Feed the Rich...Desserts

I was torn about where to post this entry. Here in my regular journal (which my husband says makes our lives an open book but I don't really think so)? Or in the Journal of Unintended Consequences, my other blog, which is intended to capture the chaotic results from well-intentioned (or not) actions? I decided to put it here because somehow I thought that would be less controversial. I'm not really raising an objection to feeding the rich. Everybody's got to eat, you know, to sustain life.

The photo is of a sausage-shaped big cheese (I think) at Mandola's Market, posing with some of its sausage friends.

Now, I consider myself rich. I don't have any debt, I can budget for things like 'gifts' and 'donations' and 'eating out.' I don't work. Yeah. The idle rich even. Hasn't always been so, but I was never as poor as my parents or grandparents once were.

I've noticed that, when you donate money to things or you entertain friends or do them favors or people think you are going to do them a favor or donate money, people give you free food and booze.

I have often wondered if you could just live off this free stuff. For weeks at a time. I'm not really trying to do that and, besides, it would probably require lining your pockets with zip lock bags as my friend SuRu points out. But yesterday when I got up I realized that for that one day I could probably get by on what was free. So I decided to try it.

Now first off, I'm not a 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' person. When I get up in the morning, I'm not usually hungry at all. I want coffee. Black coffee. And lots of it. So in my experiment I decided that I would allow myself unlimited coffee made in my very own Jura-Capresso E8. (See this entry also.) Of course, there are no calories in black coffee. Just a buzz.

During the morning, I went to my club and rode the recumbent bike for thirty minutes. The bike claimed I'd burned 200 calories. Just before I showered I weighed on the fancy-looking digital scales from Sharper Image that we bought when we decorated our remodeled bathroom. (See photo of bathroom in my old journal...the scales fit in with that decor. Hmmm...maybe FFP is right about the open book thing!) My weight was 163.6. Seems like the scale said just over 160 a few days ago. But it fluctuates. Who knows?

Around 12:20 we headed downtown. We got into a huge traffic jam at 5th and Lamar caused by the city's urge to close a couple of lanes of W. 5th every weekend. Still we found a parking place and found a bus that was taking the media around for a tour of markets as part of the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival. I figured...free food! While we waited for the bus to depart I took a quick swing through the Saturday Downtown Farmer's Market. (I imagined when we were living downtown how I would stroll through the market and buy some vegies and greens and goat cheese for the week.) I got a free taste of some delicious Hibiscus Tea. I saw that the goat cheese and honey people had those tiny plastic tasting spoons. But I figured a small taste would just send my juices up too high.

The bus headed out to Mandola's Italian Market near our house. For some reason they used the surface streets. As we drove by the University I saw some homeless guys digging in a trash can. I was feeling a little hungry myself. Several eateries on Guadalupe (Milto's, Ruby's Barbecue, Zen, NeWorlDeli) suddenly seemed very attractive. As we filed into the market to get a talk from one of the owners we walked by outside tables where people were scarfing late lunches (it was 1:15 by now) of pizza and salad and anti-pastas and all manner of stuff that was looking increasingly delicious. But there were no samples! The best I could do was to grab a little bit of cranberry walnut bread out for sampling by the general public. I listened to the owner talk about the operation (their own winery, imported Italian groceries, baking almost all their own stuff, very interesting actually, etc.) and tried not to feel too hungry. We were given a goody bag. It contained a jar of artichokes and olives and stuff in a tomato sauce, a pack of three or four baked crackers and some biscoti and cookies along with one of those napkin/cutlery packets you get with takeout. On the way out I looked at the bread sample basket...but all the samples were gone. Darn! In the bus, I ate one of the crackers and a little cookie of some sort. That took the edge off.

We drove back toward downtown and over to South Congress and were soon at Cissi's Market. This was feed the rich nirvana! I took a glass of the offered white wine but fortified myself before drinking much with chips on sample. They had some Austin Slow Burn Salsa Verde out, too. Then they started circulating with platters containing tiny bite-size hors d'oeuvre. Ah, heaven. Vanilla-poached lobster with Shiraz grits. Little pulled pork sandwiches on cornbread the size of pill boxes. They had a lot, too, so we were encouraged to have multiples. I began to think I'd survive on my free food diet. I sipped a little wine. I had one bite of lemon bar dessert. I'm not much of a dessert person. That would be my downfall on this regimen. A peek inside our goodie bag from Cissi's revealed a sack of coffee beans, giant home-style cookies and chocolate!

Next we went to Farm To Market Grocery. It's been there on South Congress for a while. A tiny space stocking a lot of food and a few gift items, it has 30% local products including flowers out front that are from the Hill Country. The people there were really nice and were passing out goat milk ice cream, sodas and water. And they gave us goody bags with a private label chocolate bar and a Butters Brownie. Now, as I said, I'm not much on sweets. I actually had eaten a Butters Brownie a few nights ago. (There was a sample in the media bag we got.) The goat milk part tempted me on the ice cream but I just ask others how it tasted.

We headed west of W. Mary and located the P&K Grocery. This place was ultra funky and hip at the same time. They had taken an old building, used antique fixtures where possible and had some antique glassware and china and collectibles for sale. They had a deli counter with hot sandwiches and other stuff. They make their own pimento cheese and hummus and hot dog condiments. They sell goat cheese on a stick (lolipops!). That made my stomach rumble. But they weren't giving them away. They were giving away little square pimento cheese sandwich samples and freshly made lemonade. Also deviled eggs but for some reason I didn't get one before we got on the bus. I'd regret that. That 1.5 inch square sandwich wasn't going to hold me long. And their goodie bag had samples of their hot dog condiments. Which would have been great if someone was giving away hot dogs!

When we got home, I had some coffee and water. I was actually a little hungry. The only free thing that wasn't sweet was some of those plain crackers and that artichoke concoction Mandola's gave us. So I opened it up and had a little of that with the crackers. Later a bag of caramel corn Cissi's gave us (a private label product with a light hand on the coating, not at all like Crackerjacks) called to me. As I always do with such products...I checked the calories in the entire bag...about seven hundred and eighty! They were pretty good, sort of salty and sweet, but I stopped eating after only a couple of hundred calories.

A few hours later, we dressed up and went to a house over near Lake Austin. The party was free. Well, if you don't count the hefty annual donation that had yielded the invitation. When I saw plates of food, I found the dining room and filled a plate with tender beef, roll and butter, green beans, roasted root vegies, roasted purple and white fingerling potatoes and rice. The offerings seemed a bit odd...no chicken or fish and a lot of starch but I wasn't complaining. I took some of everything and polished off all the carbs and a few ounces of the beef with a glass of free red wine. (I had finished a glass of white I'd gotten coming in.) Later I had a coffee and three mini madeleines.

At home Forrest ate some of the caramel corn and so I finished the bag. I was tempted to grab a cheese snack from the fridge, but true to my word, I stuck to coffee and what the world fed the rich today. Which seemed a little heavy on the sweet side. Let 'em eat cake, I guess.

As I finish this entry I'm waiting for FFP to come home. We might go to the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival Fair. There would be lots of free food. And we have press passes. But jockeying for free food with thousands of other people and drinking wine outdoors on a hot day sounds less and less fun now that I think about it. I haven't eaten so far today. I've had my coffee, a bottle of water and a walk around the neighborhood. I'm feeling a little hungry. But not hungry enough to go for the chocolate and cookies left over from the free stuff from yesterday.