The Girl Who Ate Everything

I've been sick for the past two days, yet that hasn't made even the smallest dent in my fooding habits. My eating has actually became less healthy. No, I'm not trying to destroy my body--I just really love to eat baked things. Damn conniving bundles of wheat and fat and sugar and sinful deliciousness and--

OH MY GOD, COOKIES!!!

plates of cookies, oh my

Carol and I went to Milk and Cookies, a place I could hardly believe I had unknowingly passed by countless times (my bakery radar is obviously defective), to eat some ...um, guess! No, not honey glazed roast pork, but COOKIES!

outside Milk & Cookies

Nested away on the tiny Commerce Street, this place probably doesn't get much foot traffic. That would be a shame, as it's a cute, homey place to hang out in, until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays if you so desire. Spending a night cavorting (or just sitting, whatever floats your boat) among plates of cookies is my kind of night. And my kind of cavorting.

cookie case

They had at least 13 kinds of cookies when we were there, so I'd compare it to one of those "gazillion cupcake flavors" bakeries but with cookies instead. I think I'd rather go for cookies since they're cheaper and smaller, thus allowing the eater (me) to consume a wider variety of them in one visit.

Carol ordered a plate of three cookies (snickerdoodle, chocolate mint, and oatmeal blueberry cranberry and a cup of tea) while I, while struggling to decide, went for the specials (chocolate chip walnut and oatmeal scotchies). We shared all the cookies and came to the conclusion that while they were all great (soft and chewy, and I don't think I need to describe the flavors since they tasted like their names, except for the snickerdoodle, which while being on the best cookies in the world has a name that doesn't give any hint at what it tastes like, which might add to it's greatness, and this was a really poorly constructed sentence), they weren't amazingly great (not that we were expecting amazingly good-ness). My favorite cookie was the chocolate mint, which Carol found too sweet for her tastes (oh, I laugh at the thought...BWAHAHA...oh crap, now I have diabetes). What I love about the cookies is that they're a good size (not jumbo, which is how I usually like my cookies, and not tiny "by the pound" cookies, which I kind of hate) and feel very fresh and home-made. Of course, you could wonder why I don't just bake my own cookies, but I think I've already expounded upon the problem of me baking or cooking in my dorm, and if not...I'll do it later.

I'd definitely go back to Milk & Cookies for a cozy place to sit and enjoy some cookies with a friend. It's not a place I'd feel like going by myself but I'd love to make it a weekly (or perhaps monthly would be more reasonable) meeting place with Carol.

To exemplify a bakery I would go to myself for the sake of trying a variety of baked goods that I'll ultimately become addicted to and cry out the names of during my darkest nightmares as they add to my subcutaneous layer of fat, I went to Moishe's Bake Shop yesterday afternoon around lunchtime (after eating Japanese curry at JAS Mart). If you're from NYC, you'll know that it was rainy and windy. Factor in my "ball of phlegm" feeling while trying to orient my umbrella (with one broken hinge) to make best use of its rain-blocking properties (yes, that's what they're supposed to do, unlike hitting other pedestrians in the face, which is what they tend to do), I stared at the ginormous window glowing with golden pastries radiating the promise of Kosherliciousness and latched onto these babies.

chocolate cigars

When I say babies, I mean gigantic freak babies, like "THE 20 POUND BABY THAT TERRORIZED THE HOSPITAL AND ATE THE OTHER BABIES." I'm pretty sure the woman in the bakery told me they were "chocolate cigars". What kind of cigar is that? The "Instant-Ephymsema" variety? Hm. Well. I had no expectations and IT WAS SO GOOD, OH YES IT WAS. Layers of dense, rolled up flaky dough with chocolate splodged in between and drizzled on top; it just can't be bad. I had to carry it around for about 7 hours before getting to eat it since i didn't have time; it nearly killed me. (Of course, I'm sure eating the chocolate log didn't increase my life expectancy either.)

But back to bakeries. I met up with Carol to celebrate her 21st birthday in the best way we know how: FOOD. It's not the best was as much as the only way I know. (scratches head) Anyway, after Milk & Cookies we headed down to Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven since it's awesome and it was close by. Strangely perhaps, I wasn't in the mood for much (yes, GASP!), but I still walked out with a milk chocolate brulee bar, which I shall comment on later since I haven't actually eaten it yet. Carol got three of four bars, something I couldn't do because I have the ability to eat 100 grams of chocolate in one sitting with ease (until later, at which point I'll probably shout, "I ATE ALL THAT CHOCOLATE AT ONCE, HOLY CRAP?!").

And then...silence. Where off to next? We went to Once Upon a Tart thinking it might be closed and the empty cases told us that yes, tarts were not to be part of our stomach contents for the night.

NOW WHAT? WHERE CAN WE GO IN NYC AT NIGHT? OH MY GOD, PASTRIES?! HUUH MUHH *foams at the mouth*...

Well, there are a gazillion places in NYC, such as the 24 hour Veselka! I brought Carol there (after first taking a look at Bruno Bakery on LaGuardia Place, a bakery I've been inside a few times yet have never actually eaten anything from) to look at their small but appealing bakery case. We were going to sit on a bench outside the nearby church when the glowing innards (yes, innards) of Black Hound...glowed in our direction.

"Wanna check it out?"

"...what kind of question is that?"

little cakes

They have loads of little cakes in the front window. AIEEE. And inside...

tarts and stuff

...were lots of tarts. They also sell truffles and cookies, all of which look very tempting. However, the tempting factor of the bakery is, in my opinion, seriously downplayed by the lack of environment. It almost reminds me of an empty apartment, except that it's full of pastries and sweets (not that NYC apartments need help selling, but people would swarm all over a listing like "APARMENT, FURNISHED WITH BAKED GOODS", or at least I would, while ignoring that the apartment has no ceiling or running water). It's not like the selection is sparse, but for whatever reason I can't shake off the "just moved in" feeling. If anyone's been there, maybe you can tell me if I'm odd (no, wait, I know the answer to that already).

apple ginger tart

Carol and I shared an apple ginger tart, which I kept mistakingly calling a pie. It looks like a little pie, right? We wondered what the difference between pies and tarts were, but didn't come to many conclusions after eating our pie-esque tart. This doesn't help much either. The tart was awesome, with a pronounced ginger taste and a great crust that wasn't too thick, hard, soft...er, basically there was nothing wrong with this tart and it was way above average. It was hardy enough that we could split it in half and each our portions with our hands--oh yes, we epitomize sophisticated eating.

We ended our fooding for the night at this point since our diet for the night consisted of cookies, tarts, and chocolate. I didn't actually eat any chocolate but since I got her a box of chocolates from Kee's Chocolates, she ate some of those.

Ooh, Kee's, how I adore you. I went in during my lunch break since freshly made chocolates aren't something you can buy in advance (or they shouldn't be able to last that long; there's no need for Godiva in NYC). The first (and previous) time I went to the store was in the spring to buy a box of chocolates for my mum's birthday. When I walked in, Kee was stirring what looked like a pan of almond slivers and caramel, which created a heavenly scent that you can imagine almost made my head explode (you know, the good kind of explosion). When I walked in this time, another woman (who was there last time also; I guess it's just a two-person operation) was popping creme brulee truffles out of their hexagonal molds.

new batch of creme brulee truffles

Their creme brulee truffles encase a liquidy, creamy vanilla filling in a delicately thin, crunchy dark chocolate shell. Quite beautiful. But of course, not every piece comes out perfectly, especially considering their fragility. What happens to pieces that don't make the final cut?

THEY FEED THEM TO PEOPLE LIKE ME! Yes, I am the human chocolate disposal; fill me up. I had tried the creme brulee truffle once before, when I unsuccessfully tried to eat just half of it to take a look at the insides (you're best off eating the whole thing at once because it's very runny). This time I popped it in my mouth and crunched down. There isn't a comparable sensation to the mixing of crisp chocolate shards and creamy vanilla filling that comes to my mind, so I'll just say that it's really good. Reeeeaally good. Go buy one, now, preferably when they're making one and might possibly get a defect. I got another "defected" champagne truffle, which while not nearly as enjoyable as the creme brulee (hello, non-alcohol lover speaking here), was still good. I'm not going to refuse free chocolate!

Besides the free truffles, I bought a chocolate turtle for myself. I prefer nut-caramel-cluster-y things to truffles, maybe because they're more mishmashed and eating perfectly constructed truffles and bon bons makes me feel like I'm destroying works of art with my digestive juices.

turtle innards

It's a good thing I take photos of things as it's the only way I can slow down my eating. See the caramel chocolate nut-ness? Yeah? Good. [Continues to eat the other half in about 2 seconds.]

I could say more, but I'm tired. Keep in mind that I was sick all day (Carol said she was also sick) yet that didn't make any impact on my eating. How much do you want to bet that that'll so bite me in the bum over the weekend? I'm going to an Interpol concert on Sunday, so I'd like to be functional.

Oh...sweets.

I'm afraid I have no food porn for you today—nothing I ate today was very special. Tasty and indulgent and something I'll regret later? Probably.

• a lot of onion & olive focaccia with olive oil (bread from the Greenmarket)
• two nectarines and a bunch of grapes (also from the Greenmarket)
• some stir-fried green beans (...Greenmarket)
• a milk chocolate brulee bar from Jacques Torres

The bread and chocolate were the major no-nos of the day. Lesson: I absolutely cannot buy large portions of bread and I can't buy chocolate bars from anywhere. It's ironic that with a kitchen as bare as mine (the non-condiment food I have left consists of a container of Greek yogurt and 4 white peaches), I can still consume way more calories than I'd ever need in one day. What makes this worse than a normal day is that I spent my entire day inside and I'm still sick. Obviously, not sick enough to fast or sleep later than 12:30 PM (I wanted to, but my body wouldn't do it) but still. Sick. I barely got any work today and I ate a crapload of food. Physically, I don't feel any bad effects from the food, but mentally I obviously feel like I shouldn't have eaten (or bought) all that food.

Sigh. It's ridiculous that with so many more pressing issues in the world/life/whatnot, this is what stresses me out and moan about in blog-format. I didn't mean to eat the portion of bread I ultimately did consume, but just half of it. Obviously, it was really tasty after steaming it, thus leading me to return to the kitchen for the other half I had wrapped up in a paper bag and placed in the cabinet, to be eaten later. I bought the chocolate bar last night, of course not intending to eat the whole thing, but before I knew it, I had already eaten half. And then 3/4ths. And then...the last 1/4th. It didn't stand a chance; I've never had a solid caramel flavored milk chocolate bar before and it was divine.

Whatever. (pokes belly) I probably gained a few pounds. Oh well, not like I have to be svelte to live. I have to be healthy to breathe correctly though. Sneezing triggers my asthma for a short period of uncomfortable breathing and I sneezed a few times today. Damn...sneezing.

So. Still reading? This will be a boring, not very amusing entry.

...still reading? ALRIGHTY!

Tonight I watched What's Cooking as an assignment for my food film class (one thing that annoyed me was that my school, which must have a gazillion movies, didn't have this movie, meaning that I had to join Blockbuster, which is a bit rarghy). The movie follows four culturally different families who live around the same block in LA on Thanksgiving. Each family has their own special dishes for the holiday, besides the quintessential centerpiece-turkey. Each family also has a set of different problems that blows up on Thanksgiving from the obligatory gathering of the whole family, whether or not they want to be together.

I enjoyed the movie. It wasn't terribly substantial, kind of in between something I think would be on TV and a theather, but it's enjoyable and cool to see if you're American and familiar with the idea of Thanksgiving (or if you don't know anything about Thanksgiving and are somewhat fascinated by it; the director, Gurinder Chadha, is British). It made me think about Thanksgiving in my house, or the idea of Thanksgiving being pounded into my head ever since I was born.

