Frequently Asked Questions
lemon cupcakes with homegrown lavender icing and sugared homegrown edible flowers
General questions about the service and how it works Q: Where are you located, and what is your contact info? A: Our kitchen is in Rosendale, New York (1 hour and 45 minutes from NYC). We get most of our great produce from organic and better-than-organic farms in the New Paltz, NY area. I don’t get mail at my kitchen and don’t want to give out my home address and am too cheap to rent a PO Box, so the best way to contact me is through email: chef@lagustasluscious.com. You can always try the phone too: 845-255-8VEG. * Q: I’m looking to get dinners every night for a week/lunches for three days a week/all my meals for a week for me and my husband and two kids/just myself/my partner and myself. What meal plan should I get? A: It really just depends on how much you eat. Everyone eats really differently, which is why I don’t have a meal plan with lunch on Tuesday, dinner on Tuesday, lunch on Wednesday, etc. The best idea, in my opinion, is to start with one of the smaller plans (B or C) and move to a bigger plan or add on extras as needed when you see how many meals the plan makes for you. As a general rule, for one adult I would get Plan B or C. For two adults, plan on Plan A. I must confess, however, that only about half of my clients fit into that profile – lots of single people get Plan A and vice versa. Something else to consider is if you’re planning on eating the meals by themselves or if you plan to use them as meal “bases” and add other ingredients to them. For example, a simple side dish of garlicky kale could become a nice meal with some cooked pasta and beans of your own added. Though the entrées come with sides that are matched to them (for example, if there is no protein in an entrée, the side dish with it will have a lot of protein), you can also make more meals by cooking up other sides to go with the entrees and using the sides as full meals. Obviously if you plan to go this route you will need less food. After you get a week or two of meals you will be able to gauge your needs a bit more, and you can always switch from plan to plan depending on your travel schedule, appetite, etc. * Q: I’m in LA half of the month (or wherever), can you FedEx me my meals? A: Oh God no. We tried this once for a bicoastal movie producer and it was a giant fiasco. I also felt incredibly guilty about all the extra carbon emissions. Sorry! * Q: Speaking of pollution, don’t you feel guilty about driving your meals almost 2 hours away once a week? A: Yep. But Megan, the awesome NYC delivery person, has a biodiesel car, so that makes me feel a little better. * Q: How would you describe your cooking style? A: Extremely multi-cultural – basically I cook the food of poor people from around the world. Seriously – poor people have historically eaten the best, most nutritious meals, often with little to no meat. Think of your favorite dish - I bet it is (or started out as) peasant food. Poor people know how to work magic with what is there. My food is made with insanely high quality ingredients, and at times I do go off into nouveau directions, but at its heart my food is soul food in the widest sense of the word. * Q: Are you looking for employees? A: Probably not, but if you are easy to get along with, fairly sane, and good with a knife feel free to email me. * Q: Can I intern with you? A: If you are easy to get along with and fairly sane, how can I turn down free labor? Email to discuss. * Q: My town isn’t listed on your delivery area, can you still deliver to me? A: Yes, at the rate of $50 per hour. The rates can be reduced if we get more than three deliveries in your town. * Q: What is your name? How do you pronounce it? What does it mean? Does it have to do with cooking? A: My name is Lagusta. It’s pronounced just like it sounds, with a “gus” in the middle, not a “goo.” It’s a made up hippie name that means nothing but is supposedly a combination of Leonard and Augusta, two family names. These days people sometimes think that the “gus” part of my name refers to “gusto” (though it's not pronounced that way) and means that Lagusta is some Italian/Spanish-ish nom de cuisine. Chronogram magazine thought that, at any rate. You’re free to think the same, but it’s not the case.
fresh udon noodles Financial questions (Meal plan prices and discounts are available here.) Q: If I refer a client to you, can I get a discount? A: Sure. Be sure to tell me about it, and I will give you 10% off one week of meals. A lot of my clients are pals. * Q: Do you have a lot of famous clients? Because I’m famous/I work for famous people, and I want to see if you’ll be weird about it. A: I have had a whole bunch of famous clients, but it’s dorky to talk about it, isn’t it? Some of my current and former clients include a writer/thinker who can be seen sometimes on “The Daily Show” (not Jon Stewart, alas! Swoon!), a supermodel, a financial tycoon, the wife of a super famous artist, indie-rock musicians, a movie screenwriter, a whole bunch of fancypants writers and editors, a Planned Parenthood administrator (a superstar in my eyes, for sure), and more. * Q: Yikes, I am not famous, and in fact I am not especially wealthy. Can I afford your service? A: The thing about the service is that if you add up what it costs to eat out all the time at halfway decent restaurants, it’s actually cheaper or just as expensive to do my service. Not to mention that the food in most restaurants is hardly ever organic or local and often filled with scary ingredients. And don’t get me started on the cleanliness – suffice it to say that I got so fed up with the filth of working in NYC restaurants that I once called the health department on a restaurant I worked in. The luxury of having my own rat-free kitchen is a special kind of luxury, indeed.
