- 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.
