(Continued from last post:) The good news

... is threefold:

1. COOKING (this may be obvious, but I'll say it anyway) for yourself and/or with friends means you get to pick how much you want to serve yourself based on things you know better than anyone else: how hungry you are at the time, how much would fill you up (and how much you'd want to be filled up with what you'd be eating, if you have food sensitivities, or particularities, or phobias), and whether you'd like seconds.

Thus, it's most possible to customize portion sizes when the server is the eater; when you know just how big your stomach is, and adjust accordingly. (It also helps to know how big your proverbial "eyes" are, and further adjust accordingly.)

2. DOSA, a restaurant in San Francisco's Mission serving South Indian cuisine that I visited Friday. Dosa has a tasting menu that for once didn't leave me feeling like I stuffed myself up to the esophagus.

But that just means the portion sizes were perfect for me, and that it was refreshing to find a good restaurant offering a tasting menu in my personal stomach size. If you have a place or a dish that fits your size, tell me! I'm curious, because a healthy number of restaurant reviews on Yelp or Zagat say something about portion sizes, many times disagreeing.

3. BREAD PUDDING. Is it just me, or is it becoming a staple on American restaurant menus? Many of the new restaurants I've been visiting, especially those serving "American" or "New American" food, include some form of bread pudding on their dessert lists. It's obviously a great use of leftover bread, and as noted before is one of those wonderful dishes that have been formed over long periods of time to make economical use of leftovers in a cultural-geographic pocket (fried rice, shepherd's pie, ribollita, for example). When Azania first told me, practically drooling, what bread pudding was, I said "eww. Soggy bread and runny stuff?" But that's when I thought bread = Pepperidge Farms or Wonder; I'm converted now!

A couple of my favorites in the past year are at District (I can't remember if it was brandy/spice or butterscotch bread pudding) and The Monk's Kettle (peanut butter and chocolate - obviously a winning combination, and sharing-size). Some friends have also picked up on the trend: John made Amaretto bread pudding and Jessica made Nutella bread pudding. Big props to Jessica for making it out of leftover fondue bread cubes at Artisanal. And of course, bread pudding works great with leftover savories. Personally, I'd love to try a sweetbreads bread pudding someday... but if you'd like to take it down a notch, there are plenty of savory bread pudding recipes online.

If only we could measure good recycling of unused food, like an epicurean version of RecycleBank. I guess until then it's a great reason to patronize restaurants that reuse their day-old bread, and you get a great dessert as a bonus, while encouraging a larger recycling trend. I still have to figure out what restaurants do with the untouched bread in bread baskets though...

Food prices are going up for a while. It wouldn't hurt to overserve ourselves a little less often.