The Girl Who Ate Everything

I'm going to start off this entry with bee cake:

bee cake?

I spotted it outside a bakery in Chinatown on Bowery. WOO! ANATOMICALLY INCORRECT BEE CAKE! Incorrect because it has a tongue and it's 200000 times larger than a real bee. And it has "Happy Birthday" coming out of its butt (er, abdomen). And it's wheat-based. That's a giver.

"STOP TALKING ABOUT BEE CAKE, ROBYN!"

Okay. But isn't that fun to say? Bee cake! Bee! Cake. BEECAKE! BEEEECAAAKE! I'll stop now.

Yesterday I ate a lunch of Greek yogurt + accompanying fruity goo at Whole Foods in Union Square. Yum. Sometimes you just want Greek yogurt. I, however, happen to want it more than sometimes. After licking the container dry (not literally, I swear), I went to the Greenmarket for some yummy nectarines and peaches. Each fruit costs about $1! Eek. Well. They are really tasty, that's for sure. I guess there's no point in wasting money on fruit that tastes like crap.

Last night I met up with Diana and Allen for BOWLING! And by bowling, I mean...FOODING! HAHA! I didn't really fool you. Why would be bowl? You can't eat bowling balls (and feel comfortable afterwards, at least).

Sooo, we went to Chef Liu's, a Chinese place that Diana had just discovered and Allen has been going to forever. And me? Being the non-Brooklynite in this trio, I had never been there, which is why I had to go there. But because I'm a moron (and keep in mind I start classes next week with an obviously ill-prepared brain) I took the wrong train for 30 minutes and then decided to backtrack when I should've kept going. We ate about an hour later than expected, but that was okay. I guess. Unless Diana and Allen secretly wanted to kill me.

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xiao long bao

Chef Liu's gives you a tray of xiao long bao (aka soup dumplings) for $2.50. So we got two. :) I think I ate the majority of them because I can't even remember how many I ate. Oops. I have no complaints, although to tell you the truth almost all xiao long bao taste the same to me. I only notice when the sizes are a little different. :P Inside, it looks like...meat:

mm, pork

Which makes sense. We also got vegetable dumplings and seafood dumplings. We really do like our little dumps.

vegetable dumpling innards

seafood dumpling innards

Diana likes seafood dumplings so I don't have much to say about them besides that they were seafood-y. The vegetable dumplings were nice, not the best I've had but better than other ones I've tried before. I think I'm looking for a vegetable dumpling that's bursting at the seams with filling, but I've only seen that at Lin's Dumpling House, which doesn't exist anymore. :(

We also tried a dessert called "red bean pancake" since none of us knew what it was:

red bean pancake

In my opinion, it's not really like a pancake, but more of a fried...thing. A filled fried dough thing. I described it to my mum and she said it was a traditional Chinese dessert. I think it'd be better with chocolate and marshmallows, or just chocolate. Or ice cream. Hell, what am I talking about--fried anything is good.

I guess it's a good thing I don't live near there or I'd go there a lot since it's cheap:

the bill

I'm sure I ate the most. Oops. That would explain why I'm the biggest of the three of us. ;)

For no reason, here's something I spotted at a Chinese grocery store:

Fresh Pie

Not only is it fresh, but it's NOW! NOW! PIE! NOW! Oh my god, this pie is so now. ...I didn't buy it, but I'm curious. Actually, I'm curious about many packaged cookie-esque things from China and beyond. Seriously, I'd like to have some kind of tasting party where we buy loads of this crap (and it's all pretty cheap) and rate everything. In the end, we'd probably find out that nothing is really worth eating. That's probably why there's no Chinese equivalent (to my knowledge) of Japanese Snacks.

Today I mainly ate fruit and dried figs I got from Whole Foods (DAMN, THEY'RE SO GOOD). For dinner, I roamed around Chinatown after I got my hair cut, thinking "Food...where?" I don't think in grammatically correct sentences. Bah.

vegetarian duck

Why is this called vegetarian duck? Or rather, "duck"? It doesn't taste like duck or really look like (vaguely, maybe). If it actually tasted like duck, I wouldn't like it since I don't enjoy eating duck. If you're wondering what it is, it's a gazillion thin layers of tofu roll up into...something. Something duck-esque.

I don't think I'm going to use the word "duck-esque" again.

What does pudding taste like after you put it in an ice cream maker?

Now, get ready for this...

frozen pudding.

I'm sure you're thinking, "Holy crap, no way, that's AMAZIN'!" And when I say I'm sure, what I mean is that you're definitely not thinking that because freezing pudding would obviously end up with something that tastes like frozen pudding. I can't say I was expecting anything else, but for some reason I kind of was. Because I have no life.

Frozen pudding has an odd texture: gloppy and gummy. I know that doesn't make it sound tasty, but it's not that bad. I didn't actually eat the mixed pudding since it was around 1:30AM when I made it (yeah, bad Robyn), but I ate the frozen bits stuck to the bottom and the inside of the ice cream maker container. Those tasted more fudgesicle-esque, if the fudgesicle were in the form of flakes that you could only eat by hacking at with a spoon.

I'll look at the container of frozen pudding in the morning and see if it's a brick (a delicious, chocolate flavored brick).

[update: Yup, I have a chocolate brick now. It's like a ginormous popsicle that I can slice. WOO. I think.]

Yesterday I spent my whole day inside, subsisting on soy-based "duck" substance, nectarines, a peach, and some dried figs. Which was perfectly fine with me, as I like all those foods. What was less fine was spending the whole day inside without any fresh oxygen/human contact/movement. Yeah, how does one spend an entire day inside when one lives in NYC and has infinity plus one things to do (maybe that's part of the problem)? If you're me, it's pathetically easy. I won't go into that though. Because...

Today I ate a bit too much. I feel fine, surprisingly, maybe because my digestive system has broken down and it just hasn't registered in my brain yet. But you wait; I'll go to bed and wake up with my stomach hanging out of my mouth. And I'll be dead because that's not really where your stomach belongs (if you're wondering, it belongs below your spleen, unless that's also hanging out of your mouth).

Sorry, I just painted a not-so-appetizing picture. I'll try to ameliorate that.

columns of cupcakes

I hope that worked.

Back to my story, entitled "This Is What Robyn Did On Saturday." I walked from my dorm to Union Square (about 2 miles) since I really needed the exercise. Would it amuse you to know that I didn't have a cutting board? I didn't. HAHA! Okay, that wasn't very laughter-inducing. I stopped into Crate and Barrel (because it's huge and pretty) and got an orange jelli board. Hopefully it doesn't suck (although it's hard for a cutting board to suck). While continuing my way to Union Square on University Place, I eyed a produce stand and focused on'''

FIGS! Beautiful figs. Sitting there. In little green plastic mesh (I almost said "tree") containers. And at reasonable prices! I was thinking of going to Whole Foods to buy some fruit, but'''

"I'll take two. ...And five pluots."

The guy also gave me three bananas, so I got a lot of nice fruit for $7. The pluots are the yellow (and sometimes reddish) kind, sweet and not so tangy, aka my favorite kind. I still went to Whole Foods to buy some more Greek yogurt, a bottle of olive oil, and a jar of honey, aka "Robyn essentials." ;) I bought the oil so I could cook with something although I forgot to buy salt, so I guess I won't cook much unless I want oily vegetables without any seasoning (er, not really).

Chipotle tacos

I went to Chipotle for dinner with Diana, Allen, and Melanie (by now you probably see a trend in my fooding group, although Melanie is new...but who knows, she might become a regular). None of us had ever been to Chipotle before but we were curious as to what it was like. I was curious at least because it's been getting really popular lately and I learned about it in my Food Management class last year. Also, I rarely ever eat anything resembling Mexican food (I know Chipotle is far from real Mexican food, but it's more Mexican than, uh, eating 10 figs for lunch), so I figured...mmkay!

I was rather disappointed, but maybe that's because I didn't get a ginormous burrito log like Allen had. It's ginormous. Yeah, I just said that but i figured by saying it again there'd be a greater chance of it registering in your head how ginormous it is; very ginormous, so much that I've said the word four times by now. I'm not sure how else to describe it, but we had to laugh while watching Allen eat it because we wondered how it was going to actually fit inside his digestive tract. Or maybe that was me.

Anyhoo, I ended up getting four crispy tacos. I figured, hey, I like crispy things; I put potato chips in my sandwiches! But crispy tacos just don't work. Do they? I mean, would you make a sandwich out of two thin crackers? ...okay, it's not really like that but the chances of the taco splitting down the middle thus resulting in a corn-chip-sammich are high, as are the chances of getting taco filling all over yourself. I should've went with the soft tacos but Melanie and Diana got that; "I'LL BE DIFFERENT! ZOMG!" Oops. I tried one of Melanie's soft tacos and it was nicer than the crispy taco. Doh. Then again, besides the crispy taco-ness, maybe I got sucky fillings. I probably should've said, "Put everything you can fit in it" but instead I got corn salsa, sour cream, and lettuce on top of the beef (which was nice, in that it looked like beef and was moist, although I was hoping it' be spicier).

GIMMEH SPICES! MRRH!

Anyway. Despite that I thought the tacos would be better (to better fit the price, which I think was too much), I ate all of them. And then the weirdest feeling set in...

Holy crap, I don't feel like I ate anything! BUT I DID! Those four tacos! Are gone!

Seriously, I didn't really feel like I had eaten anything. I ate lunch, so it wasn't like my stomach was empty. The question "Where did the tacos go?" is going to keep me up all night.

[update: From Chipotlefan.com I found out that my tacos had about 750 calories. Which isn't...that bad, I suppose. I mean, could've been worse, and by worse I mean a 1168 calorie burrito.]

The four of us went over to Magnolia Bakery, only to be met with a metal curtain of doom in front of the store and a sign saying that they would be closed Labor Day Weekend. Dammit. Other people were equally saddened by the lack of sugar-coma-inducing treats. I thought we could just go down to the Polka Dot Cake studio, but then I thought...

"How about Sugar Sweet Sunshine?"

No one minded. And, holy crap, Diana agreed! (Diana isn't really into desserts and sugar things, but we've been to Sugar Sweet Sunshine a few times together.) It's about a 1.5 mile walk from Magnolia to Sugar Sweet Sunshine, but I didn't tell that to Melanie. (cough) So why do we love Sugar Sweet Sunshine so much? Well, it has this for one thing:

lots of cupcakes

And this:

piggy pudding

But as I'm far from having tried everything in the bakery, I went for something new and equally sugar-coma inducing:

coconut cake

It looks a big splodgey, but I swear on the holy belly of the Happy Sugar Fairy that it's delicious. Also, it's absolutely ginormous. GINORMOUS. You really get your $4.25 worth, in my opinion. Two people should share this, but I ate almost the whole thing by myself because I'm a freakin' pig and no one else wanted to dig in with me. What fools they are...fools! And mean fools, because they knew unaided I' eat the whole thing by myself. They'd probably leave me twitching in a sugar spasm. In a ditch. For no reason.

coconut cake frosting

Ain't that frosting beautifully fluffy? Wouldn't you just want to shove your head in it, as long as you wouldn't suffocate? The three-layer cake was moist and very fresh tasting (I may have gotten the first slice out of the cake, although it probably went quickly as I saw people after me getting the same cake). In between the layers was icing with coconut shavings mixed in and over the cake was that FLUFF, MM. Now, my friends thought the cake was very sweet, perhaps overly so (GASP) but my reaction? Well.

*takes a bite* "...it's not THAAAT sweet. I like it." *eats some more*

It's typical Robyn fashion to refute that something is really sweet. Really sweet things include chocolate bars, Magnolia cupcake frosting, and spoonfuls of honey (which I eat much more often than the average person, or bee perhaps). This cake was sweet, but not in a way that would make you sick. Or rather, make me sick. I don't know why I have a weird sugar tolerance, but I suppose I'm just setting myself up for diabetes. HAR HAR.

Melanie's lemon cupcake was surprisingly very tangy and lemony, like lemonade in cupcake form (because I'm sure you've wondered, "What would this lemonade taste like if it were a cupcake?"). If you like lemon, you have to try it. Hell, I'm not even a big fan of lemons but I want more of it. Next time I go (and that might be next week) I'm just going to get some cupcakes and not kill myself with a stomach sized cake (don't ever get the cake unless you have someone else to share with). Melanie also tried the sexy red velvet cupcake since that's a specialty of the bakery (and I've heard other people say good things about it), but neither of us liked it that much. The icing seemed tasteless and the cake, while good texture-wise, was just...well, normal? Plain? Kinda? LEMON CUPCAKE OOWWWNNZ, MAN.

This entry is way too long.

