On a hot summer day four years ago, Cathy Erway was sitting in a crowded Brooklyn beer garden, eating a burned burger off a greasy paper plate, when she thought: “Why am I here?”
For years she had gone out and spent too much on food that didn’t satisfy and even made her feel queasy. It was at that moment that she decided she would do something radical for most New Yorkers — eat at home every day for as long as she could manage it. She would swear off restaurants, takeout joints and food carts in NYC and refuse to eat any foods that were premade.
Being a decent self-taught cook, Erway, 28, kick-started her experiment with a meal for two friends at her three-bedroom apartment in Park Slope. For just $18.13, she produced squash rolls, Swiss chard and roasted chicken — and had leftovers, to boot.
“That was encouraging. It seemed like I could take it to the next level and do that every night,” says Erway, dressed in jeans and a blue plaid shirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, except for an errant wisp dangling across an eye. “It was the kind of food you could eat every day — simple, healthy and cheap.”
At the time Erway was earning just $27,500 a year as an editorial assistant at a publishing house — and spending $725 a month for her share of the rent plus $400 a month on eating out. Just doing the math gave her confidence to carry on.
She started baking bread in her “closet-sized” kitchen — a great eating-in staple because it’s so versatile. “Not only is it exciting to have a homemade loaf fresh out of the oven, but when it gets stale you can make breadcrumbs out of it or toss it into soups,” Erway says. It’s also super-cheap. One loaf costs about $1 to make and lasts a whole week.
Plus, Erway discovered she was a talented baker. She entered her no-knead peppercorn, potato and parmesan bread in a contest at Williamsburg’s Brooklyn Kitchen, where she won high honors — and even got name-checked by Vogue.
Every weekday, Erway would cook one big meal, which provided dinner and the following day’s lunch. Breakfast was usually oatmeal, eggs or toast from her homemade bread. On weekends, she took on bigger cooking projects like making stock, which added flavor to meals like soup, stews and risotto throughout the week. If she couldn’t be bothered to make an effort, she’d whip up scrambled eggs with brown rice and frozen peas, topped with hot and soy sauces.
She bought most of her groceries at the green market and occasionally the corner market, and — incredibly — spent just $25 a week.
“It doesn’t take a lot of time and planning,” Erway says of her less-is-more philosophy.
“Just go to the market and pick up whatever looks good. Once you have a few techniques down — like making soups and roasting vegetables — you can apply them to ingredients you never cooked before.”
Amazingly, Erway kept it up for a year — in spite of friends who urged her to go out. If they were meeting at a restaurant for an important occasion, she either declined to go, brought her own food or just went along and didn’t eat. At the same time, Erway chronicled her home-cooking adventures on the blog Not Eating Out in NY.
Her friends remained supportive despite this weird arrangement. “They teased me from time to time, but they were cool,” says Erway, noting they were avid fans of her dinner parties and supper clubs.
But her boyfriend, Ben, with whom she lived, was beginning to grow weary of her experiment.
“He wouldn’t complain outwardly, but whenever he had a chance to go to a restaurant with friends he would go,” she says.
Erway wanted to keep her challenge going even though it was putting a strain on her relationship. She and Ben broke up and — with the money she saved eating in for a year — she was able to afford a one-bedroom apartment on her own in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Eating in, ironically, bought her some freedom.
“Cooking for yourself is about being more self-sufficient and more independent as a person rather than someone who has something handed to them — or pays someone to hand it to them,” she says.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that her restaurant-free lifestyle led her to shed about 10 pounds. “I felt more energetic and healthy,” she notes.
Far from turning her into a social pariah, she says home cooking filled her calendar with a seemingly endless stream of dinner parties, potlucks, supper clubs and home-cooking competitions. “There’s a really cool bond that develops there. It’s like a game you’re playing, cooking together. I made a lot of friendships through supper clubs and cook-offs. It’s a lot more social than at a restaurant.”