Every year my family has been in America, we've celebrated Thanksgiving, turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce and all. I suppose my parents got used to the idea during grad school (they lived in Taiwan before that), probably going to Thanksgiving celebrations. The only times that we didn't celebrate Thanksgiving in a traditional way was when we lived in Taiwan. However, we still had the Thanksgiving weekend holiday, during which we'd go to Tokyo Disneyland (which is definitely a more fun way to celebrate Thanksgiving than eating turkey!). One year when only my mum and I were home, we ate a Tofurky, and when I was a raw foodist I suppose I just ate salad and a homemade "raw pumpkin pie" (didn't come out that good; human bodies just don't want to digest raw squash, hence WHY YOU COOK IT). The movie showed how each family brought their own culture to the table, but I don't recall my family serving much traditional Chinese food. We probably had rice, but I remember also making bread one year and wild rice another year. Or maybe we didn't need rice since we had the potatoes. Last year I made mashed sweet potatoes but we probably had rice too.

dinner for three

I guess our table was kind of sparse last year. Besides mashed potatoes (which I've been in charge of for years, although I never used sweet potatoes before), I also made Norwegian cookies from a recipe my friend gave me that I'm sure came out nothing like they were supposed to.

Sirupssnipper

Not having any idea what they were suppposed to taste like, I don't think there's any way these could've been successful, working from a translated recipe. Oh well, can't say I didn't try.

Uh. What was I talking about? Crap. I didn't mean to just describe food, but hopefully the pictures are a little interesting.

When I was younger, Thanksgiving dinner involved familiy friends or other family members besides just the four of us. It whittled down when the family friends that we'd always celebrate holidays with moved to California, my dad spent 50% or more time in Taiwan, my brother went to college, and so on. We never had any big conflicts at Thanksgiving though, thank god. I'd go insane if that happened.

However, we did have a conflict at a food related event this year. For my brother's birthday, my dad forced us into the kitchen with a cheap cake none of us really wanted to eat for a photo opportunity (he always takes photos of us when we really don't want to have photos taken). As none of us wanted to eat the cake or celebrate my brother's 23rd birthday this way, we were ...silent.

"I don't understand; why don't you guys speak?"

Oh, great question, dad. Even though my knowledge of Chinese is worse than stray dogs in China, I've heard him say "I don't understand" enough times to know what that sounds like in Chinese. However, he said it this day in English and mainly directed the question to my mum (but said it in English so we'd all know what he was saying; my brother doesn't know Chinese either). I should probably fill you in on the status of our family. (My mum wouldn't appreciate it but really, I don't think it's a big deal.)

...um. It's not so good. Or rather, it's fine between my mum, brother, and myself, but not so good with our dad who after recently going to a counselor with my mum has come upon the stunning realization that yes, their marriage sucks. Oh gee, that's what my mum, brother and I have been saying for years. I guess that also shows how well he comprehends this stuff. It's easier to swallow when you pay someone to analyze your relationship. However, from what my mother has told he, he still doesn't really get it. He's apparently informed the counselor that he has a good relationship with me (well, better than with my brother or mum, if that can be used as a scale; by the end of the summer I was the messenger between us and him) and that we'd speak for 20 minutes each day, or something. Which is just a lie, but there ya go.

Anyhoo, after that question my mum got quite angry (replying to his question in English) and still, I don't think my dad got any kind of hint from her unsurprising anger. ...You know, even though my mum sometimes eats a lot, she's quite slim, probably from all the stress.

One part of "What's Cooking?" strongly reminded me of my mother. In a scene between a college-age son and his mother who had been cheated on (the son has a poor relationship with his dad), he asks why she's "weak", in that she still lives with his father. Of course, she's not weak; she puts a lot of energy into trying to keep the family together.

I've asked my mum a similar question before, getting a similar answer. If only you knew my grandparents. In-laws are stereotypically known as nightmares, but ...you haven't met my dad's parents. It would take too long to explain them though.

Uh. I don't know what point I'm trying to make...probably none at all. I'm also not getting out of the film what I probably should be getting, as in something about the food and how it's portrayed in the movie and whatnot. Well. There was a lot of food. Yes. I liked how the scenes panned between the four families making different dishes with similar ingredients, or making completely different dishes to go with their backgrounds (Vietnamese, African-American, Jewish, Latino). Unlike the other movie I just watched for my class, "Like Water for Chocolate", the food wasn'y necessarily a major component of creating conflicts. Obviously, it's a major part of Thanksgiving, but it was the holiday itself bringing families and friends together that lead to conflicts. Ish. I think. Maybe not—I'm supposed to read an essay about the movie but I haven't gotten the book that contains it yet.

One thing that I thought was hilarious was how in the Vietnamese family, the mother had to prepare to meals; one Vietnamese, one American, for the parents/grandparents and children. The turkey (before it turned into charcoal) had been half covered in what looked like a spicy paste while the other half was left naked for the children's American tastes. My mum has a Korean friend who apparently has to do the same thing since her children don't like Korean food. This makes me want to cry since this woman can probably cook amazing things and Korean food is undeniably awesome. I'd love it if my mum cooked Chinese food all the time!

...actually, on that thought of having to cater to the kid's american tastes, that does have to deal with the movie's conflict. The mother is stressed due to having such Americanized kids who don't follow the same principles as her, but she loves them and gives them what they want. And blah blah blah...I suppose I'd have to talk about the conflict for this to make sense, but I don't want to spoil the plot. An epitome of American-ness is shown towards the end, when the family resorts to KFC after the turkey burns to a crisp.

In the African-American family, there's a conflict between tradition (the grandmother) and the upper-middle class (the grandmother's son and wife). To the wife's chagrin, her mother-in-law questions the shitake mushroom stuffing and insists on making an additional macaroni and cheese dish. Not that there's anything really wrong with that. Although her heart was in the right place, the grandmother was pretty annoying to the wife; of course, EVERYTHING TURNS OUT ALRIGHT IN THE END! Kinda.

Uh. I'm tired. Or rather, I should get off the computer and read more stuff for school. Of course, it's all food related....good lord.

I ate a whole chocolate bar today. Um. Yeah. I know I already mentioned that. (sigh)

As much as I wish I wouldn't eat tomorrow, I know I will. I'll still be sick. Veselka is tempting me.

I usually try to write well though-out entries, but I think I'll just lay down what I've been eaten lately.

...wait, that's what I usually do. HA HA! HAAA oh, my stomach.

U.S. Food Policy made an interesting post about school lunches. The bit about France describing school lunches as "adult menus served in child-size portions" made me want to cry. If you're American you'll well aware that public instutions for the most part, whether schools or, even worse in my opinion, hospitals, are known for having craptastic food. It's nice to hear about schools getting rid of soda and snack machines and replacing them with water and milk (er, depends what kind of milk), but it's...I dunno. More than that. I guess you can't just do the "adult menu" thing in American considering that a lot of adults probably don't eat well either, but...um.

I wish I lived in France, for more than one reason, the other reasons being bread and chocolate. Those are valid reasons, yes? I suppose I'd end up fat.

Sparkling yogurt! Er. Interesting? I've had yogurt drinks before and they were okay, but why carbonated? Is that the only way we can reach kids? Mango lassi, anyone? :) While the article says that carbonation isn't necessarily bad and that it has negative connotations due to being used mainly in soda (not to sound snooty, but I could down a lot of Pellegrino in one shot...at the expensive of burping for ages afterwards), I heard that it does have bad health effects on it's own (I don't drink Pellegrino...much). But whatever. I'd rather just eat yogurt. And I do.

foooood

On Sunday I woke up to the sound of India music from outside my window. I remembered walking in on an Indian festival last year; was it that time again already?

piles of food

Yeeeeup. I don't know if this has an official name, but I call it "the Indian festival with lots of food". Damn, Indian food is good. I didn't know what was the best thing to get, so I just went for what was cheap; a $5 set of chicken and rice with two vegetable sides of vegetable dumpling and lentils, with a piece of naan.

supper

Alright, not great or bad. It's better than most festival food, eh? At least it's not sausages and various deep fried substances because then I'd have to have found another food source farther away, because this festival was literally right outside my door. Water Street was blocked off from Fulton Street and down.

I didn't eat anything for the rest of the day besides a peach because I got to stand for 6 hours and see a concert. It was good. I did some sweating which hopefully translated tothe burning of some calories after eating that chocolate bar the other day. I think I gained some weight, but my pants still fit. HOORAH. NOW I CAN CELEBRATE BECAUSE MY PANTS FIT.

Today was a more indulgent day, although I did do some sweating. However, the first red flag was when at work, I sat in what felt like a perpetual state of wheezy lung syndrome, aka asthma. Thankfully there wasn't anyone sitting near me or they would've thought I was Darth Vader's small, Asian relative. While I contemplated a quick snack for lunch from a nearby bakery, I realized the wheat products had to go.

[insert sad black and qhite montage of bread]

So for today at least, I cut out wheat. However, I kept in the rice, figuring that without rice I'd resort to nuts, which could be worse than rice, or at the very least more expensive. I skipped lunch and after going to the Greenmarket after my Essentials of Cuisine class (in which we discussed Chinese food, hence...something coming up) where I bought apples, onions, and potatoes, I headed towards Chinatown with a backpack full of produce. And a book. The craving for Chinese food came from my class, which makes me feel less and less Chinese the more I learn about Chinese food. I didn't even know what province my family came from since my parents are from Taiwan and while I call myself Chinese, I'd say my parents are from Taiwan cos...well, they are. I've never been to China (although I wouldn't mind) and I'm sure Taiwan is pretty different from China, aside from the cities maybe. But I don't know.

Since I couldn't eat wheat, I looked out for rice things. Rice. Rice rice rice, the most central, important, symbolic Chinese food, which I can eat copious amounts of. I first went to a bakery on Grand Street to get a sweet mango rice ball and then planned on checking out May May, the dim sum store, since I've never tried any of their food before, but instead I saw some zhong zi sitting on Sun Dou Dumpling Shop's open counter.

Zhong zi: the perfect meal (or a really good one; something more like cake would be my perfect meal), in the shape of a triangle-esque shape, sticky rice surrounding peanuts, pork, and/or egg yolk and wrapped in bamboo leaves. It's one of my favorite foods yet I rarely eat it. I'm sure I've eaten it less than five times this year and it's not something you should eat a lot since each one probably encapsulates a certain fatty, glutinous rice doom.

...however, I've never tried the vietnamese ones, or rather, any of the rice based desserts from the Vietnamese deli. I might just have to do that tomorrow.

Oh, what did I eat? When I got back to my dorm between 4-5PM, I scarfed down a delicious white peach, sauteed green beans and chopped red onion for what ended up being really good sweet onions (screw the green beans, just gimme onions!), the entire zhong zi (despite taht I thought I'd just eat half), an apple, and the rice ball.

It's a lot. Dude. (sigh)

I suppose I can skip lunch tomorrow too, or bring an apple.

Temporary plea: If you or someone who know wants to go to the Beck concert this Friday at Hammerstein Ballroom, leave a comment or email me. After weeks of having tickets, I still can't find someone to take my extra one.

IT IS SAD. THIS IS BECK!

The ticket is $50 but I'd pay for my friends; just that they're all busy. Or something. Oops. It's always safer to buy a pair of tickets but that bit me in the bum this time.

hamantaschen

[A quick aside: I've become accustomed to spelling it "hamentashen" but there are a whole bunch of different ways. I chose what I thought was easiest. Bwahaha.]

Remember how I said I'd try to not eat wheat because it may possibly put my life into great wheezy danger? Well, just like a crack addict goes back to the dealer for a burst of euphoria (not that I've had crack...), my legs directed me towards the north end of the Union Square Greenmarket where I knew hamentashen lay, waiting in bounteous piles of triangular, poppy seed-filled babies (triangular babies are in; ask your local geneticist). It's not something you see very often.

