The Girl Who Ate Everything

Elyse Sewell likes food. She mainly talks about modeling but a large chunk of her writings is dedicated to pictures of food from around the world. Of course, that's what I'm mainly interested in. ;) Her latest post is comprised of pictures of McDonalds from around the world, helped by submissions from her readers. Is it just me or is the McDonald's in America the least appealing one? I guess it makes sense; since McDonald's started here, the base of its menu is American food and it only has to change menu items in other countries to appeal to those countries' local tastes. I guess it would be like a foreign chain Americanizing their menu over here, except I can't think of any examples right now. And maybe I don't want american food.

Another example of interesting food in an overseas American chain is Dunkin' Donuts in Korea (also by Elyse, which I didn't notice when I first read the post a few days ago). Rye fig sounds interesting and I do love glutinous rice. I'm assuming that Dunkin' Donuts in America basically has...donuts. One recently opened in my town, which is interesting because my town doesn't have much (population is around 10,000). Then again, it doesn't really need to since it's so small and surrounding towns have lots of food stuffs (Ridgewood does, at least). The new Dunkin' Donuts (which also has a Baskin Robbins) opened up from across the middle school I used to go to. I'm figuring that the shop will do really well once school starts again and kids hobble over there at the end of the day. It wouldn't be surprising if the kids started drinking coffee as well, haha...ha..hm.

Here's one of the best picturing_food posts ever: Tokyo, Japan [7-13 July, 2005]. Look at ALL THE PHOTOS and then wish that YOU WERE IN JAPAN.

Even though NYC has lots of great food (which I try to document to the best of my ability), it's nothing like Asia. Yesterday I did a bit of fooding in NYC with TAS friends, Jesse and Carol, and since Jesse and I had never been to Macy's, we decided to check it out. The lower food level is nice, with a tempting bakery display and chocolate section, but it's not like what I've seen in Taiwan, Japan, or even England. We obviously like to eat in America so why the lack of focus on beautiful and good food? Or am I just not looking in the right place? I'm not talking about places that only have food, like Dean & Deluca, but department stores or malls.

I have many good memories of eating in the lower food court level at Far Eastern Plaza Mall (probably the only affordable thing there, haha). There were loads of different food vendors to choose from, all brought together in a subdued, wood-accented, stylish environment. Like any food court though, I'm sure it was noisy. And would you believe it, but I hardly ever got anything from the bakery (yeah, I cringe at the thought of my non-bakery-eating self during those short years I spent in Taiwan). I also remember a phenomenal food level in the basement of the newer (probably 7-8 years old by now) Mitsukoshi, like a football field of display cases harboring desserts and...well, that's all I remember. I'm sure it wasn't actually the size of a football field.

On a semi-related note, I went to Koryodang bakery in K-town yesterday (I can't believe that I NEVER noticed the two bakeries on that block before...I mean, that's sacreligious in the world of Robyn) and it had a impressive sleek, minimalistic interior. Although I'd prefer something cozy and colorful like Sugar Sweet Sunshine, it's a nice place to sit down (in cushy black chairs) for some drinks and baked goods without spending too much money.

Lastly, a "WTF" moment: chocolate flavored cheese? Huh? I repeat, huh? And this is popular in Taiwan? (You know, the land of cheese and chocolate...or not.) Now, I can kind of understand mixing cheese and chocolate, say, in chocolate cheesecake, but a chocolate flavored cheese single sounds like the product of a drunken brainstorm over at Chesedale headquarters. Actually, it's not the product itself that makes me go "muh?" but that it's actually POPULAR.

For the past few days I've had the tendency to burp, or feel like burping more than I usually would (as in, not very often). I don't know why this is happening...did I eat too much? Too quickly? Huh? For the past two days I've eaten one meal...er, okay, kinda like two meals, but I skipped lunch since I realized I didn't need it. I feel fine without lunch and after the uncomfortable burping (during which I hold my breath, thinking something's going to come up, and then nothing happens besides me getting less oxygen) I feel like I'd rather do without dinner also. Drinking water makes it worse, but I can't NOT drink water. Dammit, I'm thirsty.

But before I talk about how I stuffed my face with stuff, some interesting food things happening elsewhere...

Begin the Chinatown Ice Cream Wars! I thought it was safe to assume that Nolita Ice Cream Factory was affiliated with the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory because of the SAME DRAGON MASCOT, but apprently it's not. Or rather, it's not very apparent. If they're indeed not related to each other at all, then wouldn't it be easy to get the other ice cream places to stop using the logo? If it were, say, a phoenix instead, then it would look like a sucky imitation. Using the same mascot is just stupid. However, I tried their ice cream and found nothing wrong with it. So even if it's a "fake" ice cream factory, I can't deny that the ice cream tastes good.

I don't understand what's with all the CIFC haters on Gothamist; it's not bad! Have these people tried other ice cream? Yeah, there's better (there will always be something better), and there's much much worse, but for the unique flavors and price, it's not bad. Not that the commenters on Gothamist are going to read this, but some thoughts:

To the person who said "BTW...asians are generally lactose intolerant...that should tell you about what they know about ice cream." I know that Asians (Chinese, at least) generally don't drink milk and haven't done so for ages, but if you've been to Asia (in my case, Taiwan or Japan), you'll notice that they REALLY LIKE ICE CREAM (actually, they just like food in general). I can think of three ice cream places that were near my apartment. I have fond (although fuzzy) memories of Swensens. There was also a Haagen Dazs-sounding ice cream counter in a nearby supermarket. Sure, ice cream isn't deeply rooted in Chinese history but lactose intolerant people like ice cream! OH WELL.

As for the "enter the ice cream dragon" bit, is that supposed to offend me? Cos. I DON'T CARE! Maybe it takes a lot to offend me. In a semi-related thing, when Mulan was out, one of my relatives talked about how McDonald's Mulan promotion was offensive (which I read in an Entertainment Weekly blurb) and I thought it was funny because...I wouldn't have noticed (I wonder how American food is marketed in foreign countries). There's a Chinese restaurant in Greenwich village called Wok N Roll; is that bad?

I suppose I'm more white than Chinese, but ...uh, I did spend most of my life in America, so that's not a surprise. Something that I've always found a bit weird is how most of my friends are Asian, especially the people I meet online, aka PEOPLE I WOULD NEVER KNOW ARE ASIAN BEFOREHAND. Is there something telepathic going on? Vibes? I can't explain it and it's kind of creepy (you'd think so too if I were to spell out all the good Internet friends I've had over the years). Those are almost entirely female friends though; male Internet friends aren't usually Asian.

Whoa, digression.

Mother feeds child Diet Coke. Oh. My god. I've heard about babies/young kids drinking soda but I had never seen it. Isn't that just a tad fucked up? (sigh) Dear adults: DO NOT FEED YOUR KIDS SODA. BAD IDEA. WATER IS A GOOD IDEA! Alrighty.

Waiter Rant got a facelift. In my opinion, a botched facelift. Inside, I went "NOOOOO!" as the webpage unfolded in front of me. Some people like it but most people don't seem to. However, the general consensus is that his writing is so good, it doesn't matter what the design is. It's true; a bad design would never stop me from reading his blog. I actually preferred the blogger template though since it was so basic and I didn't feel like wine bottles were attacking me. Something that irks me about the new design (besides that I don't like it) is that it doesn't match the quality of what's on the page.

Oh well. Now...what have I been eating lately? (Wow, are you still reading this? Haven't I rambled enough? YES.) I'll do a semi-quick photo tour of what happened on Sunday around Hell's Kitchen.

cheesecake

First stop with TAS-ers, Jesse and Shea, was at the D'Aiuto bakery that Carol recommended to us. It's a small place but it's chock full of yummy sugar filled things. However, my cheesecake almost prompted a gag reflex, which I'll talk about later.

Aushe Burida

Jesse, Shea, Carol, and I ate at Ariana Afghan Kebab. Click on the photo for a better description. Overall, it was good, a tad pricey for what you got but it was a good-sized portion because it's something anyone can finish without wanting to puke afterwards. We had some friendly and semi-confusing banter with the owner of the restaurant. I say semi-confusing because he said if we told him what meat we liked, he'd make us a entree with it and if we ate the whole dish we'd have to pay double for it. Joking, obviously...well, we weren't that sure.

ice cream exploding

You probably wouldn't think of going to the Little Pie Company for ice cream, but while Carol and I wanted pie, Jesse wanted ice cream. So he got ice cream and they have inexpensive ice cream (around $2 for one huge scoop, from what I saw). Jesse got a strawberry sundae, aka "small bucket of ice cream and strawberry goo with volcanic properties, judging from the way it mooshes around". Mooshed, it did.

peach pie

A lovely pie. eh? Carol and I split a peach pie. Crust was good, filling was good...isn't it hard to have a crappy pie? Why would anyone MAKE a crappy pie? If you like pie, it's worth trying out.

banana bread

After checking out Macy's and K-town, Jesse had to leave and I went to Carol's dorm on the upper west side to hang out and MAKE NANER BREAD! It was delicious! BECAUSE WE RULE! And it was easy. BECAUSE WE RULE! And even if it came out bad, we still rule...for some reason. I don't have to make sense. I love banana bread, especially when it has nuts and chocolate chips in it. It's still good without any extras though. This is one of the easiest things I've ever made (well, it helps to do it with someone else).

On Monday and Tuesday I decided to skip lunch because 1) I wasn't very hungry and 2) it was more convenient to not eat anything. Humans probably don't need to eat everyday, at least the sedentary ones like me (although part of the reason it wasn't convenient for me to eat was because I spent most of my days in NYC doing stuff not related to eating). For dinner on both days, I went to Kofoo, a fast Korean food place in Chelsea. It's fast, tasty, and relatively cheap. Last night I got two things from there and two baked goods from D'Aiuto (the one on 30th Street and 8th is a bit roomier than the one on 52nd and 8th) for about $15. This was more than enough food to feed two people, hence...uh, me being very stuffed at the moment.

Eel Dup Bob

I LOVE BROILED EEL, so that was the first thing I tried from Kofoo. At $7.55, you can't go wrong with this. It was as good as any other eel I've had in Japanese restaurants, with the addition of vegetables and a small container of kimchi. (I'll admit, I don't have a discerning tongue when it comes to eel. The only reason I wouldn't like it is if it weren't cooked right and thus wasn't soft enough, but I could say the same about any food.)

Last night I got the bibimbob and spicy tuna kim bob. GAAAH so much food! My mum and I finished it all but we really shouldn't have. Next time I think I'll just get two kim bobs, which are like super-filling sushi (partially because one order of that is more than most regular sushi, but that's not the only reason).

Oh, I never did talk about that wayward cheesecake.

cheesecake of doom

I think this was called "celebrity mousse cheesecake", although I have no idea why. The reason my tastebuds started screaming bloody murder as I ate this (yet I kept on eating it, a true testament to my stupidity and love of desserts) was because there was alcohol in the mousse part. IT RUINED THE MOUSSE! The bottom white part was yummy, but the top was unsalvageable. It took me a abnormally long time to figure out it was alcohol. Once I had a chocolate mousse cheesecake from Junior's and that was heavenly (Junior's has a lot of haters, but I thought it was pretty good...damn, maybe my standards are insanely low). Too bad I couldn't finish it since the slice was so huge.

