I Invite You All to Dinner at My Place

You're invited to my potluck

Day 17:

Potluck Party, and you’re invited.

From the NONY-NY Locavore Challenge website:

“On a single evening on Thursday, September 23, 2010 groups of people will gather over potlucks across the wide state of NY, from Niagara Falls to the tip of Long Island, breaking (local, organic) bread together.  These groups share a common interest in their concern over the current state of the U.S. food system and a commitment to consuming food grown from local organic farms. We hope to eventually have potluck gatherings in each of NY’s 62 counties, and have thousands of individuals making this stance together, while remaining in their home communities.”

Date: Thursday, September 23, 2010
Time: Starting at 6PM, Dinner at 6:30PM
Location: 3044 Third Ave, Apt 6C, Bronx, NY 10451
Please RSVP

Bring Food. Make sure the items you make are made from “local and sustainable” ingredients. All are invited, but make sure you e-mail me in advance so I know who is coming (space considerations). I will be providing some New York wine and such.

The Ballet, or Gossip Girl?

Day 13: Someone once said that life is a series of decisions or choice. Something like that. Sometimes quoted sayings are more reality than just cute wit-ism’s.

I had these grandiose plans for Monday: good work day, including a meeting with my academic research partner (I’m wokring on this pretty cool study), followed by a solo trip to Bryant Park  to watch a performance of the New York City Ballet. I already had in mind to bring a few bunches of  locally and sustainably-grown plum tomatoes  I have a soft spot for the ballet (don’t judge!). Such a nice plan, right?

Situation (an event, not the person): today is the season premiere of Gossip Girl. Ballet or Gossip Girl? Dilemma.

Luckily, the choice was made for me: it rained. Rain!

No ballet. Sad

Gossip Girl. Good.

Salad

Off I went, returning home via mass transit, Metrocard-style. I spent some time cooking when I got home. Chicken, salad, more salad, more chicken. Nice and easy.

The universe, with it’s rain and rain and Gossip Girl and rain made a tre awesome choice.

Chicken in the oven

Trying to get to bed early. Tomorrow is the primary election in NYC and I want to go vote before work.

 I encourage everyone to go vote.

The Lack of Style is So Style! Is Zero Not a Number?

Day 12: I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit of a character. A certain flair in my prose, neon in my spoken word, a certain je ne sais quoi in the way I see the world as a series of systems. It all makes for a ‘different’ style. (Notice that I don’t qualify whether this Jorge-style of being is any good. I don’t judge.)

 This style extends to my cooking. Cooking is king in this challenge. It’s so tough to ensure that all the ingredients in a prepared or “value-added” product are sourced to 250 miles from home. On the other hand, raw ingredients are much easier to source. When I’m out shopping, my trusty Driod phone, with Google Maps application, helps me figure out if the Jorge-dubbed “farm of creation” is within the catchment area.

Yesterday’s meal is a great example. Yesterday’s special at El Jorge’s Kitchen was … salad. Yes, you read correctly. Salad.

I’ve never been a big salad eater. I kind of like eating my produce “straight up comma yo.” Unadulterated, uncooked, uncut. (Feel free to enter a That’s What he/She Said here).

• Head of lettuce, straight up comma yo.
• Stalks of celery, straight up comma yo.
• Regular tomatoes, eaten like an apple, straight up comma yo.

This whole salad thing is an adventure into a world semi-uncharted. I was able to pick up some greens and other assorted shrub-like items. And, as one would expect from a man who like to wear bright colored shirts, poly-colors were involved. Outstanding.

Tonight’s meal consisted of New Jersey grass-fed ground beef and local peppers and greens. My camera wasn’t responding while I was cooking. When it finally came-to, I was able to take this shot of the leftovers. Can you say tomorrow’s lunch! Or, if I forget to bring it into work, then dinner.

Leftovers from Day 12

As for recipe, I just fooled around in the kitchen with my food. Ok, that sounds wrong, yet scrumptious. What I’m trying to say is that I trial-and-error-ed it. The outcome was taste-tastic. Another successful “locavore” day.

Side Story that goes to the style issue: Every set amount of time, my friends think it interesting to try a different type of challenge. Dubbed the “Guap-tathalon, this multi-day, multi-discipline exercise has others trying to “live a few days in my shoes. Varying success has “befallen” the “Guap-tathalon” participants, with the “being energetic and perky on no sleep” (I sleep an average of four hours a night) and the “make a new friend, a friend til the end: including those no one can stand” as the areas where folks tend to have problems. Silly friends.