You might be amazed to know that I almost never get stomach aches. I don't know if that's good or bad, as you can see that I ate a lot of food today, or if not a lot in volume, a lot in calories. Oops.

My new roommate told me a sweet little food related story involving brownies. GATHER �ROUND, my food loving children.

Last year she found freshly baked brownies in her dorm�s kitchen that her roommates had made. Ooh! Brownies! �To eat or not to eat?� Since no one was around, she decided it was best to not eat them. When her roommates came home, she found out that they were pot brownies.

Lesson: do not eat mysterious brownies. Perhaps you should never eat brownies. I know I haven�t had one in a long time (not that I eat brownies very often anyway).

This might be a stupid question, but why is pot usually associated with brownies? Do people make pot cookies? Cake? Muffins? Truffles? Why brownies?

I�ve been eating out too much lately, probably trying to cram in the last days of freedom before school all the possible eating opportunities available. Or I just felt like eating. I think it�s a mix of both.

container of katsu sauce

On Sunday I dragged Melanie out with me to try out Katsuhama, a restaurant that specializes in katsu (or as I like to called it, �FRIED MEAT CUTLETS of TASTINESS�, or as wikipedia says is a mispronunciation/bastardization of �cutlet�) after spending most of the day debating on what to do. Like so:

Mello: Wanna do something?
Me: Sure! What?
Mello: Eat!
Me: YAY EATING! Where?
Mello: �you�re supposed to know that?
Me: �oh. �um. I dunno.
Mello: ROBYN! Choose!
Me: I DUNNO, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP SHOUTING AT ME.

Of course, I always have some possibilities in my mind, but it took a frustratingly long time to figure out what to do, which is why I spent most of my Saturday inside before making the trek towards�Midtown.

Because Mello stole some of my soul when I wasn�t looking, we ended up getting the same dish at Katsuhama: porkloin curry rice.

Me: Wait, you want the curry too?
Mello: Yeah, is that a problem?
Me: I feel like we shouldn�t get the same thing.
Mello: �I�m getting the curry.
Me: So am I.
Mello: Okay.
Me: �maybe I should get something else.
Mello: Okay.
Me: But I like curry.
Mello: JUST GET THE CURRY!

We have great conversations, eh?

Each table comes with a large container of katsu sauce, which neither of us used since we BOTH ordered curry. Just about everything in the restaurant seemed to come with a big pile of shredded cabbage, which I assume is a traditional thing.

katsu curry

The curry smelled delicious, as curry should (and all food, for that matter). It tasted slightly sweet, somewhat spicy, but not too much of either. Basically, it tasted like�curry. Which is should. But I can�t tell you much else. I thought the pork was more tender and with lighter breading than other katsu I�ve had. Overall, I wouldn�t say I was blown away (I don�t think curry is supposed to blow you away) but I thought it was better than other katsu curries I�ve had and would gladly stuff my face with it again (and it�s $10, so I could do it often if I wanted to).

I almost finished it

As you can see, I ate all the meat and basically all the curry. I could�ve finished the rice but figured it was best to leave a smidgen (in this case, a sushi or two�s worth of rice) behind. I can easily eat a lot of rice, even without any seasoning. See why I don�t have a rice cooker? :\

Yesterday I waked from my dorm to the Puma store on West 14th Street. That�s almost 3 miles, if anyone cares. You probably don�t. Well! It was upon Mello�s request, as she wanted shoes. However, the Puma store mainly sells non-shoes, so that didn�t go so well. In the process of walking seemingly forever, I passed by the Jacque Torres Chocolate Haven and Chocolate bar, which were both closed since it was Labor Day. Damn day of labor�damn you. After the failed Puma shoe search, I passed by a certain donut place.

The Donut Pub

It puts a little ray of sunshine in my heart. And if I eat there, it may do worse things to my heart. However, I�m not a donut aficionado, so if I went, I�d spring for something else. Perhaps�

oreo muffins

VOLCANIC MUFFINS! Dude. I need to try these, or some comparable muffin. Who�s with me? You�re smart. DON�T YOU WANT VOLCANIC MUFFINS?!

At some point I met up with Mello, our friend Jamie, and Jamie�s roommate, Hey-Jin. We had no idea where to eat so we ended up taking another person�s recommendation to go to the cheap sushi restaurant, Zen, on St. Mark�s Place. For some reason, all the sushi is 50% off (minimum of $8). It�s probably best if I don�t know why it�s 50% off.

sushi

I was thisclose to getting katsu curry for the second night in a row but I figured I�d try the 50% off sushi. And�I liked it! Didn�t see anything wrong with it, at least. I tried two unconventional rolls; the left one has cooked chicken with some miso-nut sauce and what looks like (I don�t remember what the menu said) cucumber and lettuce while the right roll has imitation crab, asparagus, and avocado topped with eel. I liked the eel one more than the chicken, whose sauce wasn�t as flavorful as I would�ve expected (it was slightly nutty, looked kind of like mayo). I liked the crunch the asparagus gave the roll (also, I like the taste of asparagus) and the avocado was super soft and�well, avocado-ee. Also, I love eel to death. (The death of the eel.) Together, the rolls were $8.50; not bad.

Nothing very exciting has happened today yet. I ate lunch at M2M with Diana and decided to try the eel donburi since I�ve never eaten their hot food before. Sadly, it wasn�t that great. It wasn�t really crappy (because I love all eel) but I wouldn�t want it again. If you go to M2M (on 3rd Ave near 11th Street), stick with the sushi or other cold food items. They had eel kimbob that looked pretty good.

My crappy writing brings you closer to THE LINKS!

Seriously, I need to work on my writing skills, starting now. Or perhaps in 10 minutes. Actually, they're not worthy of being"skills"—maybe "skillz" is better. Has anyone noticed that "skills" is "kills" with an s? KILLING SKILLS? WHAAT?

...wow, I destroyed this post already. Anyhoo, I shall plod on. [recomposes self]

I should have mentioned this earlier, but for Dine & Dish #4, Becks & Posh organized all the Around the World in $40 Days Rachel Ray-esque fooding itineraries. I'm not sure if my entry was the cheapest (in America at least; I can't beat India!), but I'm quite cheap. As I read through the entries, I feel a growing desire to EAT THE ENTIRE WORLD.

That's bad, by the way. Or at least it's not normal. "FEMALE, 20, EATS WORLD!" Yup. Fright.

Sweating is good for you! I agree, somewhat. But considering I'm sweating right now and all I'm doing is sitting in front of my computer, typing (my room isn't that hot) with the teeniest bit of physical exertion and not much brain activity to boot, I'm rather disturbed that my fluids are escaping through my pores. I'm turning into humain au jus, and not a tasty one at that. But perhaps all the sweat is a good thing, figuring I don't become a smelly drippy human feared by all within a 20 foot radius.

Dear Monsanto: once again, you suck! Good job. Tom Philpott of Bitter Greens Journal gets a notice from Monsanto regarding his column called "Roundup, ready", as it sounds too close to Monstanto's Roundup Ready® and weakens the name. I don't deny that Monsanto has the right to take action against Mr. Philpott, but...come on, are you kidding me? This makes them look rather stupid. "ZOMG, this blog used our trademark! Now they must pay! WITH THEIR SOULS!"

The documentary The Future of Food is coming out soon. Let's go!

On a totally unrelated (but you know, still food related) matter, what's up with this Play & Freeze Ice Cream Maker? Toss around a big ball that makes ice cream? Sounds rather neat, figuring it works.

Have you ever gotten a loaf of bread and lamented, "Godammit, why must my bread have crust? WHERE DID MY LIFE GO WRONG?" Well, Hovis has got the wheat product for you: Invisible Crust (and a slick website to go along with it)! Wow, that sounds magical! Come on, the crust is freakin' INVISIBLE! Is your crust invisible? No? Well you can continue to eat your inferior visible-crusted bread or move to England and get some of the invisible stuff. I think that means the crust just never forms, but it sounds like it does form, yet you can't see it. Like it's on some other wavelength that only dogs can see. Or something. Yes. Personally, crust is one of my favorite parts, so this "invisible crust" would not make me happy. I'd demand un-invisible invisible crust.

Celebrities eat food! Hot diggity! I thought they were robots all this time that harnessed the power of space rocks.

Lastly, Manila is freakin' killing me. Go Nuts Donuts are adorable. Yes, we have donuts in NYC, but these look more appealing, for some reason. Has anyone noticed the recent Dunkin' Donuts explosion lately? As in, over this past year? For insance, one opened up in my small hometown and while walking around NYC I've seen "DUNKIN' DONUTS / BASKIN ROBBINS COMING SOON, HIDE YOUR BABIES" signs around (well, they said something like that).

As for something non-link related, today I had my first class of junior year in "beverages", aka "alcoholic drink tasting class". We tried white wine today and let me tell you...I really dislike alcohol. If I ever wondered what something fruit would taste like if it had no sweetness and made me want to retch and smelled like a rotting something or other, I've found it. I know there are sweet wines (as in, not dry; whoa, I learned one new wine terminology) but I doubt I'll like those either. The worst part wasn't swishing the wine in my mouth (while sucking in air for aeration, whoa), but after I spit it out (into my styrofoam cup "spittoon") and having the wine taste linger in my mouth, seemingly forever as it lodged itself into ever crevice of my tasting cavity, a place I like to reserve for food I enjoy, which wine is not. Taste buds wept, tear ducts expelled...well, tears. I don't know what else you expect to come out of them.

Time to read "Wine for Dummies."

I don't think I should eat much tomorrow since I gained weight.

Yeah, good idea.

Yup.

I said this last night at home in NJ to my mum after stuffing myself with some local fruits. And perhaps a stroopwafel. And some chocolate. Of course, if you gain weight it's best to eat less. In general, it's best to eat less.

I'm already getting that crap, don't eat too much or else you'll be a lardo/piss off God/Flying Spaghetti Monster feeling I had last year during school and I haven't even been in school for a week. The anticipation of the foodstuffs that will be thrust upon me in the coming semester is making my blood pressure inch upwards. Of course, if you major in food studies (such as myself), you're going to be presented with food. If for some reason you can't handle that, you probably shouldn't be majoring in food studies. I already went through the "should I change my major?" debate and obviously decided not to.

However, I don't think I've ever been fit to go to school. (I suppose that's a whole other discussion not fit for this blog.) I've never really liked school, so I figured I'd at least choose a major that would be useful and that I may even like. A novel idea, yes?

My Food Production and Management class is going to kill me. (Actually, all my classes will kill me, which I'll explain shortly.) Besides the lecture, there are 40 hours of lab time, organized semi-randomly outside of class time. Here's a schedule for lab time in the department:

schedule of horror

I swear that I stared at it for 30 minutes, trying to figure out what I could or couldn't do based on my existing schedule. (There's another schedule for lab work outside the department, which will be four weeks from 9AM to 1PM on Wednesday mornings in a campus dining hall if I get the shift I asked for.) This wouldn't be that bad if I weren't also trying to get a job, but unlike last year, I actually applied for a job and (get read for this), I ACTUALLY GOT THE JOB.

But. This lab stuff is making schedule work time a tad difficult. And by a tad, I mean "my brain hurts, please shoot me" difficult. Last thing I want to do is annoy my new employer (the job I got in on-campus for the law school's web team) and not be able to work the optimal number of hours.

Of course, there are worse things. Like hurricanes. (But you already know about it, so...)

Actually, it's stupid for me to complain about anything as stupid as food. I know it's stupid, but I can't help it. For instance, I bought a bag of raw cashews on Wednesday from Life Thyme (on 6th Ave near 11th Street), something I haven't done all year. Cashews are my favorite nut and any food that falls under "Robyn's favorite things to ingest" also falls under "Things Robyn shouldn't buy or else she might eat a bucket-load, if the food can be measured in buckets." However, when I don't eat grain products, I tend to replace the void of grains with nuts or seeds, even though they're obviously not the same thing.

The bag I bought weighed around 14 ounces. More than half of it was gone in two days. If you're wondering, that's kind of excessive. Yup. After realizing that there was a mass of digested cashews floating within my body, I had a small freak-out.

What do I do with the rest of the cashews? Eat them? Throw them out? Yes, I should throw them out. But it cost a lot! Okay, maybe I'll keep them. Maybe I can give them to someone else? Who else eats plain raw cashews? Dammit! Okay, I'll just keep them. Or throw them out. Damn, now I really want cashews, crap, no!

When I should be thinking about my homework, I'm actually thinking about cashews or any food that I want to eat but know I shouldn't. You may be relieved to know that I'm not losing any sleep over the "minimal grain ingestion" diet I've put on myself, which isn't much of a diet. I'll allow myself to eat grains (aka SUPER TASTY FOODS) if I'm out with other people but when I'm by myself in my dorm, I shouldn't, hence the steady lonely college student diet of fruit, nuts, and yogurt and honey over the past week. It's delicious, you know. And addictive.

