Day 100: The Last Lunch

I am home sick from work today (sad face) and I haven't been to a grocery store since before my trip, so lunch today meant freezer food. My friend Shonnie very sweetly offered to bring me some chicken soup, but instead I pulled out pizza bagels. Microwaved pizza bagels are an awesome Friday lunch. I ate one earlier in the day and then left a couple others out to defrost, which left me with a challenge of figuring out how long they each needed to be zapped before they would be melty and soft without getting that overcooked feel. I ended up going with about 35 seconds on defrost and 45 seconds on cook. They were delicious.

Check back next week for a final wrap post!

Day 99: MEETUP and Special Announcement

On Thursday, I headed over to J2 with my coworker Jen to greet the rest of the MeetUp crew. Thanks to all of you who came out! It was fun to eat with all of you guys. I really love that J2 has the open buffet with so many awesome options. I had some mac and cheese, some baked ziti, really good roasted green beans, a small piece of fish, a little bit of Cesar salad, roasted cauliflower, and one perfect strawberry for dessert. I really need to learn how to take less food from these things. But everything tasted good and it made me wonder why I dont eat there more often.

At the meetup, I made a special announcement - Day 100 will be the last day of this blog.

Day 98: If you're tired, you take a Napa, you don't move to Napa!

Apparently wineries need special permits to have picnic tables or to allow food on the premises. Therefore, while waiting for our tour of the Robert Mondavi Winery, we hid in a corner of the parking lot and ate our sandwiches while sitting on the ground. My cheese and challah sandwich was deliciously melty from the hot sun of Napa Valley. I had two mini sandwiches (it was the end of the loaf of challah, so the slices were small). They were delicious and really filling. I could have used some cold water to go with it but there was none to be found. The challah did an excellent job of absorbing the wine from that morning's tasting at the Hagafen Winery. For dessert we had fresh grapes off the vines, almost ready to become a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Day 97: They Took All The Trees, Put ‘em in a Tree Museum…

On Tuesday, we spent the late morning and early afternoon hanging out with the Redwoods in Muir Woods. By the time we were done, I was starving. The plan was to eat lunch at the Point Reyes coast, which was our next destination, but I was so hungry that I decided to eat in the car. It's not so easy to make a tuna sandwich on mini bagels out of a bag of tuna while in motion, but I somehow managed. My sandwiches were good but I was still hungry afterwards and I had to scavenge for snacks.

NOTE: MEETUP THURSDAY LUNCH

Let's eat lunch together on Thursday, at 12:30 at Jerusalem 2 Pizza Marketplace on 37th and Broadway.

Day 96: Meat and a MEETUP

After a stunningly beautiful bike ride from Fisherman's Wharf up and over the Golden Gate Bridge with the sun blazing (note my very very sunburnt arms and face), we rode over to the Vista Point to get a view of the bay, the skyline and the bridge - and to find someplace where we could sit and eat. There were no picnic tables so we ducked undearneath a railing to sit on a little stone wall. Kids walked by and stared like we were in prison, sitting behind bars. I pulled out a package of freezer packed deli that I had been carrying around for 2 days (but refrigerated overnight) and made myself a sandwich of challah slices, pastrami, salami and ketchup. After the long bike ride and other days activities, I was starving and therefore I pretty much devoured the sandwich and tried not to think about whether the meat was spoiled or not. It may have tasted a little funky but it might have been in my head. After we ate, we finished the ride down into Sausalito, at which point I REALLY wanted ice cream but I did not have any.

REMINDER: MEETUP on Thursday at, lets say, 12:30. Place - Jerusalem 2 on Bdwy and 37th unless people have other suggestions / requests.

Day 95: Haight means Love and REMINDER: MEETUP on Thursday

I started lunch today with some Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream from the Ben and Jerrys scoop shop on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. The shops on this street are still 100% devoted to the hippie era that was birthed in this neighborhood, and B&Js is one of the only chain stores on the street. They are accepted in the community due to their Cherry Garcia, Phish Food, and Half Baked flavors and their happy cows. We walked with our ice cream through the Haight neighborhood to Golden Gate Park, SF's answer to Central Park. After wandering through the grounds and a Victorian flower garden, we sat on a grassy lawn and ate sandwiches. Once again, I went for a mini bagel with American cheese. It tasted delicious. I love Chocolate Fudge Brownie and melty bagel cheeses are pretty awesome so it was a pretty awesome lunch day. It was a good thing we ate a big lunch because when we were eating dinner on the ferry ride over to Alcatraz, a seagull ate my sister's sandwich.

Reminder: Meet Up on Thursday! More info to be posted soon!

