Day 25: Voulez Vous Coucher Avec French Toast Ce Soir

Here is my list of syrup holding breakfasts from most to least favorite:
1. Waffles
2. French Toast
3. Pancakes

I surprised myself with how much I've enjoyed pancakes the past couple weeks, so I decided it was time to try french toast. Besides, I'm out of flour until tomorrow so I can't make pancakes anyway.

Not too bad. My homemade bread is very dense and didn't soak up the batter as well as store-bought, so these were not as good as the pancakes, but still pretty tasty. Which means my list of syrup holding favorites needs to be amended when it comes to eating local. Now I just need to make waffles to invite further revelations.

For some reason all I brought to the Farmers' Market for lunch today was an apple and some cheese.


It wasn't enough, and left me feeling empty. I wanted to be bad. I wanted to cheat. I wanted something new and different. As I sat there smelling kettle corn and kabobs and staring at whoopie pies, I devised a plan. There was a way to break my diet without cheating. For this month my food must come from within 100 miles, which means buffalo from Clayville is perfectly acceptable, even though I do not usually eat meat. (As explained earlier, my meat intake is accidental, I eat around it in some dishes, but probably consume some, I've probably had soup made with chicken broth, and my friend Jimmy made a delectable brisket for his birthday that I was goaded into trying, and was then glad I did).

I bought one piece of Pepperjack Bison Jerky from American Buffalo in Clayville. I couldn't find a website for this farm, so the link leads to an interesting article about a rare white buffalo born on the ranch in 2007. My intentions were to eat half the jerky and give the other half to my boyfriend. I ate half, then ate the other half later with an apple. And although I can count the amount of times I've intentionally eaten meat in the past three years on one hand, my stomach feels fine. As I sat there masticating my jerky, I pictured happy buffalo grazing around, frolicking and drinking out of streams. I am not opposed to meat-eating, but I think if an animal is going to be eaten it should be treated humanely while it's alive and fed a natural diet. Call me crazy, but I could taste that this one was.


I figured if I'm going to start buying meat, why not go all out? My next stop was Promise Land Farm; my neighbor at the farmers' market, M.L., says they have THE best burgers, that each burger tastes like filet mignon. The proprietor of Promise Land explained to her that the burgers probably have some filet mignon in them. The burgers are made by using the whole cow, not just one cut or the cheap cut usually used for ground beef.


I bought a 1 pound four pack of burgers for $4.50 to bring home to Dick. I will not eat a whole one, but will likely try a bite when Dick cooks his.


Lastly, I made a purchase for the future. All month long the Amish whoopie pies have been staring me down. They're directly across from my booth and priced affordably, 1 for $1 or 5 for $4. I've had some whoopie pies in the past that have a marshmallow filling and I find them mundane. These whoopie pies taste like they're filled with cake frosting, and I've heard they're even better frozen. I bought 5 and stuck them in the icebox.

(Don't worry, I didn't break down and eat two. I gave one to Dick, and for photography's sake, left the duplicate chocolate-peanut butter pie in the freezer.)

For dinner I made a salad and finished my pasta with alfredo sauce.


After dinner I took the last of my hard cider and warmed it up with some mulling spices. It turns out this is not as good as regular mulled cider, and as a friend, I cannot recommend that you try it.

Day 24: Guess which Mary Louise Parker role I played today...

This morning's planned breakfast: toast with butter, a hard-boiled egg, and a glass of cider. Unfortunately, the two hard-boiled eggs I had left started to get a little slimy and have that not-so-fresh feeling.


After tennis I was ready to cook lunch, but too hungry to wait for the cooking to be done. I've been out of maple candies since Saturday, so I had a spoonful of maple sugar with a glass of milk to hold me over.


In answer to today's title, I made fried green tomatoes, so if you thought I spent my day performing illegal activities haphazardly, you guessed wrong.

To make these I picked two green tomatoes from my garden, sliced them, covered them with cornmeal, dipped them in an egg/milk mixture, then in breadcrumbs with salt and pepper. I have a tendency to blindly follow recipes because I always assume the author knows more than I do. So when this recipe called for two teaspoons of salt in the breading I paused, scowled, then put the salt in. These tomatoes were grossly over-salted. I tried peeling off one side of the breading and was able to eat a few slices (they would have been delicious if I had stood up to that bully of a recipe writer and went with my instincts), but I felt a little sick from all the salt that was still on them.