If you're wondering why I won't eat "normal food", just...nah, don't ask. I hope no one thinks I'm destroying my health or anything like that.

Crap, I lost my train of thought.

Oh, I was going to talk about my other classes. There are five of them. Damn, this is going to take forever. In that case, I'll just focus on one class: food and society. So far, so good. One of our projects is to write an essay about a food with nostalgic significance and bring it in or something to that degree, and the big project is an essay about some kind of food and society related topic. Vague? Ye-up. This is when I have to think about a topic, and it can't be "PANCAKES? YES!" Right now I have an idea for something related to the prevalence of characters and mascots in the Japanese food industry, but that might not work if I have to, like, learn Japanese.

Anyway, during our first class one of the things we talked about was how people identify themselves through food. Some of the first ones that popped up were ethnic foods, religious foods, special diets, eating disorders, and a crapload of others that I've already forgotten. A girl said something I found interesting, about how some people identify themselves by how much they can eat. She used a former roommate as an example: she was stick-thin but could eat just about anything in large quantities, and was proud of it. Damn, I wish. I guess I kind of identify with the fact that I can somehow eat lots of sugary things without skewing my mouth into a look of disgust or having my brain transform into cotton candy, but is that something I should be proud of? Probably not.

Lastly, I leave you with this: insane mooncakes that I would really like to eat. I haven't had a mooncake all year. I probably eat a very low quantity of mooncakes for a Chinese person, but I also celebrate a very low number of Chinese holidays (zero) for a Chinese person.

No wait, last-lastly: Shake Shack shakes are thick? Maybe I was unlucky, but the one time I got a concrete (and I don't plan on trying it again), it went from non-soup to soup seemingly more quickly than if I had just stuck it in a microwave. Yes, it was hot that day, but it was also past 9 PM so I doubt the sky was boiling at the time. While the concrete was full of delicious chocolate and brownie chunks, the thin soupy consistency ruined the magic for me. (sigh) Was my experience unique or have other people had soupy concretes also? I know the weather didn't help but it's not like you can get a concrete in the dead of winter, even though that would be the best way for it to stay frozen.

cashews

The cashews are gone. Because...I ate them. (Were you expecting something else?)

What's the moral of this story? Don't buy cashews. I'm not saying you can't buy cashews, but me? I? Er. The purchase of cashews or any other nut or seed should be relegated to times of absolute necessity, although I can't think of a time when one would have to eat nuts or face death. A desert island? One that only has nuts? What kind of island is that?

...SATAN'S PLAYGROUND! I'd eat so many nuts I'd turn into one. Besides that I'd be a really fat, human shaped nut, I'd be mentally nuts also. The nuts, they shall attack all.

Wow, that sounded kind of dramatic. I don't actually like all nuts and seeds. The ones I don't like include pumpkin, macadamia, sunflower, brazil, and pea (although that's not really a nut). The ones I like the most include cashews, almonds, and pecans. I like the taste of hazelnuts but not the nut itself as much, although I have cracked open hazelnuts (which is a real bitch; you should try it!) and toasted em for some deliciously unseasoned hazelnut goodness.

My nut obsession began when I decided to eat as high of a percentage of raw food as I could stand. I'm aware that some nuts aren't truly raw since heat is required in processing them, and are labeled raw to separate them from roasted nuts, but I ate those anyway. (How picky can one get? You can buy all your nuts from Nature's First Law to ensure that they're TRULY RAW, ZOMG!!!)

Nuts became my grain replacement. You've probably noticed that my relationship with grain products (until recently) was akin to that of an alcoholic and ...um, alcohol. Sure, it wasn't as bad as that but I've definitely had issues. If you've new to my blog, I reduced my wheat/grain consumption (for a Chinese person, I probably have a low rate of rice consumption) to see if that would ease my asthma. My asthma has been much better since then, although I can't say for sure that grain caused it. Perhaps excessive bread and cake consumption was a problem, *cough*. Interestingly, the biggest asthma trigger I've come across lately is talking to my roommate for an extended period of time. No, I don't have any problems with my roommate, nor is she a source of pollen, but I guess asthma can tell me things (like sources of stress) that I wouldn't otherwise identify. Because I'm a moron!

First off, check out the photography on this page: minimiam. For a non-flash look, go to design*sponge. I love these cr�me br�l�e men (because I love cr�me br�l�e).

Want some wine with your fast food? As someone who doesn't particularly like wine or fast food, this doesn't help me much. But it's interesting.

Have you ever thought, "I wish there were a restaurant dedicated to SPAM!" I didn't think so. It's too late, because the horror is real and it comes weilding nefariously puzzling cream sticks (spam and cheese): SPAM CAFE. Manila's where it's at when it comes to Spam, apparently.

So, onto the "things Robyn digested" part of this post (prepare to be horrified). On Saturday I went to Shopsin's with Amy and Allen. Although Amy thought she knew what she wanted beforehand, she changed her mind upon actually looking at a real life menu. She ended up getting hush puppies and a fluffernutella crepe. After much intense thought that would've been better used on something else (like homework), I decided on a fluff and nutella French toast sandwich (the other choice being some kind of French toast pile) and Allen got blueberry French toast. Observe:

hush puppies

blueberry French toast

French toast sammich

fluffernutella crepe

So for my first meal of the day I had pieces of bread fried in egg filled with an oozing marshmallow-esque substance and chocolate hazelnut spread. If it makes you feel any better, I at least walked to Shopsin's from my dorm, which took about 35 minutes. It probably burned one bite of the sandwich off. And if you're wondering what the sandwich tasted like, surely you could figure that out. How could it NOT taste good? I found no fault with the sugar content, of course. ;)

Allen finished his French toast and Amy ate most of her crepe (remember, she also had the hush puppies). In true Robyn fashion, I ate the part of her crepe she couldn't finish. Of course, I finished my sandwich. Even though it was probably super-dense with calories, volume-wise it wasn't especially filling.

For the price, you would be better off going to a different restaurant. (Our final bill was around $42 and my sandwich was $11.) But you go to Shopsin's so you have the opportunity to indulge in a French toast sandwich amidst a...uniquely decorated environment (random retro toys, weird art hanging on the walls, a shelf full of candy). Our waiters were affable; upon seeing Allen and I photographing our food, the guy told us to stop playing with our food. ;D I accidentally dropped my knife on the floor (not that you'd do it purposely) and the female waitress picked it up and gave me a new knife just as I realized I dropped it. I couldn't tell if they were family members but my guess is that they were?

My overall impression is that the food isn't great or bad, and it's kind of expensive, but it's a cute place and the menu begs to be explored. I'd go again this year (once, haha) so I can try something else.

That was lunch. More fooding happened after that. MORE. YEAH. You didn't think it would end there, right? Good.

Allen and I trotted off to Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven since it was nearby. As I easily navigated the streets, Allen seemed somewhat aghast that I just knew where places were. ;) Actually, I don't know the west side area well at all, but all you need to know is that there's a giant chocolate shop on Hudson Street. There are only so many chocolate shops, yes? As for how I find food related places, I usually search for them online, but in some cases (like Myers of Keswick) I happen to pass by and keep track of them. So note to self: must check out Myers of Keswick at the risk of buying biscuits.

But chocolate. Well. I wasn't in the mood to get anything (just wanted to bring Allen there) but after watching a video about how chocolate is made, conveniently forever looping inside the store to make people crave chocolate (as though the sight and smell of it isn't enough), we split a milk chocolate bar with hazelnuts. Mmmmm...good stuff if you like milk chocolate (I like most chocolate, even white). Smooth, pretty sweet but not overly so, and lumpy with large hazelnut pieces. MM, LUMPY!

And then off to the Donut Pub. Because you know, after you eat chocolate, you want...donuts?

oreo muffin

Not being a big donut fan, I went for the oreo muffin instead. I am a muffin person, yesm. As usual, the Donut Pub failed to disappoint in its line of non-donut sweet wheat-filled items. Their muffins are easily one of my favorite muffins in NYC, the other one (ONE) being the muffins from Bueno Pane (or something like that) at the Union Square Greenmarket. It's just my preference, but I like muffins that are soft, not crumbly, and somewhat airy (not pound cake-esque). I've had many not very soft muffins or one that just crumbled into muffin dust (sob) but after touching the Donut Pub's muffin and doing a quick "squishability test" (rating: highly favorable), I knew it was a good one.

Alas, a pause occured in the fooding. Amazing, eh? I got some fruit from the greenmarket and parted with Allen in order to read...stuff. For school. Oh yeah, school, almost forgot about that. Not long after reading some of my cookbook did I get a call from Carol to do stuff, "stuff" most likely involving food, in this case of cow origin.

ice cream

Amazingly, I never knew there was an Uncle Louie G on MacDougal Street. I haven't walked on that street very often but I HAVE walked on it and to completely overlook an ice cream parlor is almost sacrilegious. We chose to walk down the street since it was crowded (yes, that sounds illogical)...due to a commercial shoot. I've never been to Uncle Louie G before and even though Carol is somewhat lactose intolerant, she risked an unhappy digestive tract to assist my ice cream tasting endeavor.

So...the ice cream! The top is birthday cake and the bottom is black raspberry. Quite different flavors, but I can't say which one I liked more since they were both great (figuring you like cake and raspberry). Actually, I don't even like raspberries that much, which made me more surprised that I liked the ice cream. Carol and I shared the regular sized portion for $3.

As for whether this ice cream is good quality, well...I liked it. After reading up about ice cream, I've found that my tastes may be labeled as plebeian. For whatever reason, I don't like super smooth ice cream/gelato that has no bite (I'd say Cones is an example of that, and the gelato in Ferrara), so while a lot of people probably hate stuff like Coldstone, I don't have much of a problem with it (besides that it's expensive). I do have to try Il Laboratorio del Gelato though.

That was the end of my "day of eating out". I went to Urban Outfitters to look for a pair of pants, which wasn't very fun since shopping for clothes when you're semi-fat is not the most uplifting activity. Gee, could that have had anything to do with the French toast sammich and the muffin and the ice cream and EVERYTHING I EAT EVERY DAY, HOLY CRAP THIS SENTENCE SUCKS KILL IT?

Yeah.

I need a pair of jeans (I didn't say "new" pair because at the moment, I don't have a pair of jeans...that fits). I should probably lose weight first but that doesn't seem reasonable at the moment. Food studies major speaking, remember? I have my first cooking session on Wednesday. Oh. Crap.

So many tarts, so little time...

I had my first cooking class today and it went better than I thought it would. However, keep in mind that I thought I'd somehow be responsible for the explosion of a stove or a whole baking pan of burnt rustic tarts. And for some reason, the tarts would also explode. Then Satan would appear and say, "Whoa, this place looks worse than Hell," and laugh at me. I'd also have a stick of butter in my hair for some reason, probably from the explosion...

Each group in my class (called "advanced foods"; what a misnomer, or else I'd surely fail with a D, meaning "DOOMED") had to make some rustic tarts (which have a French name that I can't remember right now) and improvise stuff made of phyllo dough. I got to chop up some pears and wrap them in dough. YES! I'M...SO NOT SKILLED, but that's alright. Never having worked with phyllo before, it was interesting to handle. You take the thinner-than-paper-thin sheets, brush them with butter so they look like transluscent wrappers than once held deep fried fast food, repeat with at least one other layer, and then do stuff, which in my case meant make a bunch of triangle pounches with chopped pears (we had lots of pears) and sugar. Not very creative, but kind of fun, like arts and crafts using phyllo dough, sugar, and anything else lying around in the kitchen (some other groups used chocolate and nuts).

rustic pear tart, made by my group

another group's tarts

The rustic tarts, which were like pizzas made of pastry dough and filled with fruit, with the crust folded over (check out Honey's beautiful strawberry and pear tart), were very easy to make! I suck at making pie-esque dough, but this one came out alright, even though it was dry at first. If I actually made these at home, I don't think I'd make much else. :O Hence, I won't. We made one large pear tart and two smaller ones. They didn't come out amazingly delicious (we tossed the pears with vanilla beans, sugar, and lemon juice, but I don't think we used enough since you couldn't taste any of the flavors that well), but they were good enough so that I stuffed myself with a lot of them.

...actually, I stuffed myself with a crapload of tart-esque things. You don't want to know. But I'll tell you anyway, of course.

leftovers

After all the groups presented their various tarts and phyllo creations, we got to eat them. (People were apprehensive until the teacher insisted we dig in. I was just staring blankly at the legion of golden crusted pastries laid before me.) I didn't get to eat too much at first since I had to sweep up the floor, but after I was done sweeping and most people had left, I saw the MOUNTAIN OF LEFTOVER PASTRIES! Yes. Mountain. A really flat mountain, but still a good amount of food that could feed a group of hungry college students. Something inside me wimpered.