Sayonara art exhibit

Sorry for not being FOOD related, but since a bunch of you live in or around NYC I'm making this announcement that if you're not doing anything tomorrow night (haha...right, only people like me don't have anything to do on a Friday night), go to the Sayonara art exhibit to see...art. And plushies. Including a shy Poofy. You can also get free booze is that's what you want. IS IT? HUUUH?

I'll be there, probably. I don't know for how long but if you go and I see you there I'll give you a pancake button! HOW ABOUT THAT?

Last night my mum was telling me how I'd look better if I lost weight. No duh, most people look better when they lose weight! BECAUSE WE ALL WEIGH TOO MUCH! I'm supposed to diet, or "eat like a Chinese person", which if you ask me doesn't work because I've been to Chinatown and I've seen what those people eat. ...they seem to eat a lot. It's not fair! What she also meat by eating Chinese is not eating loaves of crusty bread or lots of cake. Dammit.

Well. (sigh)

The example she used is that when she was in school in Taiwan, a girl of my weight (over 50kg, if you're curious) would be considered very overweight. She was also perplexed by my ability to keep all my weight seemingly compact. Maybe I'm really dense. Shove me into the Dead Sea and I'll sink.

Lastly, Kim left this interesting link in a comment: Five Desserts You Should Never Eat.

I'm too lazy to write a real entry and I'd rather not completely half-ass it (don't they suck enough as it is?) SO, here are some quick thoughts:

• I drink waaaay more water now than I did, say, a week ago. Or more than that. For one thing, it's hot a lot, another thing, my throat and inner breathing tubes feel mucus-y a lot, and the other thing is...uh. Maybe I'm retaining lots of water.
• Korean places give you SO MUCH FOOD, WHYYY?!
• I swear I had another one...oh yes, I can't seem to eat as much as I used to, at least not comfortably. I can still eat mindlessly but I'll feel more pukey. I didn't even eat candy today! NO CANDY! I ate one mini stroopwafel and that was the extent of my dessert-ing. I couldn't fathom adding a Tim Tam to my gastro-intestinal juices (I'm still on the first container by the way).
• I like this Got Milk? commercial. It doesn't make me want to drink milk, but I can still appreciate the creativity. But. NO MILK! MEHEHE!
• Pina colada tastes good.
• It's been 9 days since I last had ice cream. I want ice cream
• Anthony Bourdain speaks at eGullet (via Michael Surtees) - I wish I could watch his TV show! Grr. If it's really good then it'll be on DVD at some point, eh?...eh.

That's not true at all. Of course, I did finish the meal, or stop eating it so I could waddle out of the restaurant and spend the night walking it off, but for a while it seemed neverending.

Last Friday night I met up at Han Bat to eat with longtime friend Diana (who has probably eaten with me the most in NYC), fellow foodie blogger Allen (who has now unintentionally signed a pact to go on more fooding activities), even longer-time friend Carol (who is my most food-excitable friend), and four of Carol's friends, or rather, three friends from TAS and one of the friend's girlfriends. I knew (or semi-knew) most of the people while some others didn't know anyone. But you know...FOOD. It brings people together. Or maybe that's just lots and lots of glue...

It was a bit cramped taking up two tables by the front window but it only got more cramped from there. Why? BECAUSE OF CRAPLOADS OF FOOD! But before that, we took an extended period of time mulling over what entrees to get.

"Ox jello? Beef-something? Rice? GOOSE?"

Actually, it was just me who was taking that extended period of time to mull. And I probably didn't shout "GOOSE?", although that would be a "Robyn" thing to exclaim.

Diana got Jap Chae, one of my favorite dishes, but three of us got Gobdol Bibimbab, aka "Marinated Beef, Vegetables over Rice & Egg On Top In Heated Stone Pot", aka NUMBER FOUR!

"Dude, we're all getting number four. We're so lame and unadventurous."

"Yeah. OH WELL!"

But before digging into our entrees or appetizers, we had to get past "the field of many little plates full of spicy things". Like so:

lots of spicy things

Each table got six little plates of vegetables, meat, or fish cake (at least, I think it was fish cake) soaked in some yummy spices. Holy crap! I tried a bit of everything and liked it all (say hello to my non-discerning palate). If that wasn't enough, we also got two appetizers, which ended up being larger than I had expected.

pajun

fish cake thing

I really liked the pajun, kind of like a denser, less fried-feeling version of a Chinese scallion pancake, but I didn't want to eat too much before getting my actual meal. The scallion pancake is enough for an entree, which I'll keep in mind next time I go to Han Bat (and there will be a next time).

So. BRING ON THE POT OF...MIXED STUFF!

post-mixed bibibab

It doesn't look too appetizing but I SWEAR it is. The heated pot contains rice topped with vegetables, beef, and a raw egg (which becomes cooked after you mix it in). You squeeze on as much hot sauce as you want before mixing it all together with a long handled spoon. I utilized a jabbing motion to get through the crusty rice bits/barrier that touched the pot. Crusty rice bits taste much better than they sound. YOU WANT CRUSTY RICE BITS!!!

By this point, there was way too much food on the table and being stuffed into my digestive tract. There didn't seem to be any room left for any more plates, but then out came MORE FOOD. Yes. More. The dishes were accompanied by noodle soup. No, this isn't your little Japanese bowl of miso soup, but bowls that were the same size as my bibimbab pot.

big bowl of tasteless soup

Since I know someone Korean is reading this (or maybe you're not Korean and know what this is), do tell: what is this? Can anyone actually eat all this food? I'm assuming that the huge bowl of salt on every table was meant to season the soup since the soup had almost no flavor. I mean, it was a step above water but I guess the noodles imparted some noodley flavor into the white broth (noodle flavored broth, all right!). Was that why it was white? WHY IS IT WHITE?

post-meal

I couldn't finish my orange-half, which made me sad. I'm afraid my "girl who ate everything" title is a big lie. It was a good orange!

Fooding since Friday night has been pretty uneventful. Yesterday I skipped lunch and probably fasted for 22 or 23 hours before getting around to eating something (I tell you, I just metabolize really slow, akin to the rate of continental drift). I went to Kofoo for the third time in a week and got Bulgogi Kim Bob. It's official: I like Korean sushi more than Japanese sushi. After that, I went to Koryodang (a bit of a detour considering I went from 3rd Ave to 8th Ave and Koryodang is between 5th and 6th, but when I want my dessert, I want my dessert) for a box of daifuku (4/$5) and a pack of Financiers (3/$2.75) for my mum. The daifuku (I guess it has a Korean name?) was excellently soft, or at least I really enjoyed it since I haven't had a fresh (at least I hope it was) non-refrigerated one in years. I thought I'd eat two of them but one was very filling. When I got home I feasted on sugar plums, a few piece of kim bob (I shared it with my mum and brother) and...corn chips.

I hope I lost some weight from yesterday. Today I'm eating dinner at Panera Bread with a friend and my brother since we're helping my friend buy a new computer. We figured we'd group in dinner too since WE LIKE FOOD.

Lastly, links to interesting things (as opposed to boring crap):

• Whole Grain White Bread: Huh? Yes, I'd say the same thing. It seems like a joke, but it's not. "The First 100% Whole Grain Bread Created Specifically for People Who Love the Taste and Texture of White Bread" ...would you buy this?
• Overheard in New York captures a strange description of bubble tea. "It looked like an octopus had a miscarriage." Actually, that's a pretty good description. ...and there goes any desire I once had to drink bubble tea.
• A Year In Food goes on a dessert world tour. SWEET! ...the pun wasn't intended. Seriously. I wouldn't have given Cones a 10 either, but I can't think of any ice cream place I'd give a 10 to. Actually, it's hard for any place, dessert related or not, to get a 10 in my book. Someone might shoot me for this but I like Coldstone's ice cream more than Cones' because of the texture. Cones' was really smooth without much bite. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but I like something I can chew; it's just a personal preference that might go against what ice cream should be like.
• Dear Japan: Strawberry Milk Sausages? NO! No. Key quote: "Strawberries go well with minced fish." Well, in that case...NO! I'd question children's taste buds/psychological integrity if they like this. Then again, I haven't tried it and maybe strawberries DO go well with minced fish (if I find this anywhere, I'll try it). I wouldn't bet money on it though. [via boing boing]
• The latest issue of US News & World Report is about America and food! I haven't finished reading the issue yet but I assure you, I'll ignore all the important worldly news bits in the magazine and just read the food related articles. Kinda related (in that it's something about food trivia in print) is this book, Why Does Popcorn Pop?. It's full of random interesting stuff that you probably wouldn't wonder about unless someone brought it up (like there WAS a dude named Duncan Hines, but no one named Betty Crocker..SHE'S A LIIIEEE).
• One of Eater's readers helps you remember how to pronounce Zagat. Charming.
• Chubby Hubby pigs out in Taipei. Of course, I only find this interesting because I lived in Taipei and surprisingly DID NOT PIG OUT. I ate out almost all the time since the kitchen was laughable small and no one ever wanted to use it (once I made really bad macaroni and cheese) but I can recall only a very small percentage of what I ate. Today I recalled a random memory of eating at a small cafe near my apartment and ordering a heavenly peanut butter toast. It was a super-thick piece of white bread slathered to the edges with peanut butter (not too much or too little), perfectly toasted. And that's my memory of Taiwan.

*cough hack cough*

[comments lung failure]

A few days ago I went into "wheezy asthmatic Robyn" mode after hacking on...something. My own bodily fluids, most likely. Unlike other times that my lungs decide to poot out, this time was different; it felt like my lungs were sucked dry. Usually my asthma acts up because of copious amounts of that lovely sludge called mucus (I know it's good at normal levels, but I have above normal levels) but my lungs turned into a brick in my chest and it wasn't so comfortable, in case you were wondering. So I discovered something that feels worse than normal asthma: dry, brick-like asthma!

Obviously, I need to do something about my health. Then again, if this is my "only" problem (nearly suffocating every day, HAHA) then maybe it's not so bad. I don't think my asthma is that bad compared to some other people I know (and compared to when I was elementary school when I had to skip gym class all the time...not that I cried about it). I don't need prescription medication (Primatene Mist works fine) and from past experience, my asthma is worse in the summer. Exactly a year ago I was getting asthmatic at this same, IN ENGLAND. I thought it was just ENGLAND but I guess it has something to do with the weather also? Or the debris of reproduction spurted forth from vegetation (stop spurting!)? My asthma and mucus were much worse in England; my friend and I filled her wastebasket to the brim with used tissues. Not a pretty sight. Thank god we were both sickly or being wheezy and full of mucus wouldn't have been as funny as it was at the time.

Oh well. Asthma. Maybe it'll go away once the weather gets less summery. Or perhaps I should move to a place where the weather is always around 70 degrees.

