on not living out of a suitcase

The funny thing about having a blog called “Out of a Suitcase” is when you no longer live out of a suitcase, but rather in a very fixed and stationary life where packing a suitcase is not really an option. Graduation, a job, and the adoption of my Russian family cat has completely rooted me and uprooted 22-ish years punctuated by very, very, fabulous vacations and global adventures, exotic backdrops, and general ‘trotting.’ Now I am lucky to even escape to someone on the Northeast Corridor and not have Kitty crap on my comforter out of spite. It is always funny to get what you finally wanted, and to long again for the other side.

Anyways, I complained about my wanderlust-(ish) conundrum to my father yesterday over our medium of choice, GChat. His response? Talking about his summer plans, talking about my little sister’s arrival to Kiev after her first year of boarding school, noting, “Maybe we’ll take a long weekend trip to W. Europe, Nice, Barcelona. Croatia perhaps?”

Thanks a lot, Dad!

I found this ancient word document from 2006 called “list of countries ive been to” and it was exactly that- a laundry list of countries, first starting with the ones I’d lived in then progressing to countries I’d visited a lot and couldn’t remember, trailing off at the end with one-offs and skeptical “is this a country?” notes (I meant St Maarten). Then I had “countries I want to go to before I am 26” (random age) with a reason why attached. Those were Ghana (cool nytimes article about food there), South Africa (everyone who goes on vacation there says they love it and it apparently it has good shopping), Brazil (never been anywhere in South America and it seems like the coolest), and India (I just want to eat so much Indian food that I explode). Well, yay for me! I went to all of them except Ghana. Maybe I’ll hit up that region eventually, but with my precious fourteen vacation days and the fact I am living hand-to-mouth, I think probably not anytime soon…

BUT: the best part about being stationary is that I can build up my kitchen supplies. I make weird one-dish meals or gigantic holier-than-thou salads and try to keep leftovers. I can ‘assemble’ meals. Nothing brings me more back down to earth than cutting an onion without slicing my finger open. I have a very stocked cupboard and pantry specializing in the joys of 20 something year old girl/lady/woman living, which means two kinds of ice cream, Kraft macaroni and cheese always on hand, and figuring out ways to eat kale everyday without wanting to kill myself or it go bad. However, tonight I fucked up my first meal in a long, long time. I attempted to make turkey meatballs and added an egg and now they look like pussy-at-the-edges meatballs. I am truly embarrassed. 

ramen in the summertime

I had my first bowl of ramen in months last Sunday. I’m pretty sure that ramen is one of my favorite foods ever which must mean something. (Maybe ramen and french fries tie for the top spot. As I was saying to self-confessed chocolate addict, “Maybe the way you feel about chocolate is like how I feel about french fries: everytime I pass by a McDonalds I literally fight an urge to just pop in for a medium fries.”) The East Village is littered with different ramen soup noodle purveyors and I’ve done a relatively good job trying a lot of them, but each ramen craving has to be dealt with appropriately. For example, ramen can be a great sharing dish, especially when eaten in its creamiest, richest form (see Ippudo’s tonkatsu ramen) or sometimes its best expereinced solitary slurping the salt-based shio (me at Rai Rai Ken last weekend, eating alone at the bar happily shovelling ramen in my face, ignoring the 80F weather and craving fall time). 

Rai Rai Ken is by no means my favorite ramen place in New York, it’s pretty back to basics and simple. It’s an institution of sorts in New York, predating the trendy Japanese chain imports that have popped up. There are only 14 seats and one slight slim framed Japanese waitress, and a Mexican who prepares your ramen (you can see all the Japanese > Spanish translations on the wall). It’s not too heavy and the pork isn’t as melty, the noodles aren’t as firm and homemade as Ippudo’s, but the price is incredibly right (8.50 for a bowl) and eating straight up at the bar makes the entire experience feel more authentic. If I went with someone else I would have shared gyoza, but I couldn’t justify the added expense (this time). 

I finished it off with a slice of green tea pound cake at Panya Bakery then watched Eat, Pray, Love. Now I need to make some Bolognese. I accidentally bought half a fucking pound of pancetta, idiotically not realizing that the price was covered by another salami price tag and now I have no idea what to do with this italian bacon except make carbonara and bolognese. Please send hints or suggestions my way. I also do not have a food processor if that is required.

