I have decided to throw at least one BBQ a month at the CSC Clubhouse in Rockaway. The first one was for Memorial Day and the second we did 4th of July. That means we technically skipped a June Q, so maybe I’ll have to do two in July! As followers of the blog, newsletters, and my personal instagram know, I’m crazy about food and cooking at home. During the pandemic I’ve even started making my own pasta and ice cream. While gathered around the snack table sampling some beet dip with labneh a few friends and students commented that I ought to have a surf-related cookbook. I replied that that will be in the works one day. And perhaps it will be called Fridge Tetris. There is a sense in which a large part of my philosophy of food can be encapsulated by what I mean by “fridge tetris.” This is not an original idea or anything that started with me. The organizing concept is simple: don’t let anything go to waste and always eat the things that are closest to going bad. The above salad is a perfect illustration of the concept. I made it on Tuesday, July 6th, two days after the BBQ. Josh Dzieza and Sarah Topol brought corn to the Q but we didn’t get it on the grill in time for everyone to enjoy it. The corn cooked over a dying bed of coals and kind of caramelized, so I saved it in the fridge (there were about 6 ears). Roger Hodge brought a watermelon — a great addition to any 4th of July event — and we were left with half. Earlier in the week, Sophia made stuffed flat breads with kale from the garden and feta cheese. I shop for vegetables, dairy, and meat at the Warehouse Market on 74th St every Friday afternoon. I had spinach and radishes in the fridge leftover from my weekly trip (as I write this there are still zucchinis, beets, radishes, and two cucumbers left from the same trip). In the summer we eat a lot of salad because it’s hot and salad tastes good when it’s hot. I cut the kernels off the corn, diced up the watermelon, cubed some feta, cut radishes thin, cleaned the spinach, and tossed it all together with fresh herbs from the garden, lime juice, olive oil, and salt. I had crackers with chicken liver pate on the side. The pate was in fact from a batch I made for the Memorial Day BBQ! It made so much that I froze one tin and brought it out for the 4th. A few people love it and are always stoked to see it on the spread, but it is rich and usually there’s a ton leftover. I like it on bread or crackers with mustard. It’s also good with caramelized onion jam. I have a feeling when we’re holding winter literary salons the pate will be gobbled up much faster indoors with fresh baked crusty bread and red wine.
A key feature of fridge tetris food philosophy is that you don’t eat based upon your desires, but upon what needs to be eaten. Food tetris is blind to cravings in the small scale. On the large scale, you try to have staples on hand that can scratch the itch of your cravings, but on a day to day basis you just eat what’s there. As I have written previously, it is best if what you mostly need to use up are vegetables. There are many philosophies and ideas of optimal diets out there, but all of them have one thing in common: vegetables are good for you and should be the bulk of what one consumes. I listened to a great podcast with author Gary Taubes on the Michael Shermer Show which I think is a little inappropriately titled, “The Case for High Fat Eating.” It’s basically a discussion of health and diets, who writes health and diet books, and for whom, and all the research or lack of research done in certain areas in this regard. Taubes is a big dude who has found that something like a keto diet works best for him: he primarily eats vegetables and high fat, high protein foods, and practices intermittent fasting. This is the only thing that he has tried that has kept him at what feels like a healthy weight for him. Also he finds the high fats curb his cravings for sugar and sugar-rich carbohydrates. But! But! Taubes is clear: some people process carbohydrates better than others, and some people can continue eating potatoes and pasta and bread with their already high vegetable diet the rest of their live long days and stay thin, happy, and healthy. But if you are not one of these people, cutting carbs and sugar is the most sure fire way to keep excess weight off. I just happen to be the kind of person who surfs 6 hours a day and would rather die than give up potatoes. But I also understand now why some people can’t have them without gaining weight. So if you’re one of these people, potatoes and bread aren’t going to be things you buy on a weekly basis that need to get used up. Whole milk yogurt, eggs, and fish might be. I like all of those things too! The point of all of this is shopping for food with your diet and cravings in mind so that the things you need to “use up” are things that will also make you feel strong, quick of wit, high in energy, and emotionally stable (these are some key indicators of “good health”).