On Wednesday I went Brooklyn fooding with Diana! It's usually me leading us around for food in Manhattan but LOOK HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED! BWAA...HAHA! I had never been to the Chinatown in Brooklyn so that was our first stop. While it shouldn't have been surprising, there are a buttload (I don't know why I've come to understand "buttload" as being the same as "a very large amount") of bakeries in the 10 block strip of Chinatown that we walked. I counted 12 and two of bakeries had two locations. I guess they wouldn't do that if it weren't profitable, but who can't walk a few more blocks down the street to get to their preferred bakery? WHY NOT OPEN A BAKERY NEAR ME? We NJ-ers could use some of that.

whoa, it's a bakery!

Dragon Bay Bakery Inc. (you can't leave off the INC) seemed to have the most variety out of all the bakeries. Not that I went into all the bakeries. They had a lot of puddings and mousse in addition to baked goods. I didn't try anything but I wouldn't have minded taking a bite out of their taro cake.

taro cake

I hadn't eaten anything yet by that time and since the sun was melting all my organs (even the ones the doctors said wouldn't melt), I stopped into the ice cream shop for taro ice cream.

taro ice cream

While I don't usually like super-melty ice cream, it tastily melted (I bet you don't tastily melt) into a frothy taro milk shake as I walked outside into the sun's wrathful doom rays. The ice cream wasn't as taro-ful as I would've liked (I keep comparing taro ice cream to the kind I had in Taiwan, although I could be remembering it wrong) but I enjoyed it. And it was only $1.85 so I couldn't really complain.

Diana and I went to Hong Kong Supermarket to gaze upon strange cookies and sweets. What do I mean by strange? Penty of Engrish, for one thing.

Custard Cake

Daliyuan Pie

There are many more. So many more.

After Chinatown we roamed around Bay Ridge, stopping at Jean Danet Bakery. So far I had eaten ice cream as a lunch. What's next? BROCCOLI...I mean, CAKE! No brocs. Not that I dislike broccoli, but I think it makes me gassy.

cake

I'd try to describe this cake except I'm not sure what the flavor was. That's probably not a good sign but as you may have figured out by now, I'm in no way qualified to review food. "This thing was tasty. This other thing was also tasty. This was sugary, thus I liked it." The cake had some almonds (I'm not even sure about THAT) on top and the butter cream was...tan colors. I didn't think the cake or the cream was overly sweet but Diana couldn't handle much of it. I GASP AT SUCH A THOUGHT. Then again, I can eat honey straight out of a jar. As you can see, the cake was kinda ginormous, leading to this horror:

I didn't finish

I don't always finish my food but I grew accusomed to doing so over the past year. The cake was definitely too big but eating ice cream beforehand probably didn't help much. The cake was okay; not something I'd want again, but I like literally ANY cake, figuring it's basically made of flour, sugar, eggs, and fat. Diana's tart was yummier:

strawberry tart

I don't know why I underestimate the power of THE FRUIT TART. You can't go wrong with a sweet crust + vanilla custard + fruit! Unsurprisingly, Diana also thought this was too sweet. Methinks that she needs some of my "sugar tolerance" powers. ...I'm going to get diabetes, aren't I?

After walking from Bay Ridge to Diana's home in Bensonhurst (it didn't take too long but the sun and heat made it feel like a pilgrimage in search of air conditioning) and passing out for a bit/wiping up excess sweat, we ate dinner at a nearby Japanese restaurant.

eel poking out

Diana got a dragon roll, which was a lot more ginormous than i thought it would be. I should've assumed with a name like "dragon roll" it'd be hefty (unlike the "naked mole rat roll" which nobody knows about because no one orders it). It's eel sushi wrapped in avocado, a good combination. Of course, carb (rice) wrapped in fats (eel and avocado) has to taste good. I wasn't very hungry (trust me, I was disappointed to realize this) so I got a gyu-don, aka thinly sliced beef over rice:

gyu don

Beef was a little dry but I could've put sauce on it. Oops. I ate very slowly in Robyn-speed and didn't finish, although I did poke at it longingly with my chopsticks. I think the heat and walking around decreased my appetite; maybe this isn't supposed to happen but I usually lose my appetite if I'm tired from exercising.

For a day of fooding, I couldn't bring myself to ...stuff myself! Maybe Diana had sone influence on me since I usually eat a lot more than she does. But this could be good, as I am trying to eat less and without having to do much, I find that my appetite is weaker these days and my thirst mechanism is in high gear. Or maybe something is terribly wrong with me and I'm DYING.

Link time!

• Street eats: I noticed in Chinatown and Bay Ridge that there were fruit stands seeminly on every corner. And the fruit looked good! Fruit is my favorite food (during persimmon seasons I'd regularly lug a case of persimmons from Chinatown; thank god I lived so close by) and I wish my town had fruit stands everywhere. However, we just have trees and SUVs. Damn.
• NYC Wants to Clamp Down on Yummy, Fatty Foods: A surprisingly health-conscious initiative. I don't usually choose produce with hydrogenated oils but a lot of people don't care or don't know what's wrong with them, so maybe this could help those people? Barbara also talks about the fat ban, focusing on lard. LARD. It's a lovely word. I agree with Barbara that lard isn't as bad as most people think it is; I'd much rather use lard than Crisco. The word Crisco makes me utter a Sideshow Bob-like "uuuuuuuugh" while lard is...a funny word that I like to use excessively. Another fat with a bad reputation is coconut oil (on a random note, I know my room is hot because a vial of coconut oil in my room is liquid yet in the kitchen it's solid). In my nutrition class were were told to not use coconut oil because it's saturated, thus likely to turn us into fat slugs [saturated fat controversy]. You know who eats a lot of coconut oil? A lot of people in southeast Asia who aren't fat! I'm not saying they eat buckets of it and that everyone is svelte, but coconut oil is not the root of all evil. Obviously, there are other factors at work. I wonder if/when America can become a fitter nation.
• The green one is watermelon: Or sodium-light.
• 10 Signs You're Blogging Too Much: Surprisingly, I don't have many of the symptoms on David's list. #5 is the one I most resemble, except my life was like that before I became obsessed with food (through music obsessions). #10 is pretty truthful too. ;)
• The Amateur Gourmet eats at La Bernadin: One of the last remarks caught my eye: "Look, this is your test as a New York foodie. If you can look at all of the above and resist it, still, you're just a bitter, angry person." Uhoh. Whenever I read reviews and see photos from upscale restaurants, my only thought is how I'd probably never eat at them because all I want is dessert and it wouldn't be worth the money to "waste" the other good food on me. Seriously. I wish I could enjoy savory foods as much, but "Hamachi Tartare Topped with Wasabi Tobiko" is so much lower on the desire-ability scale than "Dark Chocolate, Cashew and Caramel Tart And Other Tasty Things". And that's why I'd go to a place like Lady M without giving it a second thought. ...I'm also cheap (I'm likely to spend a large amount of money on a concert ticket but not a meal for some reason). Don't get me wrong--I'd love to dine a place like Le Bernadin if someone else picked up the bill. ;)

Corinne insists that my writing has a "voice". I assumed she meant that I sounded kind of insane and highly excitable, like a puppy with ADD that has to pee. But I thought about it and I know what my voice is. It goes like this...

[cough] [hack] [wheeze]

That was genuine; I actually coughed and hacked and wheezed as I wrote that. WOW. Don't you feel like you've witness something highly authentic? Good thing this isn't a podcast.

Not that asthma has ever been funny, but if it was before, it's not now. (That made no sense, but what are YOU gonna do about it? BWAHAHAHAAR!) Fully functional lungs are good! Wheezing sucks! Inhalers suck! (Primatene Mist is known for causing major cardiac problems, but all inhalers kinda...suck. My general opinion of drugs is that unless you absolutely life-or-death need them, don't use them.) So now what?

I've never had side effects from using Primatene Mist (how many years do those things last?) but I don't want to find out. Yesterday I tried to not use my inhaler like i've done every night for the past few weeks but at around 8:30 AM I was coughing too much (while nursing a water bottle), kickstarting the ol' lung constriction-ness and sending me hobbling to the bathroom for Mr. Inhaler. I became asthmatic about an hour before that but it wasn't bad enough for me to use my inhaler. If I wanted to wait long enough then my asthma would've gone away but...I would've had to wait a pretty long time in a pathetic state. Coughing and wheezing don't mix well. It's kind of like peanut butter and lawn mowers.

A minute puff (maybe I'm doing something wrong but I rarely get the full blast, maybe because I don't wash the mouthpiece "after each use with hot, soapy water, rinsed thoroughly, and dried with a clean, lint-free cloth") of ephinephrine somehow floated into my lungs and a few seconds later after more deep breathing, I felt much better, almost as bright as a daisy (a daisy with asthma). Go back to bed. Sleep. Mm, glorious sleep...

And then I had to wake up an hour later, so it wasn't so glorious. It's because I had to meet up with my friends Jen and Monica (they're sisters) for Country Pancake House-ing. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE seeing them, but I had stupidly gone to bed too late the night before (rather, 4 AM that day).

my omelette of fun

I used to not like omelettes, but I rarely ate them (I must've only eaten crappy ones before). The combination of herbs, potato, sour cream, and onion was delicious. It's like a baked potato omelette. Mmm. Jen and Monica shared cheese blintzes.

cheese blinztes w/lingonberry sauce

I felt like such a pig as I had nearly finished my GINORMOUS OMELETTE and all they did was share one platter. And I don't think they finished it. They seemed to like it though, but got full rather quickly.

So back to what I was saying. While I'd usually not get omelettes at the Pancake House (not that I would get pancakes either; it's too much), I've decided I need to cut out wheat and rice from my diet for as long as I can manage without going insane. It'd be best if I cut out more than that (say, go back on a raw food diet) for the sake of functioning lungs, but it's too hard for me to do right now. Cutting out wheat and rice has already made me super grumpy as at dinner I attempted to cut a mango and ended up only get 25% (if not less) of the flesh off (the rest was stuck to the skin or the pit and not being in a good mood due to uncooperative mango, I just chucked it all). Worse, I think the mango gave me a tummy ache, unless it was the plums or the combination of plums and pumpkin seeds.

I think I lost track there. Um. Wheat and rice aren't my friends. I take them for granted since they're staples of many cuisines, but I don't think they're very healthy for me. I'm no doctor or scientist so if you want, feel free to think that I'm being stupid (you don't think that already?...HAHA), but wheat is one of the most processed foods out there and god knows where it's been (well, I guess a wheat farmer would know, but I'm not one of those). Rice probably isn't as bad but I decided to cut it out because I may as well. My asthma was at its worst when I was in elementary school, a time when I didn't eat much wheat anyway since all my family ate was rice. Only since after ending my raw food diet have I eaten so much wheat for reasons I don't know.

I was somewhat asthma-free on a raw food diet, although I didn't realize that until I became asthamtic again. As you can see, I didn't stay on the diet because it was driving me insane mentally (as opposed to...something else that can go insane). I suppose my lungs were happy but I wasn't. Restricting a few foods isn't such a big deal compared to restricting all cooked foods but this already puts a damper on my birthday wish to eat good Brooklyn pizza (haha, not happening). I won't eat cake either (although I guess I could eat an ice cream cake) so right now my plan is to do nothing. It's not so bad; I'm used to uneventful birthdays since it's always right around when school starts, meaning everyone is busy and even I don't want to do anything because I loathe the beginning of school.