Speaking of blindly following things, a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times by Stephen Budiansky, Math Lessons for Locavores, questioned the reasoning behind eating local. It brought up a few good points, for example, the electricity required to grow a tomato in a greenhouse in New York is comparable to the energy required to ship a tomato from California. Then it gets off track, stating that more energy goes into refrigerating food than shipping it, which is neither here nor there because all food, local or distant, needs to be refrigerated.

A rebuttal, The Myth of the Rabid Locavore, was published by the Huffington Post. The author, Kerry Trueman, points out that Budiansky only focuses on energy costs and ignores other issues involved in food production like use of chemicals and fertilizers, soil erosion, pollution, antibiotic resistance, etc.

While frying briny tomatoes, I had new potatoes roasting in the oven. Ever wondered why they're called "new" potatoes? It's because they're harvested early in the spring before they're fully grown, making them smaller than full-grown potatoes. But, if potatoes are planted late then new potatoes can be harvested throughout the summer.

Once the tomatoes and potatoes were done, and the oven and stove were turned off, Leo felt it was safe for him come out from under the table.


After lunch I had a glass of Bully Hill's Goat White Wine, 7 out of 10.


A busy afternoon and evening left me feeling a touch peckish around 9 o'clock. I warmed up half a veggie burger with some smoked cheddar on it.

Day 23: Alfredo Makes Everything Better (except sore calves)

This morning I woke up with legs that were still very sore from my race on Sunday, but after walking Leo for a mile and a half they felt much less stiff. So I ran Zoe for 4 and 1/2 miles and sure enough I'm now doddering around like a homeless person carrying too many bags of cans.

After abusing my poor legs it was time to fuel up before tennis practice. I had a hard-boiled egg, pancakes, and a big glass of milk.


Next time you make pancakes, try giving them a crispy, darkened edge - you'll thank me. It's like the delicious charred skin on a piece of grilled meat, without all the carcinogens. But since I made my pancakes in a Teflon pan I'll go ahead and dismount my high horse.

After tennis practice I made Alfredo sauce with a couple substitutions. I didn't have any fresh parsley so I used fresh basil; I realize they're not interchangeable, but I like basil, can't make pesto (not just because I can't use oil, I tried making it in the past, it came out gross), and thought this added some nice flavor. I used Gruyere instead of Parmesan , and milk instead of cream, which made the sauce a little runny, but once the pasta was mixed in it didn't really matter.


It tasted so much better than it looked! It was at least 10 times better than the same pasta with tomato sauce I had on Saturday night, and had to be sampled many more times before I could make myself put the leftovers in the fridge.

My lunch was pretty late so for dinner I had a slice of leftover garlic and tomato pizza.


One thing I need to amend: my fruit and vegetable intake. I'm not eating vegetables as consistently this month; I usually have a salad a day, but sometimes opt not to because it seems like more of a hassle having to make my own dressing. Although, a lot of the things I cook have veggies in them. I've never been a big fruit eater, but I was eating a lot more fruit the first two weeks of this crusade, that waned once I ran out of yogurt.

One observation/question. Why do cheese names have to be capitalized? Every time I type them lower case this blog tells me they're spelled wrong. When I go back and capitalize the obnoxious red underlining disappears like a cat at a dog party.

Day 22: Garlic and Tomato PIZZA!

Well, to prevent my body, mind, and entire outlook on life from going into shock on September 7th I've started getting up at 5 in the morning. Well, 5:15 by the time I dragged myself out of bed. After taking two dogs on two separate walks (because I value my safety and sanity and will no longer walk them together), I had just enough time to cook some breakfast before heading out to coach my first tennis practice of the season (or I would have had enough time if I hadn't forgotten my keys later on).

I made scrambled eggs with peppers, onions, tomato, and Mountainthaler cheese from Mountain View Dairy. I also had a glass of cider and bread with butter.


