and all the girls bring their sleeping bags, and pajamas. You eat pizza, do each others hair, dance, and stay up all night! You’re super cranky the next day from not sleeping, but it is worth it because it is so much fun. It is a great part of growing up”

“Oh. I wouldn’t want to do that unless my mom and dad came”

“Nah. In a year or two you will be ready I promise. It is just like how you and I are spending our night tonight, except with all your school friends.”
(pause as she absorbs this concept of staying up all night…)

“Jessica…you’re nice. Can you read me a story tonight before bed? My other babysitter reads to me all the time, but I can’t always understand her because she has a Spanish accent” (I need to note, she wasn’t saying this in a mocking way. This is a classic example of kids telling it like it is).

I replied, “You got it sista. Whatever you want”
(pause for more eating as she asks me to cut her chicken into smaller bites).

“Jessica, when I’m 21 will you have a baby?”

“Well sweetheart. When you are 21 I will be 40. So, I hope so, I hope I have a baby by then, but I can’t say for sure whether I will or not”. “Why?” I asked. “You want to be my babysitter? I will need one for my “date” nights, (I do the same quotation gesture she used on me earlier when saying the word “date”) and you will be old enough”. She jumps up from her chair and says “Yes yes yes!” nodding her head with each “yes”. Eh, well. There’s one problem solved, 14 years in advance.

After dinner it was time to walk the dog.
During our walk she throws both her arms around my waist and admits that she is scared. “I am scared when I walk outside at night. I am scared of the dark” (puts her head down embarrassed) …”I still have a nightlight”.

I look down at her and say “that’s ok. You’re 7, you’re allowed to have a nightlight, it doesn’t make you any less of a woman”. We circle the block once, going down an avenue, over a block, and back up again. During this time she tells me story after story about her friends until she stops and says…
“wait. what was I saying? I forgot. I talk too much. Sometimes I talk so much that my throat hurts”. I burst out laughing and say “oh man, you really are just like me! It’s exhausting always having something to say isn’t it?” And she laughs too and agrees. I love talking to her. She isn't a baby anymore. She absorbs what I say, and when I teach her something new (like how to sign her name in sign language, or how to say "nice to meet you" in spanish) she says "ohhhh I get it nowww", and it feels amazing. I want nothing but the best for this one.

We returned to the apt with about an hour to spare before her bed time. This was just enough time to bake some brownies, allow her to do my makeup, and then wash up for bed. While baking, she runs over to the cd player and asks to play a cd. It is Colbie Calleit and the song “brighter than the sun” comes bursting on. As we eat dessert and I allow her to put blue eye shadow all over my lids, we still find time to dance to the music in the living room. It was a real party. I was rocking blue eye shadow and a side ponytail by the time she was done with me. With dessert and makeovers behind us, she brushes her teeth, finds her pajamas, and picks out the Wizard of Oz for me to read to her before bed. I lay on the right side of the bed, she on the left, and ginger at the foot of the bed. I did the “good witch” voice, and the “bad witch” voice, and the “I’ll get you my pretty” voice. It was 9pm, and the little girl and not so little dog were fast asleep.



(Looking at ginger this way because she was nudging her nose all over my, ahem, chest...)