If you're wondering why I wouldn't see a doctor or some kind of professional, it's because...I don't need to. And I don't really like doctors (it's a very general statement: obviously there are good health professionals out there, although even in my own family my radiologist great-uncle would've been ready to zap me with radiation because of my swollen glands, which went away by themselves/dietary changes). My asthma only gets bad around sleepy time, whether it's before I go to bed or when I wake up. It's rather convenient (figuring I'd get asthmatic at some point) since I'm at least at home and not roaming around outside somewhere. I suppose it makes sense that I'd get asthmatic at that time since my body is probably shutting down or repairing itself...although I don't know how the hacking and wheezing helps.

You read this far? Hm. Well. I'll have to eat much less from now on for as long as I can manage. Technically I could eat a huge steak and mashed potatoes on my diet, which is weird to think about because I wouldn't want steak and mashed potatoes. Fish and potatoes would be nicer. Maybe I'll buy some tomorrow.

Damn, I'm full of dread. I hope I don't need to use my inhaler again in the morning. I'd only use it if wheezing became too unbearable.

If you told me a week ago that I would eat cookies today, I would've said you were crazy. If you told me a week ago that I would be eating meat today, I would've said you were crazy. If you told me a week ago that I would jump off a 10-story building and live to tell the tale, I would've said you were crazy. ...okay, one of those didn't actually happen, but they're all pretty crazy. So what happened in the past week that caused the official Robyn Food Liberation Craziness? A book called Health Food Junkies plus a bit of beef in my broccoli.

The previous quote is taking from a blog entry I wrote on July 3, 2004.

I feel like I should fill you guys in on some of my fooding past. Even though I'm mentioned it before, it's probably very hard for any of you to believe that for a bit of time there were people who were surprised that I was eating things like cake and bread. It's weird to think about since I'm synonymous with baked goods these days (ain't that lovely?).

"When I told everyone that you were eating cooked food, they could hardly believe it."

"HAHAHAHA...oh boy." *wipes away a tear*

A conversation with my old roommate from freshman year at college went something like that during a get-together where we...ate. She saw me eat a lot, of course, but the stuff I ate was mainly bananas, oranges, apples, and nuts.

I found another interesting entry from June 7, 2004, in which I talked about my intestinal cleanse and a day when I ate "five bananas, one orange, and one fruit cup. And a lot of honey, but I don't think that does much to me. It's quite yummy." That wasn't very interesting, but later in the entry I talked about how I did clean up work at a faculty member's house. I can't believe that I had forgotten about it; the work was horrendous.

We had to toss a bunch of spackle and wood with nails in em that were ripped out of walls out a window and in garbage bins and roll up this huge ass carpet and lug it down the stairs to bring outside (the faculty member's daughter and her boyfriend were helping too). I got to smash a wall with a hammer to get more spackle off...quite fun. Surprisingly, my arms don't even hurt (my legs are still aching though). Ryan and I also had to take down a drywall ceiling, which was about as pleasant as you could imagine having lots of dust and dirt falling on your head could feel like. We had to toss all that stuff out of a window as well. In another room we did more tossing and it was completely dust filled...by the end of the day, I thought my lungs were coated in dust. We went through a few dust masks and we all got super heavy gloves and protective eyewear.

My clothes, hair, and NASAL PASSAGES were covered with dust--and I probably would've puked dust without the masks--after the 6 or 7 hours we spent ripping out stuff. I don't know if it takes a year for all that dust to kick in, but I didn't have any asthma at the time, which I NOW find really weird. I can't believe I lasted the whole day without getting very tired (I remember going to a nearby gas station for some fruit since they didn't have any raw food at the house) and that I didn't get sick or achey afterwards. If I had to do that today, I wouldn't last more than an hour.

What's my point? The raw food diet was pretty good, health-wise (but less good mentally). Unless you have your own experience to speak of, there isn't much anyone can say about this. I'm not saying its the BEST diet but it was a lot better than however I was eating before (I don't remember how bad my diet was before). No grains, no meat, no tofu, no chocolate, no "a lot of things" and my organs seemed better off. The bad part was not having any friends who ate the same way (I had my mum, at the very least) and even though my friends were nice enough to let me drag them to the occasional raw food restaurant, that was usually the extent of my food outings.

I know there are lots of people who eat normal, cooked food and are healthy. I don't think I'm one of these people. Ever since I was born, I've had little problems. ...little. Nothing very serious (there are a gazillion things worse than asthma), but I had more of them than the rest of my family. I guess I should be happy that I don't have worse problems but we're all a little self-centerd sometimes, yes? Especially those of us who blog on a regular basis.

As for the asthma thing, I haven't decided whether or not to see a doctor; I haven't ruled it out. Amy is right that people like me need to have one around, even if I barely use it (I didn't use it at all during the school year; the times I became wheezy were very minor, almost always caused by having to talk on the phone). I didn't need to use my inhaler yesterday, even though I wanted to at one point.

Today while walking to class, which is about 1.75 miles, I had a few coughing fits but I didn't become asthmatic. My lungs seem to be okay if I cough while moving around. Quickly. With a backpack on.

Amy also mentioned becoming asthmatic from walking up a flight of stairs, which is kind of funny except that it's kind of...true. I noticed during school that even though I could easily walk 2 miles without getting asthmatic, walking up a few flights of stairs would feel like death. However, going up and down the stairs all the time at home never makes me asthmatic. Maybe it's school?

My asthma is sometimes tied to stress--I don't think anything else could explain my phone call-onset asthma. There's nothing physically laborious to speak of but during most of my life, I've never liked talking on the phone. This is mainly when people call me and not the other way around; I guess it's the element of surprise that messes me up (good thing i don't watch horror movies).

Oh, I ate food today! Obviously. :) I had a pluot for lunch (my new favorite fruit, besides plums) before going to NYC for my class. After class I went to Han Ah Reum and got four of those Korean appetizer things: spinach, radish kimchi, seaweed, and spicy tofu. Don't worry, I shared them with my mum and we didn't finish everything! It's a deceptively large amount of food; they pack a lot in those little containers. I also got a red bean popsicle since I haven't had one in 7 years: delicious, and definitely my favorite form of popsicle. I wasn't planning to get one but I was sweaty and I saw a girl eating one outside the supermarket. If you don't know, my "hunger" usually results from visual cues; "girl eating popsicle...must have...popsicle..."

My overall message is that I don't want to make anyone worry about my eating habits or my asthma. I've had worse asthma before what I'm going through now (when I needed to use that vapor machine majiggy, and I'll probably get a real inhaler by the time summer ends). I've eaten my share of questionable diets (wanna hear about that time I fasted for about two days?...okay, maybe not). I think my general "eating lots of bread and wheaty things" habit is bad but it doesn't get much criticism, I think because so many other people have similar habits, although hopefully not as extreme as mine.

Day two without the need for an inhaler! Sweet.

When I feel cough-tastic, I drink water. The result is having to pee a lot but that's not a bad thing. Mm, water!

In response to Allen's comment in the previous entry, I don't have health insurance. I think. Yeah, OOPS. I have to admit, I haven't thought about it, but obviously it's my parent's decision. In response to this other thing:

Even if you decide not to take any of the vile modern medication, it still helps to know what is wrong in the first place. What's a visit to the doctor going to do?

A visit to the doctor will get me asthma medication. As for finding out what's wrong, I highly doubt I'd find out. That is, find out the actual cause of my asthma from when I was a baby since there are a bunch of different possible causes. A doctor could probably tell me how to make my asthma better or not make it worse, but I think that's general information I could find myself by doing a little research. Or maybe they'd just give me the prescription.

One thing that freaks me out about health (I'm interested in nutrition and medicine but I wouldn't want to go into either field) is the great amount of conflicting information. If I think one thing is truthful, I can find another opposing viewpoint. One of my course books last year, Taking Sides, is a compilation of opposing viewpoints on food related topics (very interesting, I'd recommend it).

Maybe there's no point in expressing my views on health and nutrition; you could easily find something that says I'm wrong. When I used to frequent raw food websites, I'd find forums and messages from people touting the benefits of raw food while other sites declared the diet unhealthy and dangerous. Macrobiotics and the raw food diet are oppositional in that macrobiotics largely recommends eating cooked food while the latter clearly doesn't. How can one be the absolute truth? (If you want my opinion, I'd lean more towards raw food than macrobiotics, but somewhere in the middle of the two would be nice.)

Is it safe to say that sometimes there just isn't a single rule that can be applied to everyone? And sometimes there is? How vague can I get? Would you like to see more question marks? YAY, EXCESSIVE QUESTION MARKS???

Good god, what am I talking about? Um. I'm going to go on a tangent of not necessarily well researched opinion... [TANGENT WARNING]

I'm skeptical of some alternative medicine, but for the most part I think it is/can be less harmful than conventional medicine. However, unless someone ponies up massive buckets of money, not enough research can be done to give alternative medicine enough credibility to, say, make it less alternative. I'm not saying all alternative medicine works, but surely some of it can help people in better, less costly ways than conventional medicine. I know our society/economy depends on sick people (health industry = a gazillion $$$; you can look it up) but healthy productive people must be beneficial too. Just not so much for drug companies.

I think Drug companies could do great things with the power and money they have. Same thing with Monsanto (wow, their website looks so peachy and bright). I'm not saying that drug companies or Monsanto have done nothing to help society, but in the end, who do they answer to? Sick people? Shareholders? ATTACK OF THE QUESTION MARKS??? LOOK HOW BIASED I AM?

This is just a blog entry so I'm not going to spent a week writing an essay. I'm just spurting out random junk and trying to look at things from different angles. So to clarify, THIS IS BRAIN GOO and I'm not looking out to pick a fight about medical and health related issues.

...I don't like Monsanto. How many people do? For fun I googled "I love Monsanto" and came up with an anti-Monsanto post. Haha.

Something interesting I came across: HonestFoodGuide.org. I don't agree with ALL of it, but most of it is irrefutable (donuts are bad, doh!). I don't agree that red meat necessarily equates to DISEASE and that soy protein will make you a raw of healthy sunshine. Also, I can tell you that I would NOT be happy if I had to exclude all added sugars from my diet. Although being unhealthy will probably result in not-super-happiness, being healthy doesn't necessarily result in happiness either. SUCKS, EH?

YOU JUST CAN'T WIN! HEEHEE!

I'm not sure what to think of the Health Ranger. I mean, the name makes me laugh a little. Interesting website, some good points, a reasonable way to make money ("Now of course, Truth Publishing does have bills to pay, as do I. So there are some things for sale: books and information"). I don't agree with everything but I thought I'd point it out.