And what a damn fine hamentashen it was. While smaller and less rich than the ones from Moishe's Bakery (whose hamentashen fill me up to the brim, rendering me unable to frolic, I ate the whole Baker's Bounty one in a single go without a problem; it was practically my dinner), I'd definitely buy this again. It was just really good. No complaints.

My wheat indulgence began earlier in the day after doing my second "off site" lab for Food Production and Management. I started off cutting cauliflower, then going on to slicing peppers and traying lumps of frozen cookie dough (oh, delicious lumps). Traying all the white chocolate chunk cookie lumps left behind wayward orphan white chocolate chunks. Hm. What DOES Robyn do in this situation?

*munch* TIME TO EAT SOME TASTY ORPHANS!

Yes, the first thing I ate today was a chunk of white chocolate. Unlike many other people, I have no qualms against white chocolate; hell, I like ALL chocolate, although by "all" I mean the three major categories: dark, milk, and white. I won't touch plain cacao beans; they taste like something scrapped off the floor of the third level of Hell. In other words, it's not so good. Although I was offered a freshly baked cookie, I hadn't yet decided to go full-throttle with my wheat eating (I ingested a bit of frozen cookie dough stuck to the chocolate chunks, but I decided that the amount was negligible)...until my classmate and I were let out two hours early, giving me a lot of time to partake in one my favorite pasttime.

LEAFBLOWING! I mean. FOODING! Yeah. Oh, but before that, I'll fill you in on some more advice the head chef, David, told me. He could immediately tell (well, after being in my presence for less than 4 hours over the past two weeks) that I didn't believe in myself. I guess it's painfully obvious; I'm doomed. He could also tell that I wasn't much of a kitchen worker, thus leading him to recommend that I try going for some kind of front-of-the-house hotel management position. Now, even though I'm no chef, I'm not a people-person either. I can be pleasant but I'd probably go insane from having to deal with ...uh, humans. He knows that I spend a lot of time on the computer and was probably disappointed when I informed him that I had no experience in hacking (he asked me!).

Oh well. Fooding!

hummus and stuff

I went to The Hummus Place per the recommendations of several people. It's a small place but it wasn't too crowded when I went around noon. I'm not very familiar with hummus but I ate just about all the food placed in front of my face (that tends to happen), which was a bowl of tahini hummus with a hard boiled egg, drizzled with olive oil, two warm pitas, a plate of pickles and onions, and some hot sauce. My first bite of hummus burst (boy, that sounds painful; "My first bite hemorhagged with deliciousness!") with tahini, which makes sense since it was...tahini hummus. But they must've used really good tahini. The hummus was super-creamy and tahini-filled (yup, that's all I can come up with), which is great for people who like tahini (me), but by the end of my meal as hummus filled my blood vessels, I felt unbalanced eating all that hummus at one meal. Maybe I just don't like it enough. I'd definitely go back to try the other flavors.

I probably shouldn't have eaten the white chocolate beforehand. Oops.

After my meal, I headed to the Greenmarket despite my full stomach. I had a slight urge to try the Otto Gelato Cart at the NW corner of Washington Square Park but I wasn't in the mood for gelato; I was in the mood for WHEAT, and its amber, sugar-filled waves of diet-killing prowess.

chocolate chip walnut cookie

So besides the hamentashen, I also bought this chocolate chip walnut cooking from Bread Alone. My reasoning is that I've never tried any of their cookies and I generall try a cookie from every vendor (I haven't actually tried all of them, surprisingly considering my level of consumption, which hovers around the "dude, this isn't a contest" mark). The cookie had good flavor but the texture wasn't to my liking. It wasn't a chewy or hard and crispy, but a little too crumbly while not being dry. It's not a bad cookie, just not one I really like.

While Milk and Cookies may not make amazing cookies, they have a freshly baked tasted and texture that I loved. Man, I gotta go back.

I don't remember the last time I ate that much food on a Wednesday before my cooking class; I usually don't have the time to eat anything. Crap. My cooking class wasn't very exciting since we made broths and composed soups, but if you're curious enough...

look, broth

look, soup

If I really liked soup, I'd say more about this. Surprisingly perhaps, I liked my group's soup the most out of all the groups. We seemed to have the simplest recipe of chicken broth (we mixed pre-packed chicken broth with water, dry white wine, and simmered it with chicken wings) infused with star anise over roasted root vegetables and roasted squash. Our composed soup was a mix of yellows and oranges while everyone else's had more components. All the soups tasted good but our broth tasted most flavorful. I wasn't surprised that ours was flavorful as much as I was surprised that I thought everyone else's was less so. Hm.

Tomorrow should be a non-wheat day.

After class on Thursday, I didn't know what to eat, or whether I was really hungry. So naturally, I ate way too much.

I went to the Korean food stand on the second floor of Cafeteria 61 for jap chae (potato starch noodles). Having eaten there once before, I knew that the portions were huge and hot (temperature-wise), probably not meant to be entirely consumed by people like me (short, female people). I've never actually ordered made-to-order jap chae before and this might be weird, but I like it a lot more when it's cold after sitting in a fridge case (which is the first way I had tried it); the texture is really chewy and the flavors in my opinion taste stronger. When it's cooked, it just seems too soft and almost mushy, except not really mushy since the strands don't break apart easily. I guess my perception of jap chae has been messed up since I first ate it cold.

There wasn't anything wrong with the jap chae, of course--it's just my perference. The noodles were topped with some vegetables and sliced beef, with that whole mixture put atop rice. Yes, lots and lots of starch. Yes, I like starch. Yes, I ATE ALMOST THE WHOLE THING, and I thought I was going to die afterwards because it was so much food. You could ask why I didn't stop earlier but I have no idea. A part of me used to think that hot food fills me up more and would prevent me from overeating (you can't shovel it into your mouth, at least) but that doesn't seem to be the case. Oops.

I felt weird for the rest of the day. Indigestion. It's like my stomach was always at risk for upheaval (I wouldn't want to see a rice/noodle mixture come out) but luckily, nothing like that happened. During my class after lunch, I had the strangest feeling of being unable to stay awake, something I surprisingly haven't felt in a long time. My eyelids literally felt like 100 ton weights and I fought ("Fighting Eyelids"...that sounds like a really bad football team) to keep them open. My class isn't boring, so it had nothing to do with that, and it's not like I get that little sleep that I'd flump out of consciousness during a class. Coupled with the feeling of being overly tired, I had a weird feeling in my head that I can't describe besides being abnormal. It wasn't explicit nausea or dizzyness, just...something. Something to say "hello" and bother me incessantly, like a nagging kid who won't shut up about wanting a popsicle.

The weird feelings lasted maybe half an hour, not the entire duration of the class. Odd. I'd say that they were a bit like dehydration symptoms, except I've been dehydrated before and they weren't the same. But anyway.

I didn't feel like eating after that. Yes, even I have my limits! I went to the library to watch "Tortilla Soup" as assigned in my film class, not knowing that it was a "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" remake. It was really interesting to see a movie totally remade to fit another culture, in this case from Chinese-Taiwanese to Mexican-American. The story was changed in minute ways, although the feelings of the two movies were very different. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese version felt more subdued and not as playful. It's not a bad thing, just different. If you liked EDMW/"Tortilla Soup", be sure to watch the other movie also.

After watching the movie I got the urge for chocolate, in particular the milk chocolate creme brulee bar from Jacque Torres. I didn't have enough time so instead I went to Life Thyme and got a Green & Black's mint dark chocolate bar. Yes, that's totally different from caramel and milk chocolate, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try something new.

...except it did. I didn't want dark chocolate and I wasn't very fond of the mint filling (on the upside, it's ORGANIC!). Don't get me wrong--I ate most of it--but I threw out the last 1/5th of the bar since I just didn't want any more dark chocolate. I distinctly remember a time last year when I had such a strong dark chocolate draving that I practically inhaled a pack of dark chocolate Valrhona dics. Funny how tastes change so much.

Oh, I got the chocolate craving from my period, I'm assuming. Mmm, sugar.

The next day, I felt more tired than I had the day before (although in this case, I was doing really boring work) and I didn't have much of an appetite. My appetite waned even more (even more than "none") when I went into a deep state of depression and "I suck"-ness, which I don't have to get into now. Basically, I walked to the Shake Shack and wasn't hungry at all, so I just napped on the bench in a hobo-like fashion. A clean, young hobo with a handbag, at least.

I decided though that I should eat something since I hadn't ingested anything that day and I'd have a long night ahead of me (for Beck concert-ness). What to get?

...CHOCOLATE. That's all I wanted and even though I know it's not healthy, I figured I'd give my body what it wanted. This time I went for milk chocolate labeled as having nougat, but instead was more of a creamy hazelnut filling (like I care; it's still delicious).

I ate a bunch of pieces while waiting outside for the show, waiting which went for the next two hours. In some rain. Hammerstein Ballroom is not an accomodating place, so you can't bring water bottles in. Yeah, it's understandable, but so is...hydration. Oh well. After the show, the floor of the venue was a mess of plastic beer cups, with mounds of them collected at the base of the stairwells. Lovely. I also noticed after the show that my pants had become strangely loose, which my mum attributes to dehydration (uh..whoa?), although this also happened after eating dinner at around 11:30PM.

...yes, I ate at a diner with a bunch of people! Funny though that it's still not in NJ, aka "the place saturated with a gazillion diners". Janet (fellow reader of this blog and a writer!) accompanied me to the Beck show and afterwards we met up with two of her friends and one of my friends, Erika (another food and Beck lover) all who were also at the show, at the next-door Tick Tock Diner. What did I get?

Pancakes. It was a tough choice between pancakes, cake, or pie. Actually, tartufo was also on the menu (which is something I ate a lot as a kid, although I haven't eaten one in many years) but you know me; I like pancakes. Although the selection isn't huge, I went for the Tollhouse Cookie Pancakes since I've never seen "cookie pancakes" on a menu before. They were good, fluffy with lots of chocolate chips, a little blobbly shaped, but it's the taste that matters (and the smell). It didn't really have cookie bits in it but it had some "non-pancake dough" bits, if you can imagine that. No pancake-enlightening moment took place but it was a nice end to my day after only having sustained myself on 400 calories of chocolate (400 really good calories) for most of the day. I also nicked some of Erika's wide, thin french fries that she couldn't finish. *cough*

So once again, I followed a Beck concert with food. Oh, if only we had been near the Donut Pub...

You are each responsible for identifying a food item that has some special significance to you. In order for it to be significant, it must be lodged into your memory, woven within your daily existence, or somehow attached to your emotions. Perhaps it is a food that was always prepared for a specific family holiday. It might be something you ate when you were young that you don�t even eat anymore. Or maybe it was a food you had only once, but its impact (positive or negative) stayed with you. It is important that the food has significance because your task will involve communicating that food�s special meaning in a way that others can grasp.

Uh. Uhhh. Wow, this assignment took me a long time to figure out. Strangely perhaps, this is the first paper (and a short one at that: 2 pages) I had to write this school year. I'll revise this later but if you're curious to read about a childhood food of mine, you're just a little too bored.

---

Fried Egg Sandwich

“Hey Robyn, what do you have for lunch today?” asked the perky YMCA counselor. I opened my backpack, unearthing a lone plastic sandwich bag.

“Oh…would you like me to heat that up for you?”

The counselor took the sandwich out of the bag. While it had initially been warm when my mum fried the beaten eggs and pocketed the resulting white-streaked yellow congealed mass in between two slices of stiff, whole-grain bread, it lost its heat by the time I got to the YMCA for after-school care. I would usually eat my slightly soggy fried egg sandwiches in my classroom at room temperature where no heating implements were to be found, but since my elementary school had early dismissal that day, I ate my lunch at the microwave-blessed YMCA instead.

A few moments later I was presented with my nuked sandwich on a paper plate. Time to dig in.

