How many people does your fridge need to feed?
Amaya: Three, but Jose sometimes counts for two.
What do you usually eat for breakfast?
Amaya: On the weekends we have coffee and Digestive biscuits and Manolo has some kind of fruit and cereal. During the week it’s different.
Jose: During the week I have cereal and almond milk.
Amaya: And I have cereal, or a couple of biscuits, or a banana—whatever I can get my hands on. And Manolo has some mixture of yogurt, fruit, and cereal.
Is there anything you eat every day?
Amaya: Beer. When Jose comes home from work at night we have at least one glass of beer.
Every week?
Amaya: We eat a lot of fish. I’d say we eat 80% fish and 20% meat. We do most of our cooking on the weekends and during the week we sometimes order in a couple of times, since the baby. It also changes by season: in the winter I did a lot of lentils and chickpea stews, but we’re probably moving into chilled soups and lighter meals.
What item are you forbidden from purchasing right now?
Amaya: I’m trying to stay away from ice cream.
Jose: Butter. And things like bacon that are high in cholesterol. And we don’t buy frozen dinners and things like that.
Amaya: Yea, we avoid stuff that’s over-processed.
What’s the most delicious thing in here?
Amaya: In the future it will be this sea bass that Jose’s going to cook.
Jose: I’ll cook it in a traditional clay pot with parsley, garlic, white wine, and clams.
Amaya: There’s also this frozen vodka sauce and asparagus ravioli we got in the neighborhood.
The most disgusting?
Amaya: These nasty pickles Jose likes that I want to throw away.
Jose: The ripe bananas. I don’t eat soft bananas. I like them when they’re green.
The oldest?
Amaya: The tamarind concentrate. We bought this years ago at an Indian supermarket in Jackson Heights. We couldn’t understand anything in the store, we had to have a guy who worked there translate everything and tell us what to buy for the dishes we wanted to make.
Anything you regret buying?
Jose: This Ballast Point IPA. I don’t like it. It has almost no alcohol, it’s very bitter…it’s almost like, what’s the point?
Amaya: The stuffed peppers we bought the other day at the Italian deli.
Jose: Yea, they’re too vinegary. They look so much better than they taste.
What's your guilty pleasure?
Amaya: Ice cream, pasta, and ginger ale.
Jose: Chips.
Where do you do most of your food shopping?
Amaya: In the neighborhood. We go to the Key Food supermarket and to lots of the specialized stores, like the fish guy, the vegetable lady. We can go to The Meat Hook if we need to buy good meat. We like the neighborhood because of that.
How much do you spend on groceries each week?
Jose: $300.
How often do you go grocery shopping?
Jose: Every Saturday.
Amaya: And then a few trips during the week if I’m going to make something special. Actually, I go almost every day, just because it’s something to do with the baby.
What percentage of your meals do you prepare at home?
Amaya: 75-80%.
Jose: We like to go out to breakfast on the weekend.
Is there anything in here that we would have found in your childhood fridge?
Amaya: We have very basic things: eggs, lemons, milk, etc. All those things would have been in my childhood fridge.
Jose: Me too.
Amaya: We’re missing Presidente beer. There was always Presidente in my fridge.
What do you wish you had in here?
Amaya: Presidente.
Jose: More kinds of fish so I could make a paella or something.
Amaya, 38, is a baby slave. She is holding one of two leftover olives she saved in the fridge. Jose, 49, is a psychiatrist. He is holding the other leftover olive and their 11-month-old, Manolo. They live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.