This Week's Menu: Food as Life

I've had one of *those* weeks. You know the ones. First, I was sick so I missed lots of work and sat around the house. Second, I had to make some difficult Life Decisions - those choices where you know the answer but you hesitate to take that leap. These Decisions aren't easy to make and are the cause of many, many tears...yet when the choice is made, you feel lighter inside. Anyway, I had to make one of those Decisions. Last, because I was out of town last weekend, I didn't do any food shopping for this past week...so you can't imagine the haphazard, crappy way we ate this whole week. It made me feel discombobulated and out-of-sorts.

So today I made the menu for the upcoming week. Here it is:

Saturday - Penne with Vodka Sauce

Sunday - Goat Cheese Tart, green salad (tart recipe from The French Market)

Monday - Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup, ciabatta bread with dipping oil

Tuesday - Mustard Pork Chops with gnocchi

Wednesday - Blue Cheese Pasta (from Real Fast Food)

Thursday - Grilled cheese sandwiches, red pepper soup

When I looked at the menu, I realized what I had done unconsciously: I had created a healing menu. These are comforting foods, unapologetic in their warmth and simplicity. And I love the power of food - and the prospect of sharing it with my family - to make me feel better.

Eat, drink, and find comfort.

The $300 Challenge

So I mentioned earlier that we're on a budget.  Big Time.  I shared that we normallly spend (about) $500-600 a month on food, including beer and wine.  That's an estimate...we've never had a budget in 11 years of marriage.

So I've taken a challenge to get our food down to $300 a month.  Beer and wine isn't included in that, as Adam and I agree that we were treating both as nearly disposable.  Now Adam and I buy beer and wine out of our "personal" account.

So here' s the weekend food shopping total:

Union Square market: $46

Natural Foods: $62

Cheeses of the World (some of the nicest purveyors in the city): $26

Minus $17 for the Dogfish Head beer we bought at Natural Foods...  Bringing our weekend shopping to $117 total.  According to my calculations, this should get us EIGHT meals.  EIGHT!  Here's how it'll play out:

Last night: Shrimp with corn and tomato salad, bread with olive oil and balsamic

Tonight: Plums with prosciutto, goat cheese, baby arugula, and champagne vinegar

Monday: Nachos (I had a can of black beans and a bag of tortilla chips begging to be used...)

Tuesday: Soft-boiled eggs with Artichoke Bread Fingers (courtesy of Chocolate & Zucchini)

Wednesday: Grilled Cheese (Kiddo loves grilled cheese made with smoked mozzarella) with Thick-Sliced Onions (the onion recipe is courtesy of Mario Batali)

Thursday: North American salad (I don't have to buy a single ingredient for this - it's made from food I already have on hand.  Thanks to Nigella Lawson's Feast!)

Friday: Naan paninis - I "discovered" some incredibly fresh naan at Whole Foods.  They tasted great used as a pizza crust, but I thought I'd try them as panini bread in place of the thicker, breadier foccacia.  I'm using some salad greens, leftover prosciutto from tonight's meal, and some Taleggio I bought at Cheeses of the World.

Saturday: Pasta (Adam found some fresh at the Union Square Market) with roasted garlic and scallions - this is something I've totally made up.  Never made it before.  We'll see how it goes...

So, I don't know...I still think that's going to get me over $300.  And other than Kiddo's lunch food and cereal in the morning, we don't spend anything on breakfast or lunch on the weekdays...Adam gets free breakfast and lunch at Google (don't even get me started...) and I have a bagel for breakfast (which I buy from my personal account) and I always eat leftovers for lunch.

Eat, drink, and figure out where else to cut without sacrificing quality...

The One Where I Stop Worrying About Pizza

I’ve been reading a lot about pizza lately – lots of bloggers (For the Love of Food and Lobster Squad, as examples) are experimenting with it and trying to make the perfect pie. But I don’t know – I just feel awfully uninspired to give it a go again and again. Why? Because I have tasted, to me anyway, the perfect pizza. Crust, toppings, everything. And it’s at Grazie in Scottsdale, Arizona. People who have even tasted the best in Italy (alas, not me) swear by Grazie. I’ve tried time and time again to replicate their crispy, thin, light-as-air, charred-in-all-the-right-places crust. I’ve made about a dozen attempts. All failures.

My friend Steve makes a stellar pizza. I won’t say that it’s not as good as Grazie’s…it’s just very different. The glorious, and most important, thing about Steve’s pizza is that it is a flavor explosion. He has perfected the right mix of herbs and toppings, and there are several flavors in there you can’t identify but desperately wish you could. I’ve tried another dozen times to make his pizza too. All failures. And that’s after sitting in his kitchen, watching his every move like a hawk!

I’m out. Especially since I bought Nigella Express and discovered using naan for pizza crust. It’s damn near Grazie’s crust. No more rolling out pizza dough and failing over and over again. I’ll stick with my naan and pine away for Grazie and Steve, thank you.

Note: Is this ever going to turn back into a children’s literature blog? I don’t know any more than you do. Stay tuned…

What I'm Reading

Oh, gracious. It’s Super Tuesday and I’m watching all the minute-to-minute updates on CNN.com. I will say this: the Bush administration sure has got people concerned about voting for a change. Don’t you remember 10 years ago when everyone was freaking out because only 30-something percent of the population was voting? Well, that’s changed, hasn’t it? People actually feel like their votes matter and they really can (and should) alter our country's direction. That's my impression, anyway.

Lest I digress waaaaay too much, I’d love to chat about what I’m reading. I’m in one of my schizo moods where I’m reading a little bit of everything, nothing is exciting me too much (or I’m getting excited about everything), and I can’t make up my mind.

Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen by Wendelin Van Draanen: I have to admit that this is my first Sammy Keyes book…and I’ll admit that I’m wondering what took me so long! I’m totally loving this. This is the perfect antidote to all those girly-girl books out there – which have their place too, of course – because Sammy just kicks butt. From wrestling at Slammin’ Dave’s to beating up the Queen Bee (deservedly), I’m having a blast reading it. Especially since I predict my 6-year-old daughter is a Sammy in the making. I’m two-thirds through and I’ll probably pick up another one when I’m done.

Jellaby by Kean Soo: I just got a review copy sent to me and I immediately picked it up because I had heard so many great things about it. I’m 35 pages in and I’m just charmed beyond belief.

A History of Western Art: From Prehistory to the 20th Century by Antony Mason. I received this from SLJ about a month ago to review it. And it’s taking me that long to get through it. It’s fascinating and I’m really enjoying it (I’m a frustrated art history lover), but it’s very dense and very browser-friendly so I keep sitting down, reading about 4 pages, and then moving on (it's taking me about 30 minutes to get through only 4 pages because there is just sooo much to look at!). The photographs and reproductions are wonderful quality.

Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson: It’s my newest cookbook and I’m loving it so far. When she says “express”, she means it. The meals I’ve made so far (mustard pork chops, Mexican scrambled eggs, quesadillas, et al) have been delicious and way easy. Not to mention that I love all the gorgeous photos. I will say, though, that I made the gnocchi with the mustard pork chops and I really screwed it up. I’ve never made gnocchi before – how do you keep them from turning into a globby mess???

I hope you voted, if you could, today and huzzah to the Giants for ensuring that the Patriots didn't get their perfect season (and proving - again! - that Tom Brady is useless without Adam Vinatieri)...And I digress again...