When I go to the Warehouse Market on Fridays I probably buy more vegetables than some people buy for a family of four. I know this because I used to get a CSA box in Brooklyn, which is advertised as feeding a family of four, but I’d normally eat through it in two to three days. I think the key to fridge tetris is finding out the right amount of vegetables. I always buy a bit more than I feel I can handle because that will enforce me to eat more vegetables at every meal. In fact it makes it make the most sense to consider how to transform vegetables into something delicious when those are what needs to be used up first. But! But! If I saw a pattern where a lot of vegetables were going bad before I got to them, I’d reduce the amount I buy. As it stands, I eat through what I buy every week. I don’t let leftovers sit in the fridge for longer than one day. If there are leftovers in the fridge, the rules of fridge tetris say: they need to go first before the next dish is conjured up. When conceptualizing fridge tetris you can think of the tupperwares as little squares that need to be exploded away. There should not be tons of tupperwares taking up space in a fridge, especially if the food in them is old and going bad. But of course I use tupperwares to store things that don’t go bad quickly like flour, bacon that has been opened, cheeses and tofus that are kept in water, etc.
Here is the current state of my fridge. Top shelf is half and half, leftovers from last night’s dinner — a shaved kohlrabi and beet salad and some linguini with broccoli. The green lid is anchovies that were used in the pasta. They’ll last forever, but we’ll use them soon. To the right of that are Sophia’s flours. Flour keeps better in the fridge. Middle shelf is T. Rock’s food, yogurt behind that, seltzers, ketchup, eggs, and in the tin above the eggs are some gooey brownies. Bottom shelf is bacon in blue tupperware, labneh, and the rest of the feta in the red tupperware. Vegetable drawer has squash, beets, lemons, radiesh, two small cucumbers and two carrots. There are also three ears of uncooked corn from Josh and Sarah on my counter top. I’ll eat the leftovers for brunch/lunch (I rarely eat breakfast). It’s market day so I’ll refresh on veg, which means all that’s in there right now will get cooked for dinner. Some friends are coming over and I’m going to make grilled zucchini, beet dip with labneh, and corn fritters with shredded carrots. We have a ton of cilantro in the garden so a cilantro pesto may also be in order. We also have a lot of kale back there, which I think will make an appearance as a kale salad with radishes and cucumbers (if I don’t add those to my lunch salad first). Garden tetris and fridge tetris are symbiotic.
What about protein? What about meat? What about fat? Not pictured is my wall of butter of cheese on the door. Lol. I have a nice bloomy rind cheese, some parmesan, and that’s it right now. And we always keep a healthy supply of organic butter. I buy meat at the Warehouse Market as well and it lives in the freezer until a day or two before I want to cook it. As I have written in the last food post, I don’t think farmers are going to stop raising animals for slaughter in sustainable ways. And so I want to support their tradition, which is why I buy my meat from them. Because it is expensive I don’t eat it every day. But even in this I am no purist. Rather I abide by fridge tetris norms. For example, people brought a lot of hot dogs and sausages for the BBQ, which we didn’t even open. I froze most of them for the next Q, but kept a pack of pre-cooked chicken sausages (maybe also from Roger? or was it John and Ginny?) for this week’s consumption. We ate those two nights ago with some pretzel buns Jhoan and Norva left here, sauerkraut (something in the tupperwares in the fridge shot — also doesn’t go bad), and roasted rosemary potatoes. Two sausages and a few potato bits were leftover from that meal, so I ate those scrambled with eggs and cheese for brunch yesterday. That kept me fueled until dinner time. This is fridge tetris in action!
The main goal of the fridge tetris diet and lifestyle is to not waste, not over consume, and have awesome, tasty, health-ful meals every time you eat. You shop with the whole week or even the whole month in mind. You may have a particular recipe you do want to try out. You may know that you’re going to be eating out a lot for work so then you don’t buy too much stuff. You may know that you want to grill so buy more grill appropriate vegetables like eggplants and zucchinis. And you also know your own cravings. We keep a few chocolate bars in the pantry. I also keep two boxes of Cliff Bars so that if I’m brain dead before going surfing/coaching and can’t find anything to bring to the beach there is at least something in my backpack to fuel me through sessions. With my active lifestyle — I am basically a professional athlete — I need to eat a lot more calories that someone who is trying to lose weight — not quite Micheal Phelps — but in the 3000-4000 calories a day range, which is surprisingly easy to hit if you add in higher fat foods like nuts and oils. But also for me, carbs work in this regard too. I’m really into making my own pasta now because it tastes sooo much better. But as it happens homemade pasta is more high protein than carbs: there are more egg yolks than actual flour in it. The other thing about fridge tetris is that I like to think it cuts down a little bit on packaging and packaged food waste. Sure I have a lot of food in my pantry in boxes and tins — tomato sauce, rice, tuna, clams, sardines, dry pasta, nuts, crackers — so I do my part to contribute to the recycling and trash piles — but at least I try to make sure that everything that is held in those tins is put to good and tasty use!