Robyn, you must give these pastries a home. In your belly, preferably.

Shall do! Conveniently, I forgot about that "no grain" policy I made up (if you must know, I'm a little wheezy right now, *sigh*) in lieu of eating something I actually made, somewhat. In typical Robyn fashion, I ended up taking a lot of the extras home, although there were still loads of leftovers that are now probably sitting in a garbage bin somewhere (THE HORROR!). Since I was the last person in the kitchen packing my chef things (and, you know...leftovers), I chatted with my teacher and informed her of my non-cooking abilities. She's patient, funny, helpful, and all around a great teacher. Hopefully she'll have pity on me and I won't fail. ;)

I didn't eat all of these, honest!

Oh yeah, I gorged on the leftovers. And I mean...gorged. One moment I'd be holding a piece of blueberry tart in my hand (the tart shivering in its dough, knowing very well of its impending doom) and a minute later, a chewed up tart bolus would be travelling down my esophagus and mingling with my digestive juices in a fruit-filled party of low-pH substances (complete with laser lights; the acid party does not disappoint). It was really good, until I became semi-full. But then I'd wait, ye know, 5 minutes and go at it again.

It's a good thing I didn't dump all the extra tarts and phyllo pastries in my bag or else I wouldn't even be able to move right now. My bag would also be stained with blueberry juices. Not a pretty sight.

So today was "the gorging of the tarts". Yesterday was "the gorging of the fruits and the yogurt and panchan", which was much less fun than the tart-gorging. I don't know what was wrong with me yesterday but I kept feeling hungry. I have a feeling it has to do with the lack of starchy substances (aka "the substance that makes people happy and is conveniently legal"), but I didn't have any on me at the time. No grains, no tubers. Doh. For dinner yesterday I think I ate two nectarines, a bunch of grapes, a 7 ounce container of Greek yogurt with some honey, some sesame seeds and honey (at first I was just eating sesame seeds with a spoon, but the honey made it more palatable), a small container of spicy marinated cucumber, and another container of seasoned mung bean sprouts, both from M2M (I know "container" isn't very specific, but they're the small ones...er, pretend you know what I'm talking about). Try to imagine that whole list of food I just gave you in one huge bowl; STOMACHS AREN'T EVEN THAT LARGE! What the hell? I think it took me more than two hours to eat all that food, just munchin' along, increasing my girth, and ignoring the sin of gluttony because I'm not religious.

If you're wondering, yesterday I had a peach and a nectarine for breakfast and some bread for lunch. And by some bread, I mean less than a slice; it was leftover from my friend's sandwich that she got from Starbucks. HAHAHA. That's so wrong. In case you haven't caught on yet, I'm a good example of what is known as "pathetic".

Actually, I didn't really ignore the sin of gluttony. By the end of yesterday, I felt bad about my eating habits and wondered if the satiety buzzer in my brain had gotten smashed by some disgruntled tumor begat by a muffin. "Why did I eat all that food? Why didn't I feel satisfied? WHY IS YOGURT SOOO GOOOD?" I just need to teach myself to eat less, obviously, but it's easier said than done. I couldn't tell you how many people have asked, "Why don't you eat less food?" No, really? Holy crap, I didn't know that! Thank you, for you truly have inspired me to try that "eating less" thing RIGHT NOW.

...AFTER I FINISH THIS 9" PIE TOPPED WITH WHIPPED CREAM. (Just kidding, I've never eaten an entire pie. But I probably could.)

I have no idea what I'm going to eat tomorrow, but I should keep it non-wheaty and non-girth-increasing. But I know I'm going to break those rules because I still have a tart left in the fridge (rather amazing I didn't eat it yet, but I did ingest 34020094.123 calories in buttery crust today).

On a non-gorging matter, as anyone noticed my lack of food descriptions? As in, how things taste and whatnot? People have suggested that I go into some kind of food critic writing field (because I have absolutely no idea what I'd do with a B.S. in food studies and writing seems like THE FUN) but it's rather difficult for someone who doesn't even describe food beyond, "It was good; give me more." While I like reading other people's descriptions of food, I'm not big on actually writing them. Also, you can't be a critic if you like almost everything, figuring the ingredients aren't unpronouncable chemicals and are non-toxic beyond a doubt.

I'm mega-tired, but I found that if I don't update this site frequently, I start forgetting EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENS IN MY LIFE. Everything. My memory is kind of...on the lower end of "craptastic".

I'll start backwards from today (technically yesterday; damn, I want sleep now). While walking to the NYU area to meet up with Allen for lunch, I passed by Chinatown and its overflow of mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival that I've somehow managed to completely ignore over the past 20 years of me being Chinese, two of those years spend in Taiwan among many other Chinese people. Uh. Umm. Well, I must've known about the festival but my family didn't celebrate it. I can't recall eating mooncakes due to this holiday, at least.

mooncakes from Fay Da Bakery

I asked my mum about the holiday and she said that when she was growing up, her family had too many mooncakes as the result of too much gift giving, the gift always being the same (...MOONCAKES). She isn't particularly fond of mooncakes. The general impression I've gotten from my Chinese friends is that...they just have too many mooncakes, and mooncakes aren't one of those things you want a freezer full of (unlike ice cream...you would want a freezer full of ice cream).

Further up, I bumped into the Feast of San Gennaro. Actually, I guess I didn't bump into it as much as become engulfed (eh, it is a feast) by the armies of food stands lining Mulberry Street hawking fried anything and scary meats.

coiled meat!

fried stuff

one display of innumerable funnel cakes

Interesting. SO much food, yet nothing I'd really want to eat. Except this, maybe:

"I'm sick of all this fried seafood."

And of course, I love funnel cakes as much as the next person (don't tell me you don't like funnel cakes), but I can't eat one of those by myself. Or I shouldn't. *cough*

Allen and I met up at Veselka, a 24 hour diner-ish Ukranian restaurant, except it's much nicer than a diner. I've been there once before but I heard their pancakes were good. Of course, things like pancakes must be investigated. By my stomach.

banana pancakes

Thumbs up. I can't think of anything wrong with these pancakes; they were fluffy, not over or under-done, and had a good amount of bananas in them. And I ate the whole stack, so I guess that tells you something ("something" being that I really liked them, in addition to that I'm a glutton)

One problem with pancakes that I always know about yet doesn't keep me from ordering yet even MORE pancakes is that while they taste delicious at first, your stomach grows tired of them rather quickly. Initially, I always dig into my pancake stack wide-eyed, fork and knife in the cutting position, mnuth ready to digest and be stuffed with soft, warm, maple syrup-soaked wheat patties (I have a friend who calls pancakes "sponge circles", which also works) but by the end I'm thinking, "Oh jesus, so much pancake." In my opinion, the three-pancake stack wasn't a buttload (Allen's retort: "I though it was a lot"), say, maybe half of what I'd get at the Ridgewood Country Pancake House, but by the third pancake I was pretty full.

I finished it anyway. Haha. I just felt really stuffed. Before I ordered, I wanted to get a dessert of banana cream pie with the pancakes. Thank god I didn't do that.

waffle

Allen finished his waffle, so that gets another thumbs up. He said it was crispy.

...This is random, but has anyone tried to French toast-ify a waffle? Would that work? Hm.

Those of you in NYC know that the weather was complete suckage. I felt like the sweaty, wet sock of someone who had been working in a hot field for 10 hours under a flaming ball of gas (aka, The Sun). I don't actually know what the sweaty, wet sock of such a person feels like, but I imagine it's pretty bad. What does such weather call for?

mmmm, deliciousness

Il Laboratorio del Gelato! I had never been there (*gasp*) but Allen had told me enough things about it to make me really want to go there. So, after stuffing ourselves with circular wheat-based products accompanied by syrup and butter...

Me: Wanna go to Il Laboratorio del Gelato (in real life, I probably said "Wanna go to Il Laboraah...the ice cream place?")
Allen: Sure!

Damn, that was easy. It's really good to hang out with people who like to eat. Unless you're obese. :(

flavors

There aren't many flavors out at one time, but they rotate them on some kind of regular basis, I assume.

TIME FOR ICE CREAM

We both got medium sized cups, which cost $4.25 each. It's not a bad price at all considering how dense the ice cream is. You can get three flavors with a medium (two with small) and while I initially thought I'd want to try three, I changed my mind, figuring I could focus better on just two (because my brain can't handle that many stimuli, HAR HAR). Allen got pumpkin and maple walnut while I got pumpkin and vanilla.

Allen told me that once you eat Il Lab's ice cream, you don't want to eat any other ice cream. And...he was right. One thing he wasn't right about was that the vanilla ice cream would burn my throat (technically he didn't say it would burn mine, but it burned his and I was hoping for some burning because that would've been interesting, and I like saying "burning"). But back to the greatness of the ice cream. ...it's really good.

Okay, I can afford to be more specific here. For one thing, it's dense. The cups don't look very large but when you hold a full one in your hand, the density is apparent and you realize that $4.25 is a good price, especially considering how much ice cream costs in most shops. Another thing is that the ice cream is solid (I know, I just said it was dense, but...er); you can bite into it. Of course, you can bite into all ice cream but in comparison to ice cream from Cones (which was super-soft/melty and solid at the same time in a way I can't really explain), this was a lot more appealing to me texture-wise. And the taste? Well. No throat burning, but it was probably the best vanilla ice cream I've ever had, and DEFINITELY the best pumpkin ice cream. While it shouldn't be surprising, the pumpkin ice cream really tasted like pumpkin (I like to be stupidly obvious). I was taken aback by how much it tasted like squash; basically, it wasn't anything like other pumpkin-flavored dessert I've had, which probably taste more like pumpkin spices than pumpkin itself.

Good lord, I want more. While I'm sure I'll want some wacky ice cream flavors full of nuts and goo every now and then, for basic unafulterated ice cream, I can't imagine going anywhere else. It wouldn't be worth it.

(wants ice cream)

So that was my whole afternoon, pretty much. My plans to actually do some homework were thwarted by much walking and ice cream eating. Which is awesome.

...damn, I'm going to fail.

(looks at watch)

...damn, I'm not going to be very well rested.

Sometimes food seems nothing but a problem; it consumes me, an endless source of pleasure and frustration, and indeed pain. Its endlessness is the problem - food is about boundaries, maps of the body, the outlines of social give and take. I wonder if I'll ever get into shape. Meanwhile, I love shopping for food; love finding and learning about new types of pasta, or cheeses; love the balancing act of cooking; and most of all, inexhaustively love eating.

- Susan Ardill, Turning the Tables

I got this passage out of Consuming Geographies by David Bell & Gill Valentine, a book for my "Essentials of Cusine" class. The name of my class is misleading since it probably sounds more like a cooking class than one that has to do with food theory. My teacher said if there were less bureaucracy to changing the name of a class, she'd call it "The Evolution of Cuisine".

I though that passage reflected my relationship with food pretty well, or at least more eloquently, as I'm more likely to say something along the lines of, "AHRRAGHR FOOD DOOM DOOM, EVIL, WHYYY" when frustrated with gluttonous occurences such as eating 500 or more calories of something delicious (like I'd want something that isn't delicious) in the same amount of time it takes the average person to exhale. Once. Instead of saying something like "I inexhaustively love cooking," I'd probably say, "Mmmm fooood mmmmm fooooood mrmaraah foood *sob*!" and watch as everyone within ear shot backs away, confusedly.

Today was one of those gluttonous days. It wasn't as indulgent as yesterday; I just happened to eat more than I should've. (Which happens a lot.)

Around 11 AM, not long after waking up (that's the latest I've gotten to sleep in all week; I like my sleep!), I ate a peach and the last fourth of the ginormous chocolate rice krispie treat I got from Veselka. I rarely eat rice krispie treats (that was probably the first one I've had in more than three years) but Veselka's looked too good to pass up (and most bakeries don't have rice krispie treats). Although I would've liked it to be sweeter and have more chocolate, it was pretty good. I mean, I did eat the whole thing, which was the size of a brick. (Now I'm imagining a house built with bricks of rice krispie treats...mmm, yum.) Also, I like rice krispie treats that are ...um, crispier, as in drier and not the kind that you can pull apart with little piece of puffed rice holding onto marshmallow strands for dear life, like the one from Veselka. But both kinds are good.

vegetable dumplings

I guess that was a pre-lunch snack. Oops. I ended up eating lunch at New Wonton Garden on Mott Street with Diana before going to the Res Fest. We almost ordered the same thing; Diana got vegetable dumplings in soup and I got the same dumplings in soup with Shanghai noodles. Not knowing what Shanghai noodles were, I figured that any noodle was good. And it was good (they're thick wheat noodles, kinda like udon), although I couldn't finish all the noodles. There's not much to complain about New Wonton Garden besides the same crampness and lack of decor you'd find at just about any restaurant in Chinatown; the food's really cheap, really fast, and always good. ("Always" out of the four times I've been there, at least.) Together, our food cost about
$9.

