For the first month of summer I spent my days eating in Austin , Texas. The second two months I was out and about eating in New York City as I conducted research at Columbia University. The last month of summer I spent it in Mexico.
In Austin, Texas most of the time I will eat at home my mom’s home cooked foods. They are mostly Mexican dishes with tortillas and the essential salsa. In the morning I will usually eat cereal with my little sisters and brother. My favorite cereal is frosted flakes and mini wheats. I love cereal so much I will eat it even if I wake up late like around 12pm. However if my mom already has prepared a breakfast of eggs and beans I will eat that instead. My favorite eggs are the ones cooked with tortilla cut in pieces, mushrooms, red bell pepper and white cheese mixed together. My mom is kind of health conscious. She likes natural and organic food; we have a peach and grape tree in our yard. Once in awhile we eat chips and cookies or ice cream. My mom does not really like microwavable foods. She prefers cooking at home soups such as “caldo de res” which is a soup with beef, potatoes, carrots, cabbage. It looks like the soup mentioned in The Food of France book, “ potee lorraine. Although the potee lorraine has pork instead of beef. She also makes lima bean soup. Sort of like the feves soup mentioned on page 50. “Feves resemble in looks and taste the American lima bean, but have for the gardener the advantage that whereas the lima is a delicate hot-weather vegetable demanding warm earth and a long growing-season,…” In terms of beverages my whole family stopped buying sodas to drink after dinner. There will be some times we will buy Coca-Cola soda because some foods taste better with soda. Otherwise, we decided sodas everyday are unhealthy and contain too much sugar. For a time we will drink only water and then we will buy sweet tea and juice beverages. However, as I’ve learned recently, juice also contains high amounts of sugar. According to an article published by Elsevier Inc, “Americans consume more per-capita high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) than any other nation” (Walker, 1). It was discovered that in some juices that are made from 100% fruit , fructose concentration reached 65,35 g/L accounting for 67% of sugars.
On weekends I will either go out to eat with friends or go out to eat with the family. With friends I will mostly go out to Asian or Mexican restaurants like 888 Pan Asian Restaurant and will order vermicelli noodles or I will go to Taquito Riverside which has the best Mexican tacos in town. I also love Torchy’s Tacos. The weekends I was not out eating with friends, I will be with my family and my dad will have a barbecue grill outside and invite family over. We will eat fajita,sausage,and make tacos. The sausage we will eat will be Texas style which is made out of beef unlike the andouille sausage of France that is made up of pork. On the Food of France book, “Andouille is cooked and ready to eat when you buy it, like salami or any other similar sausage; andouillette, however, has to be cooked after purchase” (pg.44)
sausage, ribs and brisket
enchiladas
I used my fitbit to track the food I ate and I definitely over consume calories when I ate meat because I will eat large portions. Reflecting upon the food I ate over the this month, which was mostly with my parents, I realized I ate a lot of meat. When it was not being cooked by my dad we will be buying tacos made of chicken, beef or pork. The consumption of meat will therefore be my theme for my blogs. According to the BMC Medicine journal, “a high consumption of red meat was related to higher all-cause mortality and the association was stronger for processed meat”. I will explore how meat is consumed in different places from Austin to New York to Mexico to France and Europe.
For the second part of my summer I lived in New York City. I did summer research with Columbia University and stayed at one of the suite style apartments on campus. I shared a kitchen with four other girls: For two days each week, the research program will give us dinner which was mostly pizza, chicken or greek food. The days I ate in my apartment. I will cook eggs, chicken, quesadillas, microwave frozen chicken nuggets and make sandwiches; something very simple. The days I will go out to eat, I will rely on Yelp to recommend the best places to eat nearby. I was surrounded by many different cultural foods, therefore my options were limitless. One of my first foods when I arrived to New York was from Rafiqui’s Middle Eastern food trucks. There’s like two of this food trucks on every block in New York City. The food carts sells Middle Eastern food such as gyros and falafel. My favorite item from there was the chicken gyro but it always made me feel full and bloated. New York is also known for its pizza. My favorite pizza was from La Famiglia. I also had the chance to try mofongos. Mofongo is a Puerto Rican fried plantain-based dish. It is made with fried green plantain with broth, garlic, olive oil, and pork cracklings or bits of bacon. I only liked the pork and bacon part though. I also ate caribbean food. I was debating over ordering goat meat or chicken and finally chose the goat meat and I did not like it! I thought maybe next time it’ll be safer to stick with the chicken.