It'd be cool if there were a website about nutrition and health issues like Adbusters is about...everything. (I used to be a cover-to-cover reader of Adbusters but after a while I felt like I was reading the same thing over and over again. The most interesting parts were usually letters from readers, in my opinion.) Or is there one as big as Adbusters? (I guess it'd be hard to be as big as Adbusters since Adbusters incorporates all kinds of issues, including those related to health, food, etc.)

Another website I came across today: Quackwatch. The website is a mess to navigate, but you can search for specific things. It debunks issues related to alternative medicine, dieting, drugs with no scientific backing, etc. Interesting to poke around.

For some fun, here are INSANELY cute illustrated Korean food photos. [via Drawn!]

An interesting blog: The Angry Asthma Mama. My asthma is NOTHING compared to this woman's son and it was never that bad when I was his age. I wish the best of health to her son.

Unrelated cuteness: BUBBLES THE BEANIE BUDDY, I love youuu!

This entry took approximately five gazillion hours to write. Dammit!

Oh, I didn't talk about what I ate yet. Lunch consisted of 8 ounces of plain yogurt (yup, it's a lot) sweetened with raw honey, a pluot, a peach, and a quarter of a 3.5 ounce bar of 40% Valrhona chocolate (mm, I love good milk chocolate...and any chocolate for that matter). For dinner I made some funky potato, onion and scrambled egg mess (it was supposed to be an omelette but it stuck to the pan), a peach, and another quarter of the chocolate bar (I LIKE MY SUGAR, alright?). It was a lot of food for one day considering I spent the entire day at home with almost no physical movement. Seriously, I didn't even change out of my pjs. NJ is dangerous to my health.

I'm going to Minado tomorrow. Even though their selling point is sushi, their vegetables are amazin'. THAT'S WHAT I WAAANT.

Time for bed.

Even though I know I shouldn't eat/buy potato chips, without the starchy-ness of wheat, I started eating some of my brother's potato chips. I still remember the first time I had potato chips at a picnic lunch with friends after eating cooked food again.

"...damn, these are good. *munch* Wait. It's not potato, it's CRACK! JEEBUS!"

Those probably weren't the exact words but thinking I'd eat just a few chips was a joke, because you can't just eat a few, you must eat MANY GREASY HANDFULS. I bought a bag of sweet potato chips from Whole Foods (their own brand) and they're good! A little too salty but there aren't any other spices and they're not very oily. However, potato chips shouldn't be a meal, and they almost turned into that. *sigh*

Today for lunch (which I wasn't planning to eat, until my mum asked me if I wanted fruit, and in the end we were sharing Terra chips) I had a pluot, a peach, chips, and some milk chocolate. And flax seed oil. I make no claims to being healthy, although the chips and chocolate weren't of craptastic quality.

The chocolate was from Green & Blacks, and perhaps I was spoiled by Valrhona's 40% Milk Chocolate (my favorite milk chocolate so far) but I didn't like it that much. Of course, I liked it enough to eat (who a I kidding, I'd eat just about any chocolate) but it could've used less sugar. The texture was a bit weird too, maybe because of all the sugar. Yes, I like sugary things, but not so much in solid chocolate. I would've been better off trying their dark chocolate. Something nice about the bar is that it's divided into 10 rows, or 30 small pieces, while the Valrhona is divided into 8 squares. Then again, I'd easily eat half of a standard 3.5 ounce bar in one day so portion control for chocolate isn't a big deal for me.

Speaking of chocolate, you know about the New York Chocolate Show, yes? If you like chocolate, you should go. If you don't like chocolate, maybe you would if you went to the show (or you might get sick from too much chocolate, hm). They haven't listed student ticket prices, which is disappointing since they were $15 last year and this year they just have regular tickets for $25. It's definitely worth it though, if you like chocolate. I took a bunch of photos at last year's show but that only gives a small look into how much chocolate there is. Free samples are key.

My entries probably won't be that photo filled anymore since I don't have anything very photogenic to share. Not eating out much, for one thing. I've been cooking some of my own food but you do NOT want to see a plate of chopped up potato with onion and scrambled eggs. It's tasty enough, just not pretty.

My diet this week has consisted mainly of fruit, yogurt, potato, onion, egg, and vegetables (mainly from Minado). My weight has been stable, and that's all I ask for. Sure, I'd like to lose weight but as long as I don't gain, that's fine, especially after having gone to a buffet.

I was thinking about why some people would criticize my raw food diet (not many, but some) while overall most people can eat how they wish without backlash from friends and family (I'll admit, I tell one of my friends that he should stop drinking soda...but he really should). What if I ate a crapload of Japanese snacks? Would anyone say, "Those are high in refined sugars and I wish you wouldn't eat that" or "MM YUM!"

...Yeah, there are differences. If I go on a diet with the intention of becoming healthier, people who think that the diet would make me unhealthy would think my diet is bad. So what if I went on a raw food diet (or any diet) not with health in mind, but just because...I wanted to? If I ate a crapload of cake every day because I really like cake and my whole blog was about the life of someone who eats lots of cake, would I get lots of comments from people saying, "All that cake is going to kill you, stop!" Or "Mm, cake!"

I think I talked about something like this a while ago. "How come no ont criticizes me for eating so many baked goods?" I knew I was eating unhealthily but maybe that's not the first thing people think of. I must have also acknowledged the unhealthy nature of my diet, but in general I didn't get the impression taht other people perceived it as a harmful thing. Maybe it wouldn't be bad right away, but in the long run...

I guess if things don't have harmful consequences right away, people don't see them as particularly dangerous.

...that was random. OKAY, link time.

• Beer for Kids: Hm. The funniest part to me is the slogan, "Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink." Whoa, slow down there! I wonder what it tastes like...not like real beer, I assume.
• What's In Your Colon?: You might not want to look at that. I've seen it a gazillion times: COLON GOOP. If you're a doctor, tell me if people have that kind of goop inside.
• Death by Caffeine: How much of a certain caffeinated drink would it take to kill you? When I said I didn't ingest caffeine, I realized I forgot about chocolate. Well. I ate about an ounce of milk chocoalte today. 6 or so milligrams of caffeine won't kill me.
• The Food Loop: Cute tool, if I needed one. [via Cool Hunting]

---

Okay, entry stilllll going on since I ate dinner. Dinner was a plum, a pluot, plaine Greek yogurt + honey, too many chips, and some chocolate. My mum and I are thinking: "NO MORE CHIPS! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!" Not because they don't taste good but because both of us ate too many. So it's not just my problem...*phew*.

I felt quite sad tonight because I wasn't hungry. I ate dinner for the sake of eating dinner, but I wasn't hungry. It was just...habit. I didn't want to eat anything in particular.

Speaking of chocolate, my mum was eating some raw chocolate before disappointingly remarking, "This doesn't taste good." She's been eating them for a while, mind you. Of course 100% chocolate doesn't taste good; that's why they process it and add sugar. Maybe that makes it unhealthy but in the history of chocolate, has anyone ever eaten it raw without sugar consistently?

I saw bags of raw cocoa nibs being sold at Whole Foods on a new "raw junk food" shelf (also has treats made by Pure Food and Wine) and it was strange to see. I didn't know there were enough raw foodists (or semi-raw foodists) for such things to be sold in Whole Foods. I would've been semi-excited by the selection a two years ago, perhaps, but as the raw food lifestyle becomes more popular, I find it...tiring. I'm not saying I never ate raw junk food, but I felt hypocritical eating raw versions of cooked food (Whole Foods had raw chocolate macaroons and some other nut bars, although some of them were sweetened with maple syrup, which isn't raw), showing that I still wanted cooked food. Some raw food snacks taste good in their own right without resembling a cooked food, but not many. My two favorite raw snacks were oatmeal "cookies" (okay, it's SUPPOSED to be like regular oatmeal cookies but they were more like very soft ...yummy...delicious things) and spirulina earth pie, which you can get from a natural food store near NYU that I can't remember the name of right now (it's on 6th Ave near 8th Street; ring any bells?). That's one of my most favorite desserts ever. I almost never go to that store though and seeing as it's the only place you can get it at, I've rarely eaten it.

Uh. End rant. I don't have anything against the basic raw food diet but I can't help but feel skeptical about things like this book about why chocolate is good for you.

Oh, still haven't used my inhaler. I mean, haven't needed to. Or else I'd be dead. YAY.

I just mentioned that i was addicted to potato chips right? So what does one do upon that realization? Stop eating potato chips!

...or. MAKE ONE'S OWN POTATO CHIPS!

As you can see, I'm a moron. Today I received A New Way to Cook for my upcoming "advanced foods" class (methinks I need to retake "intro") and I stupidly decided to skim through it. And the devil was on my side, so in a 700+ page book, I landed on a potato chip recipe. And I thought "HEY, I LIKE POTATO CHIPS AND I HAPPEN TO HAVE POTATOES! ALRIGHTY." (Thoughts takes place all in caps in my brain. It's loud and raucous in there, full of shouting and potatoes and tomfoolery.)

I don't cook much nor do I enjoy it much, unless i'm making cake (but anything like cake is out since I'm not eating wheat, yesss?). I did as the recipe said, except for some key things, like slicing the potato thinly enough (IMPORTANT PART, but my slicing thingy couldn't make them that thin) and drying them well, ending up in an hour of baking three batches of potato chips that mainly came out limp or only came out crunchy if I burned 50% of the chip.

BOY. FUN. ...NO. I potato chipped about 5 potatoes (not very large; you can hold two in a hand, maybe three) and ate maybe four of them. But potato chips aren't hunger-appeasing, so I ended up eating some of my brother's potato chips also. And a pluot. And a plum. And some flan my great aunt brought over (it's the most ginormous flan I've ever seen, the size of a PIE). And some Green & Black's chocolate (I think I need to throw that out...seriously, just not tasting so good).

I would've been a lot better off just chopping up the potatoes and sauteing them. Instead, I spent much of my night staring into the mouth of my oven (through the oven door...um) as too-thick potato rounds sat there, soaking in the clarified butter (luckily, I had ghee and didn't have to actually clarify butter) I tossed them in.

It wasn't a complete failure, but it was more than 50% failure, thus it is branded FAILURE. And I shouldn't be making potato chips anyway. Thankfully they're just baked and I didn't toss em in a bucket of butter (and I didn't use seasoning since I like them that way), so they weren't deathly. But all that potato and fruit and flan and...still. The "potato chips" were saddening.

Now I feel like a potato. NO MORE 'TATO!

I thought potatoes would be a nice starch replacement but I think I'd rather eat yogurt, fruit, and whatnot.

I lied. I'm one of the last people who would truly be unable to believe that I ate the whole thing.

Greet omelette

I met up with CJ at the Country Pancake House in Ridgewood for lunch yesterday, which has been somewhat of a ritual throughout the summer (I think we ate there five or so times). He got a yummerlicious apple cinnamon French toast and I got omelette of non-sweet/wheaty doom. Last week I ate at the Pancake House with Jen and Monica and was unable to finish my omelette but I suspect that's because there was potato in it. The Greek omelette had spinach, tomato, dill, onion (or something like that) and some feta cheese that I chose to ignore. Nice and fluffy and...

