What Our Food Editor Eats in a Week

From communal dinners to recipe testing, each week's worth of meals (and snacks!) looks a little different for Food Editor Emily Ziemski. Here, she walks us through what she ate and cooked on a recent week in March—while navigating a few food allergies, and an unexpected winter cold.

Breakfast

Today, I’m going into the office to spend some time with our creative team while they get ready for the photo and video shoots of the week. I started my morning with a workout, so I’m in a bit of a time crunch and make a quick (read: microwaved) oatmeal with sunflower butter, a drizzle of honey, and frozen blueberries. My family picks a bunch during peak blueberry season, enough for all of us to keep some in our freezers throughout the year to get our seasonal fruit fix—it’s a dream. On my way into the office, I pick up an iced oat latte.

Snack

Our senior food stylist, Anna, brought in some pastries from a beloved bakery in her neighborhood that I’ve been meaning to try. I’m lactose-intolerant, but I cut off a tiny corner of a cornetto just to have a taste.

Lunch

A few months ago, I had Cava, the Mediterranean fast-casual chain, for the first time and I haven't been the same since. When I'm at the office, I usually snack on all kinds of sweets and treats, so I like Cava for a quick, well-balanced meal. Plus, the red pepper hummus is chef’s kiss. I get it with some cabbage and kale, sweet potato, tomatoes, onions, olives, and lamb meatballs. Yum.

Tea Time

Another thing I discovered at the office is PG Tips, a well-loved British tea. Those of us in the office have an afternoon caffeine session—affectionately called “PG Tips Time”—with some sweet leftovers from recipe testing, and I get some recipe editing done.

Dinner

I’m usually not in Manhattan (Brooklyn, baby!), so I text a friend to meet me in the West Village after work. We go to Bandits to enjoy dirty gin martinis and loaded tater tots. I head home, have a Pedialyte (the one-drink hangover is very real when you’re over 30), and snuggle with my cat. For her dinner, she has the same food she’s had for the last nine years of her life. She would like you all to know of these hard, devastating circumstances.

Breakfast

I usually prefer a savory breakfast, so today I’m making fried eggs and putting them over a slice of sourdough I got from the farmer’s market last week. I make a thrown-together side salad of shaved carrot and red leaf lettuce for some freshness on the plate. I’ve been trying this coffee subscription service—gifted to me by a friend—called Cometeer. It’s flash-frozen espresso that’s ready to drink; you just melt it and drink hot or cold. I’ve been considering an espresso machine, but they’re so big and I live alone, so that’s a big investment (I’m also super precious about counter space). Cometeer has coffee purveyors from all over the country, so it’s been cool to try out a bunch of different roasts. I make an iced oat latte from my frozen espresso.

Lunch

A friend who does recipe testing for cookbooks is always giving me leftovers when I see her (she’s the best!), so I make a little rice bowl with some of her offerings. I crisp the rice up in the pan with coconut aminos (did I mention I also have a soy allergy on top of my dairy allergy?), sautée some spinach with garlic, pair that with some of the fresh crab she gave me, and top it off with black vinegar-dressed avocado.

Dinner

I'm meeting an old coworker for a long-overdue catch-up, so we go to Gem Wines—a cute-as-heck wine bar that only ever has a red, white, rosé, and orange on the menu. Like, a, as in singular. It’s nice not having to peruse a super long wine list, sometimes having too many options can be exhausting. I order the orange because I love funk (did my love of dirty martinis not give it away?). We also order an escarole Caesar salad, some charcuterie, and farmer’s bread for the table. One of the meats—a mortadella—has a spread of tonnato under it that is perfectly piquant and the just-right complement to the rich cured meat. It’s all so delicious.

Breakfast

I’m doing some recipe testing today, so I repeat my easy breakfast from Monday (microwaved oatmeal with sunflower butter, a drizzle of honey, and frozen blueberries). Recipe testing involves me doing a bunch of cooking and then all the cleaning, too (hooray).

Snack

Whoops, I forgot to drink coffee, so I make an iced oat latte and sip on it as I snack on some Granny Smith apple slices with peanut butter.

Lunch

I’m in the midst of testing a few different springy pastas, so I make a little lunch from those in between meetings.

Snack #2

After all the pasta, I fill a little plate with olives, cut veggies, and garlicky hummus to dip for some protein.

Dinner

When I’ve spent a portion of the day cooking and thinking about recipes, it can be really hard to motivate myself to cook again for dinner. In comes my favorite “I’m done cooking” dinner: beans and greens. The general concept of this recipe is to grab whatever beans I have, plus whatever green vegetables I have, and prepare it in whichever way feels easiest. Tonight, it’s chickpeas—half mashed with lemon and olive oil, and half roasted at 450°F for 18 minutes until crispy—with an oven-steamed packet of garlicky green beans. I put this all over a little swoosh of dairy-free ricotta (I love Kite Hill’s ricotta because it has the perfect dry-ish ricotta texture), plus more fresh lemon juice.

