My March diary: White bread and a $5 NYC meal

A lookback on March—what I ate, made, and read (and my unsolicited thoughts on airport food).   

🍠 Home cooking

Cooking was uninspiring this month. I was kept busy with life and was, in typical March fashion, pining for new seasonal produce. My favorite things to eat this month were a string of similar dishes, made with an ever-growing pile of Farm to People sweet potatoes and Rancho Gordo beans.  

The beans were Mantequilla, a white bean from the Q1 Rancho Gordo bean club shipment—overcooked a touch, but still bright and savory with a light, clean broth.

The first day I left the beans in their broth, adding a dollop of  yogurt and a handful of kale microgreens. For the next, I sautéed already-steamed sweet potato from the fridge with the strained beans, then added yogurt and a dressed handful of baby kale. Substantial, but not too heavy, after a long winter of hearty dishes. 

In my mad dash to clean out the fridge before our trip Salt Lake City, I popped the remaining pints of beans in the freezer. After our return, I thawed and sautéed them again with yet another steamed sweet potato (down to three sweet potatoes, pray for me) and a healthy sprinkling of a Berbere blend from Burlap and Barrel. This time, I also added crumbled Bulgarian feta from Precycle. 

The steamer basket is new, a random purchase by Skylar, and has been getting a good workout on broccoli and sweet potatoes. I’d love to hear what you steam. 

I put in an order to Gustiamo, the Italian importer in the Bronx, after reading about it in Bread and How To Eat It by Rick Easton (more on that soon) and in anticipation for our upcoming Italian honeymoon. After discovering cauliflower rice in the freezer, I made

carla lalli music

’s Spaghetti with Melted Cauliflower using Faella spaghetti from Gustiamo. I’ve made this recipe a few times and found it a little bland sans anchovies, but the ($10! eek) Faella pasta made a difference. I followed the recipe closely but left out the anchovies, of course, and added a shredded, bendy zucchini the had been wilting in the fridge. 

🔪 Chores 

I was embarrassed to bring our chef’s knives to Korin for a much-needed sharpening. I took a knife skills class last year and learned how to sharpen knives at home, but ours hadn’t been sharpened ever (!) and I knew they needed a pro’s touch. I’m happy with how they turned out—and, to reassure the real chefs, I added a monthly home sharpening to my calendar. 

I cleaned out the freezer earlier in the month and discovered frozen blueberries from last summer. I made whole wheat blueberry whey muffins with a recipe from Yogurt and Whey (thank you to Eric for letting me borrow your muffin tin). They were nice! I popped most of them back in the freezer for emergencies. 

I also did some light kitchen reorganizing, wanting to take advantage of some dead space in the corner between our cabinets and the wall. I installed cheap tension rods and hung up random utensils from S hooks. I reorganized our lazy susan and kitchen island, too, but it needs a reshuffling again, I think. Such is the plight of an apartment kitchen. 

🌱 The Garden

Spring! Thank god. It felt great to start putting my garden plan into action. I sowed peppers, nasturtium, straw flowers, basils, tarragon, oreganos, kale, chard, snapdragons, and more under the inside grow lights. In the backyard, I direct-sowed peas and transplanted the perhaps-still-too-young kale plants.

Another chore: I collected and mailed a soil sample to RxSoil (I think I learned about them from The Seasonal Homestead). They send a pre-paid collection box to you and email your results with amendment recommendations. I wasn’t surprised to learn my beds could use more nitrogen, and I added blood meal to my garden prep cart. (I will add in compost and worm castings again, as well.) 

🥗 Eating in the City

After a haircut in Chinatown, I went to Xi’an Famous Foods on Lombard, happy to notice they are open again on Sundays. I got the tofu custard which I think is the best meal you can get in NYC for under $5. (I also picked up a large jar of their chili crisp.) It was one of those March days when the wind and threatening clouds encourage a quick commute home, but I put my fresh blowout on the line for a walk to an errand in the East Village. Afterward, I decided to push my luck and head over to Jane Cookshop, a cute shoppy-shop I discovered on Instagram. I bought a wooden spoon, ladle, and metal plate for food styling, which Skylar said was giving “gold panning for hot girls.” 

