Eat More Beet

Last week beets made the Well's list of The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating. Since I've recently been all about culinary experiments -- and I like beets -- I took it as a challenge and grabbed a bunch of them at the grocery store this week. But what to do with them? For starters, I rooted through the fridge and assembled a salad (spinach, beets, oranges, tomatos, feta, walnuts), and since the only dressing in the fridge had coagulated beyond rescue, I added some mustard to a bastardized microwave version of this recipe to make a honey mustard vinegarette. So far so good, but there are still 2 more beets in the fridge. Beet palaya is a simple classic, and the kind of dish that's hard to mess up. But if I had the time -- and one of these swish Benriner spiral vegetable slicers -- I would totally attempt this tasty-looking Beet and Feta Tart.

Skip Lunch Fight Hunger

I really like the simplicity and efficiency of City Harvest. The Skip Lunch Fight Hunger drive they're holding today is a good example of that -- last year it brought in some $460,000. As of my lunch hour, the organization is well on its way, with $111,241 in donations in today so far. Anyway, that's my plug: Feed the children!

May Wah Healthy Vegetarian Food

I've recently been cooking more, and in the course of restocking the fridge this weekend, I discovered that the li'l vegetarian "mock meat" store around the corner, May Wah Healthy Vegetarian Food has its own adorable li'l blog. Though some of May Wah's products are a li'l daunting, I'm a total fan of this place, so it was nice to learn that not only was it the first of its kind (over a decade ago), but that it's also -- as the largest vegetarian distributor in New York -- probably unlikely to go out of business any time soon. Good news for me!

A Nauseous Bag

The way I see it, the only real reason to bother reading drivel like Charlotte Allen's column in Sunday's Washington Post is for the sheer satisfaction of agreeing with the flood of irate responses it provokes. My favorite such response (from the Huffington Post):

No doubt many of you have had a hundred or so of your friends and colleagues pass along the stunningly inane article written by Charlotte Allen in today's Washington Post, in which she drags out each and every one of her own gender-identity insecurities like Hummel figurines and proceeds to use them as an audience for an embarrassing session of strenuous self-lovemaking. The resulting piece is a nauseous bag, unflinching in it's cliched ridiculousness, that reads like a bad prank.

Mmm.

You're looking at what I had for dinner yesterday. It was delicious.

"Because You're Going to Drink Anyway"

For all you boozy philanthropists, Cause for Drinks will be at Happy Ending tonight. And on Friday it's a champagne fundraiser for Ladakh schools in Jammu and Kashmir (as hosted by Abhinav and Gowri). Bottoms up!

A Green Diet

No one likes an evangelizing vegetarian, but I can't resist re-posting this New York Times article about vegetarianism's earth-friendly impact -- written by a non-vegetarian (and passed along to me by my vegetarian sister-in-law). For example:

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

A Real Shithole?

Something I had not considered about the city's new public toilets: Their rate of 25 cents for 15 minutes comes to $24/day and $720/month. Which is a total steal in this town! Especially for quarters The New York Times values at "more than $100,000" and calls "very spacious" (that's right, "one cannot touch the side walls with arms outstretched")! Still not convinced?

There are two architectural flourishes, both on the roof: a small pyramid of glass, like a little model of the Louvre, and an anachronistic metal stovepipe, reminiscent of a cozy shanty or an old outhouse with a crescent moon carved into the door.

A cozy little Louvre-shanty! This amusing video completely moves in on the idea (happily neglecting the fine print 15 minute time limit for restroom habitation). It's like From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler all growed up and adapted for YouTube!

No More Empty Bowl

I made a quick jaunt into Chinatown today to do something about Mr. Big's bowl, which had been looking very vacant these last few days since the demise of my goldish.  ("It's so depressing," said Leah. "It's like a testament to your failure!") Pictured on the left: A symbolic success, in the form of some very verdant bamboo and some very attractive multi-colored rocks. Long live the bowl's new inhabitant! 

Obit for Mr. Big

Yesterday, Mr. Big, my hardy, bright-eyed goldfish of seven-and-a-half months stopped swimming. My roommate Ryan delivered a short eulogy: "He lived a long and fruitful life. You know, goldfish only cost like twenty cents." Will Mr. Big be missed? Absofuckinglutely. "He was a fighter," Lan remembered. But as they say -- when it's through, it's through. Time to look for a memorial plant to put in his bowl.

Lawless Leftovers

I found this cool photo of edibles confiscated from JFK (click to enlarge) on Wired via Gridskipper.  The photo is from Taryn Simon's book An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar.  Caption:

The foodstuffs in this image were seized over a 48-hour period from passengers arriving from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, from abroad.  Among the pictured items are African yams, uncooked meats, fresh eggs, okra and a South Asian lime infected with a citrus canker.

"This room is one of my favorite shots.  I spent hours arranging the contraband to get it to look like a still life," Simon said.

On that note, I'm going to go clean the fridge. 

Do the Locomotion

What makes the perfect workout playlist? This article describes the research of a Dr. Costas Karageorghis, who has spent two decades on the subject. I like the idea of tracking the songs' BPM (beats-per-minute) -- Platinum Blue and Pandora are good examples of that kind of data's possibilities -- but I was disappointed that Dr. Karageorghis relies on survey results (participants "listen to 90 seconds of a song and rate its motivational qualities for various physical activities") rather than actually testing how the duration or intensity of a workout varies with the BPM of the playlist.

Personally, I'm a die-hard fan of the New York Sports Club's bopping in-house music video channel, aka ClubCom's Sports Clubs Network. A typical half-hour set (I paid close attention last night): Hilary Duff, Stevie Wonder, Kylie Minogue, Kenny Loggins, Gwen Stefani, Queen, Janet Jackson, 50 Cent, Maroon 5, Peter Gabriel. Not bad, right? Whatever keeps my resolve from crumbling.

Losing Farther, Losing Faster

So, like lots of folks, early January finds me on something of a health food/exercise/weight loss kick. New York Sports Club's website has generated a series of slightly Spartan customized meal plans for me (eg, "snack: 20 small peanuts, 1 celery stalk") which I've been duly studying (though In Defense of Food looks like better reading material). In any case, I'm starting to suspect that I'm of Jonathan Lethem's ilk on dietary matters. "My tendency," Lethem says of his daily eating trajectory, "is to go from purity to decadence, like I'm reliving the fall of a great empire." Read his full chronicle of a week's meals -- hands down my favorite Grub Street "New York Diet" of all time -- in its entirety here. Watch out, Caligula!