When I was craving Mexican food I will go to New York’s Spanish Harlem neighborhood and buy tamales and empanadas. It was hard to find good Mexican food in New York City. It was either really bad or really good. The best places to find good tacos will be in Spanish Harlem or Washington Heights but not Upper Manhattan. My friend and I had one of the worst experiences with tacos at two different Mexican restaurants in Manhattan. Eating in a city you don’t really know is an adventure. I tried out Japanese-style crepes at “Eight Turn Crepe” because Yelp had really good reviews on it. While the crepes were good, I felt it contained too much fruit and sugar on it.
I also enjoyed trying out for the first time the burgers at Five Guys and Shake Shack, which are said to be the best burger chain restaurants in the United States. The third best burger restaurant is “In n Out” which we have in Austin, Texas. Shake Shack opened its first location in New York City and only has 14 restaurants across the nation. After comparing the burgers from these three different places I will say that Shake Shack has the best burger. The soft buttery bun is the best part. The cheese fries that accompanied the burger was delicious as well. I went over my calories those days I ate the burger but it was totally worth it.
Shake Shack Burger with cheese fries
An interesting thing that happened in New York was when me and a friend were trying to go to Chipotle on 110th and Broadway, close to campus. We were craving Chipotle and to our disappointment there was a health hazard sign posted on the door and the restaurant was closed therefore. I looked up online that it was closed by the Health Department for a wide variety of violations, “including holding foods at the wrong temperature and having flies.” (West Sider Rag). One of the violations that caught my attention was the second one: “Raw, cooked or prepared food is adulterated, contaminated, cross-contaminated, or not discarded in accordance with HACCP plan.” This information brings me back to my theme of meat consumption and the processing of it.
I got back to Austin from New York on Saturday August 1st, so my parents decided to celebrate by making fajitas (surprise). I ate some that night and then again the next morning with scrambled eggs. Four days later my whole family and I went to San Luis Potosi, Mexico to visit my grandma and aunts and uncles. In Mexico there is always plenty to eat. My grandma asks me every minute if I want more food to eat and since she already has it prepared it is hard to say no. I feel that I eat a lot also because most of the time we are near the kitchen just relaxing and having conversations. Also, there’s always food to eat that you don’t usually eat in the United States, such as tunas (or prickly pear cactus fruit), which exclusively grow in that part of Mexico. There’s also Mexican candy. I will also eat chiles rellenos which are chiles covered with egg and that have cheese inside. My grandfather owns lands where he plants chiles and tomatoes so that is a huge part of the diet of the people there. Mexican bread is also part of the diet there. Every night after eating dinner I will eat a Concha sweet Mexican bread. According to myfitnesspal it contains 6 grams of fat and 26 grams of carbohydrates.
with my mom and aunts picking up chiles at my grandpa’s land
Sources
1: Root, Wavery. The Food of France . New York : Vintage, 1958
2. Nutritional Anthropology
3. Huth, Peter J, et al. “Major Food Sources Of Calories, Added Sugars, And Saturated Fat And Their Contribution To Essential Nutrient Intakes In The U.S. Diet: Data From The National Health And Nutrition Examination Survey (2003–2006) [Electronic Resource].” Nutrition Journal 12.1 (2013): 695. Agricola. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.
4.Walker, Ryan W., Kelly A. Dumke, and Michael I. Goran. “Basic Nutritional Investigation: Fructose Content In Popular Beverages Made With And Without High-Fructose Corn Syrup.” Nutrition 30.(2014): 928-935. ScienceDirect. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.10 Primary sources
5.Rohrmann, Sabine, et al. “Meat Consumption And Mortality–Results From The European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer And Nutrition.” BMC Medicine 11.(2013): 63. MEDLINE. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.
6. http://www.westsiderag.com/2015/06/03/another-local-chipotle-gets-shuttered-by-health-department