With a strong will and a creative mind, Cathy Erway did the impossible — she maintained a social life while avoiding the New York City restaurant scene. Her blog, Not Eating Out in New York, followed her two-year project, providing readers with recipes, cost calculations, and reasons for not eating out. The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, Cathy’s first book, is equal parts autobiography and cookbook. It pries into her personal life, sharing her successes and failures in love, in the kitchen, and in the professional world.
With two years of daily cooking under her belt, Cathy moved on to advocate for lunch with her newest project, Lunch at Sixpoint. You can catch up with her on Mondays during her weekly Heritage Radio Network show, Let’s Eat In, where she has conversations about dating without the restaurant. Cathy agreed to answer a few questions for us on eating in, the importance of lunch, and her favorite recipe for soup month.
For those of our readers unfamiliar with your work, what gave you the idea to write a food blog about not eating out in New York when so many others were focusing on reviews of the city’s most trendy restaurants?
I think with an interest in food naturally comes an interest in how to make it yourself — at least, that was the case for me. So I thought there should be more discussion on cooking at home among the buzz about food in general, instead of this fading out from the conversation, and, our everyday lives.
On your ‘about me’ page, you quote Henry David Thoreau: “None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage point of what we should call voluntary poverty.” What did you learn about “human life,” or at least human life in the NYC restaurant scene through the two years you spent dining in?
I definitely feel like I got to know my friends and fellow cooks on a whole new dimension just through cooking together or eating one another’s food. And I saw how silly it was that people always assume they should go to a restaurant on a date (and not, say, theater, or even cooking up something light at home). I could go on here, but I think that Thoreau is saying that when you strip away some luxuries, you begin to realize what’s most important in life. And, you’ve got to have certain skills to survive.
What was your greatest kitchen disaster?
I’ve never been much good at baking desserts. One time I had a craving for cookies, though, and I threw together random proportions of egg, butter, flour, sugar, and chocolate chips. I had something that oozed all over the baking sheet in the oven (I don’t even think it was a “baking sheet”) and stuck to it like clay. It tasted okay, though.
You used this project to experience all facets of non-consumerism including freeganism and foraging as well as alternative methods of socialization such as cook-offs, supper clubs, and dating without the restaurant. Could you share one experience that caused you to rethink your project?
I think supper clubs are a really great way to make unique food, in a unique setting, and share it with others. However, I can see why some people might say it’s similar to going to a restaurant, since you usually have to pay. Likewise, cook-offs are not free. So that seemed troubling. However, doing these activities and necessarily charging at the door (albeit at no personal profit) made me more keen to the fact that there will always be a relationship of producers to consumers. If I produce all my own food, and consume it myself, that is really not the case, is it? Somebody’s growing the food before I buy it, and he/she needs consumers to make that viable.
Your latest project is urban farming and raising four rooftop chickens at Sixpoint Craft Ales where you use what you grow to cook for the staff in an effort to “revive the working class lunch.” What steps could an individual with a standard midtown 9-5 job take to prioritize lunch while saving a few bucks?
Believe me that cooking has a domino effect. So if you start making something for dinner, say, a couple nights a week, you’ll have some of those things for lunch the next day, then extra ingredients in your refrigerator to make something else with quickly next, or maybe you were motivated to do things differently with that last dish so you’re going to cook something new for dinner the next night again, and so on, and so on. I think that it’s much less intimidating to “start bringing your lunch to work” when it doesn’t feel like an individual effort each time, just something that flows along with the week. I can also offer a lot of suggestions on recipes in my blog (Lunch at Sixpoint), too!
With cold winter weather and snow storms, more New Yorkers will be dining in. January is national soup month — would you share a soup recipe with our readers?
Definitely. I have been making this way too much lately, so here goes: black bean soup, with no fuss. Just time, time, and more time, is what it takes to make the beans cook to a creamy consistency, and a hearty, full flavor. I had just made a pot of when a friend dropped by my apartment, to pick something up. The minute I opened the door, he said, incredulous, “Something smells… divine!”
Black Bean Soup
(makes about 8 servings)
2 cups dry black beans, soaked overnight and drained
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small carrot, chopped
1 rib celery (with any leaves on it), chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
1 tsp cumin
¼ tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
1 tsp chipotle hot sauce (such as Tabasco)
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
In a large, heavy-bottomed pot with a lid, cook the onions, carrot, and celery over medium-low heat in the oil for 5-7 minutes, or until onions are translucent. Add the cumin, optional cayenne pepper, garlic, and season with salt and pepper. Cook another 1-2 minutes. Add the beans, bay leaves, chipotle sauce, and enough water to cover by 2 inches. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for 2 hours. Check on the pot every hour and if water level is becoming low, add more to cover by 1 inch. Taste, and add more salt and pepper as desired. The total cooking time should be around 3 hours at least, to create a creamy consistency. Remove bay leaves. Transfer to a blender or food processor if desired, to make the soup smooth. Stir in the lime juice and serve.