I didn't eat this, but I would've liked to!

We smushed our way through the Mid-Autumn Festival crowd to Fay Da Bakery where Diana wanted some milk tea (she seriously needs to find a place that only gives shots of tea since she takes about 5 sips before feeling satisfied; damn, I need that ability). I though about getting a mooncake and was about to leave empty handed until I spotted some white mooncakes in the main display case. Out of the three flavors, I chose "Mango & Mung Bean Snowy Moon Cake", handing over $6.25 for a pack of two, probably the most money I'll ever spend in a Chinese bakery. Admittedly, I don't know how much effort it takes to make a snowy mooncake, but it seemed pretty expensive. ...but I really shouldn't say anything considering how much money I spend on food.

snowy mooncake

mooncake innards (mung bean and mango)

Having no idea what a snowy mooncake tasted like, the first thought that came to mind was a very thin-skinned daifuku. The flavor wasn't very...well, flavorful, but I liked the texture. It was extremely soft and tasted fresh, not that I know what the taste of a fresh mooncake actually is. But...THAT'S MY DESCRIPTION.

And thus ended my afternoon of foods. What happened later? Um.

...on Friday I bought some kale from the Union Square Greenmarket with the intention of actually cooking, and beyond that first hurdle, cooking something pseudo-healthy. For whatever reason (perhaps from not cooking the kale long enough), I ended up with kale that tasted too kale-y. Obviously, kale isn't something that is inherently tasty, but I did cook it with salt and oil and a sprinkling of sesame seeds, all of which fell under the bitter sword/automatic machine gun weilded by THE KALE. My first thought after finish my bowl of kale (of course, I ate the whole thing) was, "Damn, I don't want to do that again."

So tonight, I cooked the other half of the bunch of kale. It came out better than before since I semi-steamed it before sauteing it (the first time, I just sauteed it). Of course, it didn't really taste good, it just came out more palatable. A passage about flavor, courtesy of Elizabeth Rozin in The Structure of Cuisine:

The definition that flavoring provides is both inclusionary and exclusionary; it imparts a culinary identification and a sense of familiarity for those individuals who create and share in the tradition, while providing as well a defining marker for those outside the group who do not participate in it or who do so only occasionally. ...Cover any food, no matter what, with a sauce made of tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and herbs, and we identify it as Italian; what is more, Italians will identify it as Italian.

I'm not going to disagree with Rozin, but in my head, flavoring...makes many foods that would be otherwise non-palatable palatable. Yes, I'm a master of the obvious. Of course I like certain flavors (curry, curry, curry!) but seasonings make us eat stuff that we may not otherwise want to eat. And maybe we shouldn't be eating certain things. Many people wouldn't eat plain spaghetti if it weren't seasoned with something (admittedly, I probably would eat plain, unseasoned spaghetti), so maybe it's not something we should be eating.

...err, nevermind. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'll still eat noodle-y things, of course.

miniature mooncake

Oh, I'm not done yet. Before the kale, I ate a peach, and after the kale I ate the other half of a container of Greek yogurt I had opened a few days ago, along with some honey. After that, I ate three miniature mooncakes. Yes, MINIATURE, as in two inches in diameter. I know three is still excessive, but all three were different and by now you shouldn't be surprised by my eating habits. The first one was my favorite and made of lotus seed paste, I THINK.. The second was black bean, which I liked, but not as much as the first. And the third...was just odd. It almost tasted savory, but I knew it wasn't. Um. Maybe that was wintermelon? Not good, man, not good. For some reason, I became slightly feverish after finishing that last mooncake. Interesting? My body immediately rejected it? Lovely. DAMN YOU, LAST MOONCAKE...OF DOOM.

AND...that concludes my day of eating. Thank god.

---

Re: Amy's commen on the previous entry: Il Laboratorio del Gelato seems to use "gelato" and "ice cream" interchangably. I know they're not the same thing, but...mrrh? What do they sell?

Eh. There are worse things than cooking. But...

First off, check out the latest strip from kawaii not: milk or yogurt? Another good food one is the can of mystery and pancakes vs. waffles.

Also, check out these perfect looking pancakes. Wow.

This morning I went to the Union Square Greenmarket at around 8:30 AM. I don't usually go food shopping that early but I was in the area and I had time. One large vendor at the north end had crates overflowing with white peaches and nectarines, plump, almost exploding (although exploding fruit would be kind of bad, and put a damper on the fruit-buying experience). I bought four of each and ended up eating two white peaches for lunch while sitting in Washington Square Park. They were perfect.

And then it was off to my Essentials of Cuisine class where I unsurprisingly had nothing to offer to the discussion about...food. I never do. (sigh) It's a wonder I've gotten to my junior year of college without having participated in class discussion for, say, my whole life. You'd think with food I could, but nope. I can't even discuss food in class.

I went back to Union Square to pick up some food from Whole Foods, mainly Greek yogurt. I assumed that a larger container of yogurt would cost less per ounce, but it doesn't. Hm. I don't know if that's just Whole Foods, but their small container of Greek yogurt are cheaper than other places I've been to ($1.70 versus $2). Due to lack of math skills, I stood in front of the dairy case for way too long, trying to calculate the price per ounce in my head (brains might be better than calculators but damn, I can't do long division).

I also bought a bottle of Nama Shoyu (raw soy sauce) since I didn't have any soy sauce. As to why I bought raw soy sauce as opposed to regular, I don't know (it ends up getting cooked anyway...I seemed to have forgotten that at the time). For some reason I didn't see the price when I bought it; when I finally got home, I found out it was $10.50. Uh. Crap. It's not much considering that the bottle will probably last me a year or more (I don't use soy sauce much) but that's a lot for soy sauce.

I gotta stop buying food and eating so much.

Even though I just decided that I have to cut down my grain consumption, I completely pigged out on bread today. Yes, my head was full of much arghy-ness, but my stomach was also going "Uhhh you like bread and you haven't eaten dinner and eat the bread, EAT IT." No, I wasn't in a bakery--rather, I was stuck in the nutrition department's kitchen, completing four of 16 required lab hours. I didn't know what I was expected to do during the lab but I soon found out that I and my three classmates were to be used as slaves in food prep for the nutrition department's catered events.

Okay, not slaves. We weren't whipped and forced to butter phyllo pastry and chop swiss chard, but we didn't have much of a choice either. It wasn't torturous, but the four hours, which initially seemed like enough time, soon felt like not enough time, "soon" being "three quick hours later after chopping stuff and getting butter all over my hands and forgetting to hydrate myself". Oops. Our lab wasn't meant to be hectic since eight people were technically supposed to show up, but there were only four of us. Argh...well. It was alright.

Oh, as for the bread, one of the recipes called for bread crumbs. What did we have to make bread crumbs with? A few large boule loaves of bread from Amy's Bread. Whoa. Yes, the department got Amy's Bread to make BREADCRUMBS from. Pretty awesome, as we were left with a few naked loaves of bread after the crusts were removed for the breadcrumbs. One of my classmates and I visited the bag of bread innards quite frequently...*cough*.

I'll probably get wheezy tonight. We'll see. (sigh)

So. Cooking. Not so fun. Baking? More fun. I didn't get to bake though; my main duties as serf to the nutrition department was sauteing swiss chard, grating craploads of parmesan cheese, and butterling a gazillion sheets of phyllo dough to make swiss chard parmesan tartlets. I hope that the people being catered to eat every tartlet because I SURE DIDN'T GET TO EAT ANY.

...actually, I probably wouldn't like them. I tried the filling and it was too parmesan-y for my tastes.

So, what was good? The freshly baked shortbread cookies! You can't go wrong with cookies of the freshly baked, super buttery variety. These were the last things we had to finish during our lab and I got to eat a too-thin "mess up" cookie. ;) We all also got to try a regular cookie, a nice treat for our work.

...time for sleep.

Dim Sum and Then Some:

Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York City
Tuesday, October 25, 2005, 6:30-8:30pm

Panelists:
Jean-Georges Vongerichten , Owner, 66, Jean-Georges and Spice Market
Phil Suarez, Owner, Suarez Restaurant Group LLC
Patricia Yeo, Owner, Sapa Restaurant
Handel Lee, Owner, Three-on-the-Bund (Shanghai)
Michael Tong, Owner, Shun Lee
Harley Spiller, Collector of Chinese menus

Moderator: Mimi Sheraton, Food Writer

Program Synopsis:
Chinese food was the first Asian cuisine to become well known to mainstream America, first along the coasts and then in the heartland. Join culinary experts for a discussion of �Why Chinese Food?� moderated by renowned food writer Mimi Sheraton. Panelists will discuss the evolution of Chinese cuisine from Chop Suey joints to high-end cuisine, the shift to pan-Asian themes and other influences in Chinese cuisine and how current western interpretations of Chinese food are impacting contemporary cuisine in China. Mr. Spiller�s historical collection of Chinese menus will be displayed to underscore the dramatic changes that have occurred over time in Chinese cuisine, and the evening will be punctuated by a Dim Sum reception.

Asia Society has a website devoted to Asian food, restaurants, cooking schools and ingredients. Please see www.AsiaFood.org for more information.

REGISTRATION FORM:
To register (credit card orders only), please print and fill out this registration form. Fax to 212-517-8315. You may also contact the Asia Society Box Office by phone at 212-517-2742, M-F 10am to 5pm, or email boxoffice@asiasoc.org. Please register by noon October 24.

I ate a lot. But I'll be more specific than that.

the brioches, they want to be eaten

Even though I wasn't planning to eat anything before my cooking class yesterday since I would inevitably stuff myself with the buffet of meat and vegetables to be presented at the end of class, a reader informed me of Lafayette Bakery, situated a little too close to NYU on Greenwich Ave. I've heard of it but never attempted to go there before.

"Should I? ...no. I'll buy something. But when will I go? Um. Damn, I'm kind of hungry."

I couldn't have been that hungry since I had eaten a breakfast of fruits and cashews (I finished the 9 ounce container in three days--oops), but I swear, my legs just carried me into the bakery's direction. Before I knew it, I was standing in front of lots and lots of baked goods and signs proclaming the presence of even more baked goods inside, waiting to be bought and consumed.

eat at Lafayette!

Signs were splodged all over the front window. I found the one above to be most interesting. Hell yeah, no point in going to a restaurant when all I want is a little treat. EAT LESS! EAT REGULARLY! (Don't have to tell me twice.) EAT QUALITY!

cakes and pies

I didn't get to eat all those cakes and pies, but I would've loved to. Besides cakes, pies, and brioche, they also have a buttload of cookies, tarts, scones, muffins, croissants, and other things I can't remember right now. I had a nice chat with the baker (the only guy I saw in there, although I'm sure there were more people...somewhere) and stumbled upon him eating lunch, which was steak and asparagus, or some other green vegetable. Man, if I worked in a bakery I think I'd just eat a lot of bread, but he said he needed some variety and protein. Well. Yeah, okay. ;)

baby brioche

Ain't it a cutie? While sitting in Washington Sqsuare Park (where I passed the Otto Gelato cart; it exists!) I ripped off its "head", plopped it in my mouth, and proceeded to rip off the rest of its body and...uh, masticate it. Tasty. A brioche is never un-tasty, is it? One question I have though is if bread is every supposed to taste fermented-y. I think my brioche had a slight fermented flavor, and I know bread is fermented dough but I don't recall tasting remnants of fermentation before. Anyway. Saying "fermentation" too much is unsettling.

During my cooking class, we had to steam fish in a papillote, steam-roast potatoes, and steam-saute vegetables. I got stuck with the fish since the other people in my group weren't too keen on gutting a fish. We weren't supposed to be stuck with gutting the fish but whoever bought the food just got whole ones instead of fillets. Holding the dead, wet fish in my hands while trying to clean it in the sink was one of the weirder feelings I've had to experience. It feels just like holding a dead, cold, wet fleshy thing. Fluffy kitty, this is not.

As for gutting and making the fish all pretty (or not full of crap), I first scraped off the scales with the back of my knife, which flicked little translucsent circles of fishy organic matter all over the work
area. Over the course of the class, the scales I didn't get to immediately wipe up stuck to the surface of the metal counter and were a total bitch to pick off with my fingernails later (especially counsidering I have almost no fingernails). After scaling the fish, I cut a slit along the belly from the poop tube (I assumed) to the mouth. As I cut deeper into the flesh, pale pink organs poked out, organs that looked like they could've come from any animal, but were rather small considering it was a fish.

