my gr*b str**t food diary
feat. two homes and five Italians
Here’s my Grubstreet-inspired food diary for the week. I read those diaries often, and while I may not be a famous writer or actor or comedian, this week felt like as good of a time as any for my own little documentation. Fun! A week of highs that are wonderful, and lows that are in reality of course so tame. This will probably be the first of many, I hope I haven’t bored you to tears.
Saturday, August 5
It is my very first weekend in my new apartment. It is Saturday, the most sacred of all days, and it’s also the most beautiful afternoon of the year. It’s like the universe is screaming directly into my ear that it’s time to leave the apartment and stare at something that isn’t a 4 x 4 cardboard box for the first time in two weeks. I say okay, fine. It’ll be a beach day, then. Unfortunately, as I am me, while my brain is saying Beach! Saturday! A day to frolic! my body is not on the same page. Since last night, my stomach has been turned upside down. Call it change/exhaustion/a heat wave/pure soul release/disorientation of leaving your home of the past 3 years/the Mexican food I had for dinner…we can get as psychological as we’d like. But the sun is out, the desperation to touch actual earth is becoming almost manic, and Pepto Bismol exists. So I get out of bed. For good measure, I toast a piece of sourdough rye that’s been sitting in the fridge to smear with peanut butter and banana. To pretend that this breakfast is out of enjoyment and not of pure fear and security, I add flaky sea salt.
I’m meeting my friend Anna, and I pick us up some Bodega Specialties ($6.00 beverages). She’s requested something citrusy and bubbly, and it’s an ultra-hydrating coconut water for me. We meet at the Prospect Park S stop, and take the Q to Brighton Beach together. Given my new apartment’s location, I’m only about 35 min flat to the beach, and my god, that is something so beautiful to me. We spend the next two hours lying on towels in bikinis, next to Eastern European men also lying on towels in their own little suits, and we talk about everyone and everything. I make a little mental note to thank the heavens (somewhere past the single cloud I can see in the sky) for female friendship and the safe spaces we create to share and bitch and moan and gush. We nibble on tortilla chip crumbs and farmer’s market peaches in between monologues. The peaches are almost inappropriately juicy. Another mental note: this time, savor this for February.
After a dip in the chilly but calm ocean, my stomach drops once more as the universe nags, You had your fun, girlie pop, but it’s time to return back to your box-filled lair. Or maybe the Pepto just wore off. If I were a better comedian. I’d have the perfect joke to tell you about what happened between me and that sandy Riegelmann Boardwalk women’s bathroom — but that’s all I’ve got for you today, thanks. We make our way back north on the train, part ways, and I’m home just in time for my first open evening in my new apartment, something even more sacred. I do what any 27 year old girl with tummy problems should do with an open evening on a Saturday in her first solo apartment: I reheat pasta, and cry watching the newest Summer I Turned Pretty episode on my couch in the dark.
Sunday, August 6
It’s a new day, and I feel a bit better. I load up one of my recently Facebook Marketplace-scored ceramic bowls with Heritage Flakes cereal, blueberries, almond milk, cinnamon and a dash of salt, and enjoy my breakfast (while obviously spending the whole time patting myself on the back for the sweet bargain on the ceramics). I make a matcha latte, and catch up Poog.
I get a calendar alert that it’s time for me to go pickup my next Facebook Marketplace purchase — this time, a shoe rack. The kind that announces I OVERPAYED FOR THIS. I head over to this man’s apartment nearby, and leave with a used, but expensive-looking wooden shoe rack. More back-patting. You go girl. Wheel and deal all over town.
My sister is on her way to my apartment. The plan for the day is to either do an Ikea run, or assemble my new dresser that is supposed to be delivered. We do neither. While I wait for Dani to arrive, I toast another one of those rye sourdough slices, and slather it this time with equal parts mayo and pesto, and then pile on thick rings of salted heirloom tomatoes. I shower the gorgeous thing with more salt and pepper, and I have five to six perfect bites of summer.
While we don’t end up leaving or assembling anything at all, we sit on my couch for three hours and quite productively figure the rest of it all *out*. Something extremely important and spiritual happens in the ether when two women plan a shelving situation, I’ll fucking say it……. . After glancing at my Wayfair subtotal to be purchased, my big sister utters the dreamiest words that a big sister possibly can: Want to go get dinner? It’s on me. I don’t bother protesting.
We walk over to Patti Ann’s. My high school English teacher’s daughter is somehow my server, but thankfully neither of us acknowledge it. It’s Dani’s first time, my third. We order the jumbo Pig in a blanket swimming in honey mustard, a tomato cucumber salad, broiled saucy eggplant parm, and perfectly crispy fish sticks and tartar sauce to share. Remember my sensitive tum of mere hours ago? This is living!