Questions about the meals: nutrition, substitutions, and how I cook fresh oyster mushrooms from Wiltbank Farm in Saugerties, NY, so gorgeous and ruffly! Q: I do Weight Watchers. Can I get your service, and do you provide point values? A: I don’t provide points, but the menu sheet you get with the meals lists all the ingredients in rough order. * Q: Do you have nutritional info on your meals? A: I used to always feel guilty that I didn’t provide this info, and always meant to get around to inserting all my recipes into one of those magical programs that provide it for you. However, in truth I don’t think it’s a good long-term way to eat. I know it works for some people, but I have some disease where I can’t do anything if my heart isn’t into it, and my heart isn’t into providing nutritional info because I truly believe that for long-term health it’s more useful to pay attention to your body and when it is telling you it is full. I know this is not possible for some people and I regret that I can’t help them out. * Q: OK, so are your meals high in fat? A: No. According to almost any measure, my meals are not high-fat. On the other hand, my meals are not super lowfat either. Cooking for people for years has taught me that one person’s high fat is someone else’s low fat – which is probably as it should be, since every body is different. I use olive oil, grapeseed oil, and coconut oil, with smaller amounts of nut oils like fresh walnut oil, roasted pumpkin seed oil, sesame seed oil, hemp seed oil, and flax seed oil. I believe deeply in the Mediterranean Diet principle that moderate amounts of healthy oils like olive oil are essential for true health. Also, it seems to be that people who eat extremely reduced-fat diets aren’t all that happy. Just my opinion! * Q: I’m trying not to eat wheat. Can I do your service? A: It depends how hard you are trying. I can’t do a 100% wheat-free meal plan, but sometimes it is possible to substitute spelt or other grains for wheat (although sometimes those same meals will have a wee bit of shoyu – high quality soy sauce with wheat – or other wheat). If you are about to say that spelt is wheat, then it sounds like you are more serious about avoiding wheat than I can help you with. * Q: I hate eggplant - can I do your service? What about if I hate okra? What about if I hate onions? Yes (but probably not in September), yes, and no. If you truly loathe a vegetable that I use lots of - say, onions, mushrooms, or garlic - the service will not work for you. If you can’t stand a vegetable that I hardly ever use, like okra, you can get double of another dish on the rare occasion when that vegetable is on the menu. If you can’t stand a vegetable that is very seasonal – like eggplant, which I never ever use in any month but August and September – you might want to either plan to get double of another dish to substitute for that veggie while it is in season, or maybe just take a break from the service so you don’t have to read about me waxing poetic about your loathed vegetable during that time. * Q: I hate beets/spinach/bitter greens, but that’s because I’ve never had them prepared correctly. Can I do your service? A: Excellent question! Might I suggest that sometimes we dislike foods because they are consistently prepared badly? Not to get too Jewish grandmothery on you, but why don’t you give my Beet Salad with Georgian Walnut Sauce a try before you swear off beets forever? * Q: I have that weird gene where cilantro tastes like soap to me. Can I do your service? A: I try to be accommodating of you poor souls, but it just isn’t always possible. I’d say it’s 85% possible, so if you can stand the soapy flavor 15% of the time (15% of the relatively rare times I use cilantro, that is, not 15% of every week’s meals), you should be OK. * Q: Could you tell me your honest opinion on substitutions? A: Thanks for asking. The honest truth is that substitutions always make your meal crappier. (Not that it’s going to be crappy, just crappier). I put a lot of care into menu planning, and if a dish is made with chickpeas, potatoes, fennel, and artichokes that’s because it’s Provençal dish and those ingredients are appropriate. If you ask for it with black beans or quinoa or squash instead of the above ingredients, the dish will be a little less whole. I’m happy to make substitutions when I can, but sometimes it’s just not the best thing for the dish. * Q: I’m a vegetarian, but my family is not, will they still like your food? A: Maybe! Most of my clients aren’t vegetarian. But who knows why people do and don’t like certain dishes? It’s a really personal thing, and often is about more than just whether or not a dish has meat in it. * Q: Will my young (or old) kids like your food? A: Maybe! I have had four-year-old clients who loved the