"Now just read your hand inside and pull out the guts."

Uh huh. I stared at it for a while and figured it would just feel gooshy. (squish squish rip squish) Thus is the fun of ripping guts out of animal, as in, it's not. Some organs just didn't want to budge, resulting in slippery attempts to rip out whatever stringy remains...remained.

After the gut-ripping, I cut off the fins and back fin, which really didn't want to budge. I cut off the head, deciding that I didn't want to cook it whole, and after cutting out the later of inner bones, I was left with a much smaller portion of meat than before. Cutting off heads and ripping out organs and spines will do that to living things.

potatoes

snow peas

Our potatoes came out pretty good, the snow peas not so much. Everyone's steamed-sauteed vegetables in the class came out overcooked. While I was cooking the snowpeas, I could tell they were going to be overcooked. YOu could then ask why I didn't just pour out the extra water in the pan or stopped it; I just didn't feel like it. The pan was kind of ginormous and I decided to just follow the directions than do whatever I felt like doing. The directions said to steam the veggies for 5-8 minutes before sauteing them, but from my cooking experience (which is almost none, you know), snow peas cook really quickly and if you're going to saute them after the steaming, you better not steam them for too long. Er. WHATEVER. They still tasted pretty good since we sauteed them in sesame oil, but they weren't nice and crispy. Another group used the same technique with jerusalem artichoke and they were so soft that it was like eating mashed jerusalem artichoke.

So that was yesterday. Today I ate cashews and an asian pear for lunch and yogurt, a plum, and a rice cake thing with red bean paste for dinner. The diet of a college student, oh yes. When I walked home from school, I went into 3 or 4 bakeries in Chinatown, some of which I hadn't been in before, no joke. (Not that you thought it was; this is me speaking, after all. It's almost surprising that there are bakeries in Chinatown I haven't been inside yet.) I got the rice and red bean thing from the new (I think) bakery on Broome Street next to the Bahn Mi place. They also sell dumplings (as their name says bakery and dumplings) but they said that won't be ready until next week. Perhaps I will try it next week...bwahaha. I also bought a mooncake from the Vietnamese bakery/jewelry store on Mott Street that I'll dig into tomorrow and probably eat in its entirety, despite better judgement. Otherwise, I was rather bored by most bakeries and in the back of my head, I just wanted a rice ball from Fay Da.

Fossil Fuel ice cream

Yesterday before heading to a Royksopp concert, I went to Ben & Jerry's with CJ for a little ice cream snack amidst the very ice cream-worthy weather. I know I already said that going to any ice cream place besides Il Laboratorio del Gelato would inevitably suck, but it was the only place around and I figured a funky flavor would be fun. I was disappointed to see that no, funky flavors aren't fun anymore, but just offer a really craptastic version of what I could get at Il Laboratorio. It's not cost or taste-bud effective. ALL OTHER ICE CREAM HAS BEEN RUINED, except perhaps for something like soft serve (probably should've tried that instead) since even though it's like ice cream, it's not close enough to serve as a comparison to what Il Laboratorio has. I guess if I'm ever in a situation where I'm getting normal ice cream, I may as well get some kind of crazy sundae to make the experience different.

In my Food & Society class today, we talked a little about hyphenated Chinese food, such as Chinese-Peruvian or Chinese-Indian food. I've never seen any of these places before but I'd be interested in trying one. Such as...Chinese-Norwegian? Where can I try that? ;) We discussed whether such food is authentically Chinese. Someone mentioned how when she was in Italy and went to an India restaurant, her friend told her that it wasn't really Indian but Indian-Italian. Of course, since it was in Italy, it wouldn't be refered to as Indian-Italian, such as how Chinese food here isn't refered to as Chinese-American (on the restaurant's sign, at least). I only referred to Chinese take out as American once I started living in Taiwan and found myself missing General Tsao's chicken.

How many of you, if you're Chinese, grew up eating a lot of Chinese take out? My mum really likes Chinese take out, which I think is funny. I'd like to believe her mum's home cooking was a lot better.

Ooh, I just got an email about the small food corner in the lobby of my dorm. It's pretty funny; I almost can't believe there's a need for this, considering it was just installed near the end of last year. Read on:

Need Groceries?

Why travel far? Come on down to the C-3 Express in the Water Street res hall lobby! We�ve got all the goods for you to stock up your fridge.

Eggs

Milk

Cereal

Cookie Dough

Cheese

�the grocery list goes on!

Plus, make any purchase and enter our weekly drawing to win $20 in free groceries!

Check us out! We�re open Monday-Friday 6:30am to 10:00am and 5:00pm to midnight.

We accept Dining Dollars, cash, credit cards, and Campus Cash.

No time for grocery shopping? Try our pre-ordering system. Fill out the pre-order form at the cashier with your choice of items, pay for your items, and we�ll pack them and have them ready for you to pick up at your convenience. It�s so easy!

What's sad is that I don't really eat any of the stuff on that list of staples. I don't stock my fridge with much unless I'm expecting an impending natural disaster. :p

Beth tagged me for Basic Juice's Food and Wine meme (read her entry)! Ooh, I don't usually get tagged, but just have to pretend I was so I can do something. ;)

Unfortunately, I'm a poor candidate for this meme, seeing as I don't drink much besides water and the smell of alcohol makes me feel a tad...retchy. Maybe I can make this a post about how I don't like alcohol? Or try to think of the last beverage-enhanced meal I had.

Okay, this is going to take a while. (thinks)

I don't usually drink anything besides water with my meals. When I do drink something that isn't water, like bubble tea, it's by itself. I think the last meal I had with a non-complimentary beverage was sometime in the beginning of the year at Bon Vivant Diner near Union Square with Diana, where I got pancakes and a milk shake. Damn good lunch, I tell ya. ;)

Damn, was that really the last time I had a drink with a meal? Uh. Well, I had hot chocolate...by itself. I remember making chai tea at home and drinking that...by itself. Dude, I seriously can't think of anything! I AM THE MOST BORING LIQUID-DRINKING PERSON. My Beverages class obviously isn't cultivated some hidden appreciation for all things alcoholic. Then again, it wouldn't matter seeing how I'm not of age. (Then again, being of age doesn't matter when you're in college.)

Perhaps I'll just mull over some things I used to drink when I was younger, mainly in Taiwan. The sports drink Pocari Sweat was insanely popular for god-knows-why reasons. It kind of tasted like sweat; if you've had it, maybe you can concur with me. Despite the sweat-ish taste, I drank it a few times (I think it tastes better than Gatorade-esque drinks at least).

Another quintessential drink at that time was Yakult. I never understood why the container was so small when you could drink a bottle in two gulps (er, I guess you weren't supposed to drink a crapload of the bottles, but they're so small!). Even though you can buy Yakult in the US, I can only recall seeing it in Asian supermarkets.

I also drank a clear drink (I have absolutely no idea what the name is) that had little jelly blobs in it. It seemed to just be something in Taiwan, or Asia at least. Packaged in a small, clear glass bottle, there were at least two flavors, one of which had yellow blobs and one that had pink blobs. Probably not the most natural thing but I drank it for...THE BLOBS.

At school I'd sometimes buy drinks from the vending machine (although I remember one time during my short walking-break between classes after gym, filling a cup of orange soda from the snack bar and finishing it in the time it took me to walk across the cafeteria). Some vending machines had your basic Coca Cola company drinks but there were also those with Chinese/Taiwanese drinks, like pearl milk tea and grass jelly tea. For whatever reason, they came in tin cans instead of aluminum; when you were done drinking, you'd feel like the can wasn't empty since it was so heavy.

So I didn't really fulfill the point of the meme, but there's a bit of my life in beverages. If I had to pick my favorite drink to indulge in today, I'd say hot chocolate or a milkshake, but as for hot chocolate, excessively drinking really good quality hot chocolate will make me feel drugged out and dizzy (damn chocolate!) and I'd rather eat ice cream than drink a milkshake.

...I like water. And Pellegrino!

I went to the farmer's market in Union Square this morning at 8:30 AM with the intention of just buying produce. You know, that healthy stuff that grows out of the ground and whatnot. I bought 6 ripe yellow peaches and a small bunch of broccoli fit for one meal.

scones close up

And then out of the darkness and hoards of fruits and vegetables came PILES OF SCONES, just begging to be eaten. Or begging not to be eaten. Or not begging anything since scones don't talk. But if they don't talk, Iwouldn't have heard the chocolate hazelnut scone say, "Hahaha Robyn, you're going to buy me and eat me and then get fat because you shouldn't be eating me."

scone innards

And then I ate it. I actually consumed it over the course of what may have been an hour, slowly picking away at it while fiddling on the computer at my job (which involves computer fiddling) while trying to not to cover my mouse and keyboard in scone-residues. It was a very stomach-satusfying scone ingestion period. The scone itself was good; not great, but better than average. I would've liked larger chocolate chips but the presence of whole hazelnuts was a nice touch, as I was expecting little bits (some people might prefer them chopped but I like WHOLE NUTS, YES'M, gimme). By the time lunch time came around at 1PM, I was disappointingly not very hungry. Damn. I figured I may as well eat something since I couldn't keep working, but where to?

plumplings

I had been interested in trying out The Plumpling House for weeks due to its interesting menu of unconventional dumpling fillings (cheeseburger?), but could never find the right time to go. As it's situated about a minute away from where I work, I couldn't think of any reason not to go today. It has odd set up as it shares its space with the BB Sandwich Bar, another place I've been meaning to try out. Next time I go back, maybe I can get a sandwich and a few Plumplings?

First off: plumplings only vaguely resemble conventional dumplings; don't eat a plumpling expecting it to be like something you'd get in Chinatown. Another difference from Chinatown is the insanely perky (in a good way) service you get. I mainly talked to John, who had actually emailed me before since my blog would come up when googling "The Plumpling House", despite that I had yet to visit it. He may have been the most friendly and vibrant person I've ever encountered in a food service place before, happily greeting all the customers who came in. He prepares fillings for the plumplings and has previously had cooking jobs. Of course, I asked him about his baking ability, *cough*, his reply being that he wasn't very good at it but could whip up a mean cake. Hey, that's better than me!

I tried 8 plumplings over the course of my lunch break. Yes, that sounds excessive, but it wasn't planned; after finishing my initial 5 savory plumplings, I went back to try the three dessert plumplings. (Trust me, I'm well aware of my excessive eating, as it's reflected in my ever-increasing girth.)

plumpling innards (Argentinean beef)

Actually, part of the reason that I went back for more plumplings was because I ordered 4 savory plumplings and one dessert, but found that I was given 5 savory. Ahh...nah, I didn't care that much, but you see, THERE IS A REASON TO MY GLUTTONY, besides that my stomach is useless in telling me when it's full. As you can see from the photo above, they really smash in the filling. The first one I tried was the chicken parmesen. I'll describe it as this: it tastes just like chicken parmesan, which is great if you like chicken parmesan and just want a few bites of it. I like chicken parmesan, although I wouldn't say it's one of my favorite things to eat. I've have it once in the past 3 years, at most. Judging the filling purely from a "did it taste like how I thought it would taste" perspective, I'd say it was great.

My favorite filling was the gryere, asiago & caramelized onion plumpling. Apparently, this is their most popular filling, and for good reason; the dough is stuffed with onions and just the right amount of cheese for me, i.e. not like a mozzerella stick but definitely...cheesy. (...yeah, that's a completely crappy description, oops.) One of the guys who worked there described it better: it's like eating French onion soup, were it not soupy. Yes. That's it. Non soupy French onion soup in dough. A funny thing that John mentioned is that the owner of the place didn't think that flavor would be popular at all, or perhaps people would dislike it.

The other filling I really liked to the point that it surprised me was the mango BBQ pulled pork. I already mentioned that there's a lot of filling in these things, but seriously, the insides were totally dense with soft, juicy pork. I don't know what else to say besides that I really liked it, and I don't count pork as one of my favorite things to eat. However, I've rarely eaten barbecued pork; I need to try a BBQ place at some point and become better acquainted with the world of meats.

While the fillings are great, I must complain about the dough; it was hard to cut through. While you could stick one with a fork and eat it that way, I'd prefer to cut it in a few pieces first. You better have a steak knife if you want to cut these without too much effort. I ended up putting them apart with my fingers, which got messy. I'd be MUCH MUCH happier if they could figure out a way to use a softer, thinner dough, and yes, this is coming from someone who really likes dough. Hell, sometimes when I'm eating out with Diana and she doesn't finish her dumpling dough, I eat it (because I'm a glutton and I'm comfortable enough around her to eat her food). The plumplings are cooked in a modified belgium waffle maker, so a regular dumpling skin wouldn't work. Damn, what if they pan-fried or boiled the dumplings? Hmm...man, I'd try that. You'd get a totally different texture.

