We plate the tagine in shallow ceramic bowls and eat. It’s not our usual Sunday feast—there is no wine, no appetizers, no pre-meal libation, not even a side salad (that one slipped my mind at the store to be honest), but it’s plenty for a Monday, and we go our separate ways full and happy.
Monday total: $39.63
Tuesday
11:55 a.m. Another day off, another morning workout, and then I head to Top City Gourmet, a bodega near me. I order a bacon, egg, and cheddar cheese on a roll ($5.50). An NYC staple. When I was in college, the $3 bodega breakfast sandwich sustained me. Now, after the rise in egg prices, that $3 wonder seems a distant memory. I take the sandwich back to my apartment and improve it with a half avocado I had in my fridge and a generous dousing of Valentina salsa picante.
12:22 p.m. Another scoop of protein powder dissolved in ice water. I wonder, as I keep track of my daily habits—why not make a shake? Peanut butter, almond milk, bananas—it would be easy enough. Simple answer: I choose to allocate my calories elsewhere. I drink a low-calorie protein knowing that when the time comes, I’ll have a pint, a cocktail, and maybe a late-night snack without fret.
5:15 p.m. Though the spring equinox was yesterday, today feels like the first official spring day. It’s gorgeous out. 60 degrees and sunny. I meet my partner in McCarren Park where we lay down on a blanket and open our books (I’m reading Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances, she’s reading Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage), and snack on some green seedless grapes from McCarren Natural on the way ($2.30). We read and snack, but more than anything else, we people watch. The weather has brought a huge crowd to the park—it seems like everybody and their dogs are here.
7:52 p.m. We walk from the park to a Just Salad nearby. We stop here often enough, so we have our reusable bowls that grant us the exhilarating power of a free topping. I order one of their special salads, Tokyo Supergreens with tofu plus chickpeas ($16.09, free chickpeas). I consider a flavored seltzer, $4 or so, but some primordial inner voice, that of my mother perhaps, asks, Do you really need that? No, I don’t.
We are waiting for our salads. I’m looking at my phone when a name is called. It’s not my name. The name is called again. I look up… that’s almost my name… if you were to hack off the beginning hard consonant. The person behind the counter makes eye contact with me. I understand then that the hard consonant was lost in translation. I step up, receive my salad, and a new alter ego is born. From here on, whenever I’m hungover or drowsy, whenever I slip in pronunciation, my partner calls me that “almost my name” name.
We walk back to her apartment, our reusable blue bowls tucked under our arms like footballs. We fall on the couch and pop the lids off our salads and put on a movie, Sideways, in preparation for a trip to wine country for a wedding… I used to like Merlot.
9:20 p.m. We pause the movie and head to the kitchen for a snack break. Her items, her brilliant idea: frozen Whole Foods pancakes, toasted, with peanut butter and a dash of cinnamon. Count me in. I put on the kettle and we enjoy our snack with Tazo decaf chai.
Tuesday total: $23.89
Wednesday
9:55 a.m. My partner and I wake up together and read in bed before having coffee. We often shoot for the French press, but we’re feeling a bit lazy, so we decide to make a couple of Keurig coffees. She prefers her coffee as dark as possible, so she usually buys Green Mountain Dark Magic k-cups. When we use her French press, she brews a potion that I honestly think is the darkest, richest coffee ever made. I have, in times prior, poured a shot of almond milk into her coffee and watched it disappear into that blackness, not changing the color at all.