On something, perhaps food souvenirs.

There was an article in the Times about food souvenirs. I know all about food souvenirs because ever since I can remember my family has always underpacked for vacations in lieu of either the ambiguous ‘spices’ and ‘ingredients’ my mother would pick up on vacation OR the boxes of Lucky Charms, double stuffed oreos, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Pop Tarts, brownie mix, CostCo size bags of chocolate chip and Kraft macaroni and cheese. My father still illegally brings back pounds of frozen Omaha steaks and burgers back. Suitcases are filled with American hamburger buns; the Russian ‘American’ brand falls apart too quickly, notwithstanding the heftiness and deliciousness found in an oozing patty. I am still some kind of Americana ‘mule’ for my family, schlepping Drugstore.com boxes of toothpaste and [REDACTED] hair dye boxes to random locales in which I meet my family in.

After graduation and being thrown into a world in which I can concentrate all my thinking time to what I like, I think a lot about food and why I like food. Often I dwell on the identity-building that was high school, and trying to pin-point that specific ta-da moment, sometimes theorizing that maybe it began with that Indian lunch with my dad, but really I just think of my friends. I was very lucky in the fact that all of my gal pals / Scooby Girl Gang (this is an inherent Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference and I only refer to them as this, they do not refer to us as this) had relatively positive or better than standard relationships with food, and it was really amazing to grow up in this ‘body-positive/food-positive’ atmosphere where there were no crash diets for Spring Break Cabo or anything. I am pretty sure if we had Food Network in Moscow we would have been watching it all the time. I am lucky that food for me has always been associated with building relationships, and not with an impending sense of guilt. My one observation from four+ years of immersion within the American food landscape is that in the US, food and eating = guilt. We just can’t manage the balance between wanting to be thin and saying no to SuperSized meals and ridiculous individual portions, so instead we guilt ourselves silly with low-carb diets and brown rice that takes longer to cook. I think the weirdest part is how much Americans LOVE the Food Network

Our attitude was more:  bring on the pie. Many of favorite memories from high school were in Kalie’s kitchen, because her pantry was super stocked with the best of American semi-homemade goods, and Kalie’s mom loved to fatten us up with Velveeta-filled grilled cheese sandwiches and always had all the ingredients to make a pecan pie on command. All of my classic longing high school moments longing for my best friend’s year-older male cousin were soundtracked by the flipping of grilled cheese sandwiches. For my fifteenth birthday, Kalie and her mom surprised me at school with a perfect pecan pie – actually it wasn’t perfect, it was a little gooey and maybe burnt but like any pecan pie in Moscow is perfect if it’s in front of you, ready to be eaten – and what proceeded with that pie, my friends and our 20 minute mid-morning break was something that my Scooby Gang still affectionately reminisce over. We ate the pie in twenty minutes, the whole thing. Seven girls, seven forks, one table, on your mark, get set, GO.

As I’ve probably said before, when I look back at my friends from high school, it really was food that brought us together – we were ‘the lunch table,’ our social life consisted of big group dinners in restaurants, the one time a year we see each other post-high school is on the overfeeding holiday that is Thanksgiving.  When I think of Amanda’s house I remember O’Boy chocolate milk which I still think is Swedish, and her mother’s homemade bread, while Francesca I think of homemade pizza and that Dutch snack of toasted buttered bread with chocolate sprinkles, Nicole I think of the Pop-Tarts her mom always packed her and big Saturday morning scrambled egg breakfasts, Ally I think of pancakes and delivered Thai food and dinner parties, Ana Donoso it the eight boxes of macaroni and cheese we made after her parties, Jenny I just think of like amazing Southern food and her mom’s keen sense of detail, Olga’s house is remembered by the dill pancakes, and of Callie, I think of only brownies. And chicken and rice. Last Thanksgiving we started our big turkey dinner with a large group discussion on how awful it would be if one was a) allergic to gluten b) allergic to nuts/chocolate/whatever. The terror in our voices reflected our need for mass amounts of gluten in our diets. We ate the turkey then, and of course after we ate the frozen mozzarella sticks, and the next day we richly buttered our English Muffins. And rolled ourselves home.