Oh, I'm not done. Remember the dessert plumplings? I got one of each flavor, with oatmeal cookie dough being the clear winner, at least if you like oatmeal cookies. However, the dough sadly detracted from the tastiness of the filling. And it was really good filling. Damn, I'd just want it in a pudding cup, perhaps with whipped cream. (rubs chin) ANother problem with the dough was that it retained a slightly savory taste from the other dumplings cooked in the same plumpling maker. I think it'd be better to have separate ones.

chocolate plumpling

The chocolate plumpling was just insane; as soon as I plunged my plastic knife through the skin, the scent of chocolate wafted out, obviously because THERE'S A BLOCK OF GOOEY CHOCOLATE IN THERE. While I'm not expert, I've eaten a lot of chocolate in my life (at least more than the average American with a Chinese upbringing, I think) and this chocolate tasted really good. In my opinion, not too dark, not too sweet, probably a good balanace to please the most chocolate lovers. I'd be interested to know what kind of chocolate they used.

So that was my plumpling experience. Oh, I have to mention the Chowhound reaming that John told me about. Damn, that's harsh. Obviously, I didn't try every filling so maybe they're not all great, but I didn't see anything at fault with the fillings I tried. I'll also admit that I've never had dog food. At least try the cheese and onion one if that interests you at all, and if you have a sweet tooth get the oatmeal cookie dough. I didn't try any of the sides but I'd assume that they're good, figuring they're not stuffed in dough pouches.

mooncake

After eating a small plum, a peach, and half a container of greek yogurt, I ate this entire mooncake. Yes, I'm WELL aware of the caloric and unhealthy-ness density of mooncakes and how no one is supposed to eat an entire one by themselves (the only thing I didn't eat was the yolk, kind of ironic seeing as that's the part people want, whether because they like the way it tastes or because of its symbolism), but I ate the whole damn thing and felt pretty much okay afterwards, aside from the shouting in my head that went something like "HOLY CRAP, YOU ATE THE WHOLE MOONCAKE, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, NOW YOU MUST FAST, OR PUKE." Don't worry, I didn't puke, nor will I fast. I'll just hang my head in shame.

...uh, the mooncake was really yummy, which obviously had something to do with my EATING the whole thing. I got it from the Vietnamese bakery/jewelry shop on Mott Street. "Hey, it's green; I'll eat that!" Yeah, I'm not very choosey. I barely exercised today so I'm not sure what's going to happen after all of today's eating. Perhaps I'll wake up tomorrow as a blob.

Sometimes even though you'd like to do something with someone else, it's easier to do the thing yourself, the "thing" in this case being "going to a bunch of places that sell food you've never tried before and eating the food." The drawback to this is consuming more calories than you would if you could share the food with someone else. You could wait until a friend is free or you can just go ahead and fatten yourself up in isolation.

You probably know which choice I made. I didn't have the advantage of toting around another human to taste things with me, so I went to a few places by myself that I shouldn't have gone to, of course, because most of the things I like to eat are the things I shouldn't be eating. Ignoring my worsening asthma (which seemed to kick in right when I started eating more wheat products; I assume they're related because it's not like I'd ever want something like that to happen), I've been going to bakeries alone, the one thing I really didn't want to do. But...but...

...I don't know. Living in NYC plus a lack of willpower is an especially bad combination; I did alright in New Jersey where delicious bakeries weren't as easily accessible.

Oh yes, so why did I venture outside the confines of my dorm room yesterday? I've been meaning to see The Future of Food for the past few weeks and when I found out it was ending on Tuesday, I figured, "Duh, I'm not really doing anything today. I should go." I don't see movies very often, hence I see movies alone even less often, but I figured I would make the movie-going into a little "culinary tourism" event. Just for myself. Because I'm greedy like that. Keeping in mind where the Film Forum was, I decided that with enough time I could walk to Chocolate Bar and Myers of Keswick before seeing the documentary.

Chocolate Bar offerings

Chocolate Bar counter

Chocolate bars, chocolate cookies, chocolate pieces, chocolate drinks...a lot is packed into this small store. I'd want to eat everything if I didn't think it would kill me first. Perhaps it's a goal I can keep in mind over the rest of my life (and which can be applied to any other chocolate store/bakery); some people want to climb Mt. Everest, some people want to meet their idols and I want to eat everything with chocolate in it. Great, my life is officially pointless. (However, as I've already met my favorite music artist, I have to go in another direction with food.)

shelves of chocs

Coconut Cream Pie retro bar

Coconut cream pie sounded most appealing out of all their retro flavored chocolate bars. Concept: good. Graphic design: pleasing. Chocolate bar: NOT ENOUGH FILLING! You can't tout the filling of a bar without putting in enough filling--that's just mean and shatters expectations. After biting into a piece, wouldn't you expect more filling than the thickness of a sheet of paper? Yes. ...okay, how about two pieces of paper? I thought the first piece I bit into was juts a fluke, but they were all like that. Maybe they do just mean to put in a hint of coconut cream pie taste, but I wanted more filling and less chocolate. The filling tasted fine, but it would've been better if there had been three times the quantity. While I had to admit not loving chocolate, I wasn't very crazy about the dark chocolate either. It wasn't bad, but maybe the filling made me bitter.

...despite that, I ate the whole bar. No, not in one sitting, but still! (sigh) I also bought an oatmeal cookie, which I enjoyed much more than the chocolate bar. While it was drier than I'd prefer (I like a moist cookie you can kind of pull apart), the spices were intense and better than any other oatmeal cookie I had ever tasted. (I've eaten a lot of oatmeal cookies, by the way.) Jacques Torres is missing an oatmeal cookie; he should do something about that. ;)

Not having walked around Greenwich Village very much, I roamed around confusedly, unsuccessfully trying to find Myers of Keswick. I ended up passing Corner Bistro and walking along Greenwich Ave, aka "going in the wrong direction". I remembered that Hudson Street is equvalent to 8th Avenue, until they branch off and Hudson becomes 9th Avenue and 8th Avenue emerges from the bowels of nothingness to screw up my direction.

Anyway, I guess I won't make that mistake again. I was also confused by Greenwich Street and Greenwich Ave since even though avenues tend to run north-south, Greenwich Street runs north-south and Greenwich Ave is more east-west. But whatever. The only way to not get lost is to get accustomed to the streets and walk a lot. And carry a map.

Of course, I could walk forever and not burn off much. That I'm not fatter than I already am surprises even some of my friends, besides myself, but I don't know how long I can rely on being able to fit into my fat gauging pants and not flipping out because I can't.

...uh, yeah. Where was I? Oh yes, onto Myers of Keswick. While I was there it seemed like half of the clientele was British, probably a good sign. The store has a deli case full of bangers (er, sausages) and meat pies, bins of crisps (er, potato chips), shelves of cookies and biscuits, containers of chocolate bars, cans of beans (you can't forget the beans), and...MCVITIES!

McVities

As low as my willpower is, even I know how crazy it would be to buy a pack of biscuits, crazy because I could easily eat the whole pack in two days, or one if I were insane. Sadly, no biscuit buying took place. I'd love to have a biscuit tasting party; buy every kind of British biscuit I can lay my hands on and figure out which ones are the best by...um. Eating lots of them.

Okay, let's stick that idea onto the "List of things Robyn Should Never Do." Right-o.

cornish pasty

After reading an essay about cornish pasties in one of my classes, I decided that I HAD TO TRY ONE. So I did. I liked it; ground beef, some potatoes, peas and carrots, conveniently wrapped in a light, flaky crust. I ate it while sitting in nearby Abingdon Square Park, a tiny little triangle of greenery with some benches that is now my favorite place to munch on meat pastries. (Not that i hvae other places, but..um.)

scotch egg

pork pie

steak & kidney pie

Next time I visit Myers of Keswick, I want to try a scotch egg and another pie, or perhaps multiple pies. Hehe. Hehehehe. *rubs hands together while forgetting that I already eat too much* Hey, I'd love to share the food with anyone who wants to come with me!

Oh yeah, I saw the documentary at some point (er, after eating ground meat wrapped in wheat). It's a shame that The Future of Food doesn't have a wider release, as I think everyone could benefit from watching it. There aren't many issues that concern me (that probably should) but I think food is a huge issue that more people should be interested in. Yes, war sucks, but potentially messing up the country's/world's food supply is kinda bad too, yes? Most of us are disconnected with our food--where it comes from and how it's made--but we don't really want to know. I don't claim to be "one with the land" (um, I'd rather live in a concrete city than a place with lush nature and lakes and bunnies, not that there's anything wrong with those things) but I think I'd benefit from working on a farm for a while. Or I'd destroy a crop somehow. Hm.

Oh yeah, the documentary; what's it about? It focuses on the lax and twisted regulations on genetically modified crops that have originated in the US in order to--what else--gain control over the food supply and make lots and lots of money. It's a scary look at what could happen if most people remain uninformed about what the government is doing (or not doing; one portion of the documentary listed names of people who work in environmental and agricultural sectors of the government and used to, or continue to, work for Monsanto) in regards to food safety. I'd love to say more about the documentary but you're better off watching it yourself. It talks about the myth of genetically modified foods helping to end world hunger, how letting companies patent life (genes in seeds) is kind of A BAD IDEA, how Monsanto isn't respnsible for how the genes it creates end up in other people's crops (a comparison being that if your neighbor's dog were to mess up your lawn, your neighbor would be responsible for making sure his dog were properly caged in instead of you making sure your lawn were inaccessible to the dog, while in farmer's cases, they have to somehow make their fields inaccessible to wayward GM seeds and such things, which isn't possible and...do you see a problem here?), how GM food in America isn't labeled and thus ensures that possible health problems with GM foods can't be traced, annnnd other things.

Oops, that was a long sentence. Back to stuffing my face.

Today for lunch I ate a bowl of broccoli sauteed in sesame oil and seasoned with soy sauce. It was alright, but not at all satisfying. Of course, I didn't expect it to be satisfying, which is why I also ate a container of yogurt and some fruit.

But...still. My stomach was bored and wanted deathly wheat. Since I had to go out, I decided to stop by Bouley Bakery.

chocolate viennoise

brioche

Alright, it wasn't exactly on the way, but it's not far from my dorm and it's one of those afforable indulgences. It's more expensive than other places--the chocolate viennoise was $2.40 and the brioche was $2.25--but it's not outrageous. The individual cakes and pastries are reasonably priced, usually around $5. Being the glutton I am, I got two things and ate both of them. I think the brioche wouldn't been better with the sugar crystal-thingers on top, but otherwise it was soft and whatever a brioche should taste like. The chocolate viennoise was good too, although I thought it'd be sweeter (not that I ever had one before) and I would've liked more chocolate. (Note to self: everythign could use more chocolate.)

Damn, this was long. Tomorrow I'm going to Zum Schneider to interview the owner about his wine list for my beverages class, you know, the one where I don't know anything about wine. I don't think I've ever walked as far as Avenue C so I hope there's some stuff there to entertain me as I walk around for Bavarian Biergarten fun.

...is anyone still reading this? If so, I'm very impressed! And I think I shall tag some people for the food and wine meme that I tried to do a few days ago: Lori at Dessert First and Janet at Escaping Words.

"Beware college, for your children shall become drunken, crack-addict whores!"

I'm sure somewhere out there has said that, or something like that. Certainly no one's said it to my parents, who have less than nothing to worry about when it comes to such supposed horrors of college (I'll admit though, I barely know anyone who doesn't get into some drunken debauchery every now and then.)

However, someone should give my parents some kind of warning. Like this:

"Beware college, for your child shall become a bakery addict, snaking through streets in search of windows displaying mounds of bounteous golden things made of dough."

Or something. No one in their right mind would actually say that, I hope.

Today while walking home, I had bakeries on the brain. However, shortly after speaking to my supervisor at work, I became asthmatic. Why? I DON'T KNOW. I like my supervisor and he's a cool guy to talk to. Asthma uncovers weird hidden stresses, practically nonexistent ones at that. I had thought about going to a meeting that night for a club my friend helped organize (the restauranteur's club, new this year) but when I realized the possibility of wheezing lung syndrome from talking to random people, I figured it would be best to stay away from events that involved forced mingling. (My friend "warned" me about it and didn't expect me to show up anyway.)