The plate, featuring the jug I bought in Connecticut and the portrait painted by my great-grandfather of his cat. <3

A group of my friends and I took a croissant-making class at Atelier Sucre, and beforehand we met up at Ruffian, a wonderful wine bar across the street. We shared small plates and natty wine. The food was great, and we were all obsessed their Khmeli Suneli chili oil, a Georgian spice mix. I will have to make this at home. The croissant class was quite fun, though I don’t think I’ll be making croissants at home any time soon…

🥖 Travel

I accompanied my friend Meg up to Connecticut to pick up a rug she won at an auction (how chic!). We collected the rug in West Hartford and got an early lunch at Zohara, where we overate on salatim before our main course. Everything was delicious, and I was reminded of the excellent combination that is whipped feta, honey, and pistachio.  

A couple weeks later, I flew to meet my parents and my sister’s family (and my husband, who was in L.A.) in Salt Lake City for a spring break trip. The Delta girlies know the food situation at JFK Terminal 4... I simply cannot have one more awful $22 Caesar salad (and don’t get me started on the coffee options), so I packed my own lunch. I usually make focaccia and granola for plane snacks but had too much to do before I left town, so I picked up a baguette at The Tipsy Baker in the course level of 30 Rock, where I work. The morning I flew out I made a simple sandwich with butter, Burlap and Barrel Paprikash mustard, thinly sliced radishes, and some delicious Hook’s Cheese Company pepper jack cheese. I threw the remaining baguette in the freezer to be resurrected after our return. I peeled an orange, too, and packed it into a Stasher bag with a fork. Since I had wrapped the sandwich in parchment paper it was easy to eat without direct hand contact  (important on a plane!). I need to figure out a protein-forward, packable veggie sandwich for next time. Is tempeh fine at room temp? Or should I start packing an ice pack?

In Salt Lake, since we were with young kids, dining out was less adventurous, but we enjoyed our meals at Laziz Kitchen and Nomad East (Skylar and I shared a Cobb salad, minus bacon, and it was one of the best salads I’ve had in a minute). 

📖 Reading

I finished reading White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf by Aaron Bobrow-Stain, a book I saw referenced by bread artist Lexie Smith in this charming interview. The book was a fascinating history of American industrial bakeries and how public health messaging, xenophobia, and the industrialization of the American food system created the grocery store loaf of enriched white bread. (I will say, the book fell apart in its sorta waffly thesis connecting these ideas to unhealthy food shaming, i.e. don’t blame people for the food they have access to. That idea could be well-argued, I think, but the connections in the book were weak and felt rushed.) 

In March, I also read Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti (yay) and The Light Room by Kate Zambreno (nay), and I ordered a copy of

Lukas Volger

’sVeggie Burgers, Every Which Way in a bid to finally get good at homemade veggie burgers. 

🍷 Nice reads and things

• I appreciated this piece by

  Charlie Brown
  about how she chooses a bottle of wine. I loosely know what I like and what I don’t like, but don’t feel knowledgeable enough to waver outside my “keywords,” especially in less curated, non-organic wine shops, but I felt more confident after reading this. (One of Charlie’s wine consultations could be a fun gift!).  

• Behind a paywall now, but

  Harling Ross Anton
  ’s collection of fun plates re-inspired me to set up eBay and Etsy alerts for my growing collection of strange, interesting ceramics. 

• This is a great piece by

  soft leaves
  on the illusion of choice at mainstream grocery stores. If you enjoy grocery store talk, The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr mentioned by Kate is a good place to start, and I was also reminded of this Bloomberg podcast on why NYC has such bad grocery store produce. 

⁉️ A poll…..