Amazing egg sandwich

The light comes in my room really early in the morning, tricking me at 8am that it’s 10am, setting off all my internal body clocks. I am a morning person. It is something I recognized only semi-recently and have totally embraced. Once you recognize your morning-person ness, you truly become a productive person. I shower, make coffee, dress myself, eat breakfast and often assemble a lunch to go, eat breakfast, drink coffee, clean dishes, dry hair, put on makeup, fix my bag all in an hour and ten minutes. Sometimes in the morning - particular weekend mornings where it is even more sinful to be up at such an hour - and especially when my boyfriend is fast asleep - I scurry around at 8:45am, cutting up ginger and zesting lemons for Balthazar ginger tea, resentfully doing my roommates’ dirty dishes, arranging my clothing rack and refolding my clothes to fit it in all the tight places, even dusting/bustering the floor. 

One one these mornings (Sunday, as in yesterday) I also made the most amazing egg sandwich. I probably came up with it when I was in still in bed kicking myself for being so awake. I decided, after deciding what I wanted to wear that day (Gap shirt blue striped ruffled shirt dress with black Uniqlo tights and black booties with the cream colored American Apparel egg jacket) I wanted to defrost a bagel, toast it, fry an egg and make a ‘gourmet’ egg and cheese sandwich with my Ouray cheese (Saxelby Cheesemonger, but the cheese is from Poughkeepsie) and use some of the cured salami I had sitting in the fridge. I made it after I did the tea, after I showered, after I got dressed, after I put away and rearranged the clothes. It was fucking amazing. Bagels trump the roll for the egg-cheese sandwich.

It reminded me of the best egg and cheese sandwich I ever ate, which was in Luang Prabang, Laos. Except there we were up really early in the morning because we were about to get on a 13 hour bus ride. Lindsay still had to do her morning run and came back with two egg and cheese sandwiches from the Western bakery in town (for me and her) and watermelon (for Logan). The sandwich itself probably wasn’t spectacular but the fact it was an egg and cheese bagel sandwich, something so foreign to me after so many months abroad, it truly something more than a miracle. The Luang Prabang egg and cheese sandwich was on a bagel that wasn’t Americany and the egg wasn’t decadent and oozy like mine, rather a thin, flat egg with a fully cooked yolk. I don’t remember if that bagel had sesame seeds or even the right texture for the bagel, but to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have even known. I sat on the bed, kicking my falling-apart gigantic suitcase filled with stupid trinkets and smelly clothes, and ate the sandwich in less than five minutes. My fingers dripped with oil and I drank lots of water after, washing my hands in the bathroom where the shower was just a single sole showerhead. It did not take me very long to learn that you should never be ashamed of your food cravings, even if it is an egg and cheese bagel sandwich in Laos.

Yesterday’s sandwich, however unforeign and completely common it was, was consumed in a very similar fashion. I didn’t even get to squeeze any hot sauce on it, which I was ready to do.

Today

was

1. Oatmeal + blackberry preserves and a piece of toast and lots of Humble Pie cheese. A cup of coffee.
2. Shake Shack cheeseburger, french fries and some of the Cinco De Mayo themed concrete special.
3. Pho ga from a Vietnamese place in Chinatown.
4. A green tea egg custard tart from a Chinatown bakery. I think the women were snarling at me.

Excessively indulgent. Little things get me through the day.

tonight

Sometimes freezing things works really well, sometimes not. I made a batch of Marcella Hazan’s meat ragu sauce back in January before I started working, putting half of it in an Ikea blue “food saver” and stuck it in the freezer, promising myself: One day that box will dethaw and it will be amazing. I promise. I promptly ate the half I didn’t freeze rather quickly.

Yesterday I searched through my freezer which has gone through at least four or seven rearrangings in the past few months and found the beloved Ikea blue and white container and stuck it in the fridge, hoping for no freezer burn (RIP Skirt Steak I never even got to eat you). I went food shopping today anyways, just in case something went terribly wrong in a relatively idiot-proof process. I came back and peeked in. Dethawed and looked, well, pretty damn perfect. I boiled the pasta. I heat up the sauce. I made a little arugula and radish salad and some haphazard dressing in a mug. I waited. I had the parmesan and grater ready for grinding. Everything came together rather well, even though the pasta I picked maybe not the best, but whatever.

