Serious Eats
Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Week 13: Pray for Me; I'm Going to New Orleans (and Dallas)
I'm hitting the road this Sunday for almost a week, and the signs of caloric danger are everywhere. First, I'm headed to Dallas to take in the Pillsbury Bake-Off. One hundred finalists vying for the $1,000,000 first prize are baking their best stuff in portable kitchens. I'm not judging, but I'm sure I will get to taste lots of elaborately constructed creative desserts using an array of everyday products.
But the bake-off is not what I'm most worried about. I'm much more worried about all the food I want to taste in Dallas, a city I have never been to before. To make matters worse (or better, depending on your vantage point), I am very likely to meet up with my friend Robb Walsh, restaurant critic for the Houston Press, who has spent the last 20 years eating his way through Texas one perfect bite at a time. Robb is a splendid fellow and a fine writer, but as far as I'm concerned, he's trouble with a capital T.
The man loves to eat everything I do, from barbecue to Tex-Mex (both of which he's written excellent books about) to burgers to pizza. Robb, if you're reading this, listen up: I'm willing to eat five meals a day in Dallas with you, but don't start giving me a hard time when I only take a bite or two of what's put before us.
What's even more problematic is the next stop on my weeklong road trip.
The Big Easy May Not Be So Easy
I'm off to New Orleans. Talk about literally going from the frying pan into the fire.
I am going to be spending three days and three nights in New Orleans with many of my favorite eating buddies at the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) Conference. I'm giving a talk at the conference on a panel on the future of food media, but in reality I am going to be eating an untold number of duck and shrimp and roast beef po'boys, oyster loaves, barbecued shrimp, gumbo, oysters Mosca, and fried boudin balls, along with many other heretofore undiscovered items of extreme deliciousness.
So I need strategies and tactics to get me through this difficult (and delicious) period. I am not bailing on those of you who have embarked on this treacherous diet/living regimen with me. I thought about taking the week off but in the end decided not to.
I figure you're either down with the program or you're not, and I am.
The Game Plan
So here is the advance planning I've done to help me get through this coming week:
It's going to be BYOS, Bring Your Own Scale Week. Yup, I'm bring my scale with me, a sleek little black number known as the Thinner that easily fits into my knapsack or suitcase. I'm thinking about weighing myself every day. It can't hurt, right?
I'm bringing my workout clothes and my swim trunks and goggles. One way or another I'm going to work out once a day in both cities. Both hotels I'm staying in have gyms.
I'm going to try to just taste everything. One fried boudin ball at Cochon is plenty, and besides, I've had these incredibly delicious not-quite-round spheres of crazy crunchy deliciousness before. But if I'm confronted with, say, 30 delicious things a day, won't a mere taste of everything put me into the calorie intake stratosphere? We'll find out, I guess.
Hopefully, my semipublic diet will encourage my fellow eaters to support this most worthwhile of endeavors.
I'm going to keep telling myself that I have been to New Orleans many, many times before, and if I miss a bite or two of delicious food this time around I will be back. But in the wake of Katrina, those of us who love New Orleans can no longer say with certainty that the city isn't going anywhere. Because a part of it did.
If any serious eaters have any other suggestions for me, this is the time and the place to offer them.
The Pound Count So Far
In preparation for this trip I did try to really watch my caloric intake this week. The only bump in the road was my ramen exploration last weekend. Let's see if that little adventure adversely tipped the scale. Yup, I don't know if it was the ramen or not, but I gained a pound this week. Ouch! Well, on to my personal Battle of New Orleans. Pray for me.