My Communal Lunch

Earlier today I found myself in one of those situations where you look around and actually enjoy the present moment. You know, really soak it in. I had spent the morning in the library studying, and decided to get lunch before heading to the gym. I don’t like eating alone. I don’t like watching others eat alone either, it just makes me really sad. I justified my eating alone with the fact that I had tons of papers I could read to further study for my midterm this Wednesday. If I have reading, then sitting alone doesn’t feel so lonely. I went to Le Pain on 84th and Madison. They are across the street from my gym, support sustainable farming, and their food is awesome. I had my small painful moment where I confirmed with the man seating me “yes, just me, just one”, and he placed me at the large community table. For those who haven’t been to a Le Pain Quotidien, they are French in style and food and while there are many small tables for individual parties, there is also the giant communal table where people from different groups all sit together. Since it was a packed Saturday, I definitely wasn’t going to get my own table, but I was OK with that. They squeezed my one chair into a place at the big table. Even though I was there alone, I was surrounded by at least 15 other people. We shared the jams and jellies for our bread, and menus that were in the center of the large wooden table.
To my right was an older couple, seemingly grumpy. When the woman sat next to me, she tapped my shoulder and said “could you move over at least a little?” (I hadn’t even seen her yet, of course I would move! Gese!) Across the table and staring back at me, a French woman with a thick accent and her (I would guess) 11 year old daughter, who clearly spoke all the English in the family. To my left, a sweet older couple, the woman in a gorgeous Burberry wrap, the husband in a baseball cap. And across from the sweet couple, (next to the French woman) were the sweet couples friends, two men, who were partners. I sat there with my orange juice, whole wheat bread, and apricot jam; reading my notes on how the industrial revolution changed public health and brought about two cholera epidemics in NYC. Every few seconds I would look up at the people to my left and observe how much fun they were having with one another. Finally, the sweet woman next to me says “what are you studying?” I replied “history of public health principles….for my midterm…(smile).” “Oh that’s wonderful, where do you go?” “NYU”. Then she smiles at me and says “you are a very sweet, and pretty girl, I wish my son was here!” The couple across from us starts laughing and I laughed too. We went about our meals for a few seconds, but they were talking about museums in the city, and I really wanted people to talk to. I looked up and made eye contact with one of the men across the table, and he included me in the conversation. Jackpot. I am making friends at this lunch and I am not eating alone. “What do you think about the Guggenheim?” he asks me. “Well, actually I’ve never been! I just walk past it all the time! I always return to the museum of natural history and the Met”. “Oh, we just came from the Met!” both men said at the same time, and now we are all smiling and talking about how awesome the Met is. The French woman keeps shooting us over some looks; I think she was taken back at how I jumped into these peoples lunch. It wasn’t until one of the men kept pronouncing tabouli wrong that she jumped in and with her perfect French accent and said “ It’s tabouli!”
“Oh! You’re French! Here, how do you say this?” (I was cracking up, they were asking her how to pronounce the name of the restaurant, which, after 8 years of eating here I can’t pronounce either). Now the French woman was in on our lunch, and explaining to us not only the name of the restaurant but how it means “breaking bread” sorta. A way of saying daily bread, or to break bread together, which makes sense considering the restaurant has the communal table. “Eh, eh, how do you say?” and her daughter looks up from her plate and says in a perfect Manhattan accent: “pastry”. “Eh yes! Pastry!”
She continues now to talk about how this restaurant reminds her of home, except in France they spend more time having wine and cheese at the communal table then they do tabouli and lentil salads. “They don’t have wine here” she says, and then out of nowhere, grumpy woman to my right chimes in with the menu in her hand “Oh no, they do! They do have wine here!” I look at her and smile, and agree that wine and cheese is my absolute favorite. “Oh yea, definitely!” The two men say, again, at the same time. Now we are all eating together. “So are you from New York?” The sweet mom asks me. We small talked for a bit, I explained where I was from and what I was doing, and she told me how she has two sons, one is earning his masters degree right now in Scotland, in English Literature. The couple, who her husband and she were lunching with this day, were friends of theirs. All four of them are vegans. I explained that I would be a vegan, if I didn’t love cheese so much. The French woman told me to start buying Brie cheese from France only, because it is substantially better. Noted.
I ate a steel cut oatmeal with banana, maple syrup, and pecans. They all ordered giant salads and platters of lentils, hummus, mini sandwiches and soups. Everything looked and tasted great. I put my notes to the side, and spent the meal chatting with everyone about wine, cheese, museums, and the quality of the food here at the restaurant. I didn’t eat alone. When I got my bill, I stood up and told everyone it was lovely to meet them, and 8 voices replied back “oh it was nice to meet you! Have a nice day!” The sweet mother who was to my left said “Oh I hope I run into you again here”, (still disappointed she couldn’t be a matchmaker this day). It was a great lunch, and I had a moment where I was thinking how happy I am that I like to talk to people. Lunch could have been lonely, but it wasn’t because I took advantage of the communal table. Way to go Le Pain. Breaking bread with people and enjoying company around good food and wine really is what it’s all about.

I should warn you, I will be blunt here

If you haven’t already seen the movie Food Inc, I beg of you to Netflix immediately. This film, although rather young, is considered a classic and should be watched by anyone who well, eats. The film discusses slaughterhouses, environmental issues caused by our food systems, food contamination/safety, the mistreatment of immigrant workers, expensive healthy food, and the absolutely mind boggling story that is the history of Monsanto. It is so much more than a few hours of cow killing footage to scare you into never eating meat again. It is smart, well written, and encourages consumers to be knowledgeable on what they are eating, and to be aware of just how powerful their purchases are. I push this movie onto anyone who will listen, because I believe in its message so strongly.

As an already current vegetarian, I don’t need to see cows being slaughtered to convince me of my dietary choice. However, my reason for being a vegetarian is not because I think humans are not meant to consume meat. It is, as the film will show you the American system of producing beef, poultry and fish that keeps my plate looking the way it is: meatless. Author Michael Pollan is a commentator in the film and brings to our attention how we walk through the aisles of the grocery store seeing pictures of farmers, pastures, and 1930’s barns on our food packaging. But this advertisement is just that, an advertisement. Because our meat and dairy is not coming from a farm anymore, it is coming from a factory. In fact, it is coming from about 13 factories. Yep. In our whole nation, we only have 13 slaughterhouses now providing us our meat. Billions of pounds coming out of 13 doors, picture it. There is no man with a straw hat calling cows in from a day in the grass. Four companies control over 80% of the market. And with science and technology, factory farms are now mass producing our food even if it means cutting back in other areas such as safety and quality. Here is a scary part of the movie summed up for you: when E. Coli broke out in our meat, and people started dying, rather than improve our quality assurance (E.Coli spreads between cows mostly through feces, which since the cows are kept so close to one another in unsanitary conditions, is an easy situation to arise), food science gave us meat “fillers” with ammonia in them. Meat fillers would be combined with our ground beef, the ammonia would kill any e.coli, and now we don’t have to worry about the bacteria anymore. We can keep the cows standing in their own fecal matter, and voila, we even have a new product to bring in revenue.