After tennis practice and errands I returned home to cook the garlic and tomato pizza I never got around to yesterday. I've had garlic pizza where the garlic is minced and placed under the cheese, I am not a fan of this. I decided to roast my garlic (cut tops of unpeeled cloves, spread butter or oil on top, cover with foil, bake at 400 for 35 minutes). When it was done I squeezed it into a bowl of butter, smooshing the soft cloves apart and melting the butter into a soft, tasty homogeneous mixture. I spread this over the pizza dough left over from my first pizza-cooking adventure that I had already rolled out, and topped it with sliced heirloom tomatoes and shredded Gruyere and smoked Swiss cheeses.

Unfortunately my camera battery was dead, but I charged it and took a picture of the slice my boyfriend re-heated for dinner:


I had two slices for lunch and couldn't resist cutting off another sliver as I was putting the leftovers away. This pizza is right up there with the life-changing quiche I made last week, but I'm extra proud because I went rogue and cooked recipe-free.

Other foods that were not captured by my exhausted camera: a nun puff (2 actually, these things are soooo much better than PowerBars), and a glass of milk.

Dick, my boyfriend/significant other/life partner came home with a huge jar of honey produced by a colleague's parents.


If you've ever wondered why different honeys are different colors it turns out that it depends what the bees are currently pollinating. This can also affect flavor, as in the case of tupelo honey. Tupelo honey comes from bees that are pollinating tupelo gum trees that only grow in the southern United States along rivers and in flooded forests. There are two types of tupelo gum trees: white and black. White tupelo honey will not granulate. Granulation also affects the color of honey: fresher honeys are dark, but as they age they begin to granulate and lighten.

Still pretty full from my pizza and snacks I decided to have a salad for dinner. Dick, a culinary genius whose only formal training came from working at Ponderosa, suggested adding basil to my feta-cider vinegar dressing. My original recipe was very tart, but the basil balances out the cider, creating the best salad I've had all month.


After dinner I had a glass of Bully Hill Reisling; I give it a 9 out of 10. One thing I've discovered about myself this month is that I prefer sweet white wines. If you do not, you should probably subtract at least 4 points from all my wine scores.

Day 21: Lake Delta and Nun Puffs

All summer long I knew that the month of August would be a challenge, a challenge I was ready to embrace. But there was another challenge on my horizon I was a little more wary of: The Lake Delta Olympic Triathlon. I have done several sprint distance triathlons (approximately 1/2 mile swim, 11-15 mile bike, 3 mile run), but only one other Olympic distance triathlon.

I completed said triathlon last summer, and I chose it very carefully. I drove all the way to New Hampshire to participate in the only Olympic triathlon I could find with a half mile swim. (Generally Olympics have a 1500 meter swim, 20-25 mile bike, and a 5-6 mile run). Upon arriving at the the Black Fly Triathlon in New Hampshire the night before the race, I did what I do upon arriving anywhere: went pee. I heard two women through the bathroom stall saying the strangest thing: with the unseasonably cold summer and the excessive rain the preceding week, the spring-fed pond we were supposed to swim in was only 48 degrees Fahrenheit, therefore the swim would have to be shortened to 1/4 mile. I was very excited about a shorter swim and bought my first wetsuit that night. I learned an important lesson that weekend: if you are ever given the choice between swimming a quarter mile in 48 degree water or a half mile in anything warmer, choose the latter!

The point of this story is that a true Olympic distance triathlon would be a new experience, and made me feel a little queasy. The race began at 8:00 am in Rome, about 45 minutes from my home in Mohawk. I was scheduled to meet my carpool at 6:15 in Frankfort (Congratulations Jane, Tara, and Ashley for being an awesome relay team!), which is about 4 miles from me. I arose at 5 a.m., dressed for the race, fed and let my dogs out, then ate breakfast.

Please take note of how dark it is! In two weeks I will be back to waking up at 5 every day, and every summer I seem to forget how much daylight is lost by September. For breakfast I ate 1 hard-boiled egg, 2 nun puffs (my substitute PowerBar containing egg, cornmeal, milk, salt, butter, and maple sugar), cider (barely visible), and a raspberry smoothie that I only drank half of. As I walked around in a daze, I was really wishing I could have coffee, but woke myself up by riding my bike to Frankfort to catch the carpool. It was raining, but since I'd be swimming soon I decided to go ahead and plunge into soppiness early.

