The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [148]
The other faces around the table froze.
Mark clanged his fork down. “That’s right! I forgot about your restaurant week.”
“Your what?”
I briefly explained my current weeklong experiment and the concept of my blog to the rest of the table. Once the confusion cleared away, Grace remarked, “Wow, I can’t believe you really didn’t eat out for two years! I didn’t realize that.”
“Well, with some exceptions,” I said.
Lynn smiled. “That’s incredible.”
“How’s that going so far, by the way?” Mark asked.
“You’re looking at it,” I said, tearing into a piece of buttered toast.
We spent a long time talking after our plates were taken away. Everyone else was finishing up the bottle of wine, and I was on my third or fourth cup of coffee. Our waiter approached our table and asked us if everything was okay.
“I feel bad; there are so many people waiting for our table,” Grace said once he walked away. “But we come here all the time.”
We received our check a few minutes later, and our party decided it was time to get going. We passed the check around the table. My brunch with coffee cost $14, and I added another $4 for the tip. We decided we’d better leave a good tip, for lingering so long.
It was a beautiful day. The morning fog had cleared away, and a vibrant farmers’ market across the street from the restaurant was teeming with shoppers.
“How’d a cookie get so thin?” Lynn said, eyeing me up and down. “Because you’re a cookie,” she said with an affirmative nod. “That’s what you are.”
I didn’t really know what this old-fashioned nickname meant, but I smiled and took it as a compliment. We bid Lynn farewell as she headed across the street to her home with a wave. Mark and I chatted with Grace and her boyfriend for a while in front of the restaurant. The brunch meeting had gone well: Mark had succeeded in convincing Lynn to come to his dinner, and he invited Grace as well. We’d been at the restaurant for almost two hours, and it was getting close to the time when I’d have to take off for my next eating-out appointment.
“What are your plans for the rest of the day?” Mark asked as we walked toward my locked-up bike.
“I have to meet my brother in the city pretty soon. Then we’re going to Flushing, Queens, to eat in Chinatown,” I said.
A few months ago, my mom had read an article in The New York Times about the incredible, authentic Chinese food throughout Flushing, Queens. She had been desperate to try it all summer long but never got around to it. It was a perfect destination for my opposite week, though, so she and my dad were driving into the city that day, to meet up with me, Jo-Jo, and my brother, Chris, who happened to be in town with his band that weekend. But before dinner, Jo-Jo was taking Chris and me around Flushing for a mini-tour in the afternoon.
“That’s brilliant,” Mark said. “Have a good time.”
I got home to park my bike and grab some things to read on the subway. Once there, I suddenly remembered one part of opposite week that I’d previously forgotten. I had to get a scale.
Now, it may sound like a far-fetched idea that my weight would change over the course of just one week. I certainly wasn’t intending on gorging myself on excess food, and I experienced very little fluctuation in my weight in general. But I couldn’t help but be a little bit curious about this possibility. What if it did change drastically due to a restaurant-only diet? I didn’t own a scale and hadn’t remembered to buy one in time to weigh myself before the day began. I hurried to a pharmacy a few blocks down and roamed the aisles in search of one. While I was there, my mom called—what time should she and my dad plan to meet us in Flushing? she asked. While I was on the phone with her, I got an idea.
“Mom, can you bring your bathroom scale with you?”
“Why?” she retorted.
“Because I’m trying to weigh myself before and after the week,” I said, “and I can’t find one at Walgreens.”
My mom pulled