So, I started walking back to my dorm. Being wheezy seriously lessens the desire to eat baked goods. I wanted to check out Once Upon a Tart, but I didn't really want anything. Moving on, I went past Sullivan Street Bakery (*sob*, I haven't been there in months) and went to the next door Yoghurt Place II. I love Greek yoghurt and just realized today that they sell Greek yogurt (well, I already knew they sold Greek yogurt but I forgot that the place existed), the only other convenient Greek yogurt purveyors being gourmet supermarkets (Whole Foods has good prices). I bought a 1 pound container which should last at least 4 meals, unless I decide to eat nothing else (it's something like 500-600 calories for a pound, man; I could easily eat the whole thing...over the course of a day).

Plodding on (plodding being my form of walking), I went to Fay Da Bakery because my lungs had cleared up and I felt fine by that point. Damn. I forgot about the wheezing for a while. While I had planned on getting a mango rice ball, I walked out with a sweet potato bun instead.

sweet potato bun innards, ish

I was surprised by how good it was. It was almost a Yakitate kind of moment when I first bit into the bun, with the exception of me not going insane, flying, collapsing in some kind of fluffy wheat induced stupor and going into a dream-like state. Cos that'd be weird. So, what was so nice about this bun? It had a buttery flaky-esque (most Chinese pastries don't fit under the "flaky"category) crust on the bottom that somewhat extended around the whole bun, but was mainly on the bottom. You can see the layer from the photo above. While I could go for more filling (unless it's something like a knish, I could always go for more filling), the filling was excellent, as in...very sweet potato-ee. As far as I could tell from my experience of eating sweet potatoes, it tasted and looked like mashed sweet potatoes. Only problem with that, as much as I love sweet potatoes, is that they're overall not really sweet, but sweet for...tubers. If it were more sweet though, that would kind of ruin the sweet potato-ness, in that it shouldn't be sickly sweet.

Oh. Buns. Filled with goo. How tasty.

For lunch after my wine tasting (which I'll talk about later), I went to Chez Brigitte, a place I've wanted to go to for a while (although I can't recall how I first heard about it) but haven't gone to just...because. I knew I had to go there myself since I figured it was unlikely many of my friends would go for a hole-in-the-wall homey French-style place. Or maybe they would. Oops.

A lookie at the lunch menu presented the option of $6.50 for a plate of some kind of meat with potatoes or rice, soup or salad, and bread. Sounds like a good deal. When I walked in I was immediately greeted by the woman working there and presented with a menu, from which I chose...BITS OF BABY COW! And by that I mean veal stew.

innards

It's small inside. 11 seats in all line the counter and the mirrored wall where I was sitting (the photo is a reflection in the mirror).

bread

I wasn't expecting a bread basket for myself. Jeez. Not great bread but I ate half of it. Um. I LIKE ALL BREAD, okay? It was good at soaking up the stew.

veal stew, potatoes, and peas

Mmmm, food groups. Good food groups! I love potatoes but honestly rarely eat them because wheat products are more readily available. BUT TATERS! MM, GIMMEH. I like peas, surely, and I thought the veal stew was great. I can't think of anything bad to say at least; the meat was tender and juicy (duh, it's stew, what do you expect?) and the sauce was...um, tasty. Obviously, it was tomato-ee, but now like pasta sauce or something. I'm a big fan of comfort food, which usually means "simple stuff that you can easily plop onto a plate", so I'm sure I'll come back here, possibly next week.

I went to Tea & SYmpathy just down the street after that for no real reason besides that it was there and I was there and HEY, that's convenient. I walked into the store with the intention of getting something, but no idea of what the something was. You can't really browse the shop as most of the candy is frustratingly behind the counter. Hmph. I told the guy at the cashier that...

"I kind of just want some candy, but I don't know which one."
"How about fruit pastilles?"

Hm. That doesn't sound like chocolate. My reply?

"...okay!"

Of course, I don't care. At least I know it's fruity! So how was my Fruit Pastilles experience? Rather good. They're fruit gummies but they don't taste exactly like anything else (I can't think of an easy comparison to make, such as Polos and Lifesavers). The fruit flavor is better than most average candy. My favorite one was blackcurrant, although maybe that was due to it being the least familiar flavor. Then again, the most popular flavor is blackcurrant, so maybe not.

I ate the whole pack while at work for four hours. Oops. I rarely eat candy so I wouldn't say that's a big health hazard, not like bakeries at least (but I did resist Lafayette bakery, which is also on Greenwich Ave like Tea & Sympathy and Chez Brigitte).

Oh, my wine class. Well. I really can't figure out what wine smells and tastes like besides fruity (no duh, it's made from fruit) or alcohol (another no duh). Every time the teacher asks us what the wine smells or tastes like I just want to shout, "ALCOHOL, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THAT'S ALL I SMELL, NONE OF THIS FLORAL SPICY BS!" I know, my senses are obviously underdeveloped, but I think it's clear that I'll never become a wine connoisseur at this rate. Actually, a recurring smell besides fruit in wines that I've noticed lately is CHEESE. I kid you not. No one else seems to think cheese besides me though, and I'm not all that fond of drinks that smell like cheese.

Maybe my nose is messed up and makes wine smell like cheese.

Today my friend became red-faced after class was over. She drank a bit of the off-dry wine, *ahem*, and felt the effects rather quickly. I wonder what would happen if I actually drank the wine, but I can try that some other day. Of course, I have drank (drunk?) wine before when I was little and I don't recall feeling weird afterwards, just wanted to clear out the crappy taste from my mouth.

Yesterday was a bit of a fooding day of muffin and focaccia eating from my favorite Union Square greenmarket vendor, Buon Pane.

muffin!!

I swear that they make my favorite muffins.

Afterwards I roamed around Alphabet City to do my wine list interview at Zum Schneider. I passed some interesting things on the way, like...

Belgian Fries, anyone?

...semi-sketchy Belgian fries stand! They also sell milkshakes. I suppose that's a yummy combination. Next time I'm on Avenue A, I'll try it...(or not).

Zum Schneider is a very cute, homey feeling indoor beer garden. It would've been nicer without the gloomy rainy weather but there were a good amount of customers in the restasurant considering it had just opened (at 5 PM).

inside the restaurant

I had to wait a bit so I stared at people eating food. YUmmy looking food. Yummy looking colorful food. With potatoes. And various cabbagey things. And meat. I'd love to go back sometime to try it out.

After doing the interview with the manager, Natascha (a really nice woman who probably thought I was strange for interviewing them about a wine list when they specialize in beer, and maybe moreso for not being of drinking age), I got a complimentary apple spritzer. It's more fun to drink in a beer mug. ;) I got a pretzel to go just so I could say I ate something from there. Yummy pretzel, although I'll admit I have nothing to compare it to since I rarely eat soft pretzels (that's the second one I've had in maybe 4 years).

I really need to stop eating wheat because while I don't have scientific proof, I'm sure it has something to do with my asthma. ...But it's so hard. (And no, I'm not thinking about taking medication for the purpose of eating all the bread I want; that would make me less bread-inhibited, if you could imagine.) I wouldn't say I even ate a crapload of wheat today, but it was easily 4 servings with that bread at lunch and the sweet potato bun. I should limit myself to...less.

Tomorrow I have my cooking class, aiiiee! Let's hope I don't make a chicken explode.

Today I had my first "offsite lab" at 9 AM for my Food Production class at D'Agostino Hall, which is part of the NYU Law School. Now that I've been in two NYU Law School buildings, I've come to the conclusion that they're 1000% nicer than the other ones. Or the ones I've been to. Hm. Anyway, this could be a new hidaway now that I know that there's a lounge area with super huge smushy chairs and Internet stations in the lower level.

Confusion set in when I couldn't find the room number for the kitchen as listed in my course packet. Talking to a guard almost didn't get anywhere.

"Could you tell me where the food court is?" (I figured there was a good court if there was a kitchen, but the kitchen is more for catering law school stuff.)

"Food court? Are you a student here?" (NYU student, yes...of course, there are a gazillion of us, almost totally unrelated to each other.)

"Yes...um, I'm in the Food and Nutrition department doing a lab in the kitchen."

After a while I found out the guy thought I said "moot court", which would be confusing. It turns out the kitchen was on the same floor as the lounge and computer area, which isn't really something I would've guessed from a bunch of unmarked doors.

After walking in confusedly (not helped by the mental impairment of waking up at 7AM, which while not especially early just doesn't agree with my body), I put on my chef coat and a baseball cap and left my backpack in the dry goods storage area. It had some interesting things, like this:

Italian Flavored Bread Crumbs

I know what the package means, but it implies Italian people and HOLY CRAP, THAT'S HILARIOUS!

Okay, back to the lab. I was immediately put on "turning small potatoes" duty. It's very likely you've never had to turn potatoes (I've only read about it in my cooking textbook); you cut the skin off to make them rounded. And yes, they're already round, but it's more like...er. You cut off more than you would if you were just peeling it. While at first I was clearly inept and this newfangled "potato turning", I caught on after a while (when my neurotransmitters decided to work), cutting the potato in half, bringing the blade down towards my thumb, repeating on the other side, dropping the semi-skinned potato with a satisfying plop in a container of water.

During the whole potato turning-ness, I spoke to David, the kitchen's supervisor, or rather, he spoke to me. Oh. Man. He's cool but I couldn't really keep up with what he was talking to me about. "Why are you so animated and awake and telling me random things that I can't remember?!" Probably because he had to wake up at 4AM. Anyhoo, he's quite a character and I mean that in the best way possible. While I haven't met many chefs in my lifetime, he's definitely nothing like any other chef I've met. Hell, he's probably unlike most people I've ever met.

...that probably doesn't help you much in figuring out what kind of guy he is; you just had to be there, I guess. He was telling me a bunch of things that will be important in my life--figuring out finances, being really enthusiastic about whatever I do, learning how to do everything (okay, that's my vague description), not cutting my fingers off--which of course made me think, "Oh shit, I'm screwed." I am.

The lab was supposed to be four hours but I got to leave after three. SWEET! ...damn, an extra hour to roam around? Now what?

Roam for food, of course. I though I was in the mood for onigiri so I began walking towards JAS Mart on St. Mark's Place, but changed my mind about halfway there and turned back due west to check out Von Singh's only to be horrified by a "WE HAVE CLOSED, GO AWAY" type sign. Crap. I heard it was good, so I wonder what happened.

I roamed some more and ended up in Union Square where I ate a spinach stromboli from a baked goods vendor at the north end that I had rarely seen before, while sitting on a dirt/grass area on the east side.

stromboli innards

It was really good, as in, I'd want to eat it again. I can't compared it to what an authentic stromboli is since I've never had one, so I'd just say it's a bread pounch with cooked spinach. And it's tasty.

After that I had my advanced foods class where I mainly braised-sauteed chicken. That was after I cut the chicken into pieces and attempted to take all the skin off, a task I was nearly successful with except for the wings where THE SKIN WOULD JUST NOT COME OFF, DAMMIT, not matter how much I pulled and poked at with my knife, the skin just stayed all gross and slippery and permanently attached to the meat. Oh well. The chicken pieces were braised in a sauce of chicken stock, sherry, sherry vinegar, crushed tomatoes, sugar, and mustard. It was pretty easy to make but it took a while since I had to sear the pieces first and cook certain parts at different times.

I ATE ALL OF THIS...okay, no

My group also made celeriac and dandelion greens in the same braised-sauteed method. Dandelion greens are either horrible pieces of vegetarian from the third level of hell, or we didn't cook them correctly. But...dude, you just cook them until they're obviously not raw but not like yellowing pieces of crap. So I think they just taste bad, or at least my tastebuds don't like them. Celeriac is quite good (I wrote "quite food" before, which is also true; IT'S FOODY), but I love most/all starches.

You know how I bitch every now and then about eating alone in a city of a gazillion people/organisms? I almost ate out with Lia (who is one of the coolest people ever, yes; she contributes to A Full Belly) but ended up coming to the conclusion that I just wasn't hungry enough to eat out (yes yes, "the girl who ate everything" doesn't really apply here). I SUCK! HOW DO I REFUSE TO GO FOODING? ...well, I really wasn't very hungry for normal foods after the face stuffage of "advanced foods" (I tried just about everything, and there was a lot, mainly meat and starches). She wanted to try Pequena and Cake Man Raven, places I will add to my "eat here" list.

I'm going to cross off one place on my list tomorrow, hopefully: Tuck Shop. Random, eh? I totally forgot about it but while looking around menupages (er, an hour ago), it popped up. I just want to go to a place for lunch tomorrow that's within walking distance (although it's not that close to NYU, but it should't take me more than 20 minutes to walk to unless I'm slow as hell) and cheap. YOU SHALL FIND OUT THE RESULTS...OF THE FOODING.