But, the real cap to my project was Saturday, where I spent the morning on Staten Island distributing food at a City Harvest mobile market. City Harvest has three of these markets, which distribute fresh produce to underserved communities. People from the neighborhood began lining up as early as 8:30 AM to get onions, potatoes, bananas and grapefruit. Many said they came because the higher cost of living is hurting their wallets. Some just had too many mouths to feed at home. One mother was taking care of multiple kids with developmental disorders who said that her food assistance from the city had just been cut. It was a two-hour trek to get to Staten Island, but it seemed like the right way to end my project. I’ve learned that the key to staying happy, even under extreme circumstances, is not to focus on what you can’t have, which will drive you crazy, but to think about what you can do for other people. It sounds trite, but it’s true.

In the same vein, I heard this story on NPR about an unemployed guy in Washington, D.C. who was giving away $10 to a different person every day. His project is called the Year of Giving, and I have to say I like the concept. It sounds like a great way to increase interaction with the world instead of closing yourself off from it. In a way it reminds me of a lower budget, Brooklyn-based blog called Gold Star for Trying. The author gives people gold star stickers whenever she thinks they should be recognized for doing something good, or just being their own bad selves.

I’m signing off from this project for now. I have to admit that I’m really relieved that it’s over. Ten weeks didn’t sound too long when I started the project, but having a $10 budget was much harder than I thought it would be. But, I have a much greater appreciation for the power of a single dollar. I used to take George Washington for granted, but no longer.

So, in the words of Garrison Keillor, be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

Gingerbread oatmeal with black pepper walnut pralines

City Harvest estimates that $10 is the average cost of a New York lunch. On May 12, you can donate that amount to their Skip Lunch Fight Hunger event to help feed New York’s hungry. Over the past two days, I’ve been buying salads for lunch and whether it’s at a generic midtown deli (City 75) or a trendier salad place like Chop’t, both have been $10. Yikes. A bowlful of lettuce represents my total food budget for the day. I’ve been managing by making oatmeal in the morning, eating salad for lunch, and then a handful of walnuts and potato chips for dinner.

Wednesday morning, I changed up the schedule to help City Harvest with their fancy pants gala event called An Evening of Practical Magic. Metromix has pictures of the dinner and auction, which was held at Ciprianis. I was really impressed with how lavish and well-coordinated everything seemed, and the event ended up raising $1.3 million for City Harvest. Love it.

This is it! The final week of the project and I’m soooo excited. And, in a bit of cosmic alignment, it’s also my first week at a new job. Strange how my project in experimenting with no cash flow ends on the week that I start making money. I started off the week with gingerbread oatmeal, with chunks of caramelized ginger and macadamia nuts. For lunch, I grabbed a ham, gruyere and mustard sandwich from Le Pain Quotidien. I always expect to be let down by LPQ because it’s chain-y and I confuse it with Au Bon Pain, and then it surprises me by being fresh and tasty. I guess that’s the key to life, having low expectations without being a Debbie Downer.

For my second day back at work, I ate the same exact thing, except the lo-fi version. My oatmeal was blander and I slapped together a LPQ-esque sandwich at home minus the ham. This illustrates the challenge of working and cooking for yourself. When you don’t have the time or the brain cells to spare, it’s easier to order in. That’s why God invented delivery, and why I always admired the blog Not Eating Out in NY. Cathy Erway held down a job, cooked for herself every day, blogged about it, and maintained her social life for two years. In my book, that means she is a superstar. And, in her book, that means an actual book called The Art of Eating In, which has been getting a lot of attention, at least here in New York. On top of all that, I met Cathy at one of her Hapa Kitchen events and she was really, really nice. And sane. More mentally balanced people should be rewarded for their passion and hard work instead of all the nut jobs that we’ve ordained as celebrities for some reason. So, go buy her book. Nice people for the win!

Spicy corn noodle with "chicken"

Brown rice salad

In Thailand I learned that pad pak meant stir-fried vegetables. One day I had a brainwave. My standby restaurant for fast Thai food is a vegetarian restaurant on First Avenue called Pukk. Close to pak. Veggies. It all makes sense.

Their sauces are usually balanced, and it’s cheap, but this weekend someone new was behind the stove and that someone was seasoning with a really generous hand. I couldn’t eat the last bite of anything I ordered because the sweetness was overwhelming. I also thought I would be open-minded and order the faux chicken, which is 100% real kitchen sponge in a chicken-y color. I’ll stick with tofu next time.

Due to the budget indiscretion at Bar Veloce, I was back to scavenging meals from the refrigerator. Since I didn’t have polenta, I started the day cooking parmesan oatmeal topped with a poached egg. Mixing the yolk into the still hot oatmeal made it even richer and creamier.

Myer's of "Kezzicks" chicken and broccoli pie

I spent some time exchanging emails my friend Kevin D. who is a bartender at P.D.T. and Clover Club. My recipe for jasmine tea simple syrup didn’t come out exactly like I wanted and I needed pointers. Turns out I was doing things totally wrong. For his simple syrup he uses a ratio of 2:1 sugar to water and if he’s flavoring the syrup he adds it at the end. In the case of the jasmine simple syrup, this means steeping the tea bag only after you’ve boiled the sugar solution. This gives you more control over amount of flavor you infuse and gives a stronger flavor as well since you’re not cooking off the flavor molecules as much.