At her new place, there is no microwave, no dishwasher, no fancy KitchenAid mixer, but she finally has complete ownership of the fridge and freezer, where she can store her concoctions. Luckily for her, she finds washing dishes “meditative” and doesn’t mind the lack of fancy equipment.
“When you’re cooking for yourself, you don’t need a lot of stuff,” says Erway.
“You just need a good knife, creativity and a willingness to eat whatever you might mess up.”
But then, one morning in September 2008, Erway got a call from her uncle and her mom, back in Maplewood, NJ, asking her out for lunch.
“You wanna come?” her mom asked. “Maybe you can take a break.”
Erway’s mind whirled. She had, in fact, had a few slip-ups in the previous two years — a slice of pizza consumed while drunk, a couple of business lunches. And now that her mother wanted her to join her for lunch, it didn’t seem fair to say no.
They went to a nondescript restaurant in Koreatown where Erway guiltily nibbled on kimchi, salty preserved white fish, seafood pancakes and spicy tofu casserole.
The food was delicious, cheap and — most importantly — different from anything she had thought to make herself. Erway suddenly started pondering a completely different question: “Why aren’t I eating out?”
Eating in was suddenly “frustrating and less pleasurable,” says Erway, who felt that her lifestyle was cutting her off from important sources of culinary inspiration.
Her lunch with her mother prompted a weeklong marathon of eating out, with stops at Walter Foods and Stone Park Cafe in Brooklyn, Momofuku Noodle Bar in Manhattan and Spicy & Tasty in Queens. The binge cost her $116.51 — far more than her usual $25-a-week food budget. (Remarkably, though, she didn’t pack on any pounds.)
These days, Erway may no longer be an extreme home cook, but she still maintains her Not Eating Out in NY blog and estimates that she currently cooks at home four or five days a week (though she still avoids takeout — if she’s home, she cooks). She estimates her entire experiment saved her $7,200.
It’s also given her a new outlook on life in the city: “I feel like folks consider cooking the oddity — at least in New York. They make it into a big production, but you don’t have to — you can make it an everyday thing that flows with your routine. That’s what cooking should be. You can save the big production for going out to eat.”
Erway’s new memoir about her experiment, “The Art of Eating In: How I Learned To Stop Spending and Love the Stove,” is out tomorrow. That same day, Erway is hosting a book party featuring live music, a crostini cook-off and appetizers from supper clubs Hapa Kitchen and A Razor, A Shiny Knife; 7 to 11 p.m., Bell House, 149 Seventh St., Gowanus, Brooklyn; 718-643-6510; $10 admission.
ERWAY’S FAIL-SAFE RECIPE
Braised lentil stew with roasted vegetables
· 1 cup lentils
· 3 to 4 cups vegetable stock (preferably homemade)
· About 2 pounds assorted root vegetables — carrots, turnips, rutabaga, celery root, chopped to about 1- to 2-inch pieces
· 1 tablespoon tomato paste (or substitute 1 ripe tomato, chopped)
· 1 small onion, chopped
· 1 garlic clove, minced
· Pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
· Chopped fresh parsley for garnish (optional)
· 1 tablespoon butter (optional)
· Olive oil
· Salt and pepper, to taste
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spread chopped root vegetables on a baking tray and coat with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for about 10 minutes; check and flip around on the pan with tongs. Roast another 10 minutes, or until just crispy on edges. Meanwhile, cook the onions in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan or pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until translucent (about 6 to 8 minutes). Add the lentils and cook an additional 1 to 2 minutes, stirring. Add the tomato paste, garlic and a ladleful of stock, and stir over medium or medium-low heat until absorbed. Continue adding stock (like when making risotto) and stirring until absorbed and until the lentils are tender and the consistency of the dish is that of a thick soup. Season with salt, pepper and optional cayenne pepper, to taste. Melt in the optional butter. Serve in individual dishes topped with the roasted vegetables and the optional parsley to garnish. Makes about four servings. Cost per serving: $1.25