Good news! I finished the race! I finished in 3:14:01, which is not great, but I'm happy. My bike and run times were good (24 miles in 1:26:14 and 6 miles in 51:14, respectively), but for some reason every other runner was swimming in a lake, and I was swimming in molasses. I am NOT a fast swimmer, and a mile of swimming puts me very far behind the field (52:52), but in my book, being in motion for over three hours is always a success!

I felt a little hungry halfway through the bike ride so I ate 1 nun puff, which worked just as well as a PowerBar. After the race I ate an apple and one more nun puff. That made this my first chemical-free race! Not that I'm a juicer, just that I'm starting to think that real food can do as much for me as chemically-produced goos.

My plan all along was to make garlic and tomato pizza when I got home, but I was too hungry too wait, so I cut myself a big piece of quiche and actually remembered to take a picture this time!


One thing I didn't have, my post-race beer. It's a tradition and was sorely missed. Before I could make my pizza, an opportunity arose, a chance to go to a movie! With no time to make pizza I heated up some cornbread with peach salsa.


Another tradition: when my boyfriend and I go to the movies, we go to Sumo first, a sushi restaurant in New Hartford. I like sushi, but he loves sushi and has been suffering withdrawal. We called around, looking for someone to go to Sumo with him, thinking that I could be dropped off at the bookstore to kill time before the movie, but everyone was busy. Not wanting him to eat alone, I accompanied him to the restaurant. It's funny how no matter how full your stomach is, when there's good food around your brain will trick you into thinking you're hungry. Sumo wasn't complete torture though, it's not like walking into an Italian restaurant where the smells overwhelm me. The waitress kind of thought that when he ordered he was ordering for the both of us, and I put my napkin on my lap to play along.

We saw Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (8 out of 10).

We arrived home around 8, and had time to sit and relax (Dick, my boyfriend, ran 8 and a 1/2 miles today and was also feeling the pain of doing what's good for your body), so I set up a mini wine and cheese party in the living room.


The cheese was Gruyere from Mountain View Dairy, and smoked cheddar from Tom's Natural Foods. The wine was Eye of the Bee, a honey wine from Four Chimneys Organic Winery, which I give a .....10! I've had it before, and although I don't usually care for reds as much as whites, I find that this one, slightly chilled, is incomparable. To me, the one advantage that wine has over beer: when my legs are completely exhausted and sore, a glass of wine makes them tingle like I'm receiving a mini-massage from thousands of little purple grapes.

Day 20: Pre-race Shower

Today I had to attend a baby shower (Congratulations, Rudy's mama!) and prepare to run an Olympic distance triathlon at Delta Lake tomorrow (Sorry about your luck, me). Having been informed about the shower menu ahead of time, I knew this would be a continuation of the Last Temptation of Krista begun a week ago at the wedding. I opted for pancakes, a hard-boiled egg, and some mulled cider.




The triathlon I'm doing tomorrow is a 1500 meter swim (just shy of a mile), a 24-mile bike ride, and a 6 mile run. Normally before a race of this magnitude I would have coffee, peanut butter toast, and a banana for breakfast. During the race I would have part of a PowerBar, some PowerBar gels with caffeine, and/or some Shot Blocks (like gummy bears with electrolytes). I also bring orange Gatorade. What I need now is a PowerBar replacement, and some quick sugar sources.

My PowerBar replacement will be.... Nun Puffs! No idea what they are, just found them in my cookbook one page before pancakes. They're basically milk, butter, flour, and egg with sugar sprinkled on top. Instead of flour I used cornmeal because I'm low and flour and I felt like this would make them hardier, and I sprinkled maple sugar on top.


I tested one out and they definitely taste better than a PowerBar, although if it wouldn't hinder my racing ability I could eat my foot and it would taste better than a Powerbar. The nun puffs were so good I even had another half after dinner. Full of starch, sugar, and protein, hopefully they will get the job done tomorrow.

Next I made pasta from scratch. I'm not a big fan of pasta, never have been, until I had fresh pasta. The first time I experienced this epiphany-inducing fare was in Newport, Rhode Island where my sister lives. There is a store there where one can buy fresh pasta any day of the week. The second time it was made by my friend's brother who went to culinary school. If you have never had fresh pasta I highly recommend you try it. It's like the difference between a gourmet wedding cake and a Ho Ho.

After showering and dressing for the baby shower I decided I should have a snack, but did not have much time to munch, so I melted smoked swiss over heirloom tomatoes again.


