Champagne on a Tuesday 🍾

Actually, it’s only existentialism if it comes from the existentialism region of France. Otherwise, it’s just sparkling anxiety.

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, there are no rules. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.

Found champagne at the kitchen table

I found this bottle at the back of the sink but I believe there are other ways to acquire it.

There are no rules now. I drink champagne on a Tuesday. I buy five boxes of cake mix at the supermarket at 3 in the afternoon. I am slowly going feral. Only the cat judges me, silently. I am learning that it is actually a lot of work to manage one’s household entirely on one’s own. It turns out that a kitty roommate neither pays bills nor splits chores, and in fact adds a lot of to-dos to my ever-flowing list. A lot of those to-dos involve negotiating with the cat while he screams either loudly or silently at the food dispenser, which has absolutely already fed him. Sometimes I want to join in and also meow at a food dispenser until it produces my meals perfectly for me. (I may have already done this; unfortunately it does not work as well for me as it does for him.) So I find a dusty bottle of champagne and the back of the sink and drink it for dinner, along with beans and toast.  

Buttery garlic white beans on toast at home

You can make this simple meal anywhere and anytime.

It is important to eat a $2 can of beans on toast for dinner when you drink your $45 bottle of champagne. These beans may not have a ton of financial value but they are extremely rich, just like me. The key to eating beans on toast for dinner is to not hold back: You want to fry excessive amounts of smashed garlic in a generous glug of olive oil. Add a can of cannellini beans, rinsed and drained. Smash a third of the beans and let the whole mess simmer on low; add a big pinch of smoked paprika, lots of salt, and a sizable hunk of butter. Add the juice and zest of half a lemon, a small handful of chopped parsley. Toast thick slices of Italian bread. Butter and salt them thoroughly before adding the beans on top -- these are luxury beans, not stingy beans, and you are the divine ruler of your own domain, no matter how small.

Wild pear tisane from 29B Teahouse

You can order online, or pick-up in person.

Me drinking this delightful wild pear tisane while eating beans on toast and boxed mac and cheese for dinner five nights this week is sort of like the food equivalent of wearing really nice clothing because you haven’t been able to do the laundry in weeks. (Which I might also be doing.)  A precious bag purchased from my favorite tea house in the Before Times, this lovely tisane was gifted to me from a dear friend recently. When I opened the bag and saw only bits of brown, wrinkled dried pear I was skeptical that the tisane would merely taste like dusty fruit water, but this is extremely not the case. I’m not sure how a beverage could taste so much like pear without being juice, but this does.

Corn on the cob in the microwave

Get it at the grocery while it lasts.

It’s the season for fresh sweet corn on the East coast which means that I go into corn overdrive: Once a year, I buy all the cobs I can each week at the grocery store and eat them at all times of day. I thought about coming up with some fancy cool corn salad recipe but to be honest I just microwave them for 3-4 minutes still in the husk, wait for them to cool slightly, peel off all the strings and eat them as-is, rubbing salted butter all over it and sprinkling it with big pinches of flaky sea salt and black pepper. Then, later in the night I like to eat a cold ear of corn straight from the fridge for a midnight snack.

Your advice, please

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Readers who live alone and/or primarily manage their households: What tactics do you use to maintain healthy habits and a sense of sanity while you work late hours at home, and  have pets (or children, I simply cannot imagine) to take care of? How do you continue to derive pleasure out of eating? Do you use an app or a meal kit delivery service? Do you manually write down your shopping lists each week? Do you just give up and Seamless, and find that it’s not a drastic change in budget? If you have tips (I aspire to eat a mostly pescetarian diet) -- I’d love to hear it!

XOXO,
Soph