This week in gob

Perhaps against my better judgment, I decided to partake in Sam at Becks & Posh's challenge to photodocument everything we eat in a week. (Update: See the roundup on Becks & Posh.) It's an interesting experiment, to say the least, and made all the more so by the fact that it was Thanksgiving week. In our case, our Turkey Day proper was a small affair, just the two of us at home. However, we attend a friend's orphan's Thanksgiving the Friday after every year, and this year was no exception.

I'm taking this one step farther by not only documenting what I ate blow-by-blow, but including estimates of caloric intake according to the fantastic resource Calorie-Count.com. (Thank you Kat for turning me on to this!) These are largely guesses at quantities, albeit educated guesses, and I think I was fair in my estimations. On the upside, few of the days seemed to exceed the standard Ameriocan 2,000 calorie diet. However, if I am to lose weight as I would like, I am meant to keep my intake under 1,500, which I did only on two days. Still, I somehow managed to lose one pound between last Monday and today.

Given that this was a holiday week, I would venture to say that much of what I ate was a bit pumped up from the norm. Yet, still, there is evidence of the monotony of everyday eating, most apparent in the almost total homogeneity of breakfast -- that is, until the pecan pie got the better of me. It also exposed how much time we actually spend in our kitchen, though to be fair we are talking about mealtime here. Still, other than Saturday, when we made an expedition up to Carneros to pick up one of our wine club shipments, we spent pretty much the entire weekend in the kitchen doing something or other.

Although many dishes and meals were planned for this week --Thanksgiving proper, the pies we made for Friday -- much of it wasspontaneous and generally indicative of our dietary patterns. The bestexample is Wednesday night's dinner, involving a baked pasta dish we hadin the freezer, salad greens carried over from our lunch and apersimmon and some walnuts we had in the house. One of the mostsatisfying meals we had all week, plucked from thin air.

When my great aunt and uncle had their 50th anniversary, my cousin's husband asked them to what did they attribute the success of their relationship. Without skipping a beat, my great aunt Laura said, a cocktail every day at four o'clock. While this is hard to pull off when you're in the office, DPaul and I do like to have the occasional cocktail ... again, as is well documented here. In retrospect, we would have stocked up the bar. The Cape Codders got a bit repetitive.

Speaking of booze: Sorry, Sam, I did not capture every single glass of wine individually, and it's just as well. Repetive would not begin to convey the landscape of the mosaic had I done so.

I am not an artful photographer, particularly when under the gun tocapture something in its ready-to-eat state while I am ready to eat it.But I have tried to offer some diversity in depiction of the foods,especially when there was little actual diversity in them (like, forexample, breakfast).

Some of these meals I will be posting about retroactively this week.I spent most of my time creating, consuming and documenting them,leaving little time to actually write about them. Watch for aretrospective of Thanksgiving week meals over the next few days.

It's a worthwhile exercise to keep close tabs on your intake.Photographing it is somewhat another matter. It's been extremelyinteresting, but also utterly tedious, and I am looking forward toeating with my mouth and not my camera again.

The meticulously documented diet follows after the jump. Or, if you just like the pictures, you can just jump in and see the Flickr photoset here.

Monday, November 20

Breakfast:

• 2 shots of espresso, with 1 tsp sugar each
• 1 slice whole-wheat bread from Noe Valley Bakery, toasted, with 1 Tbsp pumpkin butter

Lunch:

• My usual lunch salad from the salad bar at RJ's Market, comprising lettuce, cucumber, tomato, onion, cabbage, edamame, bleu cheese crumbles, salt, pepper, vinegar and olive oil
• 1 bottle Tejava

Dinner:

• 1/2 a half-breast of chicken, roasted (skin on, but I only nibbled at it)
• 1 c. Korean slaw of black Spanish radish
• 1 slice Acme bread
• A lovely chablis

Estimated caloric intake: 1,153

Tuesday, November 21

Breakfast:

• 2 shots of espresso, with 1 tsp sugar each
• 1 slice Acme bread, toasted, with 1 Tbsp pear butter

Mid-morning snack:

• 1 lovely fuyu persimmon, freshly plucked from the farmer's market (plus a wee taste of one at the market itself)
• 1 cup of Tazo Zen tea

Lunch:

• A smaller variation on my usual lunch salad from the salad bar at RJ's Market, comprisinglettuce, cucumber, tomato, onion, cabbage, radishes, edamame, bleu cheesecrumbles, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar and no olive oil
• 1 bag Baked Lays KC Masterpiece BBQ flavor
• 1 bottle Tejava

Early evning:

• Making banana bread for some friends -- tasted a walnut to make sure they weren't overtoasted (they weren't).