Monday, August 7
I start my WFH morning with a workout. Workout meaning, a 15-min Emma Lovewell “Low-Impact” Peloton cycle using a friend’s digital login I’ve used for years, broadcasted onto my Roku TV with Airplay, while seated on my deceased grandma’s geriatric stationary bike I requested my 68 year old parents bring from home (to my 4th floor walk-up, I’m a monster). A jerry-rig situation to feel rich and powerful, all for the price of $0, baby.
I sing to Amy Winehouse, and I obviously make myself late to log onto work. But, I’m a girl relishing in her first day of work in her new empty apartment where she can do whatever the heck she wants, blast podcasts, bachata at a moment’s notice, she can’t be motherfreeeeeakin tamed. I eat a weird lunch of cucumber/tomato/chickpea salad, hummus dregs, and tortilla chip bits, and I take therapy on my couch (speaking louder than I need to, just because I can).
Then the day takes a turn. My eye is throbbing, it hurts. My dresser finally arrives (late) and I must take 5 sweaty trips upstairs carrying up 70 lbs worth of dresser items. My Roku freezes and craps out. My bedroom curtain rod falls out of my wall (?!). I notice that my movers have fully broken my couch, it’s pretty bad, and they failed to ever tell me. AND I remember that, oh lord, I need to pack for my next 6 days home. I’m leaving the following day for Maryland, amidst this chaos that is boxes and bags and now, damaged wares.
I roll my eyes at the power I felt merely 12 hours earlier, because of my little cycle class and my quiet bowl of yogurt. I am no longer feigning wealth and power, but rather I am a girl that is positively hemorrhaging money, alone in her dark apartment (that I’m now believing is…haunted?), one who is only 60 inches tall and can’t even reach her busted curtain rod to pull it down herself! A humbling hour, that’s what you call it, folks.
Tuesday, August 8
I commute to work, lugging my roller suitcase up and down 467 sets of MTA stairs. I get through a busy morning on a banana, a PB & chocolate mini GoMacroBar from our snack closet, and a half cup of coffee with an embarrassing amount of oat milk. By busy morning, I mean sending an angry note to my movers, reaching out to couch repair services, repeatedly checking my checking account, and cursing the silly universe with every single lil click of my mouse.
I eat a lackluster packed lunch of leftover pesto pasta, that chickpea salad that I swear I’ve been eating for 65 days straight, and a few sickly-sweet office desserts. At 5:30, I head to Moynihan and, as is my Manhattan right of passage, I pickup a $19 sandwich. Criminal. It’s from Alidoro, which has a location right in the station. I build a sort-of stomach approved sandwich that actually really ends up slapping — parmigiana reggiano, smoked turkey, balsamic vinegar, roasted sweet peppers, all on tough-and-chewy semolina bread. I devour it, I admit it’s fantastic. I sit my arse down for four hours and clack away on my laptop while we head south to DC. I arrive late, and after a little chat with each parent, I head to bed, my head full of New Yorky Anxieties.
Wednesday, August 9
It is the most heavenly lazy morning in Potomac. A morning that the adrenaline that has been coursing through my body for weeks is not anticipating — I am instantly made Jello. Unable to move a muscle. After cereal and a mug of milky black tea, I flop poolside for hours. I sink down into the cold water, I read thirty or so pages of Hua Hsu’s Stay True, I really Soak Up the Sun the way Sheryl Crow would want me to. It’s so, so nice. The day turns to dusk, and my dad makes the three of us Pisco Sours. They’re tart and creamy and light.
I’m getting in all the R & R possible, because this evening, my Italian family members arrive! This is the reason for my trip home. Our distant Milan-based family (that we’ve only recently connected with) is spending their August holiday up and down the East Coast, visiting DC, NYC, and NC for the very first time.
Marco, Francesca, Chiara, Elena, and Margherita (can you even??) arrive, and their energy is so wonderful. They are beautiful, they are so happy to be here, and we are thrilled to have them, to show them as wonderful of a time as they’ve shown us in Italy. To welcome them to America, my dad promptly gets out glasses for….Aperol and Campari Spritzes? They laugh, but gladly accept them, and we all catch up.
Dinner is my mom’s spectacular Brazilian seafood stew, a baguette, rice, and a green salad. The stew is tomato-based, and also full of the creamiest coconut milk, tender peppers and onions, flaky white fish, and shrimp. We serve ourselves heaping platefuls, and go back for seconds. We spend dinner despairing about the United States government, the direction the Italian government is going in, and appropriately finish a bottle of Spanish red wine. We’ve gone from Italy to Brazil to Spain, but we arrive back home to the land of the free and the home of the brave with my mom’s to-die-for peach cobbler.