Side Story 2: The title for this post came from a conversation with an ex-girlfriend. She questioned my “choices” in the fashion region. Mind you, I’ll never be mistaken for a fashionista, but I tend to think my Jorge-style also permeates my clothing choices. “You have no style,” was the contention. I responded “I have style.” At which point, said ex-girlfriend retorted “the lack of style is not style.”

I found a huge flaw in her logic. The null set is, in fact, a set. Or, said another way “Is Zero Not A Number?,” said Jorge. “It’s science.” Actually, it’s math, but I was making a point.

Side Story 3: As an aside, I’ve been taking in lectures and curated tours of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology since coming home. You know, emersing myself in a subcultutre of which I’m not a part as a way to learn. It’s real interesting stuff. Check the museum’s public events out.

FYI – In the coming weeks, I’m attempting to visit and review each of the farmers markets in the South Bronx, as well as do a quick Q and A with some of the folks who run two urban gardening/farming areas in the South Bronx. I may also get around to doing something similar with the folks who run the South Bronx Cooperative Market. Stay tuned.

Cooking: It’s What’s For Dinner

I haven’t had a chance to post these over the last several days. Will post all the backed editions.

 

Kitchen Chemistry

Day 10: I like to cook. I started cooking for myself when I was in the 9^th grade, I suppose. At first, my mother would leave some food semi-prepared for me to do some cooking. As she saw I could handle feeding my sister, she’d leave me just the fridge.

She’s trained me well. See, I’d learned to cook by watch her. Visually memorizing what she did and how the resulting food tasted. My mother’s not a cookbook sort of person. Her kitchen chemistry comes from trial-and-error in which so much of our basic science is rooted. It is in this tradition that my culinary leanings were honed.

She made sure we grew up having eaten a little of everything so we knew how stuff tasted. “Quiero que ustedes estan listos para la gera.” A Spanish idiom meant to say she wanted us to be ready for whatever happened, for any situation.

One time, before leaving for my first year at Dartmouth, I surprised my parents by cooking for them. The student had become the master … kind of. My mother upped her game after that. She has always been a great, patient cook. Now, her cooking is more like a fine wine. Not to knock mine, of course. These skills make this challenge much easier.

I Almost Felt Like Chicken Last Night, Almost Like Chicken Last Night

I haven’t had a chance to post these over the last several days. Will post all the backed editions.

Day 9: Almost. It’s one of those words that lives in the world of possibility, probablilty and unknown outcomes. Much like nearly, it’s on the more negative side. You know, like, “didn’t make it, buddy” or “if only you’d tried harder, you would have been successful at your endeavor.” Almost.

Almost happened to me. Yesterday (link to last post). Chicken. I arrived at the vivero after work to find that they were sold out of chicken. This left me out of luck for dinner. Almost.

Dejected from my retail experience, I sulked to the “parent’s vertice” of the “Bermuda Triangle of Family,” the isoscelian area created by the symbolic edges of my parents, grandmother (father’s side) and my homes. Each side measuring about one city block, it’s home. Pop culture-reference-wise, we’d be Tupac, Amelia Earhart  and Elvis. (Grandmother would so be Tupac).

Almost’s strike was stricken down by a vert-tastically triangular blade. My mother eye-spied and, more importantly, purchased some ground beef at the local supermarket. Sustainable, local to 250 miles beef. My mother had saved me from a peppers and peaches dinner. I had something to cook!

She also had also proved the “zeroth law of my mother”, linear algebra style:

Almost + My Mother –> Positive Outcome.

We’ve Found Chickens!

I haven’t had a chance to post these over the last several days. Will post all the backed editions.

Day 8: I know how Columbus must felt! (the discovering something that already existed part, not the bad stuff.) A co-worker of mine prior to her holding her current position worked as an auctioneer at an animal auction center in Schoharie County. Knowing I was of the South Bronx, she mentioned that one of the folks who would come up to purchase was from my ‘hood. And, that they tended to buy out as many free-range chickens as possible, as their clientele are all sorts of Halal keeping or liked having their chicken raised in a manner similar to how they would have been raised back in their home country (the Bronx is the only borough in the City where the Latino population is the majority).

These Bronx guys were the answers to my prayers. Finally, something different. Why didn’t I remember this earlier? Probably because my co-worker made this mention, in passing, about three years ago. I remember wacky information. Silly Jorge. In this case, the wacky information is going to provide me sustenance.

These chickens are purchased live and transported live to places know as Viveros. The word derives from the Spanish verb vivir, which means to live. By extension, a Vivero is a place where you purchase live things. The consumer picks out which chicken they would like to purchase. The chickens are then “prepared” for you. Defeathered, cleaned up, cut, etc. Or not. It’s your choice.