I like to shop at the Essex Street Market, mostly because it is dirt cheap produce and has a very good selection. Today I got some green onions, a bag of onions, one Vidallia onion, a bag of bright pretty radishes, a tomato for an okra curry I want to make, no stall had okra so I have to find that somewhere else, a box of arugula, a big ass bag of lentils, a leek, and some bean sprouts (a huge clamshell box for a $1!). But really my favorite part of the market is Saxelby Cheesemonger, which sort of just blows my mind everytime. I got the Ouray which is sort of soft but buttery but has the texture of parmesan but really sharp or whatever I can’t really describe cheese besides the fact that “it is agreeable to my taste” and this one tickles me especially because it is from Sprout Creek Farm in Poughkeepsie (or as Anne Saxelby calls it, Po-Vegas). Then I got a new cheese, because I’m a very beloved fan of the Ouray, a new cheese called HUMBLE PIE which I tried on a whim and immediately asked for it. It was super melty and I imagined it on toast with beforementioned radishes.  I got some eggs there too because I trust Ms. Saxelby and her egg choice. Before I left I remembered I needed some serrano peppers and got some and then got an avocado too. I think I maybe spent like $23 dollars total. It’ll last me a while. 

I have to write in this more, mostly because I was on the bus ride shelpping all of my bounties home and tried to remember what I ate and made for myself all of last week and barely remember anything besides “miso soup” and “turkey burgers” (both homemade, duh). So here is for today:

1. Breakfast: Steel cut oats with blueberries and honey
2. Lunch: Leftover rice and channa masala
3. Dinner: Pasta Bolognese, arugula and radish salad

hello, again, to all my friends

It is funny living in even more of “the real world” where I do not have things like “The Retreat” and my boyfriend’s cafeteria points to quell me when I am hungry and do not want to spend $$. In the “real world” there is nothing to do but cook and eat your own food to be cost-effective. Is it weird that I like it - a lot? Like all of my love for badly, mass produced fashion has been redirected towards Le Creuset ovens (small blue one on sale at Williams-Sonoma, purchased with a birthday card), Pure Komachi colored knives (after I oogled them at my uncle’s house), cast iron pans and endlessly seasoning them to perfection (it’s perfect now) and just like, lots of blue Ikea food containers and microwaving at my concoctions at Whole Foods.

Cooking for one has its advantages: leftovers. I find new ways to deal with excessive amounts of one thing to last myself a week - green puy lentils, in salads, with poached eggs, always with parsley and green onion (because that’ll go bad too). I’m making this dal and rice with ginger, as it’ll keep well and is relatively healthy. I’m staring at it now, stirring occasionally, hoping it won’t char and burn.

What have some hits been? I made Marcella Hazan’s meat ragu, which was incredible and a feat on what would have been an awful, snowed-in day. Half of it is still in the before mentioned blue Ikea container, in my freezer, waiting for an inevitable week when I will eat various forms of ragu over polenta, pasta, lasagna. I tried a yogurt-leek soup again with my immersion blender, but it was still a little funny and too thin, and the yogurt would separate from the rest of the soup as the week went on. Another hit was an adventurous tomato sauce I had no recipe for but followed my whims. Tip: white wine, then reduce like hell. It tastes great. A yellow pepper stuffed with leftover homemade fennel chicken sausage blend but remixed with some panko. When I visited Zoe, we made spicy black bean cakes, an amazing chicken tortilla soup, a quiche and those “jewish purim cookies” as I endearingly referred to them then. Mornings consist of steel cut oatmeal, yogurt, sometimes a perfect egg over easy in my cast iron. I get my coffee for eight dollars a pound from Costo Rico Coffee Company, which smells like heaven. I’ve been trying to cut out a lot of dairy because I’ve been having, ahem, digestion issues and I’m pretty much at a loss what to eat for breakfast. I’m like, ok, what do I like that doesn’t involve some kind of dairy? And then cheese, jesus, cheese. And carbonara. Lots and lots of carbonara.

What I consider essentials in my fridge/pantry, I think are as follows: pancetta, eggs, frozen blueberries (preferably wild blueberries), Eggo Waffles, a box of thin spaghetti, a can of canned tomatoes, broccoli, Faye yogurt, Parmesan cheese, and Trader Joe’s frozen haricot verts.

but, ok, I’m gonna be better at writing because I cook so much nowadays that I have no excuse.