I also ate the last of the pies from Myer’s of Keswick, the chicken and broccoli, much lighter than the pork meat bomb. I got a tip from bonafide Brit, Tom B. that Myer’s of Keswick is appropriately pronounced “Myer’s of Kezzicks.” Good to know (those crazy Brits).

Then, to drinks at Bar Veloce with my sister, where the always dapper Thomas was working the bar. I told him I just started the foundation wine class at the International Wine Center and have been having trouble nailing the idea of body. He let me do a really fun comparative tasting to help sharpen my palette. And, after having little tastes of all those wines, I misplaced my judgment somewhere and I went way over budget ($40 on wine!).

Myer's of Keswick's "famous" pork pie

I put on my flip flops, a boho skirt, tank top, and sunglasses, and threw Arcade Fire on the iPod. Yesterday’s weather reminded we’re close to the season for anthem music, and I needed an anthem to execute my plan for a perfect (premature) summer day.

Step 1: Feed tummy at Myer’s of Keswick

Remember that Edible Manhattan magazine I bought so many weeks ago at Whole Foods? The one I agonized over because it killed my budget? No? Well, I do. And I’m still gleaning ideas from it. One of the shops featured in that issue was Myer’s of Keswick, a specialty shop selling all things Brit. When you walk in the first thing you smell is a light crackery, buttery smell. Glance to left and you see where the smell is coming from, a case of golden meat pies and sausage rolls, and cumberland sausage made on premises. I was looking for Choward’s violet mints, but I settled for a sausage roll, a pork pie, and a chicken and broccoli pie for $10.25. A perfectly acceptable consolation prize. They also had snacks like Wotsits (look like Cheetos) and Twiglets (supposedly taste like Marmite. Insanely curious. I should have bought these), a whole shelf of variations on HP sauce, and a lot more that was completely mystifying to me.

Step 2: Feed brain at American Museum of Natural History

Image courtesy AMNH.org

I grew up going to Museum of Natural History in DC, which is free, enormous and amazing. One visit I remember wanting to spend hours in the Hall of Gems and Minerals, totally mesmerized by big rocks like the cursed Hope Diamond. That Christmas I begged for a rock tumbler. I didn’t think New York had a chance against the Smithsonian, but the Traveling the Silk Road Exhibit there through August 15 is really, really well done. It follows the ancient silk road from East to West, starting in Xi’an, China to Baghdad, Iraq. When you enter the exhibit, the lighting dims, the walls turn to canvas and you spend the next hour feeling like you’re walking through a very large and very interesting caravan tent. At every stop along the route the music changes, there are spices and fragrances to sniff, silk worms to gawk at, and even an astrolabe so you can test your stellar navigation skills. The exhibit starts with how items like silk, spices and other precious goods were made in China and continues on to how they made their way along the route. It also shows how the cultural exchange flowed both ways, with pottery forms, religions and ideas flowing West to East. And, don’t forget, the museum entrance fee is a suggested donation, so donate what you can pay. Thrifty!

Step 3: Feed heart at City Harvest

Image courtesy City Harvest and SkipLunch.org

Skip Lunch Fight Hunger is a one-day event where you donate what you’d spent on lunch to help New Yorkers in need. For the price of an average lunch in NYC you could help feed 15 hungry children and their families. Powerful, right? Go to SkipLunch.org to find out how you can captain a Skip Lunch team on May 12th.

Last night I went to the City Harvest office to help with the final step in putting together the promotional materials. We were stickering bags, which I am really bad at so I got chastised two times for not centering correctly. Oops. But, I made two new volunteer friends, had a ton of fun and got free pizza out of it, too.

Via @UnSqGreenmarket:

Come by early for your share of today’s RAMPS! At Mountain Sweet Berry Farm.

The ramp is the groundhog of the foodie world. When ramps arrive it means spring is here to stay. Soon every food blog, foodie, newspaper and magazine food column will be talking about ramps, probably with multiple exclamation points. All that extra punctuation tires me out after week two every year, but it’s still exciting. Go get ‘em.

Smoothies with peaches, jasmine green tea, homemade yogurt, jasmine simple syrup, and blackberries (or not)

Second on my list of addicting smells (the first being truffle oil, synthetic chemicals be damned) are jasmine flowers. Especially the ones in overheated southern Thailand where I stayed up nights staring at the sky, amazed that I could see the Milky Way. I listened to frogs peeping from the grass, dogs barking in the neighborhood, and karaoke from a house down the road and wondered what the hell I was doing there. I had left home weeks before to explore a little piece of a new continent and I still felt a mixture of excitement and dread, like that feeling you get on the first day of school, but I felt rudderless, too. A little lost. Then, after a while, the Milky Way and fresh jasmine blossoms were reason enough to be there on their own.

