Apartment Dining

The City Room reported today that Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, is pushing for meatless Mondays in New York City schools to promote healthy eating and cut down on costs. Baltimore’s public schools have taken up the program and offering options like eggplant parmesean and black bean nachos. Each meal costs 20 cents less than an average meal with meat.

A program like this makes perfect sense in a city where one in five kindergartners is obese, and when you consider the environmental impact of not producing those weekly orders of thousands of pounds of meat, it’s a no-brainer.

After looking through my Grandma Mangan’s recipe book at my mother’s house last fall, I decided to buy a scanner and archive the book’s contents on my computer. My father has now loaned me the recipe box of his mother, my Grandma Cahill, and I have started scanning her recipes as well.  Grandma Cahill’s collection has more recipes in poetic verse (total: 2), and Grandma Mangan’s collection has more clippings of famous dishes from local restaurants, but overall, their contents are similar. They include a recipes scribbled on scraps of paper, clippings from newspapers and processed food packaging, and index cards from friends and family. Lots of jello molds. Lots of “whipped topping.”

The first recipe I chose from my Grandma Cahill’s collection was for molasses cookies. Internet sleuthing while the cookies were baking yielded many similar—if not identical—recipes on the web, so it must have appeared on the side of a molasses container at one point and now graces the index cards of many collections. Recipe and photos after the jump. » Read the rest of this entry «

My mouth is still not fully healed from my surgery, but this weekend was the first time I branched out beyond pasta and I may have gone a bit overboard. Saturday dinner was barbecue from Fette Sau, Sunday morning brunch was vegetarian eggs Benedict at Brooklyn Label, and Valentine’s Day dinner was a chicken taco by Ramsey at my request. The whole weekend was rounded out with a game of Scrabble and an assortment of Italian pastries from Fortunato Brothers in Williamsburg. Oof.

I felt a recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook was in order for dinner tonight, and I chose Polenta Pie. Photos and a short recap after the jump. » Read the rest of this entry «

I had my wisdom teeth removed last Wednesday, and over the past four days, I have learned some valuable lessons.

• The nutritional drinks typically consumed by the old and infirm taste pretty good. Chocolate Ensure is like a thin milkshake in a handy little bottle. The only downside is that the second ingredient is sugar. The third? Corn syrup.
• Organic pureed soups in a box are also surprisingly good.
• Despite my love of mashed potatoes, no amount of butter can make them satisfying four meals in a row.
• Chocolate pudding is very easy to make from scratch. I chose a recipe from Simply Recipes because it didn’t require a double boiler, and with an egg involved, I convinced myself eating two cups in one sitting helped my protein intake.
• Do not schedule wisdom tooth extractions before major food-related holidays. Today should have involved a chicken finger sub, but instead I nibbled on some boiled dumplings.
• No amount of painkillers could make The Watchmen seem like a good movie. All I wanted to see was a giant squid attack.
• It’s difficult to focus on reading post-extraction, but I was able to get some design work done. You can see the redesign of my personal website at mocahill.com.

My wisdom teeth are coming out tomorrow. I’ve stocked up on juices, pureed soups, jello, Ensure, potatoes, and I bought supplies to make chocolate pudding from scratch. Will I have the motivation to shuffle to the kitchen in a pain killer haze and use a double boiler? I’m not sure, but if I do, I will document it here.

Undergoing major oral surgery is bad enough, but tomorrow also happens to be a big potluck at work. I’m lucky to have a number of colleagues that are avid home cooks, so the fact I will be unable to consume any of their dishes is a culinary tragedy. There is a regional theme, so I made a batch of Irish cream cookies as the boiled foods of my homeland aren’t the best crowd pleasers.

I’ll see you on the flip side, AD readers. If I believed in a higher power, I’d ask you to pray for me, but instead, just eat a whole lot of crunchy, spicy food on my behalf.