Tiny chocolate handbags! (Link from Purseuing, which I found at Kottke.org)

Couscous salad and tomato soup from Trader Joe's today. I realize it's hard to come by a TJ's in NYC, but they're just great for cheap organic, healthy stuff. I am a new huge fan of the tomato soup which comes in a convenient pourable box like soy milk. Good with brown rice or quinoa mixed in. Today Gothamist has a little article about frozen foods which is timely if you use frozen spinach and blueberries as much as me. I'm not into short cuts which usually include preservtives or loss of nutrition. But they say frozen fruits and veggies may hold more of their nutrients than the fresh stuff because they are frozen right after picking whereas the fresh stuff loses nutrition in transport. Food for thought (har har).

I can't wait to check out Baked this weekend! (I think they hired the same people who did the Chocolate Bar website.)

What was that about childhood obesity?

Hot Lunch Reading Room

Please Feed Me: A Punk Vegan Cookbook by Niall McGuirk.

Pizza: A Slice of Heaven by Ed Levine. I'd buy this just to find out where the "pizza belt" is!

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, by Ruth Reichl.

Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food, by Susan Marks.

and...

The USPS will be releasing Holiday Cookie Stamps in October!

Fake "chick'n" salad sandwich on whole wheat with soy cheese and spinach, Bearitos nachos chips, and two milk-chocolate Dove hearts. Something about the sandwich made me totally nauseous. Probably the mayonnaise-y texture and the celery. I hate celery. Just typing the work is making me want to puke. And I hate sandwiches that are loaded with mayo - they get too slimy. Well, I guess I'm not going to buy this kind of fake chik'n salad again. You learn something new every day at lunch time!

Here's an article about Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Don't Get Fat, which is currently sweeping the nation. I definitely enjoyed it. From this article it sounds like French women are all unemployed. And I didn't see anywhere in the book that one of the reasons to stay slim is to stay appealing to men. Ug.

Another grosso lunch: peanut butter and jelly and sour cream and onion "Dirty" potato chips. At least the PB and J was on whole-wheat with organic peanut butter and jelly. I tried drinking a Very Pro-Berry Naked Juice, but it was so gritty and sandy I couldn't do it. Not recommended.

My dinner was a little better: tofu pups with spinach and soy cheese, and Pom Wonderful juice.

The book Kerry mentioned below is Superfoods RX: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life by Steven G. Pratt. I have this book too and I really like it - it scared me into eating spinach, which was probably the only way I would have ever started eatinig the stuff!

Cheese and tomato sandwich again. Although I must say I love the yogurt cheese from Trader Joe's. Since I used flax seed bread, that's three Superfoods (look this book up at amazon.com): tomatoes, flax seeds, yogurt. I will live 3 seconds longer.

Sunday I ate like crap all day long: pizza, jellybeans, toast, scrambled eggs, cookies, chocolates, coffee. Ug. I felt disgusto. Today was not much better: leftover pizza with a spinach and carrot salad to balance it out a little. And more jellybeans. I love sour Jellybellies!

Last Sunday G and I had a friend over for brunch. G did all the cooking: risotto, onion gratin, and he also baked jam thumbprints with blackberry jam. So good!!! The blackberry jam was perfect. I made no-bake peanut butter chocolate squares, and our guest Michael didn't mince words with these: "It's like eating a softball!" Ah, what's a friend if not honest?

We used cava, which is sparkling wine from Spain, for the mimosas. I had never heard of this stuff, but the guy at the wine store said it is great for mimosas because it's not really that great to drink plain, and I soon agreed with him.

I want to clarify that post down there about reasons not to eat meat. I should have said, reasons not to eat factory-farmed meat.

Welcome to Hot Lunch, Kerry!

Spinach pie

I had spinach pie today which I made last night during boyfriend-meet-my-dad dinner, so it has a little bit of stress in it, but it's still good. It's a Greek recipe my friend Stef's grandmother used to make. First mix:
2 cups flour
1 t. salt
1 cup warm water
Mix together to form a dough. Roll into log then divide in half and then each half in 6 pieces.

Melt 1 stick salted butter.
Brush plate with butter. Roll each of the first six dough balls as thin as you can, put one at a time on the plate and brush with butter between the layers. After 6, cover with plastic wrap. Butter again and stack next 6 layers with butter brushed between. Refrigerate 20 minutes.

Meanwhile mix:
1 12oz container low fat cottage cheese
1 pound spinach, destemmed and steamed (1 package frozen from Trader Joe's is perfect)
3 eaggs, beaten
1 t. salt
1 T cream cheese

Butter a large pie pan. Take the first stack of dough layers and roll it thin to cover the bottom and sides of the pie pan. Pour in the spinach filling. Roll out the second stack of dough layers and cover the top. Seal with water and roll edges in. Cover top with buter. Cut seams in top to allow steam out. Bake at 400 for 50 minutes. Let cool a bit before serving. De-lish!