Photograph-Illustration: Maanvi Kapur
Henry Alford is thought to show his obsessions into writing. His most up-to-date e-book, I Dream of Joni: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell in 53 Snapshots, a form of biography of Mitchell advised by way of Alford’s essays, displays what he calls a “not fairly lifelong however longtime” preoccupation with the musician. The New Yorker contributor additionally wrote a e-book on dancing a number of years in the past, and his weekly postmodern courses stay a fixture in his schedule: “my model of a midlife disaster.” He attributes his “obnoxiously wholesome” way of life to “equal elements me attempting to save lots of the world and neurotic weight administration,” however nonetheless discovered time to make “final meal on Earth”–worthy bagel sandwiches and take pleasure in a multistage snacking bender throughout a notable stretch final December, proper earlier than he took off on an extended vacation journey.
Sunday, December 1
In its ultimate kind, a sesame-seed bagel is so totally and luxuriously encrusted with its namesake seeds that cream cheese or butter is rendered pointless: The encrustation is dormant tahini. I discover this type of dormancy within the choices of Apollo Bagels, whose outpost close to my boyfriend’s and my house within the West Village, alas, has irritatingly lengthy, Shakespeare within the Park–caliber wait instances. So I purchase these leathery little sourdough beauties in bulk after which freeze them. Thus, most of my mornings begin with an act of defrosting — which, metaphor sensible, I form of love.
Sunday is dance day: I’ll dance for both two hours (one class) or three hours (two courses). At this time is barely a one-class day, however nonetheless I really feel wholly entitled to a form of midmorning bridge meal: I toast a Dealer Joe’s flour tortilla on my gasoline prime range, then hit it with Gruyère, bitter cream, and roasted-pepper salsa earlier than operating it beneath the broiler and sprinkling it with a Dealer Joe’s Brussels sprouts and cabbage combine known as Cruciferous Crunch, which appears like plant blight. I eat this gooey concoction in certainly one of my most hallowed places of positive eating: over the kitchen sink.
After two hours of sweaty boogying and thrashing to world music and the occasional rock traditional, I am going with three of my dance buddies to the close by Kubeh, the Center Jap restaurant on Sixth Avenue at Tenth Road. I’ve the Breakfast Bowl (freekeh, butternut squash, avocado, and a poached egg) and eat half of my good friend Mel’s malawach (a Yemeni crêpe crammed with egg and tomato). Sitting in a restaurant is a relatively glamorous post-dance state of affairs for me: Each different Sunday, I am going to a second class, in Soho, which is able to discover me, after the primary class, both stopping at Joe’s Pizza for a slice, or shopping for sushi from Citarella and consuming it on the hoof as I scurry southward. In both state of affairs, after consuming, I’ll have interaction in breath administration by neurotically brushing my enamel on the sidewalk after which spitting right into a sewer opening. They are saying that Margot Fonteyn gave her dance accomplice Rudolf Nureyev class, whereas Nureyev gave Fonteyn intercourse attraction, which is basically the dynamic between me and the New York Metropolis sewer system.
Again at dwelling, I make dinner: broccoli Thai curry with a chickpea and carrot salad. My boyfriend, Greg, is the perfect individual to prepare dinner for: by no means choosy and really appreciative. I prepare dinner all of our dinners, however I don’t must vet them. We’re in settlement on varied libtard culinary requirements — we’re principally pescatarian at dwelling; we’ve switched to oat milk; we each love bitter greens, teriyaki candy potatoes, and any meal that has the great sense to put on a parka of melted cheese.
After dinner I ingest a half-sativa-half-indica edible after which Greg offers me a therapeutic massage on our purple shag carpet whereas we take heed to Al Inexperienced: As Wordsworth put it, very heaven. At 7:30 I make, as I do 5 or so nights per week, a fruit salad. That is the one a part of my food plan that reads “homosexual” to me — I can get very homosexual with fruit. I’ll flip a pear into 65 completely lovely batons; I’ll suprême a grapefruit till it seems bare and afraid.