food, and four-year-olds who hated it. Kids are weird like that, as I’m sure you know if you’re a parent. * Q: How much of your meals are made from scratch? A: Absolutely everything. OK, I don’t make my own ketchup, but I only use ketchup a few times a year. I also don’t make my own peanut butter. Other than that, I don’t ever use cans except for canned organic tomatoes when I run out of my own frozen heirloom tomatoes (usually around June, no matter how many I freeze) and organic canned artichoke hearts (because I actually like the flavor better). I make my own miso (it’s a three-year-long process!), shoyu (high-quality fermented soy sauce), and tempeh. I no longer make my own tofu or seitan because other companies (small regional organic ones, not giant multi-nationals) do it better than I can. I do all my own pickling (lactofermented pickles, that is, not cop-out vinegar pickles), including all sauerkraut, kimchi, preserved lemons, etc. When fresh local organic produce isn’t available, I rely on vast stocks of frozen (by me) veggies and (sigh) California organic produce as well as local organic storage crops. Whenever you see anything on a menu that says “smoked,” “roasted,” etc, it is always done in-house.
Working on our new line of chocolates (to be launched Fall 2008!) Useless questions Q: How long have you been doing this funny little business? A: Since 2002. I was pretty crappy at it until around 2004 though. I still have clients from those dark days, and I feel embarrassed thinking about all the mistakes I made! * Q: Why don’t you have lots of fancy press clippings on your press page? A: Laziness, lack of a press agent, and lack of an inclination to send out press releases and samples to the press. Also, no one understands how awesome my food is, and knows that they should be writing articles about it. * Q: Why do I have to meet your delivery person downstairs for my Manhattan delivery? Can they bring the meals up to my office on the 34th floor in Times Square and wait to have my secretary call me to bring out last week’s cooler bag and then wait fifteen minutes while I rinse out the old containers? A: Here’s the thing. The service is here to make your life easier and less stressful, and I totally, 100% know that sometimes you are in meetings or are crazy busy when your delivery arrives. But have you ever driven in NYC? Before I did deliveries myself (those dark days are happily over, though the nightmares live on), I thought that delivery people had some special magical parking sticker thing that meant that cops wouldn’t give them tickets while they went inside to make deliveries. Getting three (three) tickets in one day because of dashing in to make deliveries put an end to that fantasy. Shortly thereafter I was reading an article about Fresh Direct, that company that brings your groceries to your door. The CEO said in the interview that they resigned themselves to getting parking tickets, and pay about $600,000 in parking tickets a year. Sigh. We must regretfully ask that you meet the delivery people downstairs, as we don’t have a six figure (or three-figure, or two-figure - not that there are any two-figure parking tickets) parking ticket budget. * Q: Why do you always write “we” when everyone knows it’s just you, Lagusta? A: A friend and successful business owner suggested I do that years ago when I started the business, and I’ve never gotten out of the habit. These days I have two delivery people and a sous chef, but it is true that I do all the communications for the business, so the whole “we” thing is a little silly. * Q: What a great business idea! Let’s talk about how I can pump money into it in order to start a giant chain – you’ll be the new Martha Stewart! The new Rachael Ray! A: Thanks so much, but no way. I’m an anarchist (a sweet, gentle kind of anarchist that believes in people power, not the black-handkerchief-wearing kind), and believe in teeny tiny small businesses. I do have a secret love for Martha, but that Rachael Ray makes me nervous. * Q: Hey, I’ll be in Rosendale next week, maybe I’ll stop in to say hey! A: Although it would be great to see you, we cook for 12-15 hours a day and our kitchen isn’t open to the public, so regretfully I must decline your visit. Which is sad, because the kitchen is so cute and lovely. * Q: Have you ever seen that movie Kiki’s Delivery Service? A: Yes!! I loved it! * Q: Why don’t you open up a restaurant? A: Because I’m happy, and in my experience very few restaurant owners are truly happy. And because I couldn't be sitting in my friendly neighborhood coffeeshop on a Wednesday afternoon writing all this drivel if I had a restaurant. I'd probably be bussing tables because the afternoon shift waitress's car broke down or something.
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