Breakfast

I have some cereal that I’ll be recipe testing with tomorrow, so I have a little bowl of it just to get the sense of its flavor profile and notes, plus more peanut butter and apple slices.

Lunch

I’m testing a few different types of recipes today—going from pie to spring rolls—so lunch is a little all over the place. After snacking on everything, I'm still a little hungry, so I make some avocado toast.

Dinner

Last weekend I picked up ground lamb and caponata—a tomato and eggplant dish simmered with other vegetables, finished with an agrodolce sauce—from my favorite bookstore/food shop in Brooklyn, Archestratus, and tonight feels like a good night for a hearty pasta dish. (The weather forecast this week has been 50°F, but the “real-feel” is 30°F or below with gusts of a mean wind. Spring, where are you?) I round out the caponata with tomato paste and pasta water to make it a bit saucier, turn the ground lamb into baked meatballs with some panko breadcrumbs, and serve with tender orecchiette pasta.

Breakfast

What better way to celebrate Friday than with a lox bagel? I walk to my local bagel shop to pick some bagels up, then grab some of my favorite cashew-based cream cheese and lox from the store. I often find the in-store ratio of cream cheese to lox disappointing, so I like to build my own bagel at home. I add some red onion, tomato, and capers, plus a squeeze of lemon, and pair it with another iced oat latte. What a good start to the morning.

Lunch

More recipe testing! Today, I'm testing a salad recipe for an upcoming Plus One, my recipe column, and a few different empanadas.

Dinner

Tonight I’m meeting some friends at Chai Spot to celebrate a birthday, and a cozy mug of chai tea is exactly what I need in this rain. Chai Spot is a wonderful tea house downtown that has a space backspace filled with colorful textiles and pillows where you can find people lounging and sipping tea at all hours.

After the tea we're very hungry, so we bop over to Congee Village and order a bevy of fragrant garlic-sautéed vegetables, dim sum (shumai, dumplings, and puffs), beef noodles, and a giant, steaming bowl of mapo tofu that I don’t partake in (soy allergy aside), but catch delicious wafts of every time the lazy Susan rotates around the table. We end the night with a nightcap at Bar Lula, where I have a Negroni Sbagliato because I love being late to a trend.

Breakfast

Rainy, cold winter days zap my motivation, so I heat up some bone broth to sip on while I putter around the house, consider running errands, and read a book. Once I’m fully awake, I make an iced oat latte and some oatmeal.

Lunch

Lucky me, I still have some delicious leftovers from empanada testing, so I fry those up, along with re-crisping some garlicky green beans from last night’s dinner.

Dinner

Every day I’m so happy that I work in a field that makes it super easy for me to navigate my food allergies (since I know how to substitute or make my own versions of unsafe-for-me items). One of those things is pizza. Granted, there are so, so many more options for ordering dairy-free things now versus even five years ago, but pizza in the city is already at a pretty high markup, and it’s even more when you're adding a dairy-free cheese substitute. Therefore, it’s pizza night at Chez Emily! I regularly buy fresh pizza dough from a local bakery and keep it in my freezer for nights like this. Once it's defrosted and rolled out, I load up the dough with cashew cheese, red onion, and fig jam. Once it’s out of the oven, I finish it off with arugula, prosciutto, and a drizzle of olive oil. I add those items last so that 1) the arugula doesn’t get weirdly wilted and 2) so the prosciutto doesn’t overpower the pizza with salt (which happens when it's cooked because the salt flavor is super concentrated).

Breakfast

Uh oh, I am in full-blown cold mode. I started to feel not-so-great halfway through the day yesterday and it looks like it's here to stay. First, some bone broth to sip while I catch up on podcasts and work on a crossword puzzle. Then, an orange (for the vitamins) and a piece of peanut butter toast.

Lunch

My energy is super low, so I’m going for the weirdest snack-lunch that I sometimes make for myself: popcorn and fried eggs. Yep, it’s exactly what it sounds like—stove-top-popped popcorn with olive oil and salt, plus a side of two, sunny-side-up fried eggs. It’s weird, it’s savory, and it gets the job done. This is also one of my cat’s favorite lunches, as she is a popcorn fiend. She gets two pieces.

Dinner

As you could have guessed, that lunch did not do it for me. Therefore, I'm dreaming up the most lavish dinner I can treat myself to with my current energy levels. I’ve got some chicken and breadcrumbs, so I decide to make a version of chicken Milanese, but with panko breadcrumbs (so the result is a bit crispier). I put that over a roasted Brussels sprout salad and pair it with some herbal tea.

Dessert

A handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips. No notes.

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