Tonight I macerate blackberries with the again of a spoon and Microplane some lemon zest on them; then, I pull out my mandoline and chiffonade a banana. I slice some contemporary mango on prime of the blackberries and banana, organizing and adjudicating all this stuff like I’m drafting the Treaty of Versailles. Then I take the mango pit and, very rigorously lest it torpedo throughout the room because it has performed extra instances than I wish to admit, rotate the seed in my firmly clenched fist, spackling the assembled fruits with a scrumptious if barely off-putting mango ooze. I ought to most likely point out right here that mangos figured in certainly one of my all-time culinary peaks: I as soon as served my upside-down mango cake to meals luminary Pete Wells, an previous good friend of Greg’s, and he professed to love it. So I suppose I’ve established a mango gauntlet for myself. Code identify: Chutney.
In between the primary and second episodes of the Ted Danson sitcom A Man on the Inside that Greg and I watch whereas mendacity in mattress, we every eat a Greek-yogurt popsicle. Tonight’s taste: chocolate-chip cookie dough. At 9:45, I eat three handfuls of combined nuts. It’s my agency perception that I’ll die whereas mendacity in mattress consuming nuts. The horror is especially acute if I’m consuming any of what I consider as the posh nuts: Greater than as soon as I’ve visualized a thick coating of cashews and macadamias constricting round my coronary heart like an ever-shrinking Kevlar vest.
Monday, December 2
On the mornings that I don’t defrost a bagel, I normally eat the earlier night time’s leftovers at my desk whereas studying the information on my pc. Hey, chickpea-and-carrot salad, mightn’t you be improved by a tablespoon of tahini? Desktop consuming will not be one thing I’m pleased with, however I as soon as learn that Joan Didion used to eat tuna salad at her desk, which consoles me. We inform ourselves [tuna] with a purpose to [tuna].
I’ve a PT session at two — did I point out that I’m 62 and generally dance for 3 hours at a crack? — so I’m on the lookout for a light-weight lunch. I make a salad with, uh, tuna, dried cranberries, shaved fennel, and avocado. I brush my enamel earlier than my appointment, swallowing half of the sudsy byproduct in order to render my breath much less walrus-y. I’ve generally puzzled if years of swallowing just a little toothpaste backwash any time I eat garlic, uncooked onion, fish, or eggs earlier than socializing has left its mark on my insides; sometime a dentist will inform me, “Your uvula is a breath mint.” After PT I defrost a bagel as a result of I deserve one thing pillowy and pleasant in any case that exertion.
For dinner I make a favourite meal of ours: salmon fillets with pores and skin that I make very crispy in a skillet; tzatziki; farro with dried cranberries and contemporary dill; a giant pile of garlicky sautéed spinach. A couple of third of the dinners I make are one-pot wonders, so it feels good to generally make an “grownup” meal with a number of working elements. I’m all the time combating towards the picture I’ve of two middle-aged males residing collectively: cereal for dinner and elasticized waistbands.
The remainder of the night is remarkably much like the earlier night time, however we swap out chocolate-chip cookie dough popsicles for chocolate fudge, and 2024 Ted Danson for 2006 Denzel Washington and Val Kilmer (the thriller Déjà Vu, which is being featured on the Criterion Channel). Simply earlier than preparing for mattress, I open a plastic container of cashews and begin to clutch a handful of salty goodness, however then take into consideration the Kevlar vest and withdraw my hand.
Tuesday, December 3
On Tuesday morning I swim at NYU, then I am going dwelling and defrost. Lunch is a Unhappy Desk Salad — similar to yesterday’s, however with chickpeas as a substitute of tuna. Midafternoon, I’ve one other stovetop tortilla. Henrycita.
