- I'm Alison Roman, and this is everything I eat in a day.
So I admittedly am really bad
at pretty much any and all rituals.
But the first thing I do when I wake up is I drink coffee.
It's black, it's hot.
And it comes out of my Chemex at home.
I don't leave the house.
I don't eat first thing in the morning.
I feel like my body really wants to eat around 11,
which is a word I hate to use, which is brunch.
So it's like an 11 o'clock sort of like bean or grain
or something like that.
It really depends on the day,
but right now, because it's colder outside,
I feel like I am very into anything that is soft and warm
in the morning.
And that can be like a bowl of Kanji with a soft egg
and scallion on it.
Or today I had beans with cabbage
and some fried onions on top.
I feel like anything
that's sort of in like a whitish brown beige food category
that is warming, soft,
that I can put an egg on or not,
add leafy greens to or not,
is exactly how I want to start the day.
And it keeps me full for a pretty long time.
I am a hot beverage person, so I love coffee.
I love tea, but I always start with coffee.
Say, I like walk down the street, run some errands.
I do like a Blue Bottle or something like that.
And I'll do a cortado with oat milk.
In the summertime, I'm an iced coffee drinker.
And then any of after 1:00 PM,
I'm an iced tea drinker or a hot tea drinker.
So I sort of break up my day between like morning,
which is coffee and then afternoon, which is tea.
I am an absolute nightmare of a person when I'm hungry.
I feel like I, at 36, have started to realize this.
And before meeting with somebody,
say for the evening or for a lunch,
I know that in order for me to be my best self,
I will grab a green juice or eat an apple
or like a handful of chips or whatever I need to do
to make sure that I am not letting the lack of food
sort of ruin my mood.
Ruin my best self.
God, I love snacks.
Snacks, I simply cannot get enough of snacking.
It depends on the category of snack that we're talking.
I am a big fan of just having like different cheeses
in my refrigerator that like,
I will sometimes just grab and like break off little pieces
or make little slices for myself.
I love having like a jammy egg on hand,
which I will just sprinkle with salt and eat.
Love cucumbers.
I eat like apples.
I loved them so much.
They're so crunchy and full of water
and they taste delicious to me.
I also love cottage cheese.
With cucumbers or cottage cheese on its own
with like salt and pepper in a little bowl,
kind of feels like a treat.
If I'm talking like snack cracker food
or something like that, I am a box of Cheez-Its.
I had the famous virus before Christmas,
so I was home for 10 days
and I had just a big family size box of Cheez-Its
that I ate in those 10 days.
That was using restraint.
I've sampled like the white cheddar,
I've sampled the extra toasty,
which I feel like real cheese heads
really feel like is the best.
But to me, there's a classic for a reason,
and it's the regular Cheez-It.
There is not a typical lunch.
That bowl of like beans or lentils or rice or whatever,
kind of keeps me full for an extended period of time.
But say, I skip that and I do have like a lunch moment,
it really depends.
I know this is infuriating I'm sure.
Especially for the editor (chuckling).
But I have a tendency to order lunch out a lot.
In the event that I am making lunch at home,
it is definitely something like a tuna salad
or an egg salad.
Tuna salad which I make with like any sort of canned tuna,
lots of red onion soaked in lemon juice and salt,
just to kind of quick pickle it.
So much celery, like an insane amount of celery,
chopped capers, maybe some lemon zest
or finely chopped lemon.
And then just a little bit of mayonnaise
just to kind of bind it together.
I like the tuna salad to be more solid than tuna salad,
if that makes sense.
So there's a lot of romaine or iceberg lettuce.
I want it to just be like very, very savory,
very, very crunchy.
And if I have rye bread on the side,
I'll toast it and butter it and eat it with it.
But most of the time I just eat the tuna salad
in like little pieces of lettuce, like lettuce cups,
like it's 1998.
I look forward to dinner because it's a meal
that if I treat myself poorly all day, which I tend to do,
like, I'll forget to eat. I won't eat.
I won't prioritize it.
I'll eat poorly.
I don't like take the time any other time of the day,
other than dinner.
So whether I'm making my own dinner
or I'm going out to dinner,
that is something that I sort of base my whole day around.
So where am I going? Who am I with?
What time am I eating?
Like I wake up and I think like,
what am I having for dinner?
Where am I having dinner?
I love roasting a chicken.
I love like making a big dish of baked pastas
or like a personal skillet of pasta, like pasta for one.
I attempted like a shabu shabu night at my house,
but I don't have a hot plate.
So I was just running back and forth
from the stove to my dinner table with hot broth.
And I can't recommend it, but it was fun to try.
Right now, I am drinking martinis.
That is my cocktail of choice.
I feel like, again, in my older age,
I just can't drink wine the way that I used to.
It makes me not be able to sleep at night.
Like, I don't know if it's like the sugar in the wine
or what the deal is,
but for some reason martinis, no problem.
I can have a million and I feel fine most of the time.
I'm a cocktail person before dinner and after dinner,
but never with dinner and almost never at home.
At home for dinner, it's definitely wine.
I have these little cups
that I like to drink my wine out of.
I don't know why I like to drink wine out of a tiny cup
at home. They're cute, I don't know.
Maybe it makes me feel like I'm not drinking as much wine.
I actively avoid red bell peppers or any bell pepper.
It's not for me.
I've never cooked anything and been like,
you know what this needs?
Bell pepper.
Right now, I mean, it's been a while since I've been there.
It's been a while since I've traveled in general,
but I will say that London
has some of my favorite restaurants in the world
that I've been to.
I just find them such a delight to eat in.
I love the food culture there.
I love how diverse it is.
You can spend an entire weekend eating around,
have something from everywhere.
And the vibe is right.
There's something about it that's like cozy
and charming and a little old.
I find them to really nail like the restaurant experience.
Late night snacking, again, I'm a million years old.
So now when I eat late,
I feel like it makes me have horrible sleep or weird dreams.
I'm like end the night with ice cream kind of person.
Although yesterday I had before dinner,
I just decided to finish off the ice cream.
My freezer wasn't shutting properly.
So I just was like,
"Oh, this ice cream is taking up too much space."
So I ate it.
My go-to dessert is ice cream.
It always has been, will be forever.
It is mint chip ice cream.
It's not just any ice cream.
If I go to the store
and they don't have mint chip ice cream,
I'm not getting ice cream.
It's not like I need ice cream.
I need mint chip ice cream.
And I do it all.
I do the Baskin-Robbins.
I do the Van Leeuwen.
I do the Haagen-Dazs.
I do the Talenti.
I'm an equal opportunist.
I find them all fantastic.
But if it's not mint chip, I don't need it.
It's not coming home with me.
And that is everything I eat in a day.
You can find more recipes and ideas for all those snacks
on my YouTube channel,
which is youtube.com/AlisonRoman
or on my website, AlisonERoman.com.