There�s no mystery as to what my fried egg sandwich tasted like. Fried egg. Plain, un-toasted whole wheat bread. Combination of the two. There�s nothing particularly wrong with this kind of sandwich; it was fast, somewhat filling, and relatively healthy. Also, it was surely better than Lunchables, a sad excuse for a kid�s meal that I made the mistake of trying once�lured by its bright, colorful packaging�consisting of crackers, processed �cheese�, and meat products of questionable origins.

While I doubt I ever complained to my mother about the constant presence of fried egg sandwiches, instead demanding a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches accompanied by mini muffins and Capri Sun as many of my classmates appeared to have, I don�t think that fried egg sandwiches would rate highly on any child�s �scale of food desirability�. It�d be somewhere near the bottom, equivalent to Dante�s first circle of hell; it�s not that bad, but you certainly wouldn�t find angels noshing on it during afternoon tea in Heaven.

Eating the fried egg sandwich while sitting in the YMCA gave me two points from which I could lament my mother�s busy life. She didn�t have enough time to prepare something more involved than frying eggs and taking sliced bread out of a bag and she wasn�t home in the afternoon so that I could spend my time productively watching Disney cartoons in the living room instead of sitting under the glare of fluorescent lights alone at a table, staring at my sandwich as it lost its radiation-induced heat. There are worse things in life, but I wasn�t about to think of them at the age of 6.

I�m assuming that the fried egg sandwiches I ate so frequently as a child had something to do with my aversion to all versions of cooked eggs (except hard-boiled) for most of my life until just a year ago. If you want to recreate the fun that is my childhood school lunch, here�s what you need:

• One or two eggs, beaten


• Small amount of butter


• Two slices of whole wheat bread (must be whole wheat

In a frying pan, heat up the butter over medium heat until it melts and starts to sizzle. Add the beaten eggs to the pan, cooking until set and browned (kind of like an omelette). Remove eggs from pan and put between the slices of bread.

For more authenticity, wrap the sandwich in a clear fold top (not zipper) sandwich bag and eat it after the condensation from the heat has made the sandwich soggy and it reaches room temperature.

---

Addendum: I love my mum to bits! But I don't have any super-fantastic memories related to her cooking.

It's only day three of "resisting all wheaty products", or about 72 hours, or about 4,320 minutes, or about 259,200 seconds.

...that number translates into a lot of wheat eating opportunities. Of course, if I thought eating wheat (or not just wheat but the things made of wheat, like bread, cake, cookies, and so on) were fine and dandy, I wouldn't be trying to give it up. However, my asthma has gotten not so good (as in, waking up to hacking up mucus like cat with a furball problem is not very becoming), so I'm getting desperate.

Yes, I'd rather give up wheat products than take medication or go to a doctor and, I dunno, demand tests and junk. I can't say I'm really eating less, rather, every fooding possibility becomes a temptation. "Ooo, cookies! Ooo, sammich! Oo, cake! Oo...more cake." To curb temptation, I do things like consume a 9 ounce container of raw cashews in two days (although that obviously didn't curb the temptation or else I wouldn't have been running on 4.5 ounces of cashews a day, which by the way is a lot more nuts than most people would ever need in one day). Thankfully, even though nuts are a common food allergen or source of food intolerance, I'm 1000% sure they don't cause me any problems since I subsisted on them for a long time without any lung related problems.

*hack cough hack*...*wheeze*...dammit, there I go again. I wish I could turn my lungs inside-out and scrape off all the mucus. Damn, how gross would that be? (Besides "I'm gonna go puke for a while now" gross?)

I don't remember my asthma being this bad a year ago, but my body is now a year more junked up on NYC food. Delicious NYC food. Delicious carb laden NYC food. I can't just cut out wheat though; I should also cut out added sugars. Yesterday I ate a 100 gram peanut butter milk chocolate bar from Jacques Torres, but I obviously can't do that every day. (I mean, technically speaking, I could, and would love to, but my organs probably wouldn't like it, except for my taste buds and my brain's pleasure center.) Today while walking home through after eating dinner with a friend, I had a hankering for a rice ball from Fay Da Bakery. I passed two of them and went inside one of them...but I plodged on. For dessert, I ended up eating an apple and about 3 ounces of cashews. Yeah. Not the most delicious thing in the world (quite calorie-dense though), but I could do worse.

Yes, I ate dinner out today! With a human! What a novel idea. My high school friend, Christina, goes to NYU also but ironically lives at the absolute opposite edge of NYU housing from me (I live in the southern-most area at Fulton Street and she lives at the northern-most area at 26th Street). We haven't seen each other in ages so she hopped a cab to meet me in Soho. Although I initially had no idea where to go, I remembered wanting to try Thai Angel on Grand Street. Christina said she had never tried Thai food, giving us all the more reason to try something new. It was empty when we went in around 5:30 PM but became full by the time we left around 7 PM.

meat and rice and stuff

Christina ordered pad thai and I got some kind of spicy meat and vegetable thing (seriously, after looking at the menu for a while it seemed like a lot of things were the same...but now) involving chili paste, julienned red peppers, chopped green beans, bay leaves, and lots of beef. I wasn't expecting all the beef.

"Dude, I think I just ate a cow. A very thiny sliced cow."

While I would've prefered that the beef be more tender, I still enjoyed it; just enough spicey-ness that I didn't have to glug down water, flavored with a hint of bay leaves, and the green beans were perfectly crisp. There was just SO MUCH MEAT. Like. Man. It's a good value (with tip, around $10); I enjoyed my dish but couldn't finish it. God knows I tried, as Christina looked at me in horror (which is how people usually look at me while I eat). Besides having my stomach almost explode from my meal, I sampled Christina's pad thai--TWICE. I didn't think she was taking it home, causing me to ask for another bite after she said she was done, but...er, she did get it packed up. Oops. Note to anyone who might eat with me in the future: if you want to take your food home, don't let me eat it! I'll just eat stuff if it's destined for the trash.

Before meeting up with Chrstina, I had spent about 5 hours in Corinne's apartment to see her photoshoot for an upcoming issue of Budget Living about throwing a Chinese New Year party (cos you know, EVERYONE'S DOING IT...hell, my family hasn't celebrated it in at least seven years). It was cool, food stuffs including chicken satay, Vietnamese summer rolls, potstickers, triangular fried spring rolls, those Japanese buckwheat noodles whose real name I can't remember right now, and probably other stuff. It just took...a long time. Yeah.

stuff for making summer rolls

I was there because I wanted to observe but also because I could be used as a prop! A living one. At most, I think I'd be in two photos, one of a group of us around the table in the photo making summer rolls and looking like we're having THE BEST TIME EVAH, and another standing next to a woman holding a cake with another person on her other side looking at the cake and all of us looking at the cake like we're having THE BEST TIME EVAH. Like yeah.

Taking photos of one food platter (or anything) takines 1000000 shots. They come out really nice though, if you have a really nice camera, good film, a huge-ass lighting thinger, and people who know what they're doing. YUP! Figuring out what plate works best with what other serving dish takes some planning too, not something I've had the need to think about since I have ...um, a plate? A bowl? "A" as in the singular. Not much choice there, folks.

Although we couldn't eat most of the food since it had to be photographed (I left before they finished the final "let's put all the food on the table and make it look all bounteous and delicious" photo), I could've sampled some of Corinne's dumplings or spring rolls. Except. WHEAT! NO WHEAT! Why does my asthma come at the most inopportune times? (not that there's a good time, but I was eating wheat last week.) I figured I had to start somewhere, so I refused all the wheaty products, including the free sandwiches and cookies we had at lunch. My lunch consisted of potato chips, corn chips, and strawberries. Well. It could've been worse.

NO WHEEEAAT!!!

Whoa, man. *poke poke* Fat is squishy. My fat is squishy. The skin in the area above my hip bone? Squishtastic!

I don't know why I felt the need to tell you that. Did it catch your attention? Are you disgusted now? HUH, HUH? TELL ME, OH MIGHTY READER, or I shall poketh you like my hip fat.

*poke*

Dude, it's too late. I'm tired. Despite that, I'll keep on blabbing in a semi-cohesive manner.

banana chocolate vegan pudding

I'm sure eating a whole container of pudding doesn't help to slim one's waist and it's probably for the best that the nutrition information wasn't listed on the container. This banana chocolate vegan pudding from Life Thyme was AMAZINGLY GOOD. I mean, when you're expecting something to taste like tofu but instead experience the taste of normal, moo-juice enhanced pudding, you think WHOA! YUM! And it's not often you find the combination of banana pudding and chocolate pudding. DOUBLE WHOA! MY MOUTH, IT GOES WHOA! I don't know how else to describe the pudding besides that it was like regular pudding, except better because I knew ingredients didn't suck and that Life Thyme made it. Sweet. If you like pudding, you must go there NOW and get some pudding. Or bring me along.

Oh, I had one problem with the pudding; I think it left a funny taste in my mouth, like a film. Unless that was from the food I ate before it...

lunch of many food groups

Although their selection is small, I like Life Thyme's hot food bar (nothing is wheaty, woop!). I didn't load up on too much food (it's more expensive than most places, even more than Whole Foods, I think) but I got a bit of chicken, turkey, rice, potato, sweet potato, and bok choy. The meat was too dry but ye know, still edible (dude, what isn't edible in my world?), hence this:

I ate it

Yup. I also bought a bar of Green & Black's caramel bar to reach my sugar and fat requirements of the day (or week, if you're a normal human being), which I unfortunately didn't like that much. That's two hits for G&B and I'm not itching to make it three strikes. The chocolate isn't bad but it's like I keep coming across stuff I don't like, yet think I will (the previous strike being the dark chocolate mint goo-filled bar). The chocolate was my dinner, so I ate most of it, save for one 3-piece row I shared with a friend.

Wednesday's advanced food's class was semi-deserted due to Yom Kippur. I had one partner in the beginning of class, but it whittled down to zero after she had to leave early for the holiday.

Robyn. Left alone. To cook. This stuff:

pork chop with enriched porcini-miso broth sauce

other pork with reduced porcini-miso broth sauce

porcini mushroom powder crusted bass in Port wine butter sauce

steamed mussels with Pernod and Star Anise

It all came out good, although I didn't have the time/mindset to follow recipes perfectly. I forgot to reduce the enriched broth and I'm pretty sure I didn't do the Port wine butter sauce right. I forgot to pull out the beards from the mussels, but most of them ended up being beard-free. Shellfish are super-easy to cook; you basically just steam them for 5-10 minutes in some kind of sauce, which becomes flavored with the shellfish juice. The recipe I used called for clam juice, white wine, Pernod, star anise, and shallots. Most of my mussels ended up uneaten since I finished cooking them at the end of class. :\

Pork! Chops. Are quite good. I don't eat pork much aside from tonkatsu (Which I don't eat often, although I love it) so I wasn't familiar with pork chops...which basically taste like tonkatsu (yes, I know they're the same meat; my brain doesn't work). I seared them before shoving the whole pan in an oven to cook the rest of the chops. Of pork. The Chops of Pork. Mm.

Overall, I ate a gazillion types of meat at the end of my lab: mussel, clam, duck, beef, buffalo, bass, and pork. Good stuff. *pats belly*

Time for bed. I wonder what I'll be eating today...

...yes, I'm still squishy.

BUT WAIT! Last things:

• Bento moblog: Whoa, awesome! or whoa, scary! In my food & society class, we just read an essay about Japanese mothers and the meaning of making bento boxes for their children. I'd describe it but that would take more thought.
• Egg cosies!...uh, why? They're cute, but huh?

I hadn't eaten food from Chinatown in a while. Since it conveniently appears en route from campus to my dorm, I dropped by. On a Saturday night. Oops.

You know how it's usually hard to choose something from a Chinese restaurant menu because there are 500 choices? It can go both ways.

taho or turnip cake?

