insomnia haiku

Meatless Monday 4/25: Oops! Fish is a meat ...

While I am still (sort of) committed to the idea of Meatless Monday, I'd given myself a pass for the last couple months. As I see it, you are given a Meatless Monday exemption if you are 1) going out to dinner, 2) on vacation, or 3) having the shittiest month of your life. All three have applied at various times (particularly #3). Hence, Meatless Monday got shelved. If everything else is falling down around me, then for God's sake, let me eat meat.

But yesterday rolled around and I didn't have dinner plans -- and in fact, was feeling that a meatless day might be in order, since in recent weeks I had eaten, oh, let's see:

• suckling pig at Maialino
• lots of good things at Ma Peche (it was a great experience -- thanks, Sandy! -- but I didn't love it as much as the Momofuku restaurants)
• arroz con pato at Nuela
• steak frites at Le Renais de Venise L'Entrecote (I love this place -- they only have steak frites on the menu, and when you get most of the way done with your portion, they bring you seconds)
• porterhouse steak (and bacon, natch) at Peter Luger
• more bacon the next day at brunch at Clover Club
• pork belly buns at Momofuku Ssam
• fried chicken at Redhead

What can I say? I've had a lot of friends in town recently, and on top of that, everyone from my old job wants to go out to dinner or lunch to gossip. What am I going to do, say no? (Note: rhetorical question.)

So I decided to reinstate Meatless Monday yesterday, though only temporarily since I'm about to go on vacation (see: rule #2). I got a little hungry in the morning, and realized that I could head to Mile End and get a bagel, since it was before noon. Is it sacrilegious of me to say that I prefer Montreal bagels to New York bagels? They're sweeter and not as dense, and I love the ones from Mile End. So I trotted over there and got The Beauty, which is a bagel with lox, cream cheese, capers, tomato and red onion.

I was feeling all proud of myself for not eating meat for lunch -- and also for remembering, for once, to hit up Mile End before noon -- when I realized ... um, you dummy, lox is fish. NOT A VEGETABLE. Ergo, "meat." Dork. Oh well, at least I wasn't having more steak. Here is The Beauty in all its, well, beauty:

For dinner I made pasta with broccoli rabe, which I made with anchovies since that's what the recipe called for, and I had decided that anchovies don't count as "meat." It wasn't I who decided this, actually, but other people, who kept saying, "but they're just there for flavor!" I guess the logic is that anchovies don't take up enough room to matter or have feelings, and though as a short person I suppose I might take umbrage at that, I am all for exceptions, so onto the exception list they go.

The broccoli rabe pasta is supposed to be topped with parmesan cheese, and since I'm lactose intolerant I tend to avoid cheese, so I didn't add any. This was a mistake, I think. Cheese would have helped cut the bitterness. But I did buy good pasta, and that made a big difference to the dish.

Accompanied by brussels sprouts glazed with balsamic vinegar. I didn't bother wiping off the plate. I'd never get anywhere on Worst Cooks in America.

For the record, I was starving this morning.

A day without cell phones; and, two food columns

When I bought my first cell phone, a decade ago, I vowed, "I will never turn it on -- only for emergencies!" In retrospect, this assertion bears more than a passing similarity to other misguided statements such as "I will never drink again," and "I swear to you, if I ever get back together with that guy, please shoot me."

Today, as I left my apartment to meet my friend Brooke for brunch, I realized I'd forgotten my phone. "Oh well," I thought, "what am I going to need it for? I'm only going for brunch and then coming home." But then, as I sat waiting in the restaurant, and Brooke didn't arrive right away, I started feeling the vertigo of phone-lessness. What if something happened? What if she wasn't coming? How would she reach me? What if I was at the wrong place?

And then, I thought to check what time it was ... and even though I wear a watch, I always set it 7–10 minutes fast so that I won't be running late (this works about as well as you think it does, which is to say, not at all), so I usually check my phone if I want to see what the exact time is. And of course I couldn't do that. Because I didn't have my phone.

Time to kill as I sat there? Oh fun, I get to play Angry Birds! But wait, I couldn't. Because I didn't have my phone. (I pulled out my New Yorker instead. Yes, I realize that Angry Birds is killing my brain cells.)