I remember going to a number of these places with my dad as a kid. There was one for a while underneath the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge, and another reliable one up on like 118 street in East Harlem. And, of course, the good ones in the Bronx on Southern Boulevard, 3^rd Ave and the Lower Grand Concourse. There are also some in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, but I digress. (There are rooftop and urban garden chicken coups in the Bronx. That’s a story for a different time.)

 These Bronx guys were actually only a few bus stops away. Victory, Viking Quest-style (or, in the real world, Legend of the Seeker). I totally felt like chicken tonight.

Side Story: A while back, I was hanging out with mother and the young lady I was dating at the time when we happened upon a vivero. I walked in when my mother stopped me. She said “esta no es su cultura. Ella no crecio asi. Espera aqui.” Translated from the Spanish, my mother was telling me that the young lady was raised differently, with different customs and points of view. And, that the view of a place like this may freak her out. Usually, I’m pretty perceptive and responsive to these sorts of situations. My mother saved me, and her, from what may have been a culturally awkward situation.

Also, some might find that weird, but, to me, it’s actually a lot of fun to spend time my parents and whoever I’m dating at the time, as it is fun for me to spend time with the young lady and her family.

(For full disclosure, I suppose I should mention that while that didn’t work out, I’m still friends with the young lady from the Side Story. I’m single now. Maybe TMI, but whatever. I live a very public life. Notice, though, I use no names or identifiers for the folks mentioned in this blog. I try to respect my friends’, family’s privacy.)

On Being Home

I haven’t had a chance to post these over the last several days. Will post all the backed editions. 

The Bronx

Day 6: Being home full-time from the back-and-forth Albany trips has been a nice change. (For the last several years, my work has taken me between Albany and NYC.)

I hadn’t realized how tightly wound I’d become. I hadn’t change. I’d just been run down from the schedule I’ve been keeping and the turbulent last few years. Changes of Governors, budget battles, help staving off the elimination of the State’s consumer protection agency, more budget battles, scandals, etc. And, let’s not mention all the travel, on my dime, to and from NYC/Albany, as well as work-related travel to Buffalo, Syracuse, Utica, etc. Three long years.

(On a personal level, I’m very pleased what I was able to accomplish. Notwithstanding the climate, I was able to advance a bunch of initiatives I started or made better/more efficient, including in the area of food policy.)

It took me about three weeks from being home to finally feel whole. A good friend and I had been organizing, over e-mail, phone and meetings, a possible outdoor movie screening for the early fall, as well as a movie screening series at a local neighborhood restaurant in the South Bronx. We’d spoke a bunch over the first few weeks I was home. It was when we spoke, that third week of being home full-time, that he said “Dude, you sound so different from the last few week. Did it finally hit you that you’re home?” It hadn’t just hit me. It’s more a matter of, apparently, needing those three weeks to “center” myself back in NYC.

Later the same week, I went to a movie and humus with someone. Over a few plates of varying humus (or humi, haha. I like plural-izing words with “i.” I think the words are cuter that way), I noticed that I was excited, yet calmer than I’d been in years. Granted, the excitement and calm had more to do with the company and not the being home. Nevertheless, the next day that followed that delightful evening, I was so serene. I was finally home. It was in the midst of this excitement and calm that Saturday that I decided to take up Northeast Organic Farmers Association’s Locavore Challenge.

And, this blogging thing, kind of  public, isn’t it? It’s rather weird for me to be doing this. I really value my alone time. Like, I really enjoy solitude. That may read weirdly coming from a guy who is blogging his Locavore Challenage experience and who, admittedly, live a very public life. I mean, when you Four Square when you get home, are you really that solitude-like? I would say yes to my own question.

“Alone doesn’t necessarily equate to “alone.” I guess it’s more like being away from the world. People can be there. For example, a number of years ago, I dated a young lady who would go “off the grid” with me. It was the best part of that relationship. We’d go to movies, quiet hikes, watched a days-worth of episodic television. All together. Just the two of us. All solitude-like. (Too bad the rest of the relationship wasn’t a good fit ).

My friends call it my going “off the grid,” referencing the electric grid, as well as not being able to be found on the “grid” created by the Commissioners Plan under New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, for whom there is a high school named in the Northwest Bronx.

It’s quite liberating to go “off the grid” and be excited, relaxed and calm at home.

Con Este Biscocho Hasta Mañana A Las Oche; Ya Comiste, Ya Te Fuiste

I haven’t had a chance to post these over the last several days. Will post all the backed editions.