There's a shop on Mott Street that sells loads of tofu and noodles. And...this stuff. Even though I've passed it innumerable times, I've never tried it. With every other eating place either packed to the brim or closed/near closing, I relenquished two $1 bills in exchange for some unhealthy but life-sustaining (eh, at least for one night) food.

turnip cake

The turnip cake had a nice crust all around, my only complaint being that I couldn't cut through it with my plastic fork (which is why someone invented knives; good work). I dipped each bite in brown goo/oyster sauce but turnip cake tastes fine without sauce. If you've never had turnip cake before, I can't really describe. Yeah, if I were less lazy I could, but you know. Lazy. Just trust me when I say that it tastes good.

hot taho

Taho is a dessert of silky tofu and sweet syrup. It would be better with honey (to satisfy my sometimes insatiable sweet tooth) but since it comes with a little container of syrup, I used that. Diluted by the tofu water in the container, my first thought was "Damn, I wish it were sweeter." I decided to just drink some of the syrup to see how sweet it was and...it's pretty sweet. If I get taho again, I should probably drain it first of something. However, it's not one of my favorite foods--I've eaten it once so far this year, and I had it once last year--so I don't know when I'd feel like trying honey taho.

I wasn't planning to eat a $2 dinner; who would? I thought I was going to eat dinner and see a movie with some friends, but the plans didn't pan out. No one's to blame, but I felt really...depressed. As you can see, I don't partake in many social activities so when something comes along that I might be interested in, I usually take advantage of it. Not only did that dinner plan come about, but my old roommate from last year invited me to her apartment for a Harry Potter party. I didn't feel like going by myself though, so I skipped that (also, I didn't want to be surrounded by food I couldn't eat...eh, yes, damn food). My mood was basically killed after waiting in the library (which isn't a fun place to sit in, if you've ever been there) for half an hour, unable to reach my friend's cell phone.

Despite being depressed, I was still hungry. No, not starving, but my stomach wanted something. Roaming around Chinatown was somewhat depressing as every restaurant looked crowded and I didn't want to wait long for something (I've never done take-out from any of the restaurants but I suppose most of them do that). I went to Fay Da Bakery on Mott Street with a hankering for a taro rice ball but there were so many people with arms outstretched with dollar bills and pastry-filled trays lining up on the counter that I figured it was best to leave.

The day before, I decided to actually cook a meal. Hell, I have a kitchen! And some cook-able food. And a baking tray. I should do something with those components.

roasted potato onion stuff

So I did. I roasted two potatoes and one and a half onions (the half was leftover) in a 450 degree oven for about 20 minutes, during which the fire alarm went off TWICE because of the heat. It wasn't like the kitchen became a furnace, so I guess the alarm is just super sensitive. To avoid having my eardrums blasted with high pitched beeping, I'm just going to...not roast anymore. Not like I ever did it before.

Tired. Time for bed. You'll hear my asthma-rant later.

I just ate this totally funky taro red bean coconut glutinous rice thing (like zhong zi) from Viet-Nam Bahn Mi So 1. For a bit of unecessary backstory, only once before have I had a sweet zhong zi with dates and red bean. Result? Not so good. Or simply, just bad to the point it made me wonder why anyone would eat it.

Today's funky taro whatnot rice triangle had the same effect, except I actually ate most of it (because I'm a moron). Anything that touched the taro tasted like crap, like my previous experience; you think the main part will taste different than how it ends up tasting, which is "crap". Have I just had the unfortunate experience of having two funky glutinous rice things or are they all like that? Savory ones always taste good. Bring on the meat.

Thankfully, besides the funky glutinous rice, I also bought a pack of five summer rolls. With pork. They're quite good. The only other place I can think of to buy summer rolls that isn't a restaurant is Whole Foods, but I think they make larger ones, which isn't something I prefer.

I've actually been in a state of non-hunger all day, but I figured I should eat something or I might not be a happy camper tomorrow. For lunch, I had a grand meal of half an apple. I wasn't hungry to begin with and somehow became less hungry when my mouth was zapped with sourness as I bit into the apple. Crap, what the hell did I buy? They're green, but they're not ...a regular kind of green apple. I think. Unless it was labeled incorrectly. Dammit, now I have a bunch of apples I don't want. Maybe I'll make applesauce out of the damned apples (or does "apples of the damned" sound more dramatic?).

But WAIT, for it is the season to rejioce. Why? PERSIMMONS! THEY'RE HERE! IN MY KITCHEN! Or at least in Chinatown. I bought 5 beautifully plump, orange, and not quite ripe Japanese persimmons for $2 on Mott Street today. In my belly, soon they will be.

...but probably not tonight since that glutinous rice crap is still floating around mah belly. Uh oh.

I've definitely put on some weight in the past few days. (pokes self) Not from wheat, at least. Yes, I'm still WHEAT FREE, 10th day in a row, which isn't very long at all. I sort of cheated by eating spelt, but I didn't eat that much. So. I don't know. (sigh) Today I skipped out eating a freshly made onion tart that looked damn tasty. WILLPOWER, I HAVE.

...okay, more like WHEEZY LUNG, I HAVE. Oh yeah, that organ? It's still wheezy. I've needed to use my inhaler twice in the past 7 days, which ain't cool, even more so considering the time I had to use it was in the middle of the early morning when I would've rathered preferred being in a state of...sleep. I finally made an appointment for a doctor's check up in my school's health center, although that's not until November 2nd. It's doubtful that I'd die before then.

sign of a (clumsy) chef

Surprisingly, I've never gotten badly injured in a cooking class. This burn isn't that bad at all, but it's the worst thing that's happened (no chopped fingers/other appendages!). Two days after putting my arm on a hot metal surface (hot because I had put a hot pot on it--not smart), a slightly triangular dark brown splotch has appeared where my skin cells transformed into crispy dead things. It doesn't hurt nor has it gotten scabby, so I can't say I care that much. My teacher said chefs frequently get burns on that part of their arms.

When I initially realized I burned myself, I thought "Eh, it's not bad." A few moments later, I realized the burnt part started feeling kinda tingly and the skin didn't look quite like the surrounding skin. My brain is slower than the melting ice caps.

sesame crusted tuna

The main dish I made on Wednesday was sesame crusted tuna. It came out alright, even though I probably cooked it for too long. The green sauce is cilantro and coconut chutney, basically a bunch of cilantro mixed with coconut milk, dried coconut, lime juice and spices. Shove it in a food processor and voila: green goo. But impressive green goo!

(I like saying "goo".)

So. Enough of that. This morning I went to Whole Foods to buy some ingredients for a recipe I'm testing for my Food Production and Management class. Since I don't have to make it until next week, I just bought dry ingredients, which included a buttload of herbs , spices and pine nuts. The bulk spices in square plastic containers were cheaper than the smaller but nicely packaged, screw-top ones, which means I now have a crapload of dry parsley and "butcher's pepper" (I think it's just coarsely ground black pepper) among other things. I suppose now I'll just put parsley and pepper on everything that could use a dash of ...taste.

I also picked up a spelt coconut scone since I've never had a spelt scone from Whole Foods before (not because I was hungry). My opinion? It's good. Probably more crumbly than a normal scone, but not dry. However, the weirdest thing happened: it made me so full to the point I couldn't finish it. No, it wasn't one of those ginormous mutant scones (you know...those), just a normal one. However, I ate it over a 1-2 hour period while twiddling away on my computer at work. I've read that it takes 20 minutes for your body to register that it's full, but for me I think it's more like 1-2 hours. Because my brain is insanely slow, in all respects. I just got tired of the scone after a while and decided I didn't want to eat it anymore, even though it tasted good. This is very rare in the world of Robyn, if you haven't noticed already. It's not like when I used to throw out bread crust from a one pound loaf (you know, when I used to eat one pound loaves througout the course of a day), as this was just a small part of an already small scone. But. Anyway.

It's disapppointing to not have an appetite by the time lunch rolls around. "WHAT THE HELL AM I GONNA EAT? I should eat! I have a lunch break. But. I'M NOT REALLY HUNGRY. OH MY GOD, this is like a nightmare of gastronomic proportions!" My life turned upside down for a brief moment of fooding confusion.

sushi!

So naturally, I went to JAS Mart and got sushi for lunch. Remember how I said I wasn't hungry? Well. Sushi is one of those foods that has the ability to make me hungrier. It doesn't always happen, but after eating my 8-piece eel and cucumber sushi, I thought "Er, I could eat more." No, I didn't actually eat more, but I COULD'VE. The potential was there! The potential for MORE FACE STUFFAGE!

...dude, I'm tired. What the hell am I writing about? ...Oh, there was an overall message I was hoping to get across.

I don't usually eat breakfast because I'm just not hungry enough. If I don't eat breakfast, my tummy is rumbly and good by the time lunch rolls around to...ye know, digest lunch. I've been told for most of my life (not that I've heeded the advice) that people should eat breakfast or else they won't be able to function, their brains will atrophy, they will forever be unloved, puppies will die, and so on. My mum didn't care about breakfast and I never bought the idea of "THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF YOUR LIFE" since I always did well in school despite the lack of filling my body with fruit, cereal, or some other breakfast item before class (I don't think eating breakfast would've made me any smarter). So...as for whether or not one should breakfast, it's relative. I know there are people who are hungry in the morning and wouldn't be able to function without something, in which case, eeeaat. And then there are people like me who just wake up and go because we hardly expend any energy worthy of eating breakfast for.

...I don't think that was the overall message I wanted to get across, but it's sleepy time. Writing blog entries late at night is a really bad idea, by the way. These things just keep on getting worse.

table full of stuff

Last night I went to Kuma Inn with Lia and Kathryn after prolonged IM-ing with Lia as to where we should eat. Lia wanted meat and salt, while I just wanted something that wasn't too far away because I'M SO LAZY, OOH CAN YOU FEEL MY LAZINESS? I'm glad I didn't choose because even though I've heard of Kuma Inn, for some reason I hadn't put it on my "list of places to eat".

restaurant innards

Kuma Inn is a cozy little Asian tapas restaurant in the Lower East Side hidden on the second floor of a building, although it does have a chalkboard outside to inform people that yes, there's a restaurant up there. I walked past it all the way down the block since I hadn't noticed it at first. Lia called about a reservation and was told 10 PM was the earliest. Pssht, we'd have none of that (besides, our stomachs were ready to do some food-churning). We walked in around 8:30 PM and got a small table probably better fit for two people (as you can see from the photo), closest to the entrance. It was noisy inside, most notably with random outbursts from one probably drunken table. ;) The wall was decorated with long cross sectioned bamboo stalks whose cavities were covered with plastic windows to show the various ingredients that filled them. That probably doesn't make much sense but if you saw it, you'd know what I meant.

So...food time! I don't know the names of all the dishes (besides the ones I can find online) but here's generally what we ordered:

• seaweed salad
• whole red snapper with a sweet chili sauce
• edamame with Thai-basil lime oil
• pan roasted ocean scallops w/ bacon, kalamansi, & sake
• pork rib ...things
• garlic rice
• tuna tare tare with cucumber
• Chinese sausage with caramelized onions and sticky rice

Lia definitely wanted something with pig. Kathryn had her mind totally set on the Chinese sausage. me?...I didn't have much preference as long as it wasn't shellfish.

red snapper

I got the special, which was a whole red snapper atop snow peas, accompanied by a sweet chili sauce that reminded me of this Thai stuff I used to buy from Whole Foods and put on everything because IT TASTES SO GOOD. I like crispy things and this fish...was super-crispy. Mmmm. I wish there had been more meat, but it was still good. Not like I have any idea how to make fish that way. I totally ripped up a fish once while trying to sautee it.