Anyway, Brooke showed up soon enough, and all was well, though she briefly thought I was mad at her because I wasn't answering her texts saying she was running late. How far we've come from the days when we thought our cell phones would only be for "emergencies," or when we said things like, "Why would I want people to be able to reach me whenever they want?" or "I don't want to be one of those people who's always on their phone."

It made me wonder, what would happen if we all left our cell phones at home one day? Would everything just ... stop? How would we ever communicate? We'd have to be on time, for one thing: no more "running 5 minutes late" or "just got off the subway!" We'd have to be everywhere we said we'd be, when we agreed we'd be there. And if you went out, you'd be out -- no interruptions, no distractions, no "just a minute, I have to take this." If someone wanted to reach you, tough luck. You'd interact with the world, not with your phone. What a novel concept.

Not that that means I'm leaving my phone at home again.

---

I've only eaten at the vegetables-only restaurant Dirt Candy once, because, well, it's vegetarian. (The one time I ate there, I liked the food. Shocking!) But I've enjoyed reading chef/owner Amanda Cohen's blog over the past few days. One of the nice things about being unemployed is that I actually have time to read on the Internet, and though over half of what I read is related to fantasy baseball, I'm enjoying finding well-written pieces I wouldn't have thought to seek out before.

In Amanda Cohen's Dirt Candy blog, she talks about having just endured the worst week of her life, from having her diswasher break to earning a subpar grade from the Health Department to losing her longtime sous chef. She's a good writer, and I'm sure that anyone who's ever worked at a restaurant can relate.

More inside-the-kitchen blogging worth reading: Sara Jenkins (of Porchetta fame)'s regular column for the Atlantic about opening her new restaurant, Porsena. I haven't read all her columns yet, but I did particularly enjoy this recent one on Yelp reviews. "I really don't know what restaurants these people are eating in," she says. And though she appreciates feedback in her efforts to improve, "I try not to read Yelp anymore." Believe me, I can relate.

It's only words

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I've been on a bit of a hiatus from the blog lately. I recently lost my job in circumstances I'm not yet ready to discuss, and so I've been at a loss as to what to divulge here, even if, as with most of what I write on Insomnia Haiku, I share very little that's personal or work-related or embarrassing (unless it's funny, in which case "embarrassing" works out like gangbusters).

Like I said before, the Internet is like one giant game of Telephone. By that, I mean anything you say can be picked up, dissected, distorted, misused. You could say that this is the byproduct of the scary new Internet world in which we live -- but it's mostly our own fault. How much of our lives do we guard as truly private, and "offline," as it were? Instead of keeping diaries for ourselves alone, we write blogs that can be read by anyone, anywhere. Instead of having intimate conversations with our friends, we text, Facebook, Twitter and email.

For people such as I who are private bordering on shy, and who don't particularly enjoy talking on the phone (thank you online ordering!), the rise of the digital age can seem like a boon. We can retreat further into ourselves while somehow being more connected than we ever were before. Wow, you mean I can just write stuff and not interact with anyone I don't know? Score. But we forget, don't we? Words have power -- power at the hands of the writer, which then transforms into power held by the reader and interpreter. Once we let those words go, they spring out into the world like children; and for all our care and worry and thought, we have little to no control over what the world will make of them, or what they will, in the eyes of strangers, ultimately become.

But words, to quote the Bee Gees song, are all I have, and so I will do my best to keep writing here even if, in some ways, I can't say much of anything. I know you're all used to that already. In fact, I'm sure four of you six readers are scratching your heads having no idea what I'm going on about ... well, I don't understand what I'm going on about half the time anyway, so welcome to my world.

At any rate, since leaving my job I've been trying hard to unplug, which is a novel concept for me. The first weekend, as I lay on my couch, I kept glancing over to my coffee table, expecting to see my Blackberry with its red light blinking. My fingers twitched for the device that was no longer there. I was glad not to have to leap to respond to every late-night query and request and breaking news story, but at the same time, I felt a little lost otherwise.

And while being on constant work alert has become a fact of existence -- even a point of pride -- for me, it is also, I have come to realize, not healthy. It's alarmingly not healthy, in fact. Sure, there's something of a thrill to being that energized all the time, that tuned in ... but what does it get you, in the end? Does it truly fulfill you, or does it merely fulfill in you some narcissistic desire to feel necessary and important? I'm starting to suspect the latter. People out in the world have lives, or so I hear, that don't revolve around a blinking Blackberry. And so, turning the page, I am embarking on a quest to try to find one.

