a pickled belly
May 5, 2008
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I feel like a pickle. I am pickled. I have had too much wine, too much chocolate and too much coffee in recent days. It’s important for me to enjoy being with people I love, and when I don’t get to see them often, I am prone to opening an extra bottle of wine, having an extra scoop or two of chocolate ice cream (on Thursday night I had two desserts after my berry cobbler failed to satisfy) and drinking unending cups of caffeine during the day to keep me going through my physically soggy state.
I arrived in Texas this morning, determined to return to what the hungry, hungry Hippo(crates) said about food–that we must make it our medicine.
For the next few days I will be cooking with this in mind, and beginning each day with a saintly cup of warm water with a floating slice of lemon. A few yoga twists in the morning will also help me wring out my blackened innards. Delicious!
Now I am sipping peppermint tea instead of coffee and cream, which I would usually slug at this hour of the afternoon. (Mind you, this detox plan includes a cup of coffee in the morning, a glass of wine every night and some dark chocolate after every meal, because it would definitely be a health hazard to give up those flavenoids altogether.)
May the pendulum swing back to intestinal cleanliness for a minute, but may I not forgot the many wonderful meals I had in New York. Worth your time: scallops at Nook, a BYOB in Hell’s Kitchen (the cheeseburger is also good, if only for the potatoes, fried with a Midas touch). Also try the farmer’s veggie plate at Westville in the West Village, aptly named. I had a combination of butternut squash, mushrooms, artichoke hearts with goat cheese and beets with walnuts. That night I also ordered the salmon, then the berry cobbler. Then the chocolate soufflé.
Before dinner at Westville I had drinks at The Rusty Knot on the West Side highway–the most excruciating yippster crowd I’ve stumbled into since crashing a prep school party at somebody’s parent’s Park Avenue penthouse. It was like a recurring nightmare: all of the pretties prep school kids I’d ever met, together in one place, floating in paisley and pinstripes as if they were bobbing on a Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard boat instead of hobnobbing (land-locked) by the dirty Hudson. There they were, all grown up, drinking gin and tonics and wearing pink pants with flannel shirts for a bit of that just-rolled-out-of-bedness. At least Dorian’s stays in its rightful zip code.
Buzina Pop was another inadvertent stop-over. I went there after a very clean meal at Candle Cafe–the vegetarian platter serves up at least a bottle of Centrum’s-worth of vitamins and minerals. In need of a kick in the gut, I bought myself a sack of earl gray infused dark chocolates from Payard (across the block from Buzina Pop) and had a glass of Miolo Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon outside, which was almost enough to keep me warm, but not quite. It was very good wine–maybe the best glass I had all week. Nevertheless, it was very cold outside. So cold that I ate all of my truffles and ordered another glass.
Today I raise a mug of lemon-infused water and toast to that decision.