I think my favorite dishes were the edamame and the Chinese sausages, not that I was IN love with them (I think I only fall in love with desserts) but if you go to the restaurant, you should get those. Lime makes a big difference; PUT IT ON EVERYTHING! MRAAH! I also loved the onions that came with the sausages. If you've never had Chinese sausages before, I'd recommend trying some ...now. You can tell how incredibly unhealthy they are from the sweet, fatty taste. I rarely eat it (my most vivid memory of it was when my mum, brother and I stayed at my mum's dad's house in Taiwan in 1992 and we ate some for breakfast) but if I had to pick a favorite kind of sausauge, that'd be it.

All the food was great. I didn't try the scallops, but I'm sure those were good. The pork ribs (which were cut into tiny bite-sized pieces) were tender and...well, porky. (I'd never be a restaurant reviewer, if you haven't noticed yet.) I'm not a big raw fish fan so I'll just say that the tuna tare tare was good, in that it tasted like raw tuna. Garlic rice was delicious, and you can't go wrong with seaweed salad. Our waiters were nice and attentive, making sure to take away dishes as we finished them or else we'd have some major table-crowding issues.

Besides that the food was great, the company was too. I've never eaten with just Lia and Kathryn before but it'll happen again, as long as my stomach can digest things. If it were up to me, it'd happen every week. :) Eating with people who really enjoy eating and trying new things is so much more meaningful than just eating with a friend who wants sustenance. That would be like going to a concert with a friend who isn't that interested in the artist you're seeing but going just because...she's bored or something. ...actually, it's not really like that but some kind of comparison that I can't think up of right now can be made.

Good times.

I weighed myself this morning and I only weigh a pound more than maybe a week ago; not bad! No need for a freak-out at least. I also ate a bar of Valrhona chocolate to remind me that it's one of the best chocolates and seriously, what's the point of eating other ones when they usually don't taste as good?

bring on the chocs

...okay, I should stop eating so much chocolate.

---ADDENDUM---

Did I totally forget about the desserts from Kuma Inn? Lordy. DON'T I LIVE FOR DESSERTS? (Or die?...I don't think you can live on desserts for very long.)

spicy chocolate ice cream something or other

While the waitress was telling us the dessert specials, Lia proclaimed that I'd be having the chocolate ice cream as I sat there all empty-brained like. Not like I'd complain, it was just funny and caught me off guard. "Someone is telling ME what to eat? I GASP AT THE THOUGHT! [gasp]" Because people usually tell me what not to eat. "No, Robyn, don't eat...the entire pie." The ice cream was smooth and while rolling it around in your mouth initially made you think, "Mm, chocolate!" And then came the burning in the back of your throat. "Mm, burning!" By no means is it excessive. It's just enough for an interesting sensation...of burning.

coconut ice cream

Kathryn got the coconut ice cream. I liked it more than my chocolate ice cream, although it was different so you can't really compare the two. Actually, as much as I love chocolate, I've never been a big fan of chocolate ice cream. I know I'm not the only person who feels this way. Chocolate chunks in ice cream works out fine but chocolate flavored ice cream doesn't seem tow ork as well, at least in my experience. But my chocolate ice cream was very good for ...chocolate ice cream. Coconut ice cream is always good though.

tart!

Lia got thsi tart made of a Philipino fruit whose name I forgot. Her first reaction was that it was very tart. And...it was, although I wouldn't say it's more tart than a lemon square, which is the only other very tart pastry I can think of having eaten in the past few years. Not that it tastes like lemon, it's just tart. And yellow. The filling was more like pudding than gelatinous, meaning it oozed everywhere when the crust was broken. Still good though. GOOO PUDDING!

spider roll

Amy and I went to Izumi yesterday, where I took my first bite of a spider roll. I don't know why it's called a spider roll. DO YOU SEE SPIDERS? NOOO. THANK GOD. This had crab tempura, cucumber, avocado, and probably other stuff. Whatever the combination, it was heavenly. Oh. Man. I rarely eat freshly made sushi, usually getting it in the form of something that's been sitting in a supermarket cold case for a while allowing the sushi to solidify and gain a less than desirable texture, but few things compare to eating sushi that was made just a few minutes prior to shoving it into one's mouth.

Obviously, something must be done about this. MUST EAT MORE SUSHI! YAARH!

Yesterday, all I ATE was Japanese food. Skipping lunch because I wasn't hungry (and I didn't have enough time), my stomach was saved for Izumi. Besides the sushi, I also got a hijiki seaweed salad.

hijiki salad

Hijiki is probably my favorite seaweed. The first time I had it, I thought it tasted kind of ...meaty. No, it doesn't taste like chicken, but it tastes less seaweed-y than other seaweeds. It tastes good, trust me. I ate my entire bowl of hijiki, along with the shiso leaf and shredded turnip.

miso eggplant

Amy ordered miso eggplant for an appetizer. Holy ...crap? This thing is freakin' huge! I think she ate most of it and if not, it was because she was getting full. "I want to save room for ice cream." Ah, Amy, I like the way you think. But before the ice cream, she had to polish off her sushi platter.

tricolor sushi

And polish the tuna, yellowtail, and salmon, she did, save for one piece of salmon. So. Onto the ice cream!

red bean ice cream tempura

We both got ice cream tempura, although she ordered green tea. I've only had fried ice cream once before about ten years ago and it wasn't really tempura, so I'd consider this the first time I've had ice cream tempura.

Wow. I've been missing out on this my whole life? Ice cream by itself tastes pretty good (I don't usually eat it two nights in a row) but wrapped in a warm, soft, oily (not in a bad way) crust, the ice cream eating experience is escalated to a new height of something ...really good. (How was that for a disappointing revelation?) I ate the whole thing, of course. My only complaint is that they put the ice cream ball on a paper doily, which became mushed and ripped up in the ice cream eating process. I wouldn't be surprised if I ate some paper.

It's unlikely that Amy and I would ever go to Izumi again due to its location in Chelsea/Garment District (pass a bunch of gritty wholesale stores and out pops a Japanese restaurant) but we'd recommend trying it out if you're in the area. We went there at 5 PM and appeared to be the first dinner customers, but it filled up (and this place is tiny, mabye around 15 seats) over the next hour.

...man, I could really go for some sushi considering I made oatmeal with chopped apples for lunch and it wasn't very satisfying. :\

Oh, and an update on the burn I got last Wednesday: a scab didn't necessarily form, but the patch of skin that was burned is just a thin layer of skin, protecting the pink, embryonic skin developing underneath. How do I know this? I accidentally got a little scrape on my arm while doing laundry and a bit of the skin came RIGHT OFF. Washing it made the tiny bit of fresh skin sting. Thankfully, it developed a scab thing today. I should probably get a huge bandage to put on it.

My school's department has a mailing list that sends out food related job/internship/volunteer opportunities, usually not ones I'm interested in or capable of doing. ...which is still the case. But YOU might be interested! Um.

Want to educate kids about nutrition, food, agriculture and everything in between? Come this Friday, the 28th, at 4:30pm to The Campus Plaza Center, which is a recreation center, located at 13th St. and Avenue B. We will be teaching kids at an afterschool program through the art of carving pumpkins, roasting their seeds and whatever else you can do with pumpkins. A new food literacy program is starting so come on down to find out more.

Actually, that one sounds fun. I can be like, "THE PUMPKINS, THEY ARE MIIINE!" and horrify little kids while wielding those little plastic carving knives. Or not. I've only carved a pumpkin once in my life in 6th grade when I lived in Taiwan (it was an American school but with craploads of international students, who we had to indoctrinate with the custom that is Halloween and gouging out pumpkin brains). The entire class had a big pumpkin carving session in groups of four. There must've been a lot of pumpkin goop by the end of the day.

Here's another, very different posting:

We are Casting Season 2 of Hell's Kitchen on Fox TV....Please forward on the information to your Staff, coworkers, family & friends....

Thank you

Debbie-Billywonka@aol.com

Hell's Kitchen - Casting Director

212-289-1777

=================================

HELL�S KITCHEN

FOX TV - SEASON 2

CASTING CALL

Do you think you have what it takes to win Hell's Kitchen �Season 2?
IF SO, WE WANT YOU!

HELL'S KITCHEN with Acclaimed Chef-Gordon Ramsay is looking to cast Chefs, Cooks & Foodies over the age of 21. Whether you are an Executive chef, you've just graduated from a culinary institute, cooking is your hobby or you have a fascination AND PASSION FOR food�.WE WANT TO MEET YOU!

This is a culinary opportunity of a lifetime!
=========
If interested in auditioning please EMAIL us immediately:
twinsworld1@aol.com or billywonka@aol.com
917-678-9996 LISA AND DEBBIE - CASTING DIRECTORS
Please write: HELL'S KITCHEN 2- in the subject matter
Include your full name, age, contact numbers & why you would be the perfect contestant for the show
========================
HELL'S KITCHEN is a culinary boot camp that features contestants running a top-class restaurant overseen by world-renowned Head Chef GORDON RAMSAY.

RAMSAY AND HELL'S KITCHEN will serve helpings of terrors, tears, tantrums and triumphs in this dramatic unscripted series.

HELL'S KITCHEN will follow the competing CONTESTANTS 24/7, capturing the drama, intrigue and high emotion each night the restaurant opens. These ambitious hopefuls believe they have the drive, talent and desire to win and be the last one standing next to Chef Ramsay. The contestants will be tossed into the cauldron and will be fighting for their survival.

Culinary boot camp? (shudders) Not my thing.

Yesterday I spent my whole day inside attempting to do homework (which wasn't very successful; I have to cram for my wine mid-term tomorrow). As for sustenance, I ...COOKED. Yes, I took out pots and pans and put it on the stove, and put ingredients in the pots and pans, and heated them with hot gassy flames, and put some seasoning on the food to make it pseudo-palatable, and ended up with something kind of edible, but that's open to debate.

Lunch was steel cut oats with honey and chopped apples. I rarely eat oatmeal but since I'm doing the no-wheat thing, I figured "Hey, oatmeal can potentially tastes good, despite looking like puke." As much as I love the taste of oatmeal, I rarely eat it because it usually makes me feel nauseous after eating/smelling it for a while. It's odd because oatmeal has this very comforting feel...and then comes the nausea. Hm.

Unfortunately, I felt icky after eating most of it (I cooked 1/2 dry cup, which is one serving too many). It would've benefited from more honey and some milk, but you make do with what you have, which in my case was honey and chopped apples. It was pretty unsatisfying, although at the very least, I wasn't hungry after that (just disappointed).

For dinner I caramelized a chopped onion and sauteed thin potato slices. Although I looked online for recipes to get some kind of idea of what to do, in the end I decided I didn't want to follow a recipe, thus resulting in something that didn't necessarily suck, but wouldn't find its way into a restaurant either. Or even someone's home. Since I went on an herbs and spices buying craze last week, I decided to try a crapload of them; "This will make my food taste better! Or mask its deficiencies!" I don't think I used enough, as all I could taste was pepper (and I threw on about 5 things). Oooops. I love onions and potatoes but eating a whole bowl of them didn't appease my stomach, and I'd certainly never feed it to another human being, unless I wanted to make someone cry.

Somewhere in between those meals, I ate two persimmons. Ah...persimmons never fail me. Because I don't have to cook them.

While trying to make some progress on my food blog essay (a topic that i obviously have to narrow down), I attempted to categorize all the food blogs (plust a few others) that I'm subscribed to by region, specific food, restaurant reviews, recipes, and so on. It took...seemingly forever. I skipped blogs that I didn't know how to categorize or haven't updated in more than a month, but I basically scrapped the most itty bitty tiniest percentage of the top micron layer of food blogs, methinks. I think someone (if it hasn't already been done) needs to make a blog/directory about other food blogs that goes beyond just listing them in alphabetical order, but only listing the ones that actually get...updated (Kiplog's links is ...uh, as comprehensive as I'd want to get, so I think I'll just leave it at that. I don't feel like my blog is real though because it's not on it, nor is it on food porn watch. HAHARRR!). When I make a better list, I'll show you. Most of the blogs I read are unsurprisingly NYC-based but second in line were California-based blogs, mainly SF. There were also a lot of blogs from Sydney.