Day 94: East Coast meets West Coast

On Saturday morning we checked out the local synagogue near our hotel in Nob Hill, SF. They were offering a lunch after services so we thought about staying to eat there. The meal was vegetarian and seemed to feature salads and perhaps a vege chulent. However, the table was only set for about 15 and there were a number of other visitors there, plus a couple of students and locals, so we decided to head back to our hotel where we had food we had bought in advance. We took the scenic route back and checked out some of the fanciest hotels in San Fran. When we got back, we enjoyed a meal of deli sandwiches, potato salad, cole slaw, and Israeli salad. We had brought the deli from NY but we ordered the rest of the food from Tel Aviv, the kosher market place in San Fran. We also ordered challah from them, and the challah was excellent. Different from the challah I normally eat in NY, but definitely doughy and soft and delicious. I used slices of the challah to make a sandwich with pastrami and salami. I added ketchup, but only on the salami side, not on the pastrami side. It was a very filling and delicious lunch.

Day 93: Sunny San Fran

Lunch on Friday was eaten outside, sitting on a small stone wall surrounding the parking lot in front of Coit tower, with views of the Bay Bridge behind me. I was carrying around some American cheese and some mini lenders bagels, so I combined the two into the kind of sandwich that I would only think to make if I was on the go. It was bright and sunny at that moment, and the sun felt great on my face as I ate the slightly smooshed and slightly melted cheese sandwich. It was the perfect mid- day meal as I explored San Francisco.

Day 92: Office Lunch and announcing a MEET UP!

A few of my coworkers and I sat and ate together in the little kitchen area on our floor today. I had brought in some leftovers that I needed to get rid of before my trip out west tonight. I ate leftover duck sauce chicken with sweet potato, leftover breaded chicken and leftover popcorn cauliflower. Joyce wanted to try the cauliflower but unfortunately got there after I ate it all. It was nice having a free home cooked meal for lunch! Shoutout to Rebecca G who made the yummy breaded chicken.

Note: I will be on vacation for the next week so may be posting irregularly.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: To celebrate some upcoming milestones of the blog, why don’t we all have lunch together? Let’s MEET UP on Day 99, Thursday Sept 10th for lunch in midtown. Details to come.

Day 91: New Restaurant Review!

I met up with my friends Emily and Tzip to check out the new NY Lunchbox on 36th street. They just opened this week, and the menu looks good so I was eager to try it. As I mentioned earlier, they have sandwich, sushi, soup, and salad options plus a hot buffet where you pay by the pound. I had to try the butternut squash sweet potato soup, so I ordered that, and then took some food from the buffet. I may have overdone it a bit and I ended up spending a little more than I would have liked, but I think that was my own fault at the buffet. The problem is that once you load up your plate and bring it over to be weighed, you aren’t going to go back and take off a spoonful of pasta if your plate was too heavy. You are kinda just stuck with it. So you really need to learn how to gauge the amounts. Anyway, my meal came with a free drink which was a nice bonus. There is a nice size seating area upstairs in the back and we had no trouble getting a nice sized table. The soup was absolutely delicious. It is more squashy tasting than sweet potato-y. The portion was huge. I couldn’t even finish it, combined with all my other food. I ate about half the soup, and then turned to my hot buffet food. I tried the penna ala vodka, which was OK but not amazing, and the fettuccine Alfredo (I think!) which was really really good. Definitely the better of the two pastas. I also tasted the sweet potato slices, which were also tasty, but nothing special. My last buffet item was the mushroom zucchini mini quiche. Emily really liked this and thought it had a lot of flavor. I thought it was OK. I prefer a cheesier quiche, but it was definitely not bad. I would definitely come back here, especially for the soup. The only problem is that they have a 25.00 minimum for delivery to my office, which means I won’t be ordering in from them once it gets too cold to walk over, which is too bad because its those days when that soup would really be perfect.

Day 90: Reader's Choice Take Three

Today's lunch choice was up to you, my loyal readers. The losing option, with under 25% of the votes, was the Chinese Lunch Special from Kosher Delight. Second place went to the Chicken Nuggets from Kosher Deluxe, with just over 25% of the vote. This choice was inspired by my friend Darren, who says the nuggets are delicious, but then did not vote in the poll. The winner, with over 50% of the votes, was the Meatball Sub, inspired by my friend and talented singer, Dov (his new album drops soon!). I wasnt sure where I could get a Kosher meatball sub in my area of midtown. I checked the online menus at Kosher Delight, Kosher Deluxe, Mendys and the Sub on Wheels truck. No meatballs subs. Mr. Broadway was out because they are still closed due to health violations. I used to see these subs on the Dougies menu, but they closed down. Two readers commented that they have eaten Meatball Subs at various Mendy's locations, so I called them up and asked if they could make me one. Even though it was not on their menu, they said they would do it for me! The sandwich was delivered to my office a short while later. It tasted pretty good. The meatballs definitely made me want spaghetti. I think I would prefer spaghetti and meatballs to a meatball sub, but the sandwich was pretty delicious. The meatballs were large and firm without being too big, too hard or too mooshy. And the sauce was tasty without being too tomato-y tasting. All in all, I would consider ordering this made it item again. Thanks Dov, for the inspiration for this new and yummy lunch!

POLL: What SHOULD Rebecca eat for lunch today?

What SHOULD Rebecca eat for lunch today?

• Chicken Nuggets from Kosher Deluxe
• Meatball Sub - not sure where to get it? Any ideas?
• Chinese Lunch Special from Kosher Delight

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