The first flowers I smelled were a gift from a friend, and the garland of the small, waxy, white blossoms I hung in my guesthouse room had a fragrance that went on for days, literally. Although the smell did change over time, even the completely wilted flowers exuded some of their initial warmth and sweetness. Right then I knew that if things this beautiful, strong and persistent existed in Southeast Asia, the next couple of months were going to be great. (And they were.)

When I got back from Thailand, the East Coast winter was ready and waiting with a jealous slap. New York felt grim and cold. Everything looked the color of the dirty snow packed against the curbs. Then, in the grocery store one day, I saw a jar of orange-yellow clingstone peaches levitating in heavy syrup and I thought of one thing: summer. Summer would come back to New York and everything would be okay again. But, it needed to hurry up. Which brings us to peach and jasmine smoothies. The sweet warmth of jasmine combined with the tartness of peach brings me back to warmer days, whether in New York or Thailand. Additional inspiration came from Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Foods and Fragrance, a collaboration between natural perfumer Mandy Aftel and chef Daniel Patterson. Click on for the recipe.

Summer Peach and Jasmine Tea Smoothies

These smoothies make the perfect light breakfast or a cooling afternoon pick-me-up in summer. The floral note in jasmine tea is echoed in the perfume of a ripe peach. Look for jasmine tea in any high-end tea shop or your local international grocery store and use either canned or fresh peaches depending on the season.

Yields: Six cups

Ingredients:

For Jasmine Syrup:
1 bag jasmine tea
1 cup sugar

For Smoothies:
1 bag jasmine tea
One 15-ounce can peaches, strained; or two ripe medium peaches, sliced
1 cup plain or vanilla yogurt
Jasmine syrup

To make the syrup:

1. In a medium sauce pot, bring 1 1/2 cups of water to a boil, uncovered. Steep 1 bag of jasmine tea in the water for 3-5 minutes. Remove the tea bag and add 1 cup of sugar, stirring to dissolve. Bring the sugar and water to a boil, uncovered, and then remove from heat. Let stand for 10 minutes and then pour into a container to store until needed.

To make the smoothies:

1. In a separate sauce pot or teapot, brew 1 bag of jasmine tea in 1.5 cups water until strong, but not bitter, about 5 minutes. Let cool and pour into ice cube trays. Freeze until needed.
2. In a blender, combine the jasmine tea ice cubes, yogurt, peaches and jasmine syrup to taste. Blend until smooth. Pour into a glass and serve.

Blackberries and sweet mini peppers

There are certain things I do when I visit home. And they happen in this order:

1. Walk through the door and raid pantry. Eat all snack food, in its entirety.
2. Take nap after eating said snack food.
3. Next day, go hiking with parents to work off snack food.
4. Go to Costco, marvel at bulk produce.
5. Negotiate with mom about what will and will not fit in luggage.

Do I want to take frozen dandelion shoots with me? How about an herbal supplement with ginseng and deer antler fuzz? A bunch of bananas? This time I carried ten pounds of fruit and vegetables back to New York, part of which you see here. The sweet mini peppers are crunchy, refreshing and loud as heck. A terrible choice for smuggling into a movie theater, but great within the privacy of your home.

Post-snacking on Costco produce and pre-writing class, I went to Dos Toros Taqueria in Union Square with Travis H. I can still remember the day I ate my first burrito. Ten years ago, I lived in the Bay Area for a summer working at a tech start-up and sharing a house Real World-style with skaters who also happened to be coding geniuses. Not knowing anything about cars, coding, skateboarding, and being the only girl, I didn’t fit in. But I shared one thing in common with the guys — I liked to eat.

One day during a coding break, the guys decided they were tired of Hungryman meals so we piled into our (only) car, a huge late-1970s Cadillac DeVille, and drove a couple exits down 101 to a bodega. Except it was more than a bodega. In the back was a doorway and through that doorway was a little counter. At that counter you stood and pointed at things you wanted in your burrito. Rice, beans, guac, pico, corn, hot sauce, cheese, and pulled pork piled on and on until it looked like it would burst. I dropped that burrito into my stomach like the Enola Gay dropping Little Boy on Hiroshima. It was the best burrito I’d ever had. Memory of all prior burritos was instantly obliterated. Later, I found the Mission district joints where you can get life-changing tacos for a pittance, and it was then that I knew that California was more than fake tans, big boobs, Silicon Valley paper millionaires, bad high school movies and perpetual summer. It had something substantial over the East Coast, and that thing was Mexican food.

The two guys who opened Dos Toros, according this New York Times review, wanted to pay homage to this mythical Mexican food. They moved to New York from Berkeley and said, “Mexican food here is shit!”, which it mostly is. So they opened their own place, and it’s damn tasty. And yes, like the article says, get guacamole on everything. And yes, the blistered tortilla on the quesadilla is perfection. And, yes, the salty, soft pulled-pork taco brought a tear to my eye. It’s not quite the real deal, but it filled an empty spot the original burrito bomb cratered into my heart all those years ago. Bring wetnaps, an empty stomach and be ready to chow.