Speaking of SF, check out San Jellocisco. IS THAT NOT ONE OF THE MOST AWESOME THINGS EVER? Yeah. The creator Elizabeth Hickok even made a jiggly earthquake video.

My latest food blog subscription (oh god, make it stop) is Twenty bucks a day. I already spent $20 on groceries before 8:30 AM. Isn't that...not good? It wasn't all for me (I bought Swedish cookies for my "Food & Society" class, for which we had to read an essay about Swedish food) but it was probably the most junkf food-ified purchase I've made from Whole Foods in ages. Or ever. I also bought a bar of chocolate (yesss), a cherry spelt scone (delicious, soft, buttery texture, really impressed) and gluten-free ginger snaps for myself since I can't eat the Swedish cookies and GOD DAMMIT, COOKIES. (That wasn't a real sentence.) I never knew how many gluten-free snacks there were until I perused the cookie aisle. I was surprised to even find a bag of Swedish gingersnaps (although I also bought a bag of "Swedish style" lemon cookies...I don't know what the Swedish style is!). I also got a container of Greek yogurt and honey for dinner.

...but I did buy apples from the farmer's market! Yes, something fresh! Something raw! There's my healthy thing of the day.

Even though I usually label Japanese food as my favorite cuisine without a second thought (ignoring my dessert obsession, as Asian food doesn't usually rate high in my world of sweets), I don't eat it often. Considering how many Japanese restaurants there are in NYC (current count: a very huge crapload that could fill a very large bucket), my act of not frequenting Japanese restaurants is just moronic. To think, all those times I was eating non-Japanese food, I could've been eating...Japanese food. Why such pain, such horror, such anti-Japanese-ness?! WHAT WRATH HAVE I WROUGHT ON MY DIGESTIVE SYSTEM?! (Did that sentence make sense?)

...I dunno. Actually, my eating habits vary a lot (seriously, lately it's been all about chocolate and non-wheat products, and before that, perhaps just wheat products) and I do like to eat a variety of cuisines, usually within that huge continent called Asia where the food tastes unbelievably good, yet doesn't make most of the native people fat because over many generations they've acquired some skinny super-gene to protect them from the potential fattening capabilities of their delicious food, genes that suddenly disappear when you emigrate to a western nation and have babies that turn into obese 20-somethings (by Chinese standards).

I guess I'd avoid Japanese food because I had this impression that I could get something faster, cheaper, and more filling from somewhere else (that I look for such qualities would explain the weight gain). But if you haven't noticed, I don't usually eat typical fast and cheap college fare, such as sandwiches, pizza, and other marriages between wheat and something savory that aren't renown for their ease of digestibility. Sometimes I'll get sushi from a cold case in a market, but I've been disappointed with that kind of sushi lately, as each grain of rice, huddling close to his (or her; hell if I know) rice brethren, washes over in depressed...coldness. Because it comes in a cold case. (Were you expecting some other resolution? "And then the pickled ginger brandished a chopstick sword and skewered the rice grains out of their misery." That made no sense.)

Well. Screw that. You don't need a lot of time to go to a restaurant and get some freshly made sushi. Now that I know this, my sushi eating prowess is NEARLY UNSTOPPABLE! [cue bloodcurdling screams of vinegared sushi rice everywhere]

Marumi

After possibly failing my Beverages midterm (it takes a spectacularly incompetant mind, such as mine, to mix up Bordeaux and Burgundy solely because they both begin with "B"), I headed towards Marumi (546 LaGuadia Place), a place I've been interested in trying out because...well, it's close by and it's Japanese. Its large, sleek, metallic sans-serif sign situated above a spacious window is welcoming and seeing the happy people (one could assume) comfortably sitting inside while munching away on platters of sushi also makes me want to be comfortably inside, munching away, ingesting various kinds of sea life and vegetation wrapped in sheets of rice and seaweed.

sitting at the sushi bar

As the restaurant opened at noon, I had no problem getting a seat at 12:15 PM. Snuggled in the right corner of the sushi bar, I had a good view of...well, not much, but I could peer down the line of four sushi chefs and watch them prepare appetizers, ladle soup into bowls, arrange sushi, and broil fish all in this compact area. Note to self: if I can design my own itty bitty kitchen, model it after a sushi bar. Or buy a sushi bar and a personal chef. I guess that'd be the way to go, if I were rich enough.

Sidenote: I've just realized (because I have that aforementioned incompetent mind) that I've never seen a female sushi chef. [UPDATE: I found a female sushi chef in NYC...kinda. Apparently she's not there anymore.] Not that I can remember, at least (which doesn�t meant much; ask me what I did yesterday and you'll get a slow response). I know there are female sushi chefs, I just haven't seen them yet. Hm.

While lunch is the prime time when you can get a cute, inexpensive bento box partitioned into numerous sections of yummy food, I went for that magical roll I had a few days ago: ROLL OF SPIDER! I think that's a more dramatic name than "Spider Roll", yes? "What'd you eat, Robyn?" "You know, some soup, some Roll of Spider." "...Huh?" I love confusing people, whether intentional or not.

uzaku

Since I'm rarely satisfied with just one roll of sushi, I also ordered uzaku, an unagi (eel) and cucumber salad, as an appetizer. Since I usually ignore appetizer menus, I've never noticed uzaku before, but I wanted to fulfill the never-ending unagi craving (and ever present gluttony) somehow.

The Japanese concept of a salad isn't like one most western people would be accustomed to. In my "Essentials of Cuisine" class (basically "Asian Cuisine"), we read an essay about Japanese cuisine that mentioned how salads aren't just chopped raw vegetables but small dishes of marinated cooked or raw foodstuffs, arranged in a simple and aesthetically pleasing manner as most Japanese food is. (We discussed how the Japanese way of displaying food is ironic because the goal of cutting pieces and positioning them in a specific ways is usually with the goal of making the food look "natural". For instance, a carrot slice can be made to look more "natural" by fashioning it into flower petals. I'm generalizing here but I think you get the idea. Of course, this attention to appearance that is both simple and complicated at the same time makes the experience of eating Japanese food so coveted. �ZOMG, THIS RADISH LOOKS LIKE A TULIP!�)

In my case, salad was a small bowl of a bed of thin cucumber and radish strands with a medley of seaweeds, covered with a shiso leaf and topped with three slices of grilled unagi, all marinating in a light, sweet vinegar and soy sauce mixture. The bowl was garnished with a slice of lemon and a mound of pale pickled ginger (none of that cotton-candy pink stuff). I daresay I could made this at home, but I probably won't since I wouldn't have use for all the ingredients (if I bought unagi and cucumber, I'd probably just eat them plain). Naturally, I enjoyed this dish--I ate all of it except for the lemon slice--because I'll eat almost anything with unagi in it. A salad essentially in the form of a few ingredients swimming in a vinegar soup is new to me. Even though vinegar gives my throat a burning sensation (washed away with gulps of hot green tea, which could induce another kind of burning), I thought it tasted good. I heard the spicy sashimi salad is particularly good, but not being a big fan of sashimi, I didn't go for it.

spider roll

And now, the ROLL OF SPIDER! Unfortunately, since I've already eaten a roll of spider, I can only think of comparing it to the previous roll of spider eating experience: I didn't think it was as good as Izumi's, but it was still tasty. It just seemed...weaker. The fillings probably differed a little. The portion was also smaller (six pieces instead of eight), but the price was proportionally less so that's not much of a factor. The crab was crispier than Izumi's and there wasn't anything wrong with it. Overall, I just liked Izumi's more.

I was in and out of Marumi in half an hour, so if you have enough time you can get a fairly quick bite. It's best if you're a loner like me though; the tables filled up as I was there, but the sushi bar wasn't crowded. Final bill with tip was $14.50, not bad for a sit down meal with two dishes. Obviously, I wouldn't eat lunch by myself for that price very frequently, but when I go to a supermarket I tend to spent that much anyway, perhaps buying a few calorie and sugar-dense snacks or a chocolate bar (also calorie and sugar-dense). *cough* I think if I eat in a restaurant I'll spent more money on less food, which will at least ensure that I eat a smaller quantity of freshly prepared food than...

...heavily processed bars of fat, sugar, milk and cocoa beans. Oh. Chocs. ...

I'm talking about Japanese food, I think? Yeah. Um. Marumi! They've got lots of reasonably priced choices (besides the sushi, there are rice, noodle dishes, a variety of sushi and kitchen appetizers and sushi/bento lunch specials) and quick service in a warm, wood-accented, moderately sized space. I�m sure I�ll go back at some point.

Yes, it exists!

Chef's Blogs is easily "the ultimate food blog directory", my only complaint being that the title can be misleading if you think of "chef" as a professional cook. If the definition is stretched to "someone who can turn on a stove", then I suppose I'd qualify. (For whatever reason, I don't count the food I make in my cooking class as representative of my cooking abilities. It's a large, professional-grade stainless-steel glittering kitchen, with everything one could need right at her fingertips. And of course I have a teacher. You can't screw up too badly.)

The website has only been online for about a month, but I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it yet. If I look through this site for too long, I'll end up adding another 100 sites to my rss subscriptions. Let's not do that.

I don't know if you've read my about page, but it's seriously outdated. For instance, I don't eat in Chinatown nearly as much as I used to (working on a semi-regular basis has cut down my Chinatown jaunts and trying to cut out wheat has drastically lowered the consumption of suspiciously cheap baked goods, at the same time encouraging my intake of gourmet chocolate bars). Also, I'm no longer a teenager and I did manage to finished "The Man Who Ate Everything", which showed me (not that I didn't already know) that I'm no where near being "The Girl Who Ate Everything" and never will be due to a few important factors, such as my lack of a magical pot of money that keeps refilling itself (remember, it's magical) and those genes that let you eat whatever you want without getting fat (I ate a plum and a scone for breakfast and now I feel fatter I have after eating ...REGULAR MEALS).

Oh. Grocery shopping. I did that this morning since Whole Foods and the farmer's market open at 8 AM and I start work at 9. What did I get from Whole Foods? Keep in mind that the name contains the worlds "whole" and "foods"; I bought a spelt currant scone (the last kind they have, meaning I probably won't buy any more), a bar of Lake Champlain chocolate (never tried it before), and a bag of cough drops (once again, I am sick). It's not as sad as buying a bottle of coke and a pack of Pop Tarts but...gee, I wonder why I'm sick. (Not.)

At the farmer's market I bought five fuji apples and two red plums. I didn't know there were still plums out there, but these were soft and ripe. I should've bought more.

Oh, I'm at work. I suppose that means I should like...do work.

Win49

I remember the first time I saw Win49. It was a few years ago when I was roaming around Houston Street with my mum (although I can't remember why we were doing this, so obviously this memory is kind of fuzzy). The tagline "Homey Japanese Food" (my favorite foods tend to be homey "anything", especially Japanese food) in the bright pink sign caught my eye and differentiated it from every other Japanese restaurant I had seen, none of which said "homey" or had a weird pig face for a logo.

In the past few years, I've eaten here a grand total of...twice. It's not all that far from my dorm or school and the food is really yummy and inexpensive, but I ate there on Wednesday only because I was in the area (buying Explosions in the Sky tickets and evading online service charges!). In addition to being in the area, it really would've helped if I had been hungry.