At 6:45 I meet my good friend Hannah Reimann on the East Village restaurant Pangea to see the good 84-year-old character actor Austin Pendleton do his cabaret act. Hannah studied with Austin, and I as soon as interviewed him for The New Yorker, however actually we’re right here as a result of in February Hannah will carry out a bunch of Joni Mitchell songs at Pangea in honor of my upcoming e-book, so we’re casing the joint. I order a negroni and a bowl of Bolognese; when Austin and his collaborator Barbara Bleier’s act begins, I contemplate getting a glass of white wine, too, however I can’t determine how you can flag the waiter with out being impolite to the performers, so I chug my water as a substitute. Austin and Barbara’s roster of present tunes has me misting up repeatedly; I discover the aged vastly poignant.
That night time at 1:17, unable to sleep (liquor: why?), I eat a bowl of Shredded Wheat in oat milk that I plump up with almonds, raisins, and an un-chiffonaded banana. Typically, whereas pouring cereal right into a bowl within the wee hours, as I don’t sometimes , I’ll sing the refrain of the Bee Gees traditional “Night time Fever,” however change the lyrics to “night time eater.” Tonight, I’m reminded of the time that the three Bee Gees, requested to collaborate on a tune with Barbra Streisand, expressed curiosity within the venture however requested for three-quarters of the royalties, whereupon Barbra allegedly spat again, “How a lot for only one?” Consuming alone in my pajamas after midnight could make me really feel like one solitary Bee Gee. And, sadly, not Barry.
Wednesday, December 4
That is a kind of rare nights when Greg can be out of the home — a duplicate editor of books by day, tonight he’ll be volunteering on the Dream Home, a sound-and-light set up in Tribeca. I do know I have to go gradual meals sensible: When unsupervised within the confines of my dwelling, I could be a menace to snack meals.
I skip breakfast however at 11 a.m. eat the very best factor I’ll eat throughout these 4 days: a toasted sesame bagel with watercress, avocado, smoked salmon, and, in a daring departure from my earlier statements, mayo. The crunch of the bagel with the fats of the avocado and the salty slap of the salmon: We’re in death-row territory right here. I as soon as watched a documentary in regards to the last-meal requests of individuals on dying row and discovered that, hilariously, some prisoners request low-calorie salad dressing. Through the years, I’ve thought of this reality virtually as a lot as I’ve thought in regards to the Joni Mitchell lyric, “He noticed my issues / And mirrored me again simplified.” I’m fascinated by the issues that I virtually perceive.
Greg leaves round six for the Dream Home and I launch, as anticipated, right into a veritable Oresteia cycle of snacking. It begins with a goodwill effort (broccoli sautéed with garlic after which heaped with Parmesan) earlier than devolving, as I watch three episodes of Chopped and the movie noir Laura, into two large bowls of salted popcorn, a Greek-yogurt popsicle, 12 skinny slices of Monterey Jack and a thick blob of Taleggio, a bowl of Shredded Wheat with raisins, two carrots, two frozen do-it-yourself brownies from the freezer, a stovetop tortilla with Gruyère, and 7 spoonfuls of a chocolate-hazelnut unfold Greg’s stepmother gave us two months in the past however which I’ve slyly managed to cover from Greg’s view by positioning it behind a big container of yogurt.
The truth that my night time of rogue consuming consists of carrots and Shredded Wheat is telltale. I’m a Nineteen Thirties hobo who thinks heaven is a spot the place cigarette butts develop on bushes.
Thursday, December 5
Many themes are reasserted: defrosting at breakfast, chickpea salad for lunch, a wholesome dinner (kale-and-white-bean stew), a fussy fruit salad, Greek-yogurt popsicles. We watch the Humphrey Bogart film Excessive Sierra; each time I see a correctional facility depicted onscreen I’m glad I learn Mary Roach’s e-book in regards to the alimentary canal, Gulp, as a result of now I do know that one other phrase for rectum is “jail pockets.”
After the film, Greg begins enjoying with our cat, so I procure a small bowl of cashews, which I eat whereas mendacity in mattress and staring on the Criterion Channel’s touchdown web page. Unusually, I don’t die.
EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.
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