...I ATE THE WHOLE THING! Oops.

Somehow I failed to gain weight from the 'tato chip overdose. Now I'm wondering where it all went. I didn't weigh myself today since I'd rather not know what immediately happens after a massive omelette-ing and the development of another layer of omelette-dense human tissue.

I'm not sure if it was the omelette or hormones (it's that time of the month, oh yeah), but I got a very odd tummy ache yesterday for about an hour. When I say tummy ache I really mean intestinal ache, or womb ache, or SOMETHING down there aching but not my tummy, but you don't usually hear people go, "Ooh, my intestines are in pain." I say stuff like that but most people don't, I figure. During the time that my innards felt under the weather (the weather being very gloomy, none of that happy sunshine stuff), my body temperature seem to shoot to 100 degrees as my skin boiled. Hmmm. Freak fever. Lovely.

More nap time and I felt better. Phew. I'm not against a little sickness, but I'm wondering what triggered it since I hadn't felt anything that bleh-ful in ages (I almost never get cramps during my period. Despite what many of my friends believe, I don't think it's "normal" or something one should take in stride, even though it might be "average"). Oh well.

Here are some photos from the other night's potato-ing:

so...yellow

a chip that didn't suck

I wouldn't usually try to make potato chips, but I attempted it since I had never done it before and I thought it'd be healthier. Cooking tends to be more stressful for me than it should be (you know, when nothing comes out as it should) so I should lay off the cooking until I have to do it in school, at which point I'll go insane. AND YOU'LL BE ABLE TO READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE! I never fry (deep-fry, that is) at home, but only in class when I have to, one reason being the health factor (yet hypocritically, I can eat that stuff whenever I go out) and another being the "horrible grease smell that lingers for years". ;) If I wanted to fry, I'd have to buy the suitable oil since I always use butter or olive oil to cook.

I got into a little potato chip war with my brother last night. He didn't want me to eat his potato chips, exclaming that they were his and he doesn't have a lot of time to eat them (he's 23, if anyone's curious, and it's not like he pays for his food). Now I know I'm a pig, but he could afford to share some chips. He was reluctant to share some of his flour-less chocolate cake with me, offering to give me a bite (I ended up with to) after I lamented how I didn't have any chocolate (I didn't like the G&B chocolate bar enough to finish it).

As you can see, we're both annoying. But my brother...is more annoying. He's not one of those people who eats a lot (and he keeps reminding me that I am one of these people) but I feel like by now he should've made some effort to move out of the house and thus have no annoying family members to deal with, especially those of us who wouldn't normally eat potato chips or flourless chocolate cake but do so because he brought them into the house. (My mum's going to buy some more snacks for the sake of my brother, but I think it's inevitable that I will eat some. If I were living by myself I wouldn't buy any potato chip-like snacks, but it's very hard to resist when there's no other starchy substance for me to eat.)

Today for lunch I had a little black plum (it has a real name that I've forgotten), a peach (much better than the plum), some greek yogurt and honey, and...some potato chips. Err. I asked my mum if popcorn was better than potato chips and even though we think potato is "better" than corn (or not as bad; don't ask how we make the judgement), popcorn isn't fried like potato chips. ...we haven't really come to a conclusion. I haven't had popcorn in years so maybe I'll try it.

HOW ADVENTUROUS I AM! Not.

I watched an episode of Yakitate that Allen gave me and...good lord. It's more intense than any cooking show you will ever watch, complete with mass hysteria over croissants and crying over the perfection of croissants and SOLAR HANDS. I saw a few episodes before that Lee Anne but it's been a while since then and I wasn't prepared for more Japanese anime insanity. Awesome show, just...um...a tad insane.

I also watched an episode of No Reservations that Allen gave me about "Why the French Don't Suck." It was a little excessive with the absinthe bit (Anthony goes INSAAANE, almost) but I loved it. And now I really want to go to France or eat French food. Sadly, I went to France when I was 7 and remember very little about French culture that didn't have to do with Disneyland Paris (where I picked up the word "sortie" verrry quickly). (Dear future parents: don't bring your kids to Europe when they're 7, because they probably won't appreciate it as much as you will.) What I DO remember is eating at a restaurant in Paris where I picked a random thing on the menu and ended up with some kind of cold meat jelly. Truly. It obviously touched a part of my soul that allowed me to remember...the meat jelly. I'm sorry that I can't remember much else.

...meatjelly...

Anyway. This isn't about meat jelly. (You know I just want to say "meat jelly" as much as I can.)

Last night I watched Eat Drink Man Woman with my mum since we had watched it together before, kinda, and we both like it. And there's good, oh yes. During the movie we had little conversations about food and whatnot.

Mom: Cooking isn't really good.
Me: Well, it's not the worst thing in the world.
Mom: But people can live on raw food. Cooked food isn't as healthy.
Me: If people could just live on raw food, they wouldn't have started cooking.
Mom: [blah blah something.]
Me: Food is an important part of culture...
Mom: Not everything that's a part of culture is good. Foot binding is a part of Chinese culture.
Me: Well...obviously, that sucks.

...[play Jeopardy theme song]...

Me: I wouldn't want to be a chef. [said after watching intense chef-ing in the movie]
Mom: I thought you said food was good.
Me: Just because I think food is good doesn't mean I want to make it. (Hey, I'm all for firefighting but I wouldn't want to be a firefighter.)
Mom: [blah blah I forget]

...[more of the Jeopardy theme song]...

Mom: I was listening to a radio show where a caller was complaining about how today's cooking shows are just food porn.
Me: Eh, so? What's wrong with food porn?
Mom: It symbolizes sex. (Or something like that.)
Me: I hope it's not just about that considering that I've loved cooking shows since I was little.

(Not sure where it went after that.)

Boy, that was random. And thus are the joys of watching a food related movie with my mum!

I ate dinner out with my mum yesterday since eating at home has become sucktastic (for an pesudo explanation as to why this is, read my brother's livejournal). I wanted to try Baumgart's since I hadn't been there many times (went twice as a raw foodist with friends, which meant I ate salad, which meant...not very exciting stuff) and gotten to eat the FOOD-food, or the dessert. So. Indulgence time?

mango chicken something

I was sadly underwhelmed. This place is consistently crowded and for what is primarily a Chinese restaurant (seems to be run by Chinese people) it has a pleasant, non-Asian-gaudy interior. I forgot the exact description for my chicken dish but it sounded better than it actually tasted, which was...uh. I don't remember. The sourness threw me off, so it's just a matter of personal taste. If you LIKE sweet and sour stuff, you might like this dish. The chicken was extremely tender but didn't have much flavor. Despite that I didn't like this dish very much (not something i'd get again at least), I ate most of it. It wasn't bad, I just didn't...love it. Not for $15 at least.

lots of seafood

My mum got this BIG PLATE O SEAFOOD (not the real name). She liked it but I knew this wasn't my kind of dish after trying a piece of mushroom.

Me: *chew chew* This sauce has alcohol.
Mom: Really? I couldn't tell.
Me: Mm...yes, definitely has alcohol.
Mom: It has XO sauce in it. They use it in dishes in Hong Kong." (I've never been to HK but she's been there twice.)
[some time passes]
Mom: Oh, I can taste it now. I think there's whiskey in this. (She may have said some other alcoholic beverage.)
Me: God...it tastes awful! Alcohol ruins the taste of food for me.
Mom: Some people love it.

Alcohol serious makes everything taste bad for me. (sigh) And forget drinking alcohol itself--I think I'd puke. I'll love to try any French food, but the wine drinking ritual so present throughout "No Reservations" isn't going to work for me (drinking at 7 AM, for instance).

But that's just me. I don't care if other people drink, figuring they don't turn into morons (but that happens a lot in college).

Oh, I'm not done. my mum and I ate dessert.

flan

My mum got this lovely flan. I don't think I've ever seen a rectangular flan or one without much caramel goo, but this was delicious! My dessert was less enthralling.

ice cream sundae

All I really wanted was ice cream. The chicken was just a step towards ice cream. Somehow. Baumgart's makes its own ice cream and I had never tried it, but since I'm eating non-wheat stuff, I figured this was my chance. Again, I was underwhelmed. I liked the texture of the ice cream but I thought it could've been more chocolate-y (mabye the other flavors are better). And for a sundae, this was rather sad. I mean...THAT WHIPPED CREAM! Look! It's a teeny splodge! THE SPLODGE MADE ME SAD! Then again, it doesn't look like it came out a can, so perhaps they made it. The marshmallows didn't go with the ice cream, although it dounded like they would, and the butterscotch topping didn't go too well with the ice cream either. Nor the malt powder. Maybe my taste buds are off seeing as this is one of their sundaes (you can also choose toppings but I just went with a pre-made thing).

Oh, as for the non-wheat thing, my asthma has been getting better every day! Hell, I just realized that i haven't had a wheezing fit today at all. It's not totally gone but I haven't needed my inhaler in at least a week and the wheezing doesn't bother me nearly as much as it did before. I'm quite amazed; if wheat is really that bad for me, I wouldn't lament giving it up. My only problem is that there's wheat in dumplings and I really love dumplings...maybe I can loosen up if necessary, but you don't know how great it is to not be a wheezing monster. I did eat a bit of brown rice with my chicken (I like brown rice more than white, but I don't eat it much) yet...I wasn't really into it. Rice lost some appeal for me; it's a good thing! At most, I think I should eat rice once a week, but I don't see much necessity for it.

Er. Anyway. I'm going to Legal Seafood tonight, methinks. For seafood. All I want is dessert though so maybe I'll just eat something small.

Grace asked me for the potato chip recipe, so here it is, straight from my book. I found another baked potato chip recipe online but it's really different from the one I followed. ENJOY.

---

Potato Chips (of doom) [my comments in brackets]

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp plus 2 tsp unsalted butter
• 1 lb medium Idaho potatoes
• 1/2 tsp fine sea salt

[I used whatever amount of potatoes I had with whatever butter I felt like using, and no salt. I probably shouldn't know it'd be doomful from there on.]

Preheat the oven to 425F. [My oven is cooler than it says, so I made it hotter. WHOA.]

To clarify the butter, melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat, then heat until it stops foaming and becomes clear, with some solids floating on the top. Skim off the solids and discard. Set aside. [I just used ghee. It's nice to have around. Bwahaha.]

Peel the potatoes and slice them into 1/16th-inch-thick rounds with a mandoline or vegetable slicer, placing them immediately in a bowl of cold water. [I don't think mine were 1/16th of an inch. Oops.] Rinse in several changes of cold water, drain well, and spin dry in a salad spinner. [I rinsed, but didn't SPIN the. OOOPS.] Do not leave the potatoes in the water for more than 5 minutes, or after you have dried them, or they will curl up and won't cook evenly. Pat the potatoes dry with paper towels and place in a medium bowl. [Mine curled but I did pat them. Such good potatoes yes..*pat pat*]

With a teaspoon, spoon the clear clarified butter onto the potatoes, leaving the milky residue in the bottom of the pot. Using a lightly dampened brush, toss the potatoes with the butter, making sure each slice is coated. [I did it with my hands. i think that's easier since the potato slices were sticking to each other.] Arrange the slices in a single layer on a large heavy baking sheet, making they sure don't touch one another. [Mine touched. ...er. Oh well.]

