As soon as Cathy asked if I would join the week of Eating In, I said "Yes, of course!"
I read an advance copy of Cathy's book and loved it, had fun with helping with her Hungry Filmmakers here in the city, and am in the midst of final touches on a tour for my new book, Diet for a Hot Planet.
Like Cathy, and the thousands of us across the country participating in the Week of Eating In, I care about where my food comes from and believe what we eat makes a whopping difference not only to our own happiness and waistline but to the health of the planet and its climate, too. So I figured it'd be the least I could do to throw in my lot with the Week of Eating In. I also thought it would be easy.
But then I remembered...
Choice, arguably the best café in all of the lovely borough of Brooklyn, opened a second restaurant six days ago. It's a half a block from my office. Last week the lunch lines were so long they wound out the restaurant door. Can I really resist their scones for one more week?
Plus, there's the coffee problem. I swore it off during nine months of pregnancy and most of nursing so far. But now that I'm back in the coffee boat it's hard to resist the brewing barrels down the hall from my office. (Note to self: Remember to brew more in the morning and take those to-go mugs to work.)
Then I looked at my calendar: I had planned three business lunch dates this week. I'm also headed down the east coast on Thursday for a presentation in Washington D.C. and have a talk on Friday in Maryland. There's a dinner birthday party on Friday night and we had committed to a brunch with the moms and dads we see every week at our daughter's YMCA swim class. And, in complete Eating In irony, there's my dinner date Tuesday with one of the women who got me eating in in the first place: my friend Mollie Katzen. Hmm. All of a sudden not eating out seemed a lot more challenging.
Now I'm wondering what I got myself into.