Dinner:

• Cannelini and kale soup with fresh chicken stock and cubed leftover breast meat from the night before, with a nice grate of parmigiano reggiano
• 1 slice Acme bread, toasted
• a lovely sauvignon blanc

Later:

• Friends dropped by, so add on a couple glasses of a lovely syrah
• Had to taste-test the cornbread (just one crumbly bite)

Estimated caloric intake: 1,418

Wednesday, November 22

Breakfast:

• 2 shots of espresso, with 1 tsp sugar each
• 1 slice Acme bread, toasted, with 1 Tbsp pumpkin butter

Lunch:

• 1/2 each grilled chicken panini with jack cheese and sun-dried tomato spread and smoked chicken panini with jack cheese and pesto, from Caffe Ponte (I ended up eating them open-face -- too much bread)
• 1/2 oz Kettle chips, honey Dijon flavor
• 8 oz. Coca-Cola

Note: Calorie bomb!

Cocktail hour:

• 1 Cape Codder with two lime wedges, please

Dinner:

• 1 serving baked rigatoni with mozzarella (that we just happened to have at the ready in the freezer) and a nice grate of parmigiano
• A nice salad comprising the small side of lettuce from Caffe Ponte's lunch, dressed up with some chopped walnuts and a slice fuyu persimmon with a dollop of Amy's Caesar dressing
• 1 slice Acme bread
• Hey Mambo "Italiano style" Napa Malbec
• Gerolsteiner sprudel

Note: Meals like this make me very grateful indeed.

Later:

• Some Plumpjack Eagle Rare 13-year single barrel bourbon

Estimated caloric intake: 2,176 (ouch)

Thursday, November 23

Breakfast:

• 3 shots of espresso, with 1 tsp sugar each
• 1 crab cake from Drewe's with one poached egg atop, dollop of Dijon mustard and a dash of Tabasco

Lunch:

• Nothing

Cocktail hour:

• Bouchaine Chêne d'Argent chardonnay 2005

Dinner:

• Turkey breast marinated in fresh pomegranate juice, wrapped in bacon and roasted
• Brown gravy
• Brussels sprouts roasted with bacon
• Mixed Acme bread and cornbread stuffing (also with bacon)
• Davis Bynum Russian River Valley Linley's Vineyard pinot noir 2003

Dessert:

• 1 pumpkin mini-cheesecake and 1 lemon tart, both from Noe Valley Bakery

Estimated caloric intake: 1,878

Note: It pays to skip a meal...

Friday, November 24

Breakfast:

• 2 shots of espresso, with 1 tsp sugar each
• 1 slice whole wheat bread from Caffe Ponte, toasted, with 1 Tbsp pear butter

Lunch:

• Reruns of Tuesday's kale-bean soup

Cocktail hour:

• 1 Cape Codder, same as above

Dinner:

• A few oz white and dark turkey meat
• Approx 2 Tbsp jellied cranberry sauce
• Probably a cup of mashed potatoes
• Maybe a little less than a cup of cornbread stuffing with gorgonzola
• A spoonful of white bean salad with onion
• Some cooked chard

Dessert:

• 1 thin slice each pumpkin and apple pies
• An infinitesimal slice of low-sugar pumpkin chiffon pie with pecan-chocolate crust
• A square of homemade halvah (which I barely touched)

Throughout the evening:

• A lot of wine of varying provenance

Estimated caloric intake: Hard to peg, but optimistically around 2,000

Saturday, November 25

Breakfast:

• 2 shots of espresso, with 1 tsp sugar each
• 1 slice whole wheat bread from Caffe Ponte, toasted, with 1 Tbsp pumpkin butter

Lunch:

• 1 sandwich comprising leftover turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing between two slices whole-wheat bread from Caffe Ponte
• Roughly a glass of wine tasted at Acacia winery

Dinner:

• 1 piece bread, dipped in a small amount of olive oil
• 1 glass prosecco
• Octopus, potato and artichoke salad
• 1 clam casino, sampled from DPaul's plate
• Poached sea bass with braised fennel, arugula and sunchoke, with a dollop of tapenade and a drool of romesco sauce
• 1 forkful of spaghetti all'aglio e olio, also from DPaul's plate
• 1 glass trebbiano
• Rather a lot of olive oil all over everything

Dessert:

• Cannoli
• 1 bite tiramisu, from you know where
• Grappa di moscato

Estimated caloric intake: 2,199

Note: Even though I thought I was eating "light" at Pescheria, the numbers tell otherwise.

Sunday, November 26

Breakfast:

• 3 shots of espresso, with 1 tsp sugar each
• 1 slice pecan pie

Snack:

• 1 oz sharp cheddar

Cocktail hour:

• 1 Cape Codder, with lemons instead of limes (we ran out)

Dinner:

• 2 pieces pepperoni pizza from Noe Valley Pizza
• D'Aragona Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2005

Dessert:

• What the hell, one more slice of pecan pie

Estimated caloric intake: 1,881