Bring back that sleepy feeling, now it's gone, gone, gone ...

Argh. I was so close to falling asleep, drifting off, sooo close ... and I twitched awake, and then, blink blink blink, 45 minutes of lying in bed, blink blink blink, wondering how I lost that sleepy feeling, whoa that sleepy feeling.

Sorry I've been neglectful of late. Some things have been happening (shit's been goin' down, as they say, and by "they" I mean attitudinal street toughs in gang movies), and I can't write about any of it here, because the Internet, as I have recently learned, is like one giant, horribly played game of Telephone. Except it lasts FOREVER.

But, as they also say, what doesn't kill you only maims you, so life can go on. As it will, and always does.

No coherent thoughts tonight, just random ones:

1. Have I mentioned that I am now addicted to Angry Birds? Well, I am. If you're not aware of it, it's a videogame for the iPhone (and other mobile devices too, I believe), and it is insanely addicting. I don't often play video games even despite owning a PS3, mostly because I fear what I, who have a mild-to-intermediate case of OCD, would become by sitting innocently down to play. Angry Birds, on the other hand, is little! It's cute! It fits in your phone, and you can play it on the subway without anyone noticing! (Except they totally notice, because they're all playing it, too.)

And the game -- which features you shooting birds from a slingshot to knock down structures and kill green pigs -- has the genius strategy of making most of the beginning levels, at least, not that hard. Sure, you can figure it out fairly easily, earning one star out of three. Well, if you could get that one star without too much trouble, what does it take to get two stars? or three? (Note: It can take a lot.) My favorite feature is that you can immediately pause the game and start the level over whenever you want. I frequently do this when my first bird is still in the air, as I've already determined that he's not aiming precisely where I want him to go, and therefore he must be stopped! erased! vanquished for his imperfections! Pause, restart, start again. No, I'm not manic at all, why do you ask?

The other night, a Sunday at the end of a trying weekend, I lay on my couch playing Angry Birds until 3 in the morning. I felt like a dude in my parents' basement, yelling out for more PB&J sandwiches with the crusts cut off. (I'm kidding. I like the crusts.)

Anyway, if you can take having the thing subsume your life completely, I recommend it. For one thing, it's fun. And it's a nice, all-consuming distraction when other things in your life require ... distraction.

 

2. Sometimes I wonder if I might be autistic. There's probably a point on the spectrum for me, right? This occurred to me as I was in South Carolina last weekend, hanging out in the living room of my former boss's house, the conversation of the lively guests there centering around books and chefs and cooking methods and restaurants. All up my alley, but I just wasn't feeling it, so I wandered away to the jigsaw puzzle I'd set up on a side table. I adore the jigsaw puzzles at this house. They're Vintage Parker Bros., no pictures on the boxes, all pieces hand-cut, so some of them are in funny shapes like horses and stars and parrots (even though the pieces themselves will not be used to create horses or stars or parrots). I can spend forever working on these puzzles, staring intently at the shape of the piece I need, then poring over all the hundreds of other pieces searching for the exact precise one. So, there we had adults sitting by the fire, having an adult professional conversation; and me over to the side, silently bent over the hundreds of pieces, sorting them and staring at them and muttering to myself? Yeah. Autistic, I think.

 

3. Every once in a while, someone will mention to me that they don't like leftovers. My host's son, apparently, does not like leftovers. I think that's ridiculous. I love leftovers -- they're better the next day, partly because they're sitting there ready for you, and you don't have to cook them! So considerate. I'm not sure how much I can trust someone who doesn't like leftovers.

 

4. This weekend, in between jigsaw jaunts, I read Michael Cunningham's newest novel, By Nightfall. Didn't care for it much, which disappointed me because I loved The Hours. This one just seemed like a lot of white-male navel-gazing -- a single conversation followed by two pages of internal pontificating -- which, while beautifully written, bored me. I don't need an action novel but I do need people doing stuff. And not just talking about how unhappy they maybe are. A shame, because I did love The Hours, but I may have to go back and read it again after reading Mrs. Dalloway.

And that's it; I guess I only had four thoughts in my head that tumbled out when I shook it. Night all.