Thursday, August 10
After we make breakfast plates of apple bread with butter, berries and yogurt, we head over to Glenstone, the state of the art, billionaire-founded modern art and architecture property that oddly (but extremely conveniently) is located 6 minutes from our house. We take the Italians around, dodging rain spurts under umbrellas, and remarking every sixth minute about how humid (read: unbearable) it is outside. We eat lunch at the museum’s cafe, my mom and I split the gazpacho and the quinoa salad. We head home for the kind of 3pm coffees that you so desperately need for survival after a museum morning where the blood has been pooling in your ankles for hours.
The rain continues all day, and we curse the mighty Himelfarb-Saunder Rain Curse, because what do we have planned for tonight? A boat ride along the Potomac river, booked weeks ago by my dad as a fun lil’ surprise. But as we drive downtown, the power and glory of the Soligo-Pedrazzi family reigns supreme, and the clouds part. We are left with the most stunning of evenings as we board the mini Tiki boat. As has been the plan all along, we float down the river, popping champagne to sip out of plastic cups, and we gorge ourselves on all the Trader Joes-supplied happy hour goodies you could dream of: cheeses, crackers, salami, cut veggies, hummus, tzatziki, caramelized onion dip.
The evening is topped off with gelato and a quick stroll in Georgetown, a sleepy drive home, and a night swim. But before we part for sleep, Francesca presents us with a massive, paper genealogical tree that she’s lugged from Milan to Maryland. It’s a sprawling tree that begins with someone named Antoine Foire, from 1557. It shows in stunning detail how we’re connected to this wonderful family after all, and I go down to bed, my head swimming with how vast and also tiny and scary and incredible the world is (small stuff).
Friday, August 11
While my mom takes our guests downtown for more sightseeing, I work at home. I devour the silence — and by silence, I mean the deafening cicadas and crickets and frogs, and all of the delicious sounds of summertime in the trees in the northeast. Once I log off for my Summer Friday, I prepare much of the cookout we’ll enjoy together for dinner.
I slice tomatoes and mozzarella, and plate them with basil in a pool of olive oil and balsamic. I marinate a glorious 2.5 lb salmon with my mom’s honey mustard and season-all. I douse chicken thighs in Sweet Baby Rays, and leave them to rest. I toss together arugula, a spring mix, avocado, cucumber, feta, herbs from the garden, and crumble on pita chips. I stir together a quick vinaigrette.
The gang arrives home. We all dive into the pool that we have felt magnetically pulled to since we all finished breakfast, we shower, and we reconvene on the back deck at golden hour. I laugh at how the girls can’t get over the peace and beauty of our home at this hour, thinking instead about their seaside apartment beside the goddamn Cinque Terre, their home country of ITALY! But I take a moment to understand that yes, this too is magic. My mom’s brother has come to join us for dinner and meet the Italians. We drink chilled white wine while my dad works on the grill. We eat our colorful summer plates together. The three sisters eat corn on the cob for the very first time. And we’re put over the edge with cheesecake and fruit tart from Whole Foods for dessert.
Saturday, August 12
It is our last full day together, it is swelteringly hot, and we make the probably-irrational decision to spend the morning hiking part of the Billy Goat Trail. We are sticky with sweat, our shoulders are hot to the touch, but it feels good to exert a little physical energy and take in the vistas through the eyes of these first timers. It’s refreshing to see all of it through new eyes, this week, really. We keep going on the blue-marked trail only with the promise that the rest of the day will be spent submerged in the cold pool (is this what every day of suburban living is like).
We arrive home, peeling off our sweaty layers, putting on suits, and nothing has ever felt better in the history of time than that first dip. I sip a cold Fresca. We introduce them to corn hole, but the gnats are so pesky in the grass we all give up after one round and exasperatingly dive back into the pool. It’s impossible to stray far.
I’m pleased to assimilate and melt into their Holiday mindset — broken couches, credit card bills, unread work Slacks, real life completely evaporated from my brain — as I grab my book to join them reading. In silence, we are all diving into our books, napping, rotating our bodies when our limbs start to get restless, it’s such a beautiful thing to feel us all come together and collectively take a big, earned exhale, actively leaning into softness and relaxation, and ignoring the rest.
My dad makes margaritas, my mom a guacamole, and we order a smattering of tacos and bean platters from a local spot I’ve personally never tried before for dinner. We learn they’ve never had margaritas before, a few of them have even never tried tacos — I’m in utter disbelief, but I think they enjoy it all.
It’s a takeout night, but it’s probably our longest dinner. I spend what feels like an eternity talking with the girls on our side of table, about heady topics, and easy ones too. I am impossibly full, but feel grateful for this special time with new family, for that 1557-born Antoine, and for the twisty, brain-boggling passage of time that could land two families here for this trip, this meal, and this dessert of brownies and vanilla ice cream.
Came back to this after you linked it in your springy food diary, which has been an open laptop tab for nearly 2 weeks because !!tHeRe'S nO TiMe tO rEaD!! Just thinking about those peaches and silly beachy gossip sessions brought me back to earth a lil <3
Camp H THRIVING.