 

Biscocho

Day 5: My father says these two Spanish-language idioms after every enjoyable meal in which he partakes. The first refers to having eaten so much, well that there is no need to eat again until the next morning’s breakfast. The second is the nice way of saying that you might think about leaving now that we’ve eaten your meal. I’m sure the next time I’m over at my parents place, he’ll first ask me what I’m doing this local thing, then, after eating, will say these two idioms. Silly dad.

My Mother is the Latina Mary Poppins

I haven’t had a chance to post these over the last several days. Will post all the backed editions.

 

Mary Poppins

Day 4: Some of my sister’s friends seem to think this expedition is silly. I reminded them of that classic Jorge-ism: I’ve gone longer distances for dumber things. Example, one of my favorite hot dog stands is in Trexlertown, PA, a little over an hour and a half away from New York City. And, that’s not a long distance, nor very dumb. And, the hot dogs are tre awesome. I’m just example-ing. (How very Dr. Suess of me, making up words and grammatic contructs.) This is also neither longer, nor dumber, It’s awesome.

My mother is a different story. She’s sort of use to my ways. I mean, growing up, before my mother would say hello to me upon returning from school on a Friday, she would ask me two questions: what did you volunteer us for this weekend, and is it going to start at 6AM again.

Anyway, my mom gave me this The Rock-esque eyebrow raise, laughed, and said (translated from the Spanish): “so, for how long are you doing this and when does it end?” She took it in stride. So patient. A good/necessary quality when dealing with me.

She’s the best. In fact, I call my mother the Latino Mary Poppins. She totally is. When she speaks, it’s like she’s singing. She’s all sorts of cute and short. Did I mention that humming birds help her dress in the morning. (OK, so maybe the last one is a stretch. The birds are robins )

She said she’s going to try to purchase more local items for her household. You know, in solidarity and stuff. Yay.

The First Shopping Expedition = Fail … Well, Only a Semi-Fail

I haven’t had a chance to post these over the last several days. Will post all the backed editions.

Day 1: The Challenge is on like Donkey Kong. Unlike many of the other folks doing this, I’m trying to do this unplanned. That’s kind of a change for me. Well, at least on the consumer side.

Typically, my food shopping involves a trip to the grocery store, supermarket, farmers market, etc. with a good idea of what I want to eat and a good read of all specials/sales. Savvy consumerism and such, ingrained in me as a child by my mother. In fact, I was tasked a while back at work to share my insight with the public.

Unfortunately, some of these basic consumer practices are not well employed, especially the planning part. Staying true to the manner in which folks shop, I’m trying to do most of the Challenge sans planning.

My first food trip took me to a supermarket near my office. I assumed I could purchase a few lunch items for the week, then do a massive shopping trip on the weekend. I also banked on purchasing some dinner items during this first go-around. Well, you know what they say about making assumptions: don’t.

“Let’s start with apples,” I thought. “I mean, I’m in the Big one. There have to be a few New York State apples.” Wrong.

Seriously? We’re in New York State, the second largest producer of apples in the country. There were no sign of New York State apples in this store. Five varieties of apples in this store, none from New York.

I’m just saying: There is so going to be a serious Apple Uprising. Soon, you will see Macintosh’s, Granny Smith’s and other varietals picketing the store advocating … nay, demanding their fair representation in the store’s produce aisle. This Great Apple Debacle of aught ’10 will live on in infamy. Or, at least in the –famy part. (Yes, I do realize that apples, as, you know, food, don’t have arms, legs, mouths, etc. No apples was harmed in the writing of this silly missive).

NYS Tomoatoes

Failure begot failure begot success. I kept looking for other items. Nothing. That was, until I saw a box of lovely plum tomatoes. Sure, they were from California. Yes, they weren’t local. Yet, they helped me. Whispering, they said “look in this section. Jorge, look for that thing. That thing you keep trying to advance with the state’s agriculture department. Their local program. Pride of New York. Look for the logo.” With an assist from these talking tomatoes, I found a whole section of plum tomatoes from New York.

Local Peaches from New Jersey

Success begot success. Tomatoes begot peaches. Peaches begot cheese. Cheese begot milk. All local. All sustainable. The consumer sleuthing worked. I also had a conversation with the store folks about their food labeling re: fish. They label where the fish is from if internationally, buy not domestically (just “Made in USA”). I suggested to label New York State as such. They seemed receptive. Success!

While delicious and a refreshing change of pace to my normal eating regimen, a tomatoes/peaches-and-cheese lunch does not make for a balanced lunch. And, while it is at least a start towards a shopping regimen, it also got me thinking: all these folks who planned out their food shopping/comsumption/recipe patterns for the day, week, or month during which they are participating in the Challenge may have a point.