How often am I not hungry? Not. For the love of god, I will never eat a scone for breakfast again. Maybe they expand in my stomach; I can't explain why they make me so un-hungry.

inside of Win49

There are about 12 seats inside. The first time I ate here, one of the tables was filled up with six (or more) high school students. Annoying high school students. Don't come here in groups; it ain't cool. If you're alone though, you can grab a seat by the window and stare at East Houston Street. There weren't any customers when I got there around 1 PM, but over the next half hour other loners came in for lunch or take-out.

curry kushi katsu bento

Remember how I said I wasn't very hungry? Well. Despite that, I got a bento box (a main dish plus two sides, miso soup, some pickled vegetables, seaweed, and edamame), which only costs $7.59, easily one of the best deals I've ever seen. You see that photo, right? This is a CRAPLOAD of food! It's too much for one person (unless the person is starving), but maybe good for two people who aren't that hungry. The first time I ate at Win49, I distinctly remember not being able to finish my rice, which was weird because I love rice. I mean, I love carbs. I've never been to a place that put curry in a cup (although I recall eating curry in nice restaurants in Japan where they'd put the curry in a separate dish and give you an assortment of condiments, not something I've seen in quite the same presentation as in the US) but it's a good idea, as it ensures that the katsu stays crisp under its layer of golden panko.

meat on sticks

As someone who doesn't eat much deep fried food or pork, I ignore any kind of strive towards healthy eating (HAHAHAHA...whoa, what am I talking about?) in lieu of my love for pork katsu, cultivated over many years of eating pork katsu from Mitsuwa and a family friend's local Japanese take out. It's definitely my favorite kind of pork/fried meat. However, I'm not a fan of meat on sticks, specifically long sticks that seem like they could rip a hole in my throat if I'm not too careful. The other problem is that I'm not too well versed in eating things off sticks. I mean, it's awkward, isnt it? Trying to eat the meat from the side while hoping the other side doesn't plop off, turning the stick around so you don't suffer the aforementioned "throat poking" problem, all while looking like you have the eating habits of a human and not some idiot who doesn't know how to eat meat off a stick. Long after going through this process, I've decided that this is the best way to eat meat off a stick:

1. Take the meat off the stick. THIS IS IMPORTANT!
2. Eat the meat. Revel in its lack of poking danger.
3. Throw out the stick or use it to impale someone you hate.

Oh, I really liked the meat. Just not the stick. However, the place is called Win49 because of the whole meat on a stick thing. In Japanese, 4 is shi and 9 is kyu. Kushi! ...actually, it only kinda makes sense, but there you go. But don't worry, they have craploads of other homey Japanese food: tempura, soup, udon, sushi, gyoza, chicken wings, croquettes, onigiri, donburi, and SO MUCH MORE! You can't go wrong. They have a gazillion sides that I don't feel like listing.

seaweed for meee!

For my two sides, I picked seaweed salad and edamame. Why? I didn't think very hard. With so many side order choices, I ordered one of the same things I had gotten the first time I had gone (seaweed salad) and I don't know what compelled me to get edamame, as that would count as the second time I've eaten them from the pod all year. The edemame isn't very salty (I don't care either way, but it's safer to be unseasoned) and the three-seaweed salad is awesome (not like a typical seaweed salad you find in most places), if you like seaweed. The purple one was quite crunchy and had an interesting taste I can't describe. Yeah, I'm full of helpful descriptions.

I ate almost all of it. Yes. Horror. With each spoonful of rice and curry I shoved into my mouth after finishing the katsu, my stomach pleaded, "Whyy Robyn, WHY JUST STOP JESUS OW I'm gonna explode," to which I responded "Uh, I like rice and curry, go away." I love this kind of food so much that the deliciousness obliterates the part of my brain that understands moderation, replacing it with ...well, nothing. My brain just gets smaller.

I wouldn't say that Win49's food is something you should go out of your way for, but they serve my favorite kinds of food, prepare it fresh and quickly, and sell it at a great value. The only reason I'd avoid it is because of my propensity towards testing the limits of my stomach lining's elasticity. Even though I had spent about $15 the day before for some sushi and a small salad, my digestive system at least felt peaceful afterwards. After my rice/meat/curry/edamame/seaweed binge, I had to walk quickly to my cooking class, about 15 minutes away. Surprisingly, I didn't have any digestive system problems all day, but the initial "Oh god, did I just eat all that?" wasn't such a great feeling.

Uh. In conclusion, I love Win49. As tempting as it is, I just have to avoid the bento box, or fast for 24 hours before going there. They have mini donburis on the menu, which I didn't notice while looking at their adorable fake food display. It'd probably be better to get a mini donburi and one side, although that could cost about as much as the bento box. Ah. Well.

Crap, it's 2 AM and I'm going to write about what I ate two days ago. I'm slipping, folks. Slipping into a deep, rice-filled crevice. Of sushi.

three roll lunch

Ogawa Cafe

I went to Ogawa Cafe since I've passed it a bunch of times and...well. It's there. They obviously have sushi. Where does sushi go? Into my stomach. That's all I need.

I ordered the three roll lunch special (comes with salad or miso soup) of spicy tuna, sweet potato tempura, and eel and avocado. It was all good, naturally, although I was most struck by the sweet potato since I had never eaten it before. A starch wrapped in starch? Doesn't that go against some kind of culinary principle? ...nah. It's delicious. It feels a bit unbalanced but I shouldn't talk, seeing as I'd considering yogurt and chocolate to be a complete meal, you know, covering my sugar and dairy quotients of the day.

The restaurant is very small, with about 12 seats (wooden tables and chairs; the inside has a very...woody feel), so it probably does a lot of take-out. I think it's Chinese run judging from what I overheard, unless my knack for telling the difference between Chinese and Japanese (not too hard since they sound really different) disappeared. I was the only customer for a long time, but a delivery man went out a few times and near the end, a few people came in for lunch. Although I'm not sure if I'd come here again, it's fast and reasonably priced (about $11 with tip).

So. That's my vague review.

goddamn cookies

About the wheat: I didn't plan on eating it again even though I completed my 2-week wheat sabbatical as I still haven't figured out what to do about my asthma (I haven't had to use my inhaler for a while though), but the presence of Swedish cookies was a tad much for me. I bought them to bring into my "Food & Society" class, in which a few people bring food in each week that's related to the readings. One of our readings was about a Swedish woman rediscovering her mother's recipes and finding that most of them weren't Swedish, except for desserts. So. Cookies. Bags of. The possibility of eating 1000 calories in the form of these cookies caused me to throw out the remains of the Mi-Del ones (they're really tasty though, I highly recommend them). I also tried to share as many of the ginger snaps as I could with a friend during my Food Production class. Since there wasn't an insane amount of cookies left in that bag, I kept it, although I had nearly finished it that night.

But...the cookies weren't the actual catalyst to my carb binging. The Washington Square CSA (my contribution was making the website) was having a end-of-the-season party in the kitchen, so...I went. Hey, free food! It's a slight perk of paying a gazillion dollars for college and being in the food department, yes? At first I only ate the salad and the potato, ie the non-wheat things, but there was also freshly baked mozzerella-topped bread (hey, we were in a kitchen after all) and plates of barely-touched (for some crazy reason) spiced squash bread, snickerdoodles, brownies, and ginger cookies.

I tried em all. Yes. Trying all sweets possible is the Robyn way of life. (The Robyn way of life will probably result in diabetes; we'll have to wait and see.)

I'd elaborate more but it's 2:30 AM. An amusing thing I came across this afternoon while looking around the kitchen for aluminum foil (which didn't exist), I opened one of my roommate's drawers to find bags of miniature Halloween candies. Bags that had all been opened and sampled. My roommate eats pretty healthily, so I was surprised, but then maybe she didn't eat too many of them. I actually just lied about eating all sweets possible; I draw the line at generic Halloween candy. Or I should. Let's put it this way: if I eat little Hershey bars and such, I'll be at the point where I'm ready to kill someone for something fatty and sugary.

Or something. Don't want to be over-dramatic.

I ate a lot. Let's start with Friday night...

two sushi rolls

I met up with Wei, a fellow reader of this blog (AND ALL OF YOU ARE ALSO WELCOME TO STUFF YOUR FACE WITH ME!), for some Japanese food at Koo Sushi to keep the "I'm gonna eat japanese food every day this week for no good reason while simultaneously cleaning out my bank account" theme. I ordered a Mexican roll (tuna, cucumbers, spicy sauce & crunchy) and spider roll (crispy soft shell crab, cucumber, caviar & avocado). Both of them were good, although I'm personally not a big fan of tuna (don't ask me why I got it; I WAS JUST CURIOUS). The spider roll was good too, but Izumi is still the top with that one.

sushi/sashimi combo

Wei got this big hulkin' platter of raw fish. YUM! I think he ate all of it, so it must've been good. The pieces were huge.

And for the finishing touches on our fish gorging, we had FRIED BALLS OF ICE CREAM!

ice cream tempura

I had first asked for vanilla ice cream but when they told me that the ice cream was too soft to fry, I went for red bean. It took a while to get my ball of fried wonderousness (Wei had almost finished his by the time mine arrived) but good things come to people who wait, and by "good things" I mean "ice cream wrapped in a layer of dough fried in a vat of hot oil". And I mean good in the sense that my taste buds highly enjoyed eating it, even if my heart and brain cells could care less. This ice cream tempura was better than the one at Izumi. If you want me to describe it to you...dude, just imagine it. A spoonful of soft, while at the same time crispy, crust mingling with a big splodge of soft red bean ice cream, living in HARMONY! And then you eat it. And then it's gone. Cos you ate the whole thing.

The restaurant is very dim, perhaps to create a relaxing atmostphere, but the bathroom is even dimmer. Odd. The service was fast, probably because there were hardly any people in there (we went in at 7 PM), but they were making deliveries also. People like to eat at home.

After that, we went to Amy's Bread on Bleeker Street. Wei ate a slice of carrot cake and I...didn't. Believe it or not, I was too full of indulge in anything! Someday I will try their cupcakes.

Halloween cupcakes

...but not those, because Halloween will be over. Unless I get one tomorrow. Oh..boy. That's tempting.

On Saturday I had to prepare roasted potatoes and lemon-butter green beans for my Food Production & Management class, in which our main project is catering a department event. My group got a luncheon in mid-December, so thankfully we have a lot of time to plan for it. I met up with my group members for recipe testing. We met up in the lower level of the library, where there's a room/pod where people are allowed to eat without the possibility of destroying books and causing a rush of bugs to invade the library. We probably looked a little weird around all the other students that were studying, but...whatever.

GORGING TIME!

table o food

Here's everything we had in convenient bulleted list form:

• vegetable lasagna (very good)
• corn bread (oooyum)
• cranberry punch
• hot apple cider
• biscuits (mmm)
• cranberry sauce
• spinach salad (turned out a bit weird)
• herbed roasted potatoes (what I made, and caused my fire alarm to go off)
• lemon buttered green beans
• hazelnut chocolate chip cookies (I think I ate three of these, oops)
• pumpkin pie

hazelnut chocolate chip cookies, oh yes

very good vegetable lasagna

Yeah. I think I waddled out of there.

Today I had an apple for lunch because I wasn't very hungry. Dinner, which occured 8 hours later (not that I felt especially hungry during those 8 hours; I swear I must have the slowest metabolism ever), was a different story.

dinner!

No, this was fine. I blanched some green beans while sauteing onions, then I dumped the green beans and leftover roasted potatoes into the pan. VOILA: bowl of herby, potato, onion, and green bean goodness.

My roommate had a little Halloween party in the room while I took a brief sabbatical at the library. The result of the part was leftover chocolate covered M&Ms, pumpkin pie, Whole Foods chocolate chip cookies, and other things I didn't feel like eating. Uh. UHOH! Yes, I ate pie. Yes, I ate two (or was it three?) cookies. Yes, I ate some M&MS.

...that wasn't all. I ate a third of a milk chocolate bar of Nirvana Chocolate (for a simple score, I'd say it's around "very good", worth getting again at least) and another apple. Yeah, the apple doesn't do much for your health when you've gorged on pie, cookies, and chocolate.

The end. Unless I get hit by a freak meteor, I'm going to Momofuku tomorrow. Eating so much tonight was probably a bad idea.