The first dish served at the shower looked kind of familiar.


I was assured these tomatoes were local so I enjoyed this Caprese salad, sans mozzarella. I was also able to eat the zucchini and squash dish.


This is what I did not eat:


Chicken wrapped in bacon, stuffed and drizzled with a mango chutney (I wouldn't have eaten this anyway because I don't eat meat, but it looks very delicious), eggplant rollatini, polenta, and grilled peach in a red wine reduction topped with Greek yogurt and sprinkled with sugar. I did try one bite of this because I wasn't sure when I'd ever have the opportunity again.

The veggies at the shower didn't fill me up, so when I got home I was ready for my pre-race pasta dinner. I had sauce left over from the pizza I made a couple weeks ago so I just had to boil the pasta from this morning. It did not live up to the legacy of fresh pastas I've had in the past, but it was edible and it filled me up. I also had bread and butter.


For dessert I had a bowl of my raspberry non-ice cream. When I checked it this morning it was frozen solid, completely unscoopable. I stuck it in the fridge and it was just about the right consistency by dinnertime. I plan to leave it in the fridge and drink it as a smoothie before the race tomorrow.


I also had the aforementioned half a nun puff and a glass of milk with the last of my two maple candies.

Day 19: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Mush

Oops, I did it again. I was so excited to eat my Mediterranean quiche I forgot to take a picture. I realized this with about three bites left.


After breakfast I took Leo on an epic walk that included toddlers, playgrounds, pull-ups and construction zones. Next I had to run errands in Herkimer, and figured I might as well bring Zoe along and give the community college nature trails another go. I chugged some milk, harnessed the dog and off we went.

We did not get lost, in fact I found the turn I missed on our last adventure and we ran a 8:10 mile on the winding, grassy trails. All in all we covered about 3 and 1/2 miles, and found more mud than pricker bushes.


Although we ran faster and farther than last time, I didn't manage to thoroughly exhaust Zoe.


I needed to get the ice cream started before lunch and I needed to shower before I started the ice cream, but I was too hungry to wait that long, so I prepared my favorite snack: sliced tomatoes with smoked swiss cheese. This time I used one of the nice orange heirloom tomatoes I got from the farmers' market. I also had another glass of milk.


Oh, and editor's note: yesterday I said that the farmers' market offered tomatoes in every color of the rainbow except for blue, indigo, and violet. But, there are some purplish tomatoes available. Also, have you ever wondered what it means when produce is referred to as an heirloom variety? Well, heirlooms are formed through open pollination by insects, birds, wind, etc. rather than self-pollination. This leads to more variety. Also, they've generally been around more than 50 years or even passed down via seeds through several generations of a family.

Maybe because it's Friday, maybe because it's my last truly free Friday for a long time, or maybe because I had such a nice run I decided to try my Fly Creek hard cider - it was pretty good. I didn't know what to expect because the last time I had hard cider it was Magners at a bar in Syracuse and it tasted like cigarette butts and regular butts. It may have been from an old tap, or maybe Magners just can't compete with what Fly Creek is throwing down, but I was pleasantly surprised.


I started making my ice cream. The recipe called for eggs, milk, sugar, cream, and vanilla. I decided I wanted to make raspberry ice cream so I substituted raspberries for the cream and honey and maple sugar for the regular sugar. I thought I was on the track to success when I achieved the thick, runny-pudding consistency the recipe called for.


Next step, put this mess in the pre-frozen ice cream maker for 20-40 minutes.


I left it in for over an hour, and it was still runny. Maybe I hadn't frozen the base of the ice cream maker long enough, maybe my substitutions funked up the works. And if you own an ice cream maker and you think that paddle moves slow enough that you can stick a spoon in and get a sample while its spinning, you may get away with it once, but not twice.


Either way I poured it into a container and stuck it in the freezer, but not before I sampled a few spoonfuls. It was good! Kind of like a cold custard or smoothie. I'm definitely trying this again with chocolate and peanut butter in September.

For dinner I had some cornbread and peach salsa.


And a couple hours later, even though I knew it wasn't frozen, I had to try my raspberry ice cream.


Only the top and sides had frozen and the texture was more reminiscent of a sorbet than actual ice cream, but I'm pretty easy to please these days and I declare this project a success.