I am a firm believer in”you are what you eat”. If you eat a depressed cow, you are eating depressed beef, and therefore will not feel as wonderful as someone who is eating a happy bird, or better yet a plate of organic leafy greens that the sun fed. My first thought while watching the film is “why so greedy? Why can’t we just have more small individual farms, more grass grazing animals, and less of a psycho production goal?” It is a reminder that business and food are two separate teams, and nowhere in the rule book under profits does it say “just make sure to not make too much; it is unhealthy, glutinous, not sustainable and morally wrong”.

You will also learn about some of these factories recruiting workers in Mexico, and bringing them into our country, illegally. Here in the states, immigrant workers take these jobs at below minimum wage, in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. To avoid a police raid, bad press, and the chance of outsiders seeing the inside; factory bosses submit small lists to the police on a routine basis, and workers are arrested in their homes and deported back to their country. Workers are easily replaced since they are on assembly lines and not given more than one simple responsibility to do over and over again. In exchange for these arrests, the police look the other way and never raid a factory, where we can imagine they are well aware of the illegal working situation that is present. The food companies know well who they are hiring; they put a huge effort into recruiting these workers themselves. While watching this portion of the film, one cannot help but think it seems as if our American dream is built on the sacrifice of others.

Author Marion Nestle (professor at NYU, author of Food Politics, Safe Food, and What to Eat) writes about just how political our food system is, and Food Inc touches on this as well. We learn of Montsanto (the seed company which owns 90% of our nations soy beans) VIP’s moving on in their career to occupy positions in the FDA (Food and Drug Administration responsible for many policies, and plays a large role in food safety), and becoming Supreme Court judges. The exchange in positions may be considered a conflict of interest to you, and it should be. I wonder how this hasn’t been figured out sooner. We rely on our FDA and USDA to protect us, but we have no idea who the faces of these organizations are. If the people who are hired to protect us have roots with the companies who have capitalized our food system, how honest are our policies? We may live in a seemingly democratic country, but we do not have a democratic food system.

The main message is that there is a huge effort in keeping consumer information low, and profits high in the food business. As Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) says “they know that if you knew, you might not want to buy it”. It is all about the sale. Quite honestly, our food system is frightening, and everyone needs to know about it. We have a small number of people controlling a gigantic industry, and we aren’t talking about companies who produce toy sail boats for kids; we are talking about our food. This is what we eat; this affects our life span, our health, and therefore our medical bills and healthcare needs. So it is financial. This system affects our soil, our one planet earth with our always growing human population. So it is environmental. And the system we have now is not sustainable. This should be priority, and yet the power is shifted so strikingly to one side. Ultimately, it will fail. It may not be in my lifetime, but we know it will fail.

What I love about the film is that it does not leave us with the tragic conclusion I just drew upon, America as a developing country low on nature made food and water. Instead, just like a new business draws a business plan with proof of success in other markets, our cast reminds us to look at tobacco and how a once ruling product was eventually dethroned. We cannot sit at the dinner table with our children knowing that they are eating food products rather than simply food, or worse, meat fillers. We vote with each purchase in the food store, and we haven’t lost the war yet. Be knowledgeable about where your food comes from, and your business will eventually make change happen.

Below is the trailer for food inc, so you can get a feel for it and be motivated enough (if my writing didn’t do it for you today) to go out and rent it. Also, I highly recommend all the books mentioned in this blog, as the authors mentioned are all insanely intelligent people in the food world, and certainly the kind of people I aspire to be like one day. They are my heroes.

daily inspiration

This little piggie has had a difficult time writing this week, and I apologize for October being empty until now. I am working on it, and will have a new article for you to read very soon, quite possibly before the long weekend is over (I do have Monday AND Tuesday off and am oober excited about it).

In the meantime, I want to share a few things. I try (and very often succeed) to find inspiration in every day. Sometimes a certain song does it, so I play it over and over again on my Ipod. Other times it can be a meal, or going to a certain part of the city. Watching shows on countries I plan to travel to inspires me. Looking at images of rainforests, or exotic animals remind me how absolutely amazing our earth is. Very often a dance class is what does it for me. Today, this 14 year old girl inspired me. Not only did her voice give me goosebumps, it was her delivery of the lyrics that made me feel something. Talent is a beautiful thing. I want to share it with you! Secondly, I am happy to report that I am officially caffeine free in the body and actually feeling "normal". I did it. Weeks of headaches and sleepiness, but I did it! I've proven that if you want something bad enough, you can do it.
Jessica: 1 Coffee: 0 Enjoy the holiday weekend everyone, enjoy the video and in honor of Steve Jobs, the quotes.



"because the people who think they are crazy enough to change the world, are the ones who do"

"the only way to do great work, is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on"

"have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you want to become"

~~steve jobs.