Bake on the middle rack of the oven for about 7 minutes, then check them. [Mine took more like 15 minutes, HAHA. Crap.] With a spatula, transfer the potatoes that have become golden brown and crisp to a platter lined with paper towels. Continue baking the remaining potato slices up to 3 minutes longer, checking them frequently and removing the finished ones as they are done. Do not allow the potatoes to get very brown, or they will be bitter. Sprinkle with the salt.

The chips are best eaten within a couple of days. Store in an airtight tin. [I ate all of mine almost immediately, although since I had to bake them one sheet at a time, it took almost an hour.]

OH CRAP, I ATE A LOT.

CRAPPITY!

CRAPCRAP!

Hi. Today I decided to try popcorn since I haven't eaten it in a few years. It tastes the same as I remember it: airy. So I ate some. And then more. A little more. And a little more than that. And before I knew it, I was full of popcorn, although "full of porcorn" means you ate 2 ounces of it. I don't know about you but 2 ounces of most food is nothing, or almost nothing. 2 ounces of popcorn is like having a balloon in your belly.

But I also ate potato chips. I've probably mentioned that my brother doesn't eat like a cow, or that he keeps food around for a long time. He's had a 15 ounce bag of delicious Whole Food's lightly salted chips for a few days. Unopened. Sitting near my mum's computer like The Holy Altar of Thinly Sliced Fried Potato (bow down). So I cracked that open.

Me: *crunch crunch crunch* So mom, blah blah blah?
Mom: Yeah, mmsmdf *crunching noises echoing in my skull* mmaamcxpfkof.
Me: *crunch* ...uh huh... *crunch crunch*
Mom: And then, 2344nsfdsf *more echoing crunching noises* fgmloo
Me: *end crunch* I have no idea what you just said. For the past 5 minutes.

Potato chips taste better than popcorn in my opinion, but the oily translucent nature of kettle cooked tato chips is a little disturbing and the crunch is skull shattering. Popcorn is like soft angel puffs. ...that come as a result of heating corn until it EXPLODES, forcing the inner starch to turn inside out. It's kind of grotesque.

Food is violent.

So today I ate crap. I make no claims to being balanced. Overall, I had too much popcorn, too many chips, a bit of dark chocolate, two pluots, a peach, and some plain Greek yogurt with raw honey. (rubs belly) Oh, and my daily dose of flax seed oil. It tasted gross but you get used to it after a while.

Asthma is still looking good, although it acted up just a smidgen last night. Hmmm. HMMMM. This is un-good. Hopefully things will be alright tonight. Maybe my asthma was not-so-good because I ate this:

mm, sundae

It was totally worth it, if it did make me a smidgen asthmatic. I went to Ben & Jerry's with my mum, who watched me eat a chocolate fudge sundae with mini M&Ms and whipped cream atop Wavy Gravy, aka "Caramel and Cashew Brazil Nut ice cream with Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge Swirls & Roasted Almonds". Lordy. It was delicious (although not sinfully so), but I found that the chocolate fudge overpowered the ice cream. But. It was so good. Damn. I guess chocolate fudge is best eaten with a less complex ice cream. However, it was nice having the nuts in the ice cream so I didn't have to get them as a topping.

I have an ice cream memory that I hope someone else can related to. When I was little my family would go to Friendly's all the time. I would order the clown cone sundae, which consisted of a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of some Reeses pieces, topped with a cone hat, chocolate fudge, whipped cream on the sides, and a face composed of Reeses pieces. Obviously, this was all in a sundae container, or else it'd be like...an upside-down ice cream cone. Even if the ice cream wasn't great (like I'd care as a 5 year old), I loved it and now, for the first time in ages have I thought about eating this. I'm sure I haven't been to Friendly's in more than a decade but they're still around.

Eerily perhaps (because my memory is usually akin to poop), I can still remember collecting the Reeses pieces in my metal spoon along with melted ice cream soup as the end of the sundae's life came closer. That's a powerful memory. Really. I can also remember tasting the thick chocolate fudge.

Another memory of a childhood dessert was the tartufo at a nearby Italian restaurant we would go to all the time. I didn't absolutely love tartufos but I liked them more than whatever else the restaurant had for dessert.

...random.

For no reason, here's a page out of my Japanese pancake recipe book:

pancake mountain

Awesome.

Tomorrow I hope to come back with a report of German meat. BE EXCITED! STARTING NOOOW!!! (Now dance! Heehee! ...um.)

• Chippery Potato Chip Cooker: Now that would've made my potato chip making attempt much less disasterous.
• dog town bites: It looks like human food. I guess it's like good quality junk food for pets. SOMEONE EAT THIS! COME ONNN! You know I'd eat it if it weren't wheaty. (I've eaten dog biscuits before...no, not any regular kind you get at the supermarket. They were handmade and very cute. I was curious and they actually tasted really good. DON'T JUDGE MEEE! Anyway, I can't tell you what the brand is since i don't think they have a website but it didn't kill me and I doubt it was any worse than eating Chinese take-out.)
• game inspired cookies: ...whoa. Fright. [via boing boing]

*belly poke*

...uhoh.

*harder belly poke*

...hm.

I ate too much, but you're not surprised, right? Today I skipped lunch because I woke up too late and I wasn't very hungry. By the time dinner came around, I still wasn't very hungry, but I sat in the kitchen with my mum for some fruit, popcorn (finished the bag, uhoh), chocolate, spicy tofu and bamboo, and whatever else there was. We went to the Chinese supermarket today where I impulsively picked up a bag of Vietnamese taro fries after being unable to find the Terra version at any nearby supermarkets. The taro fries are surprisingly addictive despite the lack of overpowering added flavors. It's not the salt, oil, or sugar that's addictive; it's the TARO! LORDY. ARGH! Obviously, it's not something I should buy again (but you can say the same for all snack foods).

*belly poke*

Uugh.

Yesterday I met up at Lederhosen in the West Village with six friends (Grace, Flora, Diana, Allen, Mary, and Carol) for a pseudo-birthday dinner (today's my birthday, but I didn't do anything to celebrate it since I'm packing to move into my dorm tomorrow). I took the subway to 14th Street from the Port Authority terminal since I had a bit of time to kill and figured I could walk a bit to the restaurant. Even though my school is right in the area, I rarely walk (or eat) around there. Lederhosen is on the adorably homey Grove Street surrounded by residential buildings and across from another restaurant I've been meaning to try out, The Pink Tea Cup.

...But yesterday was for GERMAN FOODING. And that we did after being seated in the back dining room of the restaurant, whose walls are decorated with a mural of the Alps and ceiling decked out with some hanging lederhosen and a skylight. Since it was around 6 PM, it wasn't crowded, but by the end of our meal there were more people, mainly couples.

Comfortable seated around the picnic table/bench, we ordered drinks.

"Water."
"Water.
"...Water."
"Ginger ale."
"I'll have water.
"Coke."
"Water."

Lederhosen is a "bierhaus" but we're all underaged or non-drinkers. ;)

Never having eaten German food before, I had no idea what to get. We all stared at the menus for quite a while until I seemed to be the last undecided person. Doh.

Pick something. ANTYHING! IT'S ALL GOOD! ...what's a rollmop?

I ended up getting spherical meat. Acutally, that's just what I called it. In German, it's called Koenigsberger Klopse.

spherical meat, or sphmeat

I liked it, apparent since I cleaned the plate dry, but I think I may have gotten the least interesting dish out of the whole group.

table of food

Doh! That's what I get for choosing something random. Next time I'd try some wursts and appetizers. I couldn't really tell what the gravy tasted like (maybe my tastebuds don't respond to anything that isn't sweet) but the meatballs had a flavor that reminded me of pumpernickel. Or maybe that was something else. I liked the purple cabbage-y stuff since it was sweet (Allen and Diana said they tasted like haw, which I've never had) and the sauerkraut was good, not that I have anything to compare it to since I almost never eat it. Is it supposed to aid digestion? Ish? Or is it just there because...it's there?

I also tried Diana's mackerel dish:

Geraucherte Makrele (sea meat, or smeat)

Smokey and salty, mm! The potatoes had a spicy sauce on it that I liked, although I prefered my mashed potatoes.

Mary didn't finish her sandwich, but she had eaten some of the complimentary bread and she wanted to save some stomach room for black forest cake.

Schwarzwaelder Kirschorte

I'm sure she approved of it since she ate the whole thing. :) The German chocolate cake also got thumbs up from everyone:

Schokoladentorte

Carol and Allen shared most of this, but Carol wanted everyone to try a bit. I ...SAID NOO! NO CAKE! I didn't feel like eating cake or too much wheat, although I ultimately did eat some wheat and fulfilling my sugar quota of the day/week. Carol raved about the caramel topping on the cake though, so I'm sure I'll go back another time for sausages and cake. (But not a sausage-cake. Damn, that just wouldn't be good.)

Some other photos of food from the night:

Chicken Schnitzelsandwich (Mary's meat and wheat, or mwheat)

potato soup with a sausage (Carol's)

Schnitzel a la Holstein (Allen's)

I think it's chicken (Grace's)

After dinner, Grace, Flora, and Mary parted while the rest of us went to Mary's Dairy, where I wanted to get my sugar fixin'. ONLY ME. Everyone else was too full/not craving sugar/lactose intolerant for ice cream, yet I was ready for a barrage of carb and lactose-laden ice cream, toppings, and whipped cream. Then again, I'm always ready for that.

ice cream counter

I've been to Mary's Dairy twice before and even though it's expensive compared to other places, I like going there. I wish they had more non-conventional flavors but you can sample the flavors and the shop is a nice place to hang out in. The first time I went there, the owner (maybe, not sure) gave my friends and I a free dessert! Or more like he gave them a dessert since i was pigging out on ice cream and they were just sitting there (they had already gone to Coldstone right beforehand, haha).

sundae

Two sundaes in a one week period isn't something that happens much in my life. If ever. The sundae consisted of two scoops of mint chip ice cream topped with butterscotch syrup (the hot fudge wasn't hot yet, so I opted out of that), chopped nuts, mini raspberry truffles (a free topping due to the lack of hot fudge) and a mountain of whipped cream. Oh. Yes.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of everything that lurked beneath the whipped cream, but maybe that shows how much I enjoyed it. "Must...stuff self...no...photography..." Not that there isn't photographic evidence of my stuff-age:

Carol & me munching away

I ate the whole thing. YOU ARE NOT SURPRISED! Good. For some reason I couldn't really taste the butterscotch but the resulting whipped cream & butterscotch soup was heavenly. Carol told me to get the raspberry truffle topping, a great choice since the texture went really well with the rest of the sundae. Obviously, it tasted good too, but biting through the slightly crunchy chocolate coating and the soft center was oddly satisfying. It reminded me of when I would put potato chips in my sandwiches in high school so the sandwich would be crunchy. (It's kind of related...maybe.)

