How many people does your fridge need to feed?
Sasha: Two people and the cat, Pnin, when she has leftovers.
What do you usually eat for breakfast?
Sasha: I don’t eat breakfast. I’m just not a breakfast person. I have coffee and I eat almonds if I’m going to work, for the protein.
Jonny: I am very partial to donuts, which is a really bad habit I’m getting into, but they’re not something we keep in the house. Breakfast is generally very up in the air. It’s usually coffee. More recently we’ve been doing a little bit of yogurt with honey and some raspberries or blueberries. Very recently. It’s too recent to be a habit.
Sasha: It’s something we’d like to do: be people who eat yogurt and fruit for breakfast. But usually we eat a donut or leftover Mexican food. Our schedules are so weird: he works late, I work evenings, so our main meal together is lunch.
Is there anything you eat every day?
Sasha: Almonds. Not because I like them, they’re just so convenient. And caffeine.
Jonny: The thing I eat most consistently is bread. I’m probably Atkins’ worse nightmare, wherever Atkins is right now.
Sasha: He’s dead.
Jonny: Well there you go.
Every week?
Sasha: We’re actually pretty diverse with the meals that we make. We have some things in rotation, but I don’t think we make them every week. Lately we’ve been making pork ribs with sauerkraut, and we’ll probably eat a pasta thing once a week, with either a tomato sauce or clam sauce.
Jonny: We both like to try a lot of different things, so we’re always attempting to recreate things we’ve eaten out, or recipes that we read in magazines or online. We have our own respective blogs that we like to look at for ideas.
Sasha: We both like to research food. I probably spend at least three hours a week just reading about food, and then I get ideas about what I want to make the following week. But I don’t really follow recipes.
Jonny: My thing is long, involved projects, like I love smoking meat. Sasha bought me a smoker three years ago but unfortunately we don’t have the space to use it. I really, really love that thing. For a long time I was also really invested in the idea of making the best fried chicken in the world, ever. I nearly poisoned Sasha in one of my attempts.
What item are you forbidden from purchasing right now?
Jonny: Recently we are not buying any factory-farmed eggs.
Sasha: I only want to buy eggs from Amish farmers in Pennsylvania for the rest of my life. We do a local CSA through FreshDirect, and we get eggs and produce from the Lancaster Farm Fresh Collective. I’m going to do that as long as possible.
Jonny: It’s tough, because we don’t necessarily have the budget to eat as environmentally-consciously as possible, but there are some things for which you can make concessions. Trying whenever possible to buy locally is always good.
Sasha: We’re also trying more to buy meat without antibiotics. And I was trying to get Jonny not to eat so much bread.
Jonny: That didn’t work.
What’s the most delicious thing in here?
Jonny: Snickers ice cream bars. I’m on a kick.
Sasha: We’re at the start of the week so it’s mostly ingredients in here right now. The most delicious thing is the borscht in the freezer. I love borscht and I love soup. I’ve been making this recipe for years. Jonny only eats it for a day and I eat it every day for a week. This year I decided to go all out and make the most epic borscht ever. I found a recipe from a Russian woman in Wisconsin who butchers her own cows and stuff. I’ve at least had two gallons so far and there are at least three gallons left. I didn’t realize that the recipe was for six-months worth. I used the lobster pot to make it. I made my own broth, I roasted all the beets, I hand grated all the vegetables. It took all day. It was insane.
Jonny: She practically had to take off work the next day to recover.
The most disgusting?
Jonny: There’s Crisco in there. That’s pretty gross.
Sasha: Yea, it’s just gross by nature. We’ll just keep it in case we get our hands stuck in a jar. I think the grossest is those Mt. Olive kosher pickles. They’re just so disappointing. I eat pickles like crazy—if there’s a jar of pickles in here longer than a week than they’re bad. And these are just nasty. They’re a weird cartoon green color.
The oldest?
Jonny: We’ve had these anchovies for four years. They never go bad, right?
Sasha: We’ve bought more anchovies that we do use. We look at those ones and acknowledge that we’re not going to eat them, but then they’re not growing mold so we’re not going to throw them out.
Jonny: You can’t see botulism anyway.
What's your guilty pleasure?
Sasha: I don’t have guilty pleasures but I have some shameful pleasures, like SpaghettiOs. I really love SpaghettiOs. This isn’t something I share, even with my close family members. It’s not even nostalgic, I didn’t eat it when I was a kid. I love it when I eat it but when I check out—this is delusional, cause they’re not thinking anything, they don’t care—I always feel self-conscious because I’m an adult buying SpaghettiOs. There’s something perverted about them.
Jonny: I don’t feel guilty, but there are indulgences, let’s say. I definitely eat too much ice cream, it’s my Achilles heel. Well, on top of my other Achilles heels of pizza, and donuts, and bread—I have like four feet. I don’t eat it all at once but I eat a lot over time. I’m an endurance ice cream eater.
Where do you do most of your food shopping?
Sasha: For the last year or so, FreshDirect, and the CSA that comes through FreshDirect.
Jonny: And the farmer’s market in the summer. We use FreshDirect because the produce we get in the neighborhood is not great, and we have had incidents of bringing stuff home from a neighborhood supermarket and finding out that it’s expired. And there are limitations in terms of the selection they have.
Sasha: And to what I can carry up four flights of stairs. We also go to Hong Kong Supermarket about twice a year and stock up.
How much do you spend on groceries each week?
Sasha: Maybe $120.
How often do you go grocery shopping?
Jonny: We physically go grocery shopping once a week and we order from FreshDirect once a week, too.
Is there anything in here that we would have found in your childhood fridge?
Jonny: Salami.
Sasha: It’s more about what I have that wouldn’t have been in my childhood fridge. This fridge is way more indulgent. We have interesting vegetables like celeriac and turnips. And I don’t think I had 50 condiments growing up. My childhood fridge had milk. I like to drink milk with dinner because that’s what I did growing up but Jonny thinks that’s bizarre.
What do you wish you had in here?
Sasha: Artichokes. I love them but they’re just expensive enough to not eat all the time.
Jonny: Rotisserie chicken. That’s always nice to have around.
Sasha is a writer and a writing consultant and instructor at the Fashion Institute of Technology and she’d holding a jar of cornichons and a pumpkin. Jonny tends bar at Sisters and he’s holding a pork chop. They live in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.