I was really stuffed afterwards but not to the point of puking. Woo! Better yet, every burp brought up minty fresh gastro-intestinal fumes. I know you didn't want to know that, but...too late. Beforehand, I was just burping Diana's fish. (You didn't want to know that either.)

Diana and Allen parted ways before Carol and I walked back up to the Port Authority. It's great to have a friend who won't mind walking somewhat randomly with you, even though you're both kinda stuffed. (I should say, it's great to have a friend who won't mind waddling with you.)

Lastly, Carol made me Poofy cookies:

Poofy cookies!!!

Ohhh, adorable! Bite-sized Poofy heads! :)

Thank you to everyone who came out for the fooding. I'm glad I dragged my bum out of NJ for the night. And now...I must go back to packing! Argh!

For some reason at around 1 AM I found myself wanting to eat something. If you read the last entry (scoll down and read it if you haven't already), I already gave the impression that my stomach had inflated. That's not good. A lot of things shouldn't be inflated, stomachs being one of them (unless you're using it as a raft; I saw inflated goat stomachs in a really old documentary once about a tribe of people who needed them to travel across a river...anyway).

So naturally I ate some more of CAROL'S INSANELY GOOD COOKIES (yes, WHEAT) and some addictive taro fries and a burstingly (burstingly!) juicy pluot. And now I feel like I have to stay up for a long time to digest whatever horrible things are moving around in my intestines right now.

*intestine poke*

...*sigh*.

And on that note, I must go to Katsuhama, rice and wheat be damned! And when I say I must go, I mean sometime next week before school starts to bury my sorrows in panko-encrusted meat. If you don't like katsu, you're insane (although liking it doesn't make you non-insane). So if Carol/Allen/other "I want to burrow my sorrows in panko-encrusted meat too" people are free, we should...meat. Meet? Meat?

Okay, time to go back to packing my crap.

My lungs just got wheezy for about a minute. Interesting. I mean, it wasn't totally random; a cough triggered it. I tried to quell (hey, that's a cool word, kinda) it with water but that didn't work. Then again, maybe I should count my blessings that it didn't last long.

...but it shouldn't have lasted at all! Ergh!

I said "screw it" to the no-grain restriction today and ate a little bit too much rice and some of a Korean pancake/pizza thing. I'm sorry I don't know the real names, but all I remember was the English part of the menu: "Korean style thin pancake." And I probably didn't even remember that correctly. I skipped lunch today since I wasn't hungry (and I woke up after 1 PM, *cough*) and had to prepare some junk to move into my dorm, but after dumping my things in my room (literally, I was in and out of there in less than 20 minutes, although it's not that hard when you live in the Financial District and almost NOTHING is there on a Sunday afternoon except 10 other families trying to move in their children) my mum, brother and I hightailed (in Harlem River Drive traffic) to Fort Lee where we picked a random Korean restaurant and stuffed outselves silly.

First off, I asked the waitress (who was insanely perky, in a cute way) what certain items on the menu were that were cryptically untranslated.

*points* "What's this?"
"Oh, baby octopus."
"Oh...um, how about this?"
"...octopus."
"...oh."

Sorry, but I'm not a big fan of octopus. Actally, I'm not a big fan of non-fish seafood, and octopus (if not fried) would be near the bottom of the list of non-fish things I like. I ended up getting a spicy fish soup (Maeun-tang?) after I found out the spicy fish casserole was actually fish eggs (I like fish after it has passed the embryo stage). My mum got jap chae (one of the few things I know; I should learn more Korean food names) and my brother got a ginormous "pizza".

But before we could eat our entrees, we had CRAPLOADS OF APPETIZER THINGS (pan chan?). There were craploads of the little plates for the three of us and we didn't know that they'd refill the plates after we finished them, or else we probably wouldn't have finished any.

I was kinda full before my entree came, but did that stop me from eating most of it? NO! OF COURSE NOT! I'm rarely ever get soup yet I keep forgetting why, until I get the soup; it fills my stomach to insane proportions. Actually, all food does that but liquids make me feel really full, hence the consistently high water level in my drinking glass during meals. Anyone who eats with me knows that I rarely drink any water because 1) for some reason my thirst mechanism doesn't work well (yeah, my hypothalamus is the shit) and 2) liquids fill me up, preventing me from enjoying the non-liquid food, which hopefully most of the food is.

My stone pot was full of red broth brimming (BRIM!...ish!) with chunks of tofu, white fish, scallions, zucchini slices, and something else that may have been green pepper/chile/something spicy and hurt-ful. I ate a lot of rice to offset the spicyness,not that it was unbearable but at one point when I swallowed the soup, some of it lodged into my throat-pipe (you know, that one) and made some burny-feelings in there. Water came to the rescue in that instance. The white fish was a little bony but nothing a little chopstick-poking/indiscreet spit-outing couldn't take care of. It's not a dish I'd get again but I enjoyed it and ate most of it (my exact wording was probably, "Uhhg it's really good, I'm so full but I'm still eating it, WHY, KILL ME"), as I continued to eat at least 20 minutes after my stomach told me I was full.

"Uhhh...mom, I ate too much."

Not that she was surprised. Her jap chae was okay, but softer than I would've liked. Or maybe it's supposed to be like that and I like inauthentically prepared jap chae. WHATEVER. My brother's pizza thing (probably pajun, but larger than the han bat one, which was pretty large) was really good, something I'd want to order for myself.

I waddled out of there. "Uh, can we walk around or something?" My mum replied, "Yeah...to the parking lot." HAHAHA. Damn. *waddle*

The meal was weird in that it was insanely filling but not in a stick-to-your-ribs kind of way. I would've wanted to flop on my bed and loaf (mm...loaf) in that case. The restaurant wasn't very crowded when we went (I forgot the name of it) but the clientele was mainly Korean and no one looked overweight. I thought that maybe we were supposed to share entrees instead of each getting one (that would've been a better idea) but I saw other people eating out of ginormous bowls also. Mmh. Many people were barbecuing beef at their table but we didn't try that since it required two orders. Maybe some other time.

Later I had a snack of fruit, taro fries/chips, and the last of Carol's insanely delicious cookies. Arrgh! The wheat destroys me! I will probably eat some more this week but hopefully I can go back to no-wheat (or rice) for a while after that. I think it helps my asthma, unless it's clearing up just because of the weather. But I'm best off not eating excessive amounts of cakes and cookies, right?

I'LL EAT ICE CREAM! MWAHAHAHAHA!

Cupcake Sudoku is SUCKING MY LIFE AWAY! [via kottke, although I obviously typed in "cupcake" because that's the kind of person I am.]

...actually, I gave up. Because that's also the type of person I am. The smallest bit of pain in my frontal lobe means "STOP, STOPPIT, OW IT HURTS, JESUS." (Yeah, my brain shouts at me. What do you wanna make of it?) I like puzzles but something like sudoku takes guesswork (not that you plot photos randomly, but ...mrrh. MRRH!!!) and I suck at guessing. And non-guessing.

(If anyone cares, my favorite puzzle is Paint By Numbers. There's a Gameboy game and a handheld Tamagotchi game dedicated to it so I guess it's pretty popular in Japan...? I used to be obsessed with Tamagotchis.)

Today I fasted for about 22 hours. It wasn't intentional, rather, that's just how things worked out. ...Because I wasn't very hungry and I didn't have any food, unless you count the wheat crackers my roommate has. After reading about The Amateur Gourmet's 12 Hour Fast, I wondered if it's really weird to fast for 20+ hour stretches. I don't do it a LOT (it's quite apparent if you read this blog) but my mum and brother do it sometimes too. Not because we think, "WE MUST FAST," but because we don't feel like eating or it's not convenient for some reason. A big difference between my mum and brother (as one group) and myself is that while they're rather slim, I'm "average", or fat for an Asian (if I went back to Taiwan I'd stand out because 1) I only speak English and 2) I'm fatter than most of Taiwan). Crap.

Oh well. So how did I break my fast? (Because if I didn't, I'll have fasted for 24 hours by now, which is usually when I start thinking, "Uuhhh foood" and my digestive system punches itself because it's stupid.) CAKE.

some egg cake

AIN'T THAT THE MOST ADORABLE CAKE EVERRR? Diana made me some egg coconut cake for my birthday! It may sound like a somewhat ubiquitous thing to give to someone on her birthday, but to my knowledge Diana has never baked before. I'm sure she has but it's not something she talks about (except for her mum's cooking; her mum did help make the cake, hehe), nor have I ever witnessed the fruits of her labor. So this was EXTRA SPECIAL CAKE.

And it was delicious! Steamed cake (or any steamed wheat-based product) is so nice and soft and smooshy and not crumbly! She took the photo and sent it to me before she came over to initiate the salivation process. Which it did. Our meeting went something like this:

"Here's the cake!"
"OOOOTHANKS!" *munch munch*......"OkayI'mdone."

I guess some more stuff happened, but that's all you need to know. Don't worry, she didn't bring in the ENTIRE cake (she actually made three, as the first two represented various states of "something that kinda resembles edible cake", although I would've eaten those too) so it's not like I actually consumed that much cake.

...I think.

...oh well. So! All I ate today was four cake cubes (and some flax seed oil, *shudders*), but I feel alright. I'll eat real food tomorrow, promise. Oh, and that cake obviously went against my "no wheat" thing, but if someone makes me cake then I can make an exception (this is not an invitation for people to make me desserts, *COUGH*). However, I'm probably going to eat more wheat tomorrow in dumpling skin form (with stuff inside, not just dumpling skins) so let's hope I don't wheeze to death.

My dorm had a new mini-mart-ish food section installed in the front lobby at the end of the last school year, I suppose because there was a demand for it. It sells things like cereal, coffee, some sammiches, milk, maybe ice cream. And I don't know what else. Overall, I'm thinking that I'd have to be really desperate to buy something from there, like "I'm gonna gnaw my arm off now" desperate. The most important thing for me to have is water but I always make sure I have enough.

Not that I'm un-lazy, but sometimes I'm surprised by how lazy people in my dorm are. Once my roommate wanted some basic items to bake something with so she called up a nearby grocery store to see if they'd deliver it. She didn't even want enough items to make the minimum amount required. THE GROCERY STORE IS 5 MINUTES AWAY, if that! It's not like she was sick or in a rush; she just didn't feel like going outside.

...eh, I guess that's okay. I'd rather go out to get my food, but that's because my dislike for using phones outweighs human contact (as in, I'd rather go somewhere to order and pick up my food than do it over the phone, cos I'm WEIRD).

Robert Sietsema reviews Shanghai Cafe, and now I want DUMPLIIINGS. [via A Full Belly] I went to Shanghai Cafe last month (drool) and really liked it, although I've read so-so (or worse) reviews. Admitting that I don't have high standards, I thought everything we ordered was great and we ate almost all of it despite the risk of "exploding stomach syndrome". (What am I talking about? I shared ice cream with a friend after that.) Now I want to go back and try some of the things Robert mentioned. Like eel. Mmm...eel. TASTY!

Wonder Pizza scares me. But maybe it's good? ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA?