The Girl Who Ate Everything

Momofuku

"Let's eat out!"
"Where?"
"I dunno."
"I dunno either. THINK. You. Do that."
"Uh. ...Momofuku?"
"OKAY!"

Yeah, sometimes I don't know where to eat. And that's when Carol comes in and says, "Momofuku". We have a good relationship that involves talking, eating, and talking about eating.

I've passed Momofuku a few times before during the day and you can easily miss it. Or I'm blind. It happened to be quite dark inside the restaurant when we went last night around 6 PM so indeed, it was easy to miss. Seriously, it looked like it was closed at first.

I had read many mixed reviews, more bad than good, about Momofuku. However, I can't form an opinion about a place unless I try it, and certainly it can't be that bad if a lot of people do love it, and the restaurant does good business. One thing people unanimously agree on is that the pork buns are a must eat. So.

buns of meat

Eat we did. As you can see, the bun is more like a bread flap or a ginormous mouth. It's just heavy enough to hold all the innards without making a huge mess, but doesn't have an excessive amount of dough. The innards are fatty chunks of pork and thinly slices of cucumber topped with a sweet and tangy brown sauce, which really doesn't tell you much at all. How about this: there was sauce. And this: it tasted like something you'd eat in an Asian restaurant. Yeah, my ability to describe food is amazingly poor; "This food tastes Asian!"

Oh, I enjoyed the bun very much. Carol enjoyed it too, although not as much as I did. However, I'm sure she's had many more pork bun eating experiences than I have and knows of other yummy pork things I'm missing out on. For now, I can say that this is the yummiest pork bun I've ever had.

We also shared a bowl of pork neck Shanghai noodles topped with a poached egg.

noods!

It was alright. Carol's first reaction was that it was too salty, or more salty than she would've expected. I, with the tastebuds of cotton, really couldn't tell if it was too salty or not. Overall, I wouldn't say it was anything special, not that any part of it was bad, but just that $13 seemed like a lot to spend on a bowl of noodles. Also, I'm not a big fan of noodles (or pasta dishes), so I wouldn't be the best person to judge.

Overall, we had a quick, pleasant experience. We just thought it was too hard on the pocket book for what we got. Doh.

To backtrack, my Monday was overly Japanese-food filled. Before the Momofuku outing, I had watched Tampopo for my film class, not knowing exactly what it was about. It's ironic that I ended up watching a movie about ramen before going to a place that mainly served ramen, considering that I haven't eaten ramen in years (and I wouldn't count Shanghai noodles as the kind of ramen I'd been meaning to try...um, don't ask me why I ordered it). Sadly, I've been to Japan a number of times before the term "food hunting" had any meaning; alas, I didn't eat any ramen there. I do hate myself for all the missed food opportunities that went by me as a kid travelling all around Asia, so let's ignore that dark period of my life ("The Era of Hunger") for now.

Oh. Tampopo is awesome and easily my favorite movie from the class so far. If you haven't seen it yet, WATCH IT! NOW! Last week I watched what would be considered one of my least favorite movies ever: The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. It hasn't nothing to do with it being a good or bad movie; it's just not my kind of movie. You know, the kind with torturing and killing and insane people.

To backtrack some more, in my "Essentials of Cuisine" class before I went to the library to watch Tampopo, we had a Japanese food/snack and tea tasting.

table o goodies

And taste, I did. Everything. I'm not a big fan of tea but the chilled barley tea (which I don't think actually has tea leaves?) was surprisingly refreshing, even after the Japanese student in our class (who brought in some tea and helped prepare food) told us it tastes pretty bad. It would benefit from sugar (oh, of course I'd say that) but it had this odd...refreshing taste. Like. Barley. Which, you know, is synonymous is ODD and REFRESHING.

Veniero's

Since neither Carol or I had eaten at Veniero's before (and...it was down the street from Momofuku), we stopped by. For whatever reason, Italian pastries don't appeal to me, but I got a miniature cheesecake since I heard that's what they're known for. Carol got a miniature tart (ie, the bite sized kind) and some bowties. One customer was buying a bunch of cakes and the counter was covered with order from what was hopefully a lot of people, unless one person ordered 20 cakes.

spider cake!

Right next door is another bakery called Something Sweet, where I saw this rather cute spider cake oozing with chocolate goodness. If only I could've eaten it. (sigh) Instead, I bought a raspberry tart for Carol and I to share later when we went to JAS Mart for some Japanese food buying/oogling.

Isn't this cheesecake adorable? YES! And delicious? YES! And when I say delicious, I mean that there wasn't anything wrong with it. That probably sounds negative--it's good because it wasn't bad--but I'm not a huge cheesecake connoisseur (er, I'm not any kind of connoisseur). My problem with cheesecake is that usually it's too gummy, or cream cheese-esque, or heavy, or has some other problem that makes the dessert eating experience less desirable than it ought to be (it ought to be "very desirable"). This crustless cheesecake (a favorable thing; it's ALL CAKE) wasn't too light or heavy and it left no gluey feel in my mouth. The sweetness was just right. So, as I said...nothing wrong with it. I'm not ever amazed by plain cheesecake but I'd love to eat this again (it's only $2.25!).

raspberry tart

The raspberry tart from Something Sweet was alright. Not something I'd get again, but I had never seen a tart quite like it before, and you know...I like to eat a bunch of things, figuring they're basically made of sugar and wheat. The crust was hard, like a cookie, not and not too brittle or stiff. It wasn't as sweet as I would've liked it to be, but I think the filling was supposed to offset the non-sweetness of the crust. Hm. Well.

Gigantic meal collage things! ...yeah, I didn't warn you about random linkage. Okay. I just posted a random link. Isn't it fun? If only I were so good at collaging so that I could humorously introduce photos of meat into scenes where it shan't be found, my life would be so much more meaningful. (Did I just say shan't? YES! Yes I did.)

Today I had two piece of whole wheat bread for breakfast (you know, before my class where I tasted brandy and whisky), apple walnut cake from Amy's Bread for lunch (unplanned, seriously, but I was with a friend and she wanted to go somewhere quick that was nearby), and two egg sammiches, an apple, and Whole Foods pumpkin flan for dinner. During work I ate a leftover Halloween candy in the form of a pack of Raisinets and three bars of Hershey chocolate (no, not huge bars, the 0.8 ounce something or others, which, perhaps due to a desperate chocolate need, didn't taste that bad).

Oops. So. Um. I ate a lot. Jesus.

...calories.

That's my rough estimate of how many calories I consumed today, give or take 1000 calories/a baby goat. Strangely, I don't have any indigestion, nor do I feel like my stomach is going to bubble over with foodstuffs in various states of half-digested-ness, but I know I ate a lot. Not just a lot portion-wise but a wide variety of ingredients. You know the food pyramid? Yeah, I ate that.

If you're wondering, no, I didn't unleash my gluttonous wrath on an unsuspecting supermarket or restaurant; I did it in SCHOOL. The institution of higher learning is also an evil hotbed of overindulgence if you're in the food department and have a tendency to stuff your face with anything in front of you that conveniently happens to be edible. Like myself.

For my Food and Society class, we had to write "Food And Memory" essays about foods that particularly stuck out in our minds. After much toiling (yeah, I just wanted to use the word "toiling"), all I could come up with where the fried egg sandwiches my mum made for me when I was in elementary school, thus strenghtening the "I don't have enough time to make you something more interesting" characteristic of my mum (it's completely true, not that I have anything against her for it).

Everyone had to bring in the food they wrote about. There are 25 people in my class. Do you know what that means? Yes, 25 different dishes, 25 different sources of calories, 25 different purveyors of deliciousness, sweet, savory, chewy, crunchy, smooth, and so on. 25. Here's the list:

• Ackie and Saltfish
• Tuna Sushi
• Fried Plantains
• Black Rice
• Persian Halvah
• Tandoori Chicken
• Papas Rellenas
• Pesto and Penne
• Kheer
• Fried Rice
• Tuna Sandwiches
• Fried Egg Sandwiches
• Fried Cabbage
• K'mishbrot
• Banana Smoothie
• Bagel with Lox Spread
• Kielbasa
• Noodle Kugel
• Biscuits
• Cream of Mushroom Soup
• Sauce and Meatballs
• Ginger Cake
• Apple Pie
• Ricotta Cookies
• Italian Drop Cookies

Breathe in. Breathe out. Get a stomach pump.

The food was presented over the course of six groups, so the amount of food didn't see that overwhelming at first. The last group consisted of "Special Desserts and Confectionery", a great idea since no matter how full you are from the other food, you can always stuff in some dessert. Or a lot, in my case.

I didn't actually eat all 25 items, opting out of the soup and smoothie (not that I'm terribly adverse to liquids, I just prefer solids), but I ate multiple pieces of the halvah (which is absolutely nothing like the tahini halvah most of us may be used to; this recipe is similar to the one my classmate gave us) since it tasted amazing (and while a real foodie would probably describe what made it amazing, I'm gonna say, "Tough luck, I'm lazy and I don't really remeber what it tastes like because my laziness has formed holes in my brain"). It was one of those foods that didn't really kick in until after you swallowed it, at which point the essence of the food hit your brain, like so: *poink*. Yes, it was good. My other favorites were the K'mishbrot (described as "Jewish biscotti"), the biscuits (authentically made with White Lilly flour), ricotta cookies (never had cookies made with ricotta before) and ...the bagel and lox spread. Can you believe I've never had a bagel with lox and cream cheese before? It's quite good. Yes'm.

For the "authentic" experience of eating my fried egg sandwiches, you have to consume them at room temperature. I haven't had an egg sandwhich in the way my mum prepared it (whole wheat bread, untoasted, with unseasoned egg) since I was in elementary school. I did eat a "test" sandwich earlier this week, but it was right after slipping the egg out of my saute pan. Tastes rather good when it's fresh. After class was over, I ate one of my sandwich squares figuring I may as well try it (since I had half leftover).

All of a sudden, I was back in 1st grade, looking at my limp, slightly soggy plastic-wrapped egg sandwich. This only happened for a split second, but it was a really bizarre split second. Obviously, the fried egg sandwich did hold a strong place in my memory, although part of the reason is because I never ate them in another setting; otherwise, I wouldn't associate them with a period of life where I apparently subsisted on whole grain bread and cooked chicken embryos.

It was weird to have such a strong memory, a memory which, while neither sad or happy, isn't exactly...neutral. It hovers close to the sad side, but I wouldn't say it's depressing.

Oh well. Anyway. EAT PIE!

And lastly...dude, I ate so much today. My pants hate me for it. After my "Food and Memory" gorging, I ate even more food (not nearly as much though) in my Food & Production class for some more recipe testing. Another 4-5 hours later when I finally got home from campus, I snacked on more of my fried egg sandwiches. And an extra ricotta cookie. And leftover pumpkin bread from yesterday's rushed Union Square market jaunt.

...maybe I should rename this entry "6000". Eh. At least I'm not this guy. (He made a 30,000 calorie sandwich. And ate it.)

At around 9 PM, I passed out on my bed while reading a chapter in You Eat What You Are about Korean food. 30 minutes later, an inkling of brain activity stirred (as drool seeped out of my mouth ...yes, folks, I have a propensity towards drooling!) and my wobbly legs directed me towards...

KITCHEN. BASKET. WITH APPLES. EAT!

Was I hungry? God no! After the apple, I ate 25 grams of a Ritter Sport bar I bought today.

OKAY, WHAT IS GOING ON? Make it stop make it stop make it stop [scarfs down chocolate] okay this isn't working my life is spiraling into a deep dark hole of sugar and cocoa butter and soy lecithin ("a natural emulsifier"!).

I bought chocolate

I'll admit, buying all this chocolate (I usually just buy one bar at a time) is not something I'd file under "achievements displaying large amounts of intelligence" (not that I can think of anything that would fit into that category). I had just gone to the market in Union Square, where I ate a sweet potato pecan muffin for lunch and procured Jonagold apples and a bunch of leeks, when I decided to veer towards the Garden of Eden, a gourmet supermarket with perhaps the most varied chocolate selection I've ever seen.

While some people plan to do useful things, I tend to go into the opposite direction. "How un-useful can I be? How much of a burden can I place on this fragile Earth? What havoc can I wreak?" So. I'd like to try as many brands of chocolate as I can (aka, "Operation: Pants Won't Fit Anymore") because...wait, I don't need a reason!

Some people like coffee. Some people like booze. Some people like weed. I like chocolate, and I daresay I'm not addicted to it. I certainly don't need it to function, I just...you know, like to eat it. Surely it's less costly than some kinds of coffee, and booze, and weed, but with a higher enjoyment factor (because the other things would make me want to retch). I don't eat chocolate every day, but when I do it's usually around 100 grams.

Yes, I'm aware of the caloric implications of such an amount. If I had enough chocolate loving friends whom I could get together with on a regular basis and who wouldn't mind contributing to my cause (as in, giving me hard, cold cash), I'd love to hold chocolate tastings. $5 will get you a high quality chocolate bar, or a couple of medium quality ones. Then we can all sit around and examine the chocolate bars, akin to a wine tasting, and...get soooo fat!

Wait. Nix the last bit. A lack of people to help distribute the calories (I have friends who can't eat 100 grams of chocolate in a day; what's that about? Such discipline!) hasn't changed my idea very much, hence I shall plod on and continue my solitary hedonistic quest.

Um. Back to chocolate! I tried all three of them (what, you think I have willpower?); here's my rundown:

• Guittard, 38% milk chocolate: Disappointing for some reason. It just had this taste that didn't seem right. Nothing looks wrong with the ingredients (it has vanilla beans, rather than vanillin) and the texture was alright. Maybe a 10 gram piece wasn't enough to judge, but I don't want to buy a whole bar of it.
• Ritter Sport, Praline (or nougat) filling: Good stuff, and not very expensive. Then again, I've never had bad hazelnut praline; that would be so sad. I ate 50 grams.
• Caffarel, hazelnut milk chocolate (at least 30%): Holy crap, this was so good. At first it was too melty (same for the Ritter Sport) so I put it in the fridge. The solid-er chocolate just tasted...so good. It's not overly sweet but not under either (yeah, I've had under-sweetened milk chocolate and you know what it tastes like? Almost nothing. It's in some outer dimension where it's not sweet milk chocolate or bitter dark, but hovering uncomfortably in between the two). Smooth. Sweet enough to make me happy. And yes, the hazelnut...it has that nice after-though taste, kind of like when after you swallow something (as opposed to during chewing) you get hit with a strong flavor. Like *foof*. I ate 50 grams of this.

Caffarel milk chocolate

My tastebuds declared Caffarel as the champion in this "Battle of the Chocolates" (which I just realized pitted Italian against German against American chocolate, whoa). Where to from here? MORE CAFFAREL! Obviously.

When I told my mum that I bought all this chocolate, she reminded me that the Chocolate Show is next week. Yeah...I knew that. So? The Chocolate Show is destined to put me in a chocolate coma, which is a little unsettling, but certainly you've gorged on a favorite food only to conclude that "This floaty feeling in my skull and numbing pain in my stomach is totally worth it."

If you're wondering, I did eat something that nutritionists wouldn't completely shun. I call it...

dinner!

"All this stuff in my kitchen which I chopped up and sauteed before not-so-artfully slopping onto a plate." The name could use some editing, but that's basically it. And I didn't actually put everything in my kitchen in this dish, as I forgot about the smoked fish in my fridge. This mixture contains potato, onions, shallots, leeks, and egg (with various seasonings). Your mouth is watering, I can FEEL IT...no wait, that's just confused silence.

What will tomorrow's mealtimes bring? I'm afraid to find out.

First off, to exploit my Asian-recipe familiar readers, I need to come up with a few quintessential Chinese recipes that I can make in my "Essentials of Cuisine" class since I'm unfamiliar with cooking Chinese dishes ("unfamiliar" as in, I never do it). My class is 2 hours and 45 minutes long, but we're not going to cook the whole time so the recipe should take 90 or less minutes, which I feel may leave out a lot of food I like. Dumplings would be easy to make if I get the pre-made skins (but that's lame!), and...that's all I can think of.

So. Basically. HELP! Thank you. :)

UPDATED AGAIN (11/7): Thanks for the suggestions so far! I probably should've mentioned that nope, I don't have to pay for ingredients (mwahaha) but I'm already thinking about making some steamed egg cake that a friend made for me earlier this year. I know that's fast, cheap, and easy, although I've never made it before. Besides that, I do have that DUMPLING OBSESSION that I should perhaps indulge in. After looking up recipes, it doesn't seem to take a long time to make the skins (when I made dumplings with my mum, we used pre-made skins 99% of the time). I have a partner so I won't be left alone to destroy the food. Hooray!

As opposed to Saturday's abominable instance of "I'm just gonna stay in my room all day and cut off any fresh supply of oxygen", today I actually went out and, like, did human activities involving making the muscles in my legs contract and waiting in a subway station that smelled faintly of urine and conversing with other humans beings in an environment that was not an IM box.

To celebrate the event of masses of people wooshing by and looking happy even though they secretly wanted to collapse into a vat of pillows (erm, the New York City Marathon), Adam held a "let's eat while all these people remind us how athletically challenged we are" breakfast. I was a little hesitant about going at first because my level of sociability in most cases (even those involving food) is around "amoeba". That's low. However, knowing that Allen was going to be there changed my mind. The way my social tendencies work is that I can be alarmingly, dare I say, BOISTEROUS, around certain people. (Okay, not that boisterous, but I easily forget how loud my voice can get.) In situations where I don't know many people, I'll be the person who sits in the corner and pokes the wall, or something equally pointless.

woosh

Annnnd look at them go! Yeah. Crazy people, running miles and stuff. My most vivid memories of running are from middle school. It wasn't the actual running as much as the day after, the morning of sore muscles running the entire length of my body (and other organs I didn't know I had) and trying to find a way to trigger the least pain in these muscles while navigating a four story school. This involved a lot of running down stairs (and into walls) since that was easier than walking slowly.

But enough of my physical education glory days. For your information, the fastest mile I ever ran was around 9 minutes. It'll never get better than that, partially because I'll never try to beat it, other partially because I'd never beat it even if I tried. Another tid bit of Robyn's track record: in 9th grade I once puked after running a lap (or two, I forget) as fast as I could. I had actually been rather fond of sprinting, up until that point. Eh.

many carby possibilities

Oh, the food. Wow. Trays of Adam's baked French toast (similar to bread pudding) lured me with their warm crusty golden sheen and the possibility of glazing every carb-laden crevice with maple syrup. Bewilderingly, no one had touched the trays or dared to destory their integrity by sampling a piece.

yeah, I ate it

Screw that. I cut, I glazed, I consumed. Naturally, it was good stuff. My favorite part were the surprising chunks of cream cheese embedded throughout the French toast. (Thankfully, this wasn't called "French Toast Surprise!" because, really, a lot of things with the word "surprise" in them don't have a very good surprise. If the food deems surprise-able, I will be surprised. Figuring the surprise isn't jello. Or shards of glass.) I ate two good sized chunks over the course of the morning, which is one too many. Oh well. (pats belly)

UPDATE (11/8): RECI-MUH-PE!!!

1 loaf (about 1 pound) dense bread (challah works well and is sweet); 8 ounces cream cheese; 8 eggs; 1.5 Cups half and half; 1/4 Cup maple syrup, 1 stick melted butter; 1 to 2 tsp vanilla extract; cinnamon to taste

• cut up cream cheese into small pieces and dot all over bread
• cube 2nd half of bread and layer over cream cheese
• beat eggs with half/half, maple syrup, melted butter, and vanilla
• pour over bread in pan
• push bread down into egg mixture
• cover and place in refrigerator overnight
• in morning, preheat oven to 350. sprinkle with cinnamon before baking. bake for 50-60 min

cakey things

I also ate two of these. Allen is surprised by how much I can eat, but come on...cake? Things like this all go in a separate stomach (the one that makes me look like I'm preggers), a stomach that is sometimes annoyingly insatiable. These cake things (the official name at this point) were SO GOOD! Why? Because! They. Were. They were moist, sticky yellow cakes with bottom" crusts" of chocolate chips, which certainly helped. It was like another surprise! GOOD LORD, WHAT'S NEXT! UNICORNS? (I don't know why "unicorns" would naturally be the next thing in line.)

Okay, that's it as far as "finding unsuspected ingredients in my food" goes. There were also deliciously moist, dense, not-too-sweet mini carrot cakes. I ate one. Yes. ONE. I can do that sometimes. I also ate some of Allen's congee, a food I've always been adverse to until I realized that with the addition of maple syrup (you know, a traditional old-age Chinese practice), you end up with a satisfyingly sweet soup! Coupled with the fried sweet Chinese bread, I ended up with a...sweet soup and oily deep fried sweet carb laden substance to dip into the soup.

I know I appear to be on the road to type II diabetes. While talking to my mum about my penchant for sweets, she said I'm full of yeast and my yeastie buddies crave sugar all the goddamn time.

"What can I do about that?
"Cut out sugar for a while."
"A while? How long is a while?"
"Eight weeks should do it."
"EIGHT WEEKS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"

End of story. I suppose. Yes, I should cut down the sugar consumption. In times like this, I want to break out the "AT LEAST I'M NOT A DRUGGIE/COFFEE ADDICT/WINO/BOOZE HOUND/SERIAL KILLER/'SOME OTHER VICE' ADDICT" but that doesn't really work.

Soo. Many thanks to Adam for a morning of wheaty face-stuffing and Allen for not ripping the plates of wheat out of my hands.

Things that are caustic:

- wasabi
- hydrochloric acid
- Frank Bruni's review of Ninja
- wine

savory foods and wine

While we usually just taste wine in my Beverages class (procedure: swish in mouth, suck in some air, swish around some more, spit out), today we had to drink (procedure: swallow) it for our "Food and Wine" segment. Damn. Drink. Process of allowing wine to travel down my esophagus instead of the inside of my spitoon. I'm sure the amount of wine I've actually consumed on purpose over my lifetime has amounted to less than half a cup, yet here I was around 11 AM, told to try nine wines with an array of different foods. Obviously, we had to take small sips and bites to get through everything, but I found it semi-torturous.

I should remind you that I have a highly unrefined palate. The drink I found most appealing so far was a hazelnut liqueur that barely tasted like alcohol, but had the strongest brain-clouding hazelnut scent I've ever smelled. Oh, it was sweet too. There wasn't anything subtle or complicated about it. JUST LIKE MYSELF.

We started with the savory foods, which were olives, roast beef, turkey, Gruyere cheese, young goat cheese, and mustard to go on...something, if you so desired. First, we paired the foods with four different white wines. Take a bite of turkey. Take a sip of wine. Wait for your stomach to curl into a ball and mew like a dying cat. (And by "your" I mean "my.")

The only combination that stood out, to me as un-sucking was Champagne with goat cheese. Everything else was labeled oh-so academically by my unenthusiastic brain as "okay", "eh," or "NOO!!!!" The worst was roast beef with anything. I don't really like roast beef. God knows why I was taking notes since it really didn't matter what everyone though if I didn't like the combinations.

Classmate: "The Gruyère went well with the Chardonnay."
Inside my head: "...Meh."

Next up were the red wines, which were three dry wines and two sweet wines. I was rather excited to finally try this long-fabled SWEET wine, something with sugar, something with sweetness, something to make me happy! Maybe! Or! NOT, as my taste buds would soon find out and subsequently write a pact against to never try again or else they'd commit mass suicide.

plate o sweets

I had nothing against the food, except for the Whole Foods mocha truffle. Why? Because. Mocha. Not only do I not like coffee in liquid form, but even when combined with silky smooth (i.e., fat-loaded) ganache does my palate go, "NO, no more, noo." At least the cashews and snickerdoodle were awesome.

But did any of them go with the wines? Er. Um. Well. The Pedro Ximenex Sherry was caramel colored and similarly carried a strong caramel/fig flavor, but I wasn't very into it because of the alcohol content. Oh, you say that wine has alcohol? Oh yeah! I suppose that explains why my taste buds are adverse to it. Sorry.

I'm a heathen. You can try to assimilate my tastebuds to alcohol, but I have no idea what advantage that would give me except an inclination towards drunkenness. (And don't remind me about the "French Paradox" and red wine deal, beacuse I already know about it.) Today's class showed me that any food with wine will probably taste awful to me.

While leaving class, one of my classmates said that she's all about the savory foods. My internal response?

"I eat honey out of the jar."

Remember: I have that super-unrefined palate that knows no boundaries. You want to know what drink goes with everything and is vital to life? Water! Yeah, it's quite good, last time I checked, which was a second ago when I was thirsty and thought, "Hey, this water would go well with that mix of gaseous elements I juts breathed in". It doesn't burn my throat, unless it's composed of fermented grape squeezelin's.

Yes, that's my new word for juice: "squeezelin's". Surely, it'll never catch on. Just to make sure, I googled it and my search did not match any documents. Thank god...I wouldn't want to know who else would use it.

I had a large day of eating considering how un-hungry I was. I made that mistake of eating breakfast despite not being hungry. To take a very informal survey, how many of you are hungry at 8 AM? I'm not, but I've seen the lines stretching out of the coffee carts. It's like my stomach is still warming up while everyone is down the race track. Lapping me. Multiple times.

Panya

I've only been to Panya twice before (or rather, eaten from there twice before; I've gone inside a few times without getting anything) but since it was on my walking route, I stopped in for a curry pan, which I've never had before.

curry pan!

So. I wasn't hungry, and I knew I was going to eat in my Beverages class in a few hours. BUT YOU CANNOT RESIST THE CURRY PAN! IT'S PUFFY GOLDEN PANKO-DUSTED AURA PULLS YOU IN! WITH OIL! AND CURRY! AND HAPPINESS!

inside curry pan

I took my winnings (I could say "purchase" but "winnings" sounds more exciting) to the Starbucks by Cooper Union (you know, from where you can see the other Starbucks at Astor Place), sat at one of the the semi-deserted outdoor tables, and started a-chompin'.

It was almost a Yakitate moment. Seriously. I don't know how to best describe the sensation of eating a baked and fried bun filled with spicy curry, but I'll attempt to anyway in the case that you can't get one of these for yourself. It starts with that addictive, oily fried taste (it's not very oily but make sure you have napkins) before transforming into the soft bun dough I love about Japanese and Chinese baked goods. Then on top of the wheaty goodness, there's CURRY INSIDE! Eating the curry pan was more so a textural pleasure than a flavor one, although it succeeded in both. Curry is one of my favorite foods EVER, by the way; if you don't like curry (*gasp*), don't expect to be wowed.

I don't think I was truly hungry at any point today. Maybe the wine killed my appetite. Still, I ate...a lot. Some more of those damn chocolate chip cookies. The rest of the Ritter Cornflake bar I bought yesterday. A random dish of potatoes, leeks, onions, lemon juice, and sardines. An apple. Estimated caloric consumption: 2000-something calories.

...oh, but how could I forget?

PB & J

I went to Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven after my Beverages class, about a 10-15 minute walk away (in other words, not far enough to escape the wrath of my sweet tooth). My quest was to buy a bar of chocolate for a friend overseas, but I wanted something for myself also. For $1, I got a nice little PB & J piece, which as you can see is...peanut butter and jelly. In chocolate. You know what could be a good (or really bad) idea? If someone dipped a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in chocolate. Yeah, enrobe that sucker, you know you want to.

cookies!

Alas, I didn't buy any cookies because that would've made me feel a bit too indulgent (says the girl who eats 100 grams of chocolate a day).

Mont Blanc, pre-digested

The first time I heard the words "Mont Blanc" was probably in reference to the pen company.

What does that have to do with food? NOTHING! From now on, Mont Blanc shall immediately equate to creamy Japanese cakes with chestnut puree. Screw writing implements! And ginormous mountains in western Europe! I tried looking up information about the origins of this dessert, but couldn't find much besides that it is "the name of an Italian cake, with cream and meringue" [via wikipedia]. However, I've mainly seen it in Japanese bakeries and possibly French. Italian? I'll have to dig deeper on that one.

Most Mont Blancs I've seen are in the similar Cousin It-style of noodly chestnut puree strands encapsulating something's that's surely tasty. What exactly? A mystery of sugar coma-inducing proportions? I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I cut into the cake with the skills of someone who should never perform surgery, unless that person works in "The Hospital of Gruesome Death".

Mont Blanc viscera

Behold: cream, cake, and more cream! While taking a food-break at Cafe Zaiya, I tried to "forced" half of the cake upon my bakery hopping-cohort, Carol, but she felt that it was too sweet after a few bites. Too sweet? Carol, I'm aghast! Horrified! Shocked! Etcetera! Actually, I wasn't; I suppose most people have normal tastebuds. Then there are pleople like me, who lack the "stop eating all that sugar" sensor, possibly destroyed by a yeast army. I honestly didn't think the cake was too sweet. However, I did think it was just right, which probably means that it's too sweet for most people. Do I overestimate my sugar tolerance or are my friends sugar-wusses?

Oh, do you want me to wax poetic about this cake? Um. ...I really liked it. What do you want me to say? "My ecstatic mouth reveled in a torrent of luscious chesnut as my tastebuds tingled in creamy rapture." Huh wuh? Nah, I just forked the stuff into my mouth, chewed it to swallow-able consistency, and thought, "Damn, this is good." Mont Blanc goes on my list of "various baked goods I really really like"

Hunting around flickr, I found various photos of Mont Blancs: Japanese style, pumpkin, light-colored, sugar-dusted, Fauchon, and the motherload. Enjoy. :)

sweet potato pie

Even though I had planned on just getting the Monc Blanc, this miniature sweet potato pie was too cute to pass up. Also, I'm a pig; what do you expect? This was the most sweet potato essence I've ever seen in a pie since it was basically a hunk of unadultered sweet potato wrapped in pastry dough. While I would've prefered that the potato were sweetened in some way (yes, I'm aware that it's called a "sweet" potato, but like many things, it could benefit from an outside source of sweetness), it was a nice alternative to other sweet potato pies I've seen made of pureed potato and whatnot.

And that was my dinner on Wednesday night. Basically. I mean, in addition to all the grain-based stuffings and salads we made in my Advanced Foods class.

rye berry salad

My partner and I had never eaten rye berries before, but they're very tasty if you like chewy grains. We mixed the rye with chopped sauteed fennel, onion, shallot, mushroom, and carrot and tossed it with a dressing my partner made out of soy sauce, rice vinegar, lemon juice, ginger, sugar, and possibly other things. Despite not having a clear plan in mind (our assignment was to improvise our recipes, resulting in me saying, "So, what are we making?" 10 times throughout class), our food tasted good! Yes! Victory!

stuffed squash

For the stuffed squash, we used long grain rice (with some wild rice mixed in), dried cranberries, garlic, scallions, toasted hazelnuts and almonds, olive oil, salt, and pepper. It was pretty random as to how much of each ingredient we put in, perhaps a handful of the dry ones, and seasoning to taste with the others. If you like those ingredients, you'd like this stuffing. And if you're allergic to nuts...well, that sucks. I kept snacking on it before we actually stuffed the squash. Actually, I was probably full before we presented all our food, snacking on rye berries and rice.

Carbs and fiber are yummy.

You're not going to believe this, but I unknowingly exercised self-control at the Chocolate Show yesterday, an event dedicated to the exhibition of the best turd colored food in existence (and probably other colors). The weird thing is that now, 12 hours later, I'm realizing this. It's honestly making me a bit sad; who the hell doesn't go chocolate-eating crazy at a CHOCOLATE SHOW? Maybe being around other people, unlike last year when I went solo, gave me some common sense (you know, like not eating a shitload of chocolate).

But I don't think that was it. Perhaps my mood was overly elated by the fact that I actually had friends to share my chocolate-eating joy with instead of the usual solitary chow-down in a pathetic, sugar-controlled state of mind. Rarely have I gotten to eat chocolate with friends (surely never such a large amount) and talk about it. Like so:

"Oh my god, try that dark chocolate. It's so good. Definitely dark but not necessarily sweet or bitter."
(eats the chocolate) "Yeah, that is good."

Or...

"Dude, that toffee almond chocolate was so good."
"Oh yeah, I know! I'm thinking of buying some."
"Me too. ...It was really good."
"Yeeeah."

Or...

"Try this chocolate covered almond!"
"Wow, this is really good."
"Like 'I'd kill babies for it' good?"
"...I don't know about that."

Etc. For someone like me (as in, not very social, doesn't usually hang out with many people, likes to eat with people), getting to go to what's essentially a chocolate buffet with three of the awesomest (I've used that word so many times to the point that I'm convinced it's not an atrocity of butchered English) people I know (Carol, Eunice, and Patricia). Although I didn't realize it at the time, the social aspect made a huge difference in my chocolate eating experience. It wasn't just about "eating chocolate", but about "expressing my excitement about eating chocolate in an animated/loud manner and not looking like a total dumbass while doing it, or at least being around people who understood my madness".

So even though I probably didn't eat the worth of the ticket price ($25) in chocolate, it was totally worth going.

...God knows I must've consumed 1000 calories before noon.

Schokinag hot chocolate hut

We got there at 10 AM and waited in a fast-moving ticket line. Outside the Metropolitan Pavilion was the Schokinag Hot Chocolate Hut. I'm sure that wasn't the official name, but I rarely get to use the word "hut" excessively. So here I go: HUT HUT HUT HUT. They were giving out free samples on an adjacent table, samples which disappeared quite quickly. I didn't actually see people buying hot chocolate but I assume someone did at some point during the day.

We checked out the Altman Building first, which wasn't as crowded as the main room. Piles of Pralus chocolates and Michel Cluizel bars beckoned, like so: "Hello, we're piles of chocolate. Eat us. Duh."

oo, pretty packaging

the rainbow motif is popular

Payard

We headed to the Payard table in the back. I've never had Payard chocolate before but they nicely let us choose a free piece from a list of available flavors. I tried a piece with caramel in it. Mm...good. Obviously. There isn't much I can say besides it had really good caramel flavor. If you don't know what chocolate-covered ganache tastes like, you need to find some and eat it. Seriously.

[I think I've underestimated how many people have actually eaten Payard-esque chocolates. If you're not into chocolate, I guess you don't have much reason to eat them, but if you are into chocolate or food in general, go find some! Admittedly, I'm not a huge truffle/bon bon (is that the right term?) fan. Don't get me wrong: of course, I love eating them, but I usually go for chocolate bars instead of individual chocolate pieces. However, my mum is the opposite, meaning I've had plenty of opportunities to indulge in chocolates. Our favorites are Pierre Herme's chocolates from Wegmans. Yeah, Wegmans has roughly five billion more cool points than every other supermarket chain out there.]

That was a long aside. ...and I'm actually not done yet. I'm not usually blown away by chocolate pieces for whatever reason, finding it easier to enjoy a simple chocolate covered hazelnut, or something of that sort. However, I still recall the first time I had "gourmet" chocolate when I was in 10th grade, in the form of Richart's tiny caramel-filled chocolates. Best caramel I've had. Ever. You can disagree, but make sure to tell me where the better caramel is while you're at it.

I'm not going to talk about every vendor at the show or else I'll never go to sleep. And I'd really like to go to sleep, considering that I woke up at 8 AM and I get something like "not nearly enough sleep" on a regular basis (on the flipside, I suppose I get a lot "being awake" on a regular basis).

Sweetriot

Sweetriot specializes in chocolate-covered cocoa nibs in varying percentages of chocolate-ness. Their nice packaging and fun, hippie-esque attitude (one of the ingredients is LOVIN') surely made them popular. I tried some samples and they weren't really my thing, but I can imagine a lot of people liking the high snackability factor. And, um, tastiness. Where the hell am I when these "sweet riots" occur? Not at the riots. Damn.

Belcolade

Belcolade displayed bowls of large chocolate chips, I assume meant for baking. I only tried one piece but I really liked it. That's all it takes to make me happy: BOWLS OF LARGE CHOCOLATE CHIPS.

I distinctly remember seeing the Galler booth, yet bypassing it because...I suck. I had Galler chocolate once, a milk chocolate hazelnut bar, which I loved (I don't know if that was because it was the first thing I had eaten all day while waiting for hours in line for a Beck concert, but I'm pretty sure it was good on its own right). Besides that I suck, I was heading towards...

Mary's Chocolates

Mary's Chocolates adds to the list of "things the Japanese adapt from other cultures and makes really well in their own style and damn, WHY DO I HAVE TO BUY ALL THIS CHOCOLATE" (it's a weird list, I'll admit). Last year they were my favorite, more for show than taste. I mean, they taste good, don't get me wrong. I didn't try any truffles this year, but I did take advantage of the free green tea ganache samples.

green tea truffles

I bought a box last year but this year, I resisted. Surprisingly, one sample was enough for me. I'm truly surprised I didn't take more, seeing as I stood in front of them for quite a long time, watching as they replenished the plates and hands came out of nowhere for more. ...dude, what's wrong with me? Seriously? Wha?

Anyway, green tea truffles are basically a white chocolate ganache lightly flavored with green tea (it doesn't have the bitter tea taste; I can't really explain it). Really good, as melt-alicious chocolate always is. Like anything else, the taste depends on the texture, which can range from ...cooled ganache to not-as-cool, super-soft ganache. I prefer cooled, but I'll take it in any shape or form.

Mary's Chocolate is such a highlight because there's no other way to get it in NYC. Then again, I'd love any excuse to go to Japan: "Er, I need this chocolate. What, Japan's got temples and stuff? No no, just chocolate...yeah, that's why I'm going. You heard me." Methinks we need more Japanese chocolatiers. The only specialty Japanese confectionary in NYC that I can think of is Minamoto Kitchoan, which is fine and dandy, except I prefer chocolate.

Chocolove

Another highly was Chocolove's new Toffee and Almonds in Milk Chocolate bar, which I checked out due to Cool Hunting's recommendation. Milk chocolate with bits of toffee and almonds, you say? Jesus. Christ. I like toffee but one problem is that there tends to be too much of it in whatever it's incuded in, say, in large chunk form. Chocolove's bar has it in itty bitty pieces, meaning the chocolate bar is mainly chocolate with hints of toffee and almonds. If you like toffee and almonds, you must get this. If you don't, then what the hell is that about? They were selling these bars 2 fo $4. I didn't buy anything because I'm a dumbass. Patricia bought two since obviously, she was thinking straight.

I'm too lazy to go over the rest. Expect more later.

She sure is taking a long look at those lemons.

I'm not overly paranoid.

...actually, I am, but in this case, the cashier at Whole Foods was definitely looking at my bag of two lemons for longer than the average "looking at produce to figure out how much it costs" time, especially considering that there were only two lemons in the bag. Were my lemons particularly interesting? Did they somehow tantalize the senses from behind a thin plastic bag? [Sidenote: I don't like the word "tantalize". Maybe all those "t"s and "z"s (er, one "z") feel threatening and stabby.]

NO! Of course not--they're just plain, bobbly yellow lemons. I looked at them afterwards and saw that one had a little rotting splotch on it. Of course, it's be rather stupid to return one lemon, because 1) it's a freakin' LEMON and 2) I obviously didn't look closely enough at it when I put it in my bag and carried it around for 15 minutes. It's doubtful that bacteria attacked the lemons while I was perusing the Asian food section, in a heated rice debate while trying to decide between brown Jasmine rice or white Jasmine rice (I ended up with white, nutritional benefits of brown rice be damned). Of course lemons decompose, but as someone who almost never buys lemons, I don't think I ever saw one mid-decomposition.

So that was my morning, or a short bit of my morning. First, I went to the farmer's market to buy onions and an acorn squash. While writing an improvisational stuffed vegetable recipe last night, I craved baked squash stuffed with rice, nuts, and dried fruit. Before working on the recipe, I had to read a few chapters in "You Eat What You Are", all about Southeast Asia. Never in my life had I ever wanted to have Southeast Asian food so badly. What's weird is that it wasn't so much that I wanted to eat it, but to make it. I'd like a jar of curry paste right now and knowing that Bankok Center Grocery is so close to my dorm doesn't help. (Not close enough to casually wander to, but probably less than 15 minutes by walking.) I could put that in my rice and make stuffed squash with an ethnic identity disorder.

OH, THIS FOOD MADNESS. Insane. As you can see, my life must be highly stress-free or else there would be other things on my mind besides the bag of food I have to lug to class and the arborio rice and chicken stock in my backpack that I plan to make into risotto sometime this week. Have I ever made risotto? Eh...kind of. I've only eaten it in my cooking class so I don't know what "authentic" risotto is supposed to taste like. Whatever I ate tasted really good though and it wasn't hard to make.

Yesterday I unintentionally fasted for almost 20 hours. No, it's not much of a fast, but I'm always under the impression that normal people eat 3 meals a day and whatnot, figuring they're not busy doing things unrelated to food (the idea is shocking, I know). I've probably said this before, but even though I have the ability to eat a lot, I don't usually feel hungry. There's a huge difference between me being able to eat something at the drop of a hat and my friend who can't wait another hour to eat dinner so she'll eat a snack beforehand. Don't get me wrong--I've had those feelings before, but sometimes my lack of hungry perplexes me (I am easily perplexed). Because...as you know, I like to eat.

My stomach has been making gurgling noises this morning, but I don't really feel hungry. In my experience with gurgling stomachs, it stops if you wait long enough. (Just so you'll feel like you've learned something, stomach gurgling is called borborygmus. BEHOLD MY BORBORYGMUS!) If I go insane, there's a bag with a banana nut muffin sitting right next to me.

Egg Custard Cafe

Yesterday, due to the beautiful weather and lack of food in my dorm, I went on a bakery hunt with a friend. I don't go to Chinatown as often as I used to, but seeing a new bakery/cafe sprout seemingly out of nowhere was disorienting.

"WHAT, THERE'S A NEW PLACE? WELL, WE HAVE TO GO INSIDE NOW."

I speak in caps.

This place was "my face is smushed into someone else's back" crowded, similar to Fay Da Bakery where we had been a few minutes prior (I can see why they wouldn't make the place self-service, but I think I've gasped the concept of tong handing, which comes in handy when the employee-to-customer ratio by the bread case feels like 1:20) There were lots of egg tarts in a couple of flavors, but I've also seen various types of egg tarts at the Golden Dragon Boat Cafe and Bakery, one of my favorite bakeries in Chinatown. Maybe I'll try it some day but it didn't strike me as especially good.

cute bread thinger

I never saw this heart-shaped chocolate chip and walnut bread from Fay Da before, so naturally, I had to eat it. While the bread part tasted good, I'd rate it as "okay" because there was hardly any chocolate chip or walnut filling. A teaspoon in each half, perhaps. Meager fillings get filed under the "LAME" column.

...but it's so cute! And perfect looking! Aw. Well. I wouldn't buy it again, but it was worth trying.

Payard chocolates

Because chocolate is photogenic, I took way too many photos of the Payard chocolates I bought at the Chocolate Show before eating them. And I took photos of them even while eating them! If I didn't take photos, I'd devour everything without giving any thought to whatever I had eaten; when it comes to chocolate, my digestive system is a black hole of doomy chocolate-killing acids.

Obviously, all the pieces were good. I only really enjoyed two of them since the other two were either coffee or alcohol flavored. The one that says "Payard" on it was one of those delicately crunchy, hazelnut-flavored ones, definitely something I've had before in another form but can't recall how to describe exactly. Oh well. YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO EAT ONE YOURSELF.

glutinous rice, for meee!

For dinner I had a major zongzi craving. Zongzi is by far one of my most favorite Chinese food, besides baozi and dumplings (is it weird that even though I grew up saying "baozi" and "zongzi", I didn't grow up with "jiaozi"?). Why is it so good?

Because it's probably really bad for you. Take a mass of sticky rice, mix it with peanuts, and stuff it with fatty pork and egg yolk. Voila: DEATH! Tasty, chewy, nutty, meaty death. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a vegetable zongzi, as that would probably go against the zongzi philosophy of allowing you to easily eat rice, meat, egg, and legume in one bite (there are dessert versions, but I have yet to find one I like). The one I bought yesterday lacked egg yolk, but it had mushroom, which tasted pretty good. I was thrown off by the few random chunks of pork fat that inconveniently clung to the sticky rice. You can love fatty foods, but if you enjoy eating plain, solid fat, you're on a whole different level of gustatory caliber that I'd rather not investigate.

Overall, I thought May May's zongzi was just okay. It was overly greasy for my tastes; my memory of zongzi growing up was that it wasn't that moist and fatty. The rice granules were closely packed to each other and could be considered dry compared to the wet, almost falling apart zongzi I had yesterday.

Chinese tamales

While I've heard the term "Chinese tamale" before, I rarely see it spelled out like that without the accompanying term "zongzi". I've never had a tamale, so this name modification doesn't mean much to me. Would I like tamales? Where should I get one in NYC? TELL MEEE!

Here are lyrics to a song about my current state of physical being, which I'm making up right now:

My arms are jiggly
Because I ate so much food.
I should run around for a few miles
To try and decrease the jiggly-factor
But I'm lazy
And I'm updating my blog
Uh huh.

God, that was horrific. Don't ask me how the song goes. It should die. Now.

Yes, I ate a lot, and I don't know how I did it. Actually, that's a lie; I know very well how I shoveled forkfuls of organic matter into my mouth, but a part of me doesn't understand how or why I did it. Hunger? Nope. Craving? Not exactly, besides the chocolate.

Valrhona chocolate discs

Eating that whole tub of chocolate would provide me enough calories to last the day. I didn't actually finish the entire tub, but you don't want to know how close to empty the container sitting on my bookshelf is at the moment. (Chocolate purists are going to hate me for saying this, but I liked the white chocolate more than the dark. The white was seriously like eating heaven's milk. And...what is heaven's milk? I'm not completely sure, but if you can get a few clumps of heaven [ye know, just take them and then be banished to hell], squeeze out the juice, and solidify the extraction, you'll get something like Valrhona's silky smooth white chocolate. The dark chocolate is great too, but I don't like the fruity taste dark chocolate sometimes has. Or many times. I would'nt even like fruity tasting milk chocolate; I'm not fond of chocolate pieces with fruit in them, or chocolate-dipped fruit. There are some dark chocolates I like, but I couldn't tell you what they are right now.) Even without the chocolate, I think I went way over the food quota that people like me (as in, short, not particularly slim or fat, but ultra-sedentary young women) should place for themselves. Except I don't actually place a food quota for myself; if I don't feel like puking, I'm a-okay!

Except that's not true. Yes, there have been times that I've eaten so much that I've wanted to roll over, die, and scrape out the innards of my stomach (which would be rather hard to do after the whole "death" thing, but the excess food probably poked holes in my brain), but most of the time I just eat more than I should and think, "Hey, there's still room for chocolate." Let me start from the beginning...

Actually, first off, here's what I cooked yesterday:

curry and rice

Shopping at Whole Foods, Bangkok Center Grocery, and a store in Chinatown resulted in snow pea and fennel red curry with "pimped up" rice (pimped because I added toasted hazelnuts, chopped dried figs, and a splash of peanut oil). In all honestly, it tasted like something that could actually be served in a restaurant. Maybe. Now I almost don't see the point in ordering curry at a restaurant if I can make it myself with a can of coconut milk and some tablespoons of curry paste. I wouldn't make pad thai myself, but a basic curry sauce with whatever additions I'm in the mood for (snow peas; they rock my world) is easy to throw together. Sharing the food with my roommate was a proud moment for me: the food doesn't suck and I'm not the only one eating it! Sweet!

Now, let's go back in time...to Tuesday morning.

croissant

As I kept hearing good things about Patisserie Claude's (187 W. 4th St) croissants, I decided to make the trip there from campus (you know, the 5-10 minute walk) this morning for a buttery, carbolicious breakfast. The bakery is very small, although it does have a few tables (which you can use if you spend at least $2; a croissant costs $1.40). They didn't have many pastries at the time I was there around 8:15, with the woman in front of me grabbing the last pain au chocolat, but they had a few croissants, brioches, and sweeter baked goods.

croissant, again

The croissant seemed to have its own source of inner golden light. Each thin, delicate buttery layer puffed away from its neighbors, reminding me of Yakitate #3 where Azuma makes a 342-layer croissant. I could pick off the outer bits as though I were plucking the petals off a flower. But just eating the crispiest, phyllo-esque parts wasn't what I wanted to do. I needed...INNARDS.

croissant innards

Whoaaaa. What? Do all croissants look like this inside? I think not, at least not the ones I've eaten (although to be fair, I think I've eaten two croissants this year, both within the same week). While croissant innards obviously don't look like those of your regular loaf of bread, the layers don't usually look as pronounced as the one in Claude's. I seriously just stared at it, wondering how the layers of dough and butter could've been folded so neatly as to make the croissant's inner swirl. Simply, I was thinking, "WTF?"

So how was the taste? Do you really need me to tell you? I think it was the best croissant I've ever had. As I said before, I haven't actually eaten many croissants in my life, but going through my memory bank of croissant eating experiences, never have I had one this crispy on the outside, buttery soft on the inside, with so many perfect, visible layers. It was delicate while at the same time retaining its structure. Lordy.

If you're like me and not particularly into croissants, you must try this croissant. As easily accessible this bakery is to me, I wouldn't go back all the time just because I don't crave crossants. However, I'd cringe at the idea of getting a croissant anywhere else. Maybe I'd get croissant variations with nuts or chocolate, but for a plain croissant? Perhaps when I go to France.

I know I said I'd talk more about the chocolate show, but I think I said most of what I wanted to say. Also, since it's been a few days, I forgot the rest of what I would've wanted to say. Eh, it couldn't have been that important.

Back to today! Because my beverages class ended early, I ate lunch with one of my friends in the class at the conveniently nearby (and open for lunch) Katana Sushi. My friend the nutritionist ordered a beef negimaki bento box while I went for the super healthy tonkatsu, and by healthy I mean "deep fried and breaded".

tonkatsu bento

It was kind of disappointing, although I did eat it all. While I had nothing against the pork, the breading was soggy. You can tell from the photo that it probably wasn't fried long enough, or perhaps something was wrong with the oil. Everything else was fine and I thought the miso soup was good (as in, not overly sodium-filled) considering I don't really like miso soup. It's not a bad lunch by any means, but my favorite bento box is still found at Win49.

I hadn't planned on eating lunch because, god knows, I wasn't especially hungry, but it was a good way to spend time with a friend outside the confines of our alcohol-riddled class, in which today we tasted gin, rum, vodka, and tequila. Oh. Joy. I didn't particularly like any of it, although the gin felt interesting upon my first sip. By interesting, I mean it felt like I was drinking perfume, volitile, stinging perfume. It was almost refreshing after I spat it out. The second sip was worse...and thus ended any semi-positive feelings I had towards tasting gin.

curry and noodles and too many onions

After taking way too long buying groceries at Whole Foods (while racking up at $60+ bill after buying eggs, milk, spices, a microplaner, a cleaning brush, chocolate, and I forget what else), I came home to make use of the leftover curry from yesterday. I added the curry to chopped onions, fennel, green onion, and snow peas, and mixed in some rice noodles. The end result was something with way too much onion and not something I would ever force upon someone else to eat. Was it really that bad? Well...I ate all of it. The curry/vegetable-to-noodle ratio was way off, not to mention the whole onion and green onion bits that decided to take over my mucus membranes. Oops.

And I ate a crapload of the chocolate. Or a shitload. I haven't figured out the exact measurements of each one, but sometimes "craploads" doesn't cut it.

Oh, what will tomorrow bring? I'm scared to find out.

Remember how I just ate that other-wordly croissant from Patisserie Claude and said that I'd cringe at the though of getting one anywhere else? Well. I did. Let's compare.

Tuesday's croissant from Patisserie Claude

Wednesday's competitor from Panya

Obviously, they're not exactly the same, seeing as the Panya croissant was preggers with a banana and some wayward parasitic chocolate chips, but they're still part of the same, dysfunctional croissant category. My first bite into Panya's croissant resulted in disappointment: the texture was in limbo between soft and not-so-soft, almost stale-like quality. I don't think it was actually stale; it just took on this not very good ...mouthfeel. (Sidenote: I don't like the word "mouthfeel".) The banana was a nice touch, and the chocolate would've been better if there had been more of it (fives times as much, roughly). Too much air, not enough dough. Or chocolate. It was far from inedible--I did eat the whole thing--but it was a disappointing start to my day.

Panya's croissants

I don't know if all of Panya's croissants are in the same taste-range, but I wouldn't get another one. Stick with the curry pan, or the seasonal pumpkin muffins they're selling right now. Maybe I was unlucky and just happened to get stuck with a sub-par croissant.

Wednesday was a day of food disappointments. Let's move onto Thursday's gut-busting afternoon tea.

pots of tea

I ventured to the upper west side after euding a quick 15 minute subway ride to visit Alice's Tea Cup upon the recommendation of some friends, and indulge in some cute pots (each equipped with a handy "drip catcher", something I've never seen before) full of steeped vegetal liquids accompanied by equally cute, carb-alicious finger foods. I met up with Ranjit and his friend Irene, who ordered the "Mad Hatter" for two, while I got "The Nibble" for...one (glutton). We were seated ipast the main white room n the back red room, which was decorated with nicely framed photos of...people eating!

tiers of food

I've never had an afternoon tea set before; damn, I've been missing out. First off, the three-tier system is ingenious. How many times do you have a plate of food and then think, "Gee, I want another plate of a different tasting food, but my desk has no more space, unless I balance this place on top of this pile of CDs and get everything dirty"? Or is that just me? Shit, I could've been STACKING THEM VERTICALLY, an idea that has been in practice for some time, say, when people realized that skyscrapers can fit a lot of stuf inside them without taking up much two-dimensional real estate, yet only discovered by myself after being presented with a tower of food-filled plates.

The Mad Hatter for two ($34) comes with two pots of tea. three scones with preserves and cream, two sandwiches, a choice of a special dessert (in this case, chai spiced creme brulee) and an assortment of cookies. The Nibble ($22) comes with a pot of tea, one scone with preserves and cream, one sandwich, and an assortment of cookies. The Nibble is eroneously touted as being for those who feel "a lil' bit hungry".

hellooo, dinner!

A lil' bit? What? You should fast for a day before eating this; no joke. Earlier that day, all I had eaten was a few bread chunks, which were free in my "Food and Society" class (we had to read an essay about bread). (If you're curious enough, during my usual lunch break between classes I watched "Soylent Green" for my film class. Man, that's not a very good movie.) By the time we ate around 5:15 PM, I was read to dig in, as were Ranjit and Irene. I was hesitant to get the Nibble at first since I'm not one to spend $22 (+) on a Thursday afternoon meal, but I was too indesive to order a la carte. It's a good deal for $22.

guess what's inside the TEA pot?

Oh, it's a tea place. I suppose you figured that out. I've probably mentioned my adversity towards most non-water liquids before. Although I was considering not getting tea and just stuffing myself with some scones, it seemed rather stupid to go to a tea shop and not get any tea. The "tea" (made from a red bush herb) I ordered was "Rooibos Chocolate Caramel." Methinks the name is self explanatory as to why I ordered it. The herb is written on the menu as being high in anti-oxidants and vitamins, but I have a feeling clouding the tea with two packs of sugar and a splash of cream counteracts any possible health benefits, not to mention eating a plate of cookies, scones, and other things.

cold sammich

Sammiches (er, sandwiches) seem to be part of most afternoon tea meals. I almost never eat cold sandwiches. Why? Am I the only person who finds them rather unappealing and unsatisfying? If the bread is really good then maybe the sandwich will be fine, but in this case it was seven grain bread (an in between the bread, "lapsang souchong smoked chicken breast with granny smith apples and herbed goat cheese"). Hooray for fiber, but boo to not very soft, crumbly bread. I wanted a grilled sammich but you can't order those with the tea set. Damn, foiled again. The sammich was too dry for my tastes, although slathering on preserves meant for the scones made the sammich much more palatable. I did eat the whole thing, after all. In the future, I'd try a different sandwich or more likely, not order a sammich.

Besides the sammich, all was good. Friends kept telling me about how good their scones were, but they failed to mention that a single scone is roughly twice the size of a fist, or the size of a baby's head.

peanut butter and chocolate chip scone

Resting serenely on the plate like a wheat iceberg or Mount Scone-a-lot (nah, I'm not even trying to be creative), it was almost a shame to tear apart. But not. The peanut butter and chocolate chip scone was my favorite out of the four we had gotten. Pumpkin was great, although I was hoping for more pumpkin flavor, and I found it was a little too moist. I don't think I tried the maple walnut (something or other) scone, but the strawberry one was the best texture-wise. Not too moist or dry, and the scone itself wasn't sweet, aside from the splodges of strawberry mixed in. I love sweetness but it's nice to not have it. Sometimes. It was very biscuit-like (then again, biscuits and scones are very similar, yes?). From my biscuit eating experience (of which I have very little), biscuits are usually plain and have more fat than scones. And other stuff I can't think of right now.

aftermath

I ate just about everything, except for a bite of cookie. I was saving the cookies for last, but by the time I finished the scone and sandwich my stomach turned into a hot air balloon, if the balloon were full of food in various states of digestion. In other words, I was in no state to keep on eating, yet I continued to consume, unwilling to let such a beautiful plate of assorted cookies go to waste (yeah, I could've taken them home, but I dont like having leftovers).

It wasn't just the food that did me in; tea takes up quite a lot of space also. I drank four tea cups, which I assume is something like two real cups. Although I would've liked to drink more (with ample sugar and cream), I just couldn't bring myself to finish the pot. There were one or two tea cups left. That's a lot of potential urine.

front bakery counter

The horror of being full at the end of the meal was being unable to take anything home from the bakery counter at the front of the shop. HORROR, PURE HORROR. They sold the baby-head scones, swirled-frosted cupcakes in chocolate vanilla, and red velvet varieties, raspberry muffins, peanut caramel tarts, and more! So much more! Like this cake:

banana cake

I'd never even think of making a banana cake with nutella cream cheese frosting. That's a perfect combination, although I won't know for sure until I taste it. Ahem.

Friday was a complete night of dessert gluttony. I hope to actually write an entry about it because it�s not every day that I go to seven bakeries in one night (yes, my life is not full of continuous fooding, believe it or not) without a "Crap, did I really eat that much?" hangover the next day. You really ought to check out Melody�s blog entry since she was my partner-in-crime for the night. How nice it is to find someone to food with who�s as enthusiastic about going to bakeries as I am and who won�t mind being dragged around in the dry cold to sample all the carb-laden possibilities. It�s not just that Melody likes baked goods so much, but being new to the bakery world of NYC made me feel more helpful, like a tour guide�who gets to eat a lot of sweets and stuff.

Until I decide to un-suck, you can view my photos from the day (all 50 of them) on flickr. I also made a post at picturing food, for those of you who are all about the food porn. ;)

Unfortunately, the post I�m meaning to write now isn�t food-porn specific. But if you really want one, here you go.

Magnolia Bakery cupcake army

Moving on, I�m writing an essay about cute food in Japan, or something having to do with that. (note: When I say "cute", I'm referring to Japanese cuteness. There are many kinds of cuteness, but the Japanese one is particularly...unique? Read Cuties in Japan.) Surely many of you like Japanese snacks (and food), or maybe you are Japanese, in which case you�d probably know more about this stuff than I do. I didn�t even know that the whole kawaii culture started in the 1970s. I suppose since I was born after that, I was under the impression that things in Japan were ALWAYS MEGA CUTE.

So to give a brief overview of the history of kawaii (feel free to jump in and correct me), it started with the cute handwriting craze, or the type of handwriting we�re all familiar with today: even-lined, rounded characters, usually written horizontally. This handwriting is known as kitten writing, or fake-child writing. Although this type of handwriting was adapted by popular media, it was initially banned in some schools. (On a semi-related note, when I was in 4th grade, writing in impossibly tiny script was popular. I actually did it, although not as well as some other people. I have no idea what the point of that was, but it seems to correlate to a largely female-adapted style of �small, round, pretty letters. Except not, because itty bitty script was probably almost unreadable by anyone with slight vision problems.) Once source I read said that the kawaii movement was an act of rebellion by teenagers (not that they were the only ones who got into the culture, but allow me to generalize). While it may not be like the western notion of rebellion, usually something more extreme, maybe with a sense of danger thrown in, writing in a cute style was an opposition to the vertical, variable-width writing of before. The idea of kawaii insinuates, besides the cuteness, being helpless, passive, childlike, and pathetic, among other things. Adding cuteness and personality to goods caused people to spend craploads of money on things they may not otherwise buy, like THIS TOASTER THAT BRANDS THE TOAST WITH HELLO KITTY�S FACE (my own example), or any kind of doo-hickey that you don�t really need but you buy because it�s cute as hell. (For me, Sanrio played a heavy hand in me buying craploads of pointless cute things when I was in middle school. Of course, it�s not just a Japanese thing, but I bought like�I dunno. Really random stuff! Don�t get me started on how many Tamagotchi paraphernalia I once owned, although I feel like that�s kind of different from your general spread of Sanrio characters.)

So what�s up with the spread of kawaii? One source told me kawaii had the appeal of childhood, which makes sense to me. The difference between the longing for childhood in Japan and America (which is my only point of reference), is that while America is an adolescent country (the teenage years seem to be what people want to capture the most), Japan has the desire to go back�further. Middle school? Elementary school? Screw high school and college; what I�d really want is to go back to my pre-teens or before that. I�m sure I read this somewhere but obviously, there�s some difference between the teenage and beyond years of Japanese and Americans. It seems more stressful in Japanese society (at least the high school to college transition, from what I�ve read), where there�s much more pressure to�fit in? I�m not sure if that�s the right word, but maybe you know what I mean. I don�t plan on going into the whole life of the salary man or the role of the Japanese housewife because that would probably take a gazillion pages (besides that I don�t know much about them) and I�M WRITING ABOUT FOOD, AREN�T I?

Uh�so what does this have to do with food? I dunno. I�m having trouble coming up with a thesis (and as you can see, I�m spending my Sunday update my blog instead of actually writing my essay). This is also a way for me to get out my ideas in a semi-comprehensible manner, instead of the scribbles I wrote down and hopefully it�s not considered cheating to have a food minded audience take a look at this.

Looking at the spread of Japanese snacks, there are themes of �pastels. Chocolate. Animals. Cookies. Miniatures. While Japanese snacks are such a product of �Japanese-ness� today, they don�t really correlate with historic Japanese food culture (in my opinion; maybe I don�t know what I�m talking about!). (On another note, a lot of Japanese food is adapted from other cultures but have been so integrated that they�re Japanese, like ramen, tempura, and curry, but it seems like many snack companies started around 60 years ago.) So�wait, I don�t know what I�m talking about.

I totally ignored wagashi, traditional Japanese confectionery, until today (and I�ve been working on this essay, however slowly, since last month). I noticed similarities, such as pastel colors, small individual snacks, snacks shaped like other things, seasonal flavors. I don�t know where that fits in, but it probably does. Traditional Japanese snacks aren�t usually packaged in a particularly cute way, unlike the newer, western-influenced snacks. I guess that�s one way that they retain their �maturity? Not that all modern Japanese snacks are packaged with cute characters and bright colors, but the majority of wagashi or traditional Japanese snacks seem to have plainer packaging without bright colors. One of my most prominent memories of a snack mascot when I was little was the Calbee potato man. I could easily eat a bag of sodium-laden potato sticks. To compare, I don�t think Doritos, Tostitos, or Lays had mascots (Cheetos has a mascot, but that seems to be the exception).

What�s my point? I don�t know. I wanted to investigate the popularity of Japanese snacks. I don�t know if there�s anything very deep to them, but some people (well, Americans) will go insane at the sight of Pocky. We don�t have a domestic snack quite like Pocky; it�s a tasty, simple, sweet snack that you can easily share with other people. A lot of Japanese snacks are conducive to sharing, or giving away (like tiny, individually wrapped gummies and chocolates, which I find cute). There are American snacks like that but from what I can remember, there aren�t as many, or they�re meant for certain situations. We have those fun packs and variety chocolates but those come in bulk packages for Halloween. And there are other examples but I can�t think of them. Er. Maybe that�s not much of a point.

Oh, besides the kawaii-ness of snack food, I also wanted to talk about the cute portrayal of food characters. San-X is the ultimate treasure trove, with way too many cute personified foodstuffs, such as oranges, natto, beer, onigiri, cheese, vegetables, bread, and those freaky Nyanko kitties wrapped in food. Kamio is another stationery company with cute food related things, but I can�t find their website.

I don�t know what I�d do with that �inedible food as cute� idea. It�s just�there.

And now I�m done rambling. If you read this far, I�m really amazed and feel like I ought owe you something for having spent your time reading this. If you care to give any insight into cuteness of Japanese food, feel free to indulge me. If you�re heavily into this subject, maybe you would provide a good interview subject for me. :)

On that note, I�m also doing an essay about blogs, which is much less fleshed out than this Japanese food essay, but in a way might be easier. Or not. Actually, I�m screwed. I could probably interview some people for that one, but I should actually come up with an idea of what I�m writing about first.

But one thing that does seem to cross international lines successfully is baking. [...] And even though the world is mired in cultural misunderstandings, wars, and hostility, perhaps the United Nations might consider sending an International Baking Brigade around the world to promote cross-cultural baking traditionals.

David Lebovitz knows what he's talking about. Perhaps if I could get all the people who are not so happy with America to come on down and sample the sugary grain product-alicious bakery world of NYC, they'd be happier. Or fatter. Or both. Or maybe they'd get angry for getting fat and hate America for it's tendency to make everything fat, from people to pigeons. Hm.

Well. Melody had no objection to our bakery hunt on Friday night, during which we traveled at 1.75 bph. By the way, "bph" is now an official part of the limited Robyn lexicon: "bakeries per hour". I think that's the highiest bph I've ever taken part in, although I could've done more. How many hours did this unfold over?

FOUR. So how many bakeries is that? SEVEN. And how many of my brain cells did I kill with sugar in the process? MORE THAN SEVEN. Of course, I don't know the real answer because I killed too many brain cells. By the time this blog is near the end of its life, I'll be smashing the keyboard with my arms because by that time my brain will have the composition of a sugar cube to the millionth power, surrounded by cerebal fluids.

mm, baked stuff

We started at the new Cafe Zaiya at 69 Cooper Square between 7th Street and St. Mark's Place, a little shop that mainly sells Japanese baked goods plus some convenience foods, such as onigiri, sandwiches, bento boxes, and curry and rice combinations. Because I'm overly obsessed with japanese food, I went there earlier in the day for lunch to, ye know, scope out the new place and make sure it would be a fit destination for me to bring Melody. (YES, IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH MY MIND CONTROLLING GLUTTONY.)

mushipan

That night with Melody, I got a sweet potato mushipan (steamed cake) and Melody got a yakimochi (grilled rice bean cake filled with red bean paste). I've only had steamed Chinese cake before; the Japanese kind is denser, or at least this one was, and I LOVED EVERY BITE. But you know what would make it possibly better? If I totally abused/Americanized it with toasted nuts, topped with buttercream frosting or whipped cream. The cake is perfectly delicious (as in, soft, moist, not crumbly, densely spongy) on its own but I've decided that just about everything can benefit from a smidgen (or a few smidgens) of whipped cream. This red bean bun? WHIP CREAM IT! This muffin? WHIP CREAM IT. This scone? Oh, you better whip cream it.

Melody's yakimochi, although very different from most Japanese desserts, would've also gone well with whipped cream. Surely you know what mochi is--a delighfully soft, squishy ball of pounded glutinous rice filled with dense red bean paste that when held in your hand can feel like you're holding a small, fuzzy creature, if the creature is blob-shaped and has no appendages. Now imagine black sesame-dotted mochi, grilled until it becomes thin, crispy, and golden, enclosing soft, sweet red bean innards (not that they'd be "outtards"...outtards?). It's good.

And that was the first bakery. Don't worry; not every place was as mind blowing. I'm completely biased when it comes to Japanese baked goods though.

bee cake?

The next stop after walking down St. Mark's Place was Black Hound on 2nd Ave near 11th Street. Even though I've been here three times before, I've only bought something once (the first time, I just took a sample; hell yeah, I'm a free loader). Cost prohibitive-ness prevented us from indulging in the window display's bee cakes (normal bees: suck! bees on cake: adorable!) but we took a look inside so I could weep at the sight of this cake:

Pumpkin Maple Cake

I'm sure it's worth $7 (hell, not like I'd make it), but you know...I'm cheap. They also had insanely cute, dollhouse-esque cookies on display.

teeny cookies

As a testament to my gluttony, I don't find tiny cookies very appealing. This is unfair, as I've eaten tiny Japanese cookies, usually in the form of a koala filled with chocolate, but flowers and sticks aren't that endearing. My mind is full of fluff: "Entertain me with cute smiling animals and miniature chocolate-coated cookie mushrooms!" These cookies would be nice to serve at a party.

I don't do parties. Moving on...

giant Mont Blanc

We headed back to St. Mark's Place to check out JAS Mart and the accompanying Italian Tomato, where they were selling ginormous Mont Blancs. If you recall, I had a Mont Blanc for the first time a few weeks ago, and it may have been the most delicious dessert I've ever had that included chestnut in it (and I've had glazed chestnuts, which are pretty damn good, but don't measure up to confections involving cake and cream).

As much as I would've liked to buy that Mont Blanc, I do have an infinitesimal bit of self-control. Also, I don't like Mont Blanc so much (or any cake for that matter) that I'd order it in ginormous, slice-able form. If you want your own 6-inch Mont Blanc, you can order them for the Christmas season from Italian Tomato starting on December 1st and if you order before the 19th, it's $20 instead of $22! I'M SHILLING FOR THE CAKE, YEAH. Actually, I've never had Italian Tomato's Mont Blanc (or any baked goods), so maybe I shouldn't say anything. Strangely, even though I've had access to Mitsuwa's Italian Tomato (and the neighboring St. Honore bakery), I haven't tried many of their cakes. My mum and I usually go to Whole Foods for cakes and pastries since it's much closer. (Note to Ridgewood, NJ: get a Japanese bakery!)

Brandy & Honey Panna Cotta Jelly

Japanese people seem to have a penchant for puddings and custards that go beyond your basic (and usually boring) vanilla and chocolate. Even though I don't like brandy, I'd like to try this panna cotta sometime. Rarely do I get a craving for pudding-like desserts, but after I actually eat one I realized how much I've underestimated their satieting properties when it comes to quelling dessert cravings that leave me roaming around the city, foaming at the mouth, lunging into bakeries with crazy eyes...oops, too much information. WHAT A FOOL I HAVE BEEN. And look, there's a plop of whipped cream! It must be good!

We're on three bakeries so far, yes? Damn, are there really four more? (Yes.) Out next stop was Amy's Bread on Bleeker Street in the West Village after a short stop at the Union Square Whole Foods where Melody picked up a box of tea (although the mob-like line went quickly, it probably looked odd for us to wait in line to purchase one box of tea). The temperature that night, while not baby penguin-freezing cold (surely you've seen "March of the Penguins), gave my hands had that numb, not-so-good pulsating blood flow feeling. I'll leave you to recreate the experience as you wish, perhaps by sticking your hands in a bucket of ice.

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So, back to Amy's Bread. To me, Amy's Bread is a consistently good bakery, but not really good. There isn't anything that I've loved so much as to try more than once, but I've been there at least five times by now. They sell a wide array of baked goods including bread (no, really?), cake, muffins, cookies, rolls, biscuits, and various sweetened breads, so there's something for just about everyone, unless you have celiac disease, in which case you're just fucked! (Is there a better way to say that? Nope.) You should check out Risotteria instead, or Babycakes, which I have yet to try out.

monkey cake

I had my eye on the monkey cake since the last time I went to Amy's Bread and read the description, basking in the cake's glow (or maybe that was the light in the display, who knows): Banana cake with walnuts, covered with cream cheese frosting. Mmm...well, it sounded more appealing at the time. Overall, it was good, just not good enough that I'd remember it forever in my dreams and scribble its name in notebook, surrounded by tiny floating hearts. Neither the cake nor frosting were too sweet and neither component was objectionable; the cake was moist, although I would've liked more banana, and the cream cheese frosting was...cream cheesy. Actually, I would've liked it if the whole cake were sweeter, which means it's probably good for any normal sugar-tolerant human being. But still; no floating hearts. (On an unrelated note, one of the best desserts I ever had before my whole food obsession was the banana cream pie from Village Green in Ridgewood, NJ. I might even eat there this week, if it's open and I'm not dying from post-Thanskgiving food coma.)

black & white cupcake, anise biscotti

One of the things Melody absolutely had to try was a cupcake. Any cupcake. From a good bakery. The cake of her black and white cupcake was noticeably dry (it literally gave off crumb-babies) although she said it had good flavor. She said the frosting was especially good, so I'll definitely try it someday. She was also a big fan of the biscotti.

"There are two Italian bakeries right across the street. I've actually never tried them before..."
"Well, let's GO!"

Ah. Melody had her mind in the right place.

tiny tarts

We stopped into Pasticceria Bruno, where they had these adorable baby fruit tarts. What makes them adorable? You could eat them in one bite! ...or possibly choke on then. Pick one.

For whatever reason, I'm not a fan of Italian desserts or even Italian food. Yes, it's awful; god knows I have access to craploads of Italian food and desserts in NYC and I've been inside a fair share of Italian bakeries. It's not like Italian pastries aren't appetizing, but there isn't usually this one item that jumps out at me, shouting "YOU MUST EAT ME OR BE DEPRIVED OF MY DELICIOUSNESS." Either nothing is very appealing or too many things are medium appealing (someone, please give me a better adjective). While I love fruit tarts, I almost never eat them as my mum or brother usually buy them. However, when I was little (before I had any notion of calories and spending money on ingesting the calories) one of my favorite treats was getting a fruit tart shaped as a basket from Mistuwa's Parisienne bakery. Seriously, I always got that miniature custard-bucket, probably along with oobanyaki.

But we're talking about Italian pastries. Actually, there were plenty of delicious looking desserts; I just didn't want any of them to a great degree. However, Melody was blown away by the pumpkin raisin walnut biscotti she got from there, meaning I'll have to go back and try it.

cupcake army

Still going down Bleeker Street, we hit Polka Dot Cake Studio, a bakery with a a small display case but managed to fit in a few tables, chairs, internet kiosks, and a small freezer for ice cream/gelato from Il Laboratorio del Gelato (which didn't have anything in it that night). They had some cupcakes so Melody and I shared a red velvet cream cheese frosted cupcake.

red velvet cake

This was almost the antithesis to the Amy's Bread cupcake, while still retaining it's...cupcake-ness. The cake was super moist to the point that I thought I could squeeze out cupcake juice, whatever the hell that is. Although it was kind of like a moist steamed cake, it still had crumbs. (I'm not sure how else to describe it.) The frosting was just sweet enough, smooth and creamy with a hint of cream cheese tartness. Thumbs up for Polka Dot!

Believe it or not, we've arrived at the final, 7th bakery. Still going down Bleeker Street, can you guess where we ended our tour?

Magnolia Bakery cupcakes

I've been to Magnolia bakery four times before, getting something three of those times, two times which involved cookies and the other time, banana pudding. The vanilla cupcakes were good with frosting so sweet it makes your teeth hurt (which is why a lot of people hate it; eh, whatever floats your boat). Chocolate cupcakes were less impressive. I thought the banana pudding was beyond awesome until I made my own and realized i liked creamy, viscous pudding more than airy, light pudding.

Magnolia gets a lot of flack for being overrated and not worth waiting for. As much as I love bakeries, there isn't any one bakery I'd wait in line for. At certain times of the day (perhaps when it's actually "day" and the sun is out) there will be a line snaking outside of the front door full of people who want to grab some of the self-serve cupcakes, from which you can only buy 12 at a time lest you want to be sodomized by the cupcake overloads. I think that Magnolia is overrated, but nothing could really live up to so much hype, especially when the hype is over cupcakes. (In a similar vein, I think Coldplay is overrated. They're still good, but they can't live up to all that hype. Or maybe that's just my opinion. ...yeah, I just compared Coldplay to cupcakes.) Can you imagine someone going ga-ga over a plain, frosted vanilla cake?

On that note, Magnolia was giving out fresh quarter-cupcake samples and they were amazing. Uh-may-zing. Yeah, I had to phonetically spell that out for you. There's a huge difference between "cupcake that's been sitting out for a while" and "cupcake that was just birthed from the oven." If the cupcake hadn't just been birthed, it sure tasted like it had: the cake was just the right amounts of softness, airyness, sweetness, moistness, and buttery taste, which was condensed in the crispy top of the cupcake to form "the cupcake top of crazy, buttery deliciousness." On top of the quarter was a dollop of maple buttercream frosting, which was tastier than their regular tooth-ache inducing frosting (hey, I still love it). God knows why they don't make cupackes with that frosting on it. It's kind of funny how that sample was one of the memorable foods I've eaten lately.

Magnolia's cookies

I couldn't bear to get a cupcake since I figured they wouldn't compare to the sample I had, so I got two cookies from the homey American cookie jars. They're rather small but for $0.50 each, you can afford to sample a few. As a lover of all things pumpkin, I highly recommend the iced pumpkin cookies, which are soft, kind of like moist miniature scones. The molasses cookie was good too, but I've been spoiled by ingesting way too many of Anna's molasses cookies from two summers ago. So. Freakin'. Good. Crackled with sugar sprinkled on top, these babies are heaven straight from the oven.

...whoa, I think I'm done with this post. For a while, I thought the bakery hunting was never going to end.

This morning I considered waking up at 6:45 AM to pick up some desserts for my mum at Financier since I'm going home tonight...and also to get myself a little brekkie. After my alarm went off, one look at my clock while staring at the surrounding dim walls (not helped by the Financial District's cubicle-filled towers and rain clouds of condensed H20 doom) told me that waking up was unfavorable. Also, I was tired. After half-consciously setting my alarm to go off in 30 minutes, I went back to sleep.

Zzz.

At 7:15, my desire for a Financier jaunt outweighed the one for "recovery of brain function" (although that's more of a necessity than desire). I woke up, made sure my appendages were in working order (they are, somewhat) and my inbox was cleared of anything of upmost importance (it still isn't) and at 7:40 rolled out onto the damp, cold, and windy Water Street. The last time I went to Financier, the weather was picture-perfect with a Happy Sun-san-esque orb of gas hovering above, making all the shiny monolithic buildings gleam like metallic toasters. Really big toasters.

Financier had a few customers sitting at the tables but most people were on the go. There are two entrances, the main one being on Stone Street and the other on Pearl Street. The Pearl Street entrance seemed to be more for those who just wanted a quick cup of hot, steaming, burning liquid and an accompanying pastry. I was on a mission to get macarons and financiers for my mum, so I went around to Stone Street.

Macarons, macarons...alas, no macarons. I saw one box in the cold case shoved on the side like an abandoned orphan (a tasty, almond based orphan), so I decided not to go for that. While they do have large macarons (well priced at $1.50, figuring they taste good), I wanted a box of small ones for my mum. The clerk said they should have some in the afternoon so I'm going to check it out again after work.

macarons, purchased later that evening

Macarons are one of the few desserts that really left an impression on me, even before my whole food obssession "thing" you see before you. The first time I had one was from Wegmans and even though I haven't tried many in my lifetime, I'm sure Wegmans make excellent ones. For some reason, French-style macarons haven't taken off in America, a real shame because THEY'RE SO GOOD. YES. I'd describe it but Discover Paris would beat my description to a pulp:

A good macaron should have a light, thin crust that gives way to a soft, chewy cookie that is also light and airy. The cream filling should have the same flavor as the cookie, should be thick but not pasty, and should offer an obvious contrast to the texture of the cookie. If these criteria are met, then the differentiating factor among good macarons is the quality of the flavorings used.

The only non-French style bakery I've seen in NYC with macarons is Something Sweet on 1st Ave and 11st Street, but they were too dry in my opinion. Wegmans' may be considered too moist, although it would only be by a smidgen and I still love them to death. French chocolatier La Maison du Chocolat also makes good, ginormous ones (no miniature ones here), as does French bakery/gourmet food shop Fauchon (they have an interesting selection of flavors; I never tried it but I got one for my mum) and Bouley Market (I tried a free sample; good stuff). There are probably other places in NYC you can get them but they're not omnipresent. Besides living in France, it seems that your next best bet would be to live in French pastry-obsessed (hey, it's a good obsession) Japan.

For some crazy reason, I didn't think it was appropriate to eat a macaron on a virginal stomach (well, for that morning; god knows how much I ate yesterday) so I tried a scone instead. (There's no logic to this decision besides that scones are an accepted breakfast food. Hell, I'd eat a miniature cake for breakfast without any guilt; they had some verrrry tempting pistachio creme brulee tarts.) They just have two scones--plain (or something like that) and no sugar--so I went for the plain while getting a bag of madeleines and miniature financiers for my mum.

The woman behind the counter (who upon seeing my bag of miniature madeleines said, "I ate ten of those this morning"...damn, her job is wonderful) brought over my small, plain scone over on a porcelain plate. The scone wasn't completely unadorned--there were bits of dried fruit here and there plus some chopped nuts--but scones are inherently unremarkable looking. They pretty much look like more browned biscuits. Of course, biscuits taste awesome even if they're plain, just like scones.

plain scone

First bite. After about a millisecond I decided that this was the best scone I've ever had, or at least one that I can remember. How, HOW did the scone do that? How did it...how?! Was something different going on with my tastebuds since I don't normally eat breakfast? Do I taste things differently if I eat when I'm not particularly hungry (and not because I already ate too much)? It wasn't like a burst of a certain flavor (since it was...plain) but it had this buttery tasty, except it wasn't just butter. There was also a feeling of salt, but not a taste of salt, if that makes any sense, and there was just a little bit of sweetness. The texture was soft and dense, not too moist or dry. It's easier for me to say that there wasn't anything objectional about the scone than to figure out why I liked it so much, but there wasn't anything objectionable about the scones at Alice's Tea Cup either. I happened to like Financier's more.

The memory of the scone left me feeling very happy, even while walking in the crappy weather. Maybe that was the trick: nature gave me craptastic weather and the scone made up for it. I went back to my dorm to drop off the other pastries, popping a miniature financier in my mouth (they're really small!) before heading out again to go to school. It was good, but I'm not a big fan of financiers (I tried one before) so I can't describe how I was captivated by it's almond essence as it bathed the inside of my mouth...or whatnot. People don't really talk like that, hopefully.

During my beverages class we had a guest speaker, Allen Katz, from the drink marketing company "Blend". If I hadn't felt out of place before, then today I surely did as I was seemingly the only person in class who had never had a cocktail before (maybe other people were as scared as I was to admit such a blasphemous flaw of human taste). Neverrrrr. And why would I, aside from being a college student in NYC? ...oh. Is that it? Does my lack of attendance at social gatherings (not like I get invited...not like that would make a difference) and great distate for alcohol have anything to do with it? Hmmm. Yeah, maybe.

morning bitters

By now I've forgotten how many kinds of wines and spirits I've tasted, but it's more than 20, perhaps around 30. If it tastes like it has any bit of alcohol, I probably won't like it. Boohoo, no one in the alcohol industry is going to care. I'm a lost cause; if you added alcohol to something I like (chocolate), you'll just make me hate the thing I like. And I'll hate you too, you, the RUINER!

So what was I talking about? Uh. I have no idea why I have such a low tolerance for the taste of alcohol. However, I think many people my age have the same problem, which is why they drink cocktails that may be overly sweetened. When I hear friends telling me about drinks and spirits that taste like candy, I think, "WHY DON'T YOU JUST EAT CANDY?" I have no desire to feel out of it (more than I already do on a regular basis, for God's sake) or get a handover or, you know, increase my blood alcohol level. You know why people used to drink so much alcohol, besides that they liked it? THEY HAD NO POTABLE WATER. Guess what's in front of me right now? POTABLE WATER. YUM YUM, TASTES LIKE NOTHING, AND IT GOES DOWN SMOOTHLY!

Oh, I don't mind if other people drink. Admittedly, my palate is very unrefined ("This tastes like...um, good!"), but I don't like the notion that being unable to enjoy cocktails and wines makes me some kind of immature, unrefined human being not fit for a slice of the modern, cosmopolitan world. Or. Something. You know what I mean. Of course, I'm over-exaggerating but really, how nice would it be if we could all have a night on the town by hanging out at the local bakery. And getting really fat.

---

Damn, this entry is taking forever to write. I'm home from work, and not just dorm-home but New Jersey-home. I went to Financier after getting back from work, stocked up on three miniature cakes, a sandwich/salad for dinner, and a pack of macarons.

But before that, let's go back in time...to lunch. I decided to check out DeMarco's since it won the Battle of the Boroughs pizza contest and it was conveniently a few blocks from my workplace. I've never had a NYC pizza in my life. Most of my pizza consumption has been in the form of the limp, cheesy, fluorescent orange oil-slicked staples of "pizza day" across elementary schools nationwide. Or at least New Jersey. The other pizza I've eaten way too many of are Pizz Hut pan pizzas. Yeah, I like my chewy wheat products, which you've probably figured out already (if you've been reading this blog since the beginning of the year, you may remember my habit of eating entire loaves of bread).

So why haven't I tried any pizza? The ratio of pizza places to people is something like 10:1 (I made that up) and it seems like the chances of going to a random pizza place and getting something good are slim. Then again, how do all these places survive if they suck? I'm one of those people who'll go to random bakeries but pizza is completely out of my domain. I crave it about as much as I crave any Italian food, which means I don't. My purpose in going to DeMarco's wasn't to quell hunger (because I wasn't; damn breakfast scone) but to finally try pizza and see what was up with NYC's pizza obsession.

I went in around 12:15. The "pizza express" location looked closed (most of the lights were still off) but there was a guy inside eating pizza. I got one plain slice (a sidenote: for most of my elementary school life, I would get two slices of pizza on pizza day, probably something guys were more akin to do than girls...also, I was kinda fat), sat on a stool near the door (after the pizza dude--not his official name I'm sure--took down the stools) and ...ate.

pizza side view

I guess it would've been better if it had been more fresh (I don't know how long it had been sitting out there...I figure not that long) but it was okay. I have absolutely no idea what a "good" pizza is, so I'll just say that it was tasty (which means nothing, but I'll describe the pizza in a bit). I don't understand the pizza mystique, if there is one, so I guess you either have a taste for it or you don't. Don't get me wrong; I could easily wolf down a few slices, but for the same amount of money I'd rather eat something else, which I can say about a lot of other things.

I'm not sure how to describe the pizza besides comparing it to other pizza I've had. The obvious differences were that instead of a limp, foldable crust, the crust was crunchy on the bottom, soft on top. You could pick up the slice and not have it plop all over you, which is preferable to having pizza plop all over you. I'm not sure I've ever had a crust like that before; it was nice. Also, there was much less cheese on the pizza than any regular pizza I've ever had, which is also nice because chewing a mouthful of melted mozzerella isn't that pleasant, unless you want to die by asphyxiation. The sauce had basil in it, which I wasn't accustomed to (I like basil) and there weren't excessive pools of drippy oil on top. It was a nice slice of pizza, just not something I'd feel the need to eat again.

After realizing that I'm not meant to be a pizza lover, I thought about what pizza I've had in my life that I really liked. There's just one: pizza spread with pesto, topped with slices of fresh mozzerella and tomatoes. I don't know if that's some kind of hidious combination (or if it has a real name), but I've only had it twice, the last time being four or five years ago. I kind of want one now. On a semi-related note, my favorite pizza when I was little was with mushroom topping. That was all I ever asked for: pizza with mushrooms. I never understood why people would order extra cheese; wasn't there already enough?

I'm too lazy to go into all the desserts I ate tonight, but let's just say I ate way too much food after I got home. Apparently, we still have leftover Halloween candy. I'll leave you to ponder what I did with it.

As soon as I stepped into NJ, my immune system broke down and mucus spurt forth from my nasal floodgates. What the hell is that about?

I'm back in my dorm after spending a gluttonous few days at home for Thanksgiving. It wasn't Thanksgiving that was so gluttonous though; it was simply being at home, where there happens to be a kitchen full of food I'd never have in my dorm, some of which I made, thus reminding me why I shouldn't bake. I've taken more than 100 food-related photos over the past few days, so this entry's gonna take a while. Maybe you should take a toilet break first.

snowman poop

My mum and I went to Chef Central on Wednesday since I wanted to go out and that was the only place I could think to go (I think normal people go to the mall or something). They sell craploads of chef supplies, kitchenware (like this super useful mango splitter and the awesome creme brulee torch), cookbooks, gourmet food, and...snowman poop. That's definitely new. Either snowmen didn't poop before or someone just found a way to market it to the American (and French-Canadian?) public. I think "snowman poop" with hot chocolate would bring to mind "snowman diarrhea" but that idea may be too...advanced. Pppssh. You just wait; "snowman diarrhea" will take the world by storm.

On the way home we decided to stop by Le Jardin du Chocolat in Ramsey, only to find that it had transformed into another business that didn't sell chocolate. Horror. What's the new business? WHO CARES; it ain't chocolate, that's for sure. The shop, which to my knowledge was the only gourmet-type chocolate shop around Bergen County, had been open for around 4 years if not more. My mum said she went there not too long ago, but obviously it had been long enough so that the shop could completely clear out and be serviced by chocolate exterminators. Sad, we were.

Then I remembered seeing a chocolate shop/gallery in nearby Wyckoff. Hmmm. Let's go!

The Chocolate Gallery

It's mainly a gallery, but they also sell chocolate. I could honestly care less about the art, none of which was my style (because I'm not that fond of impressionist style, or still lifes), so I went for the chocolates and free samples. And by free samples, I mean entire bonbons and truffles. Sweeeet.

Sure, I'll take one!

Payard chocolates

Brands they have include Payard, Neuchatel, Neuhaus, Seattle Chocolates, Lake Champlain, and Chocolat Moderne. My mum bought some Payard boxes and I got a Seattle Chocolate truffle bar. There was just one woman working there at the time who wasn't the owner of the store, but when we had questions she couldn't answer she called the owner. I can't imagine they get a lot of business since they're not on a major road (I only noticed them because the gallery is close to my orthodontist), but if you like chocolate and live somewhat close by, they're working checking out.

chocolate chip cookies

I've probably mentioned this before, but I don't bake because, assuming I'm not baking just one cookie (which would be sad), I'll be left with a cookie buffet. I know you're not supposed to eat the entire batch of cookies, but it's hard to resist when they're right there, soft and fresh, in large quantities, borne from my own labor. DAMMIT, THEY'RE MY COOKIES! I creamed the butter and sugar!...with a machine...BUT I PRESSED THE DAMN BUTTON.

I got the recipe from words to eat by and they came out rather good, although I'm sure Debbie's tasted better since she probably has more experience baking. Hell, there are probably five year olds with more baking experience than I have. I changed her recipe a little, as I didn't have light brown sugar and ended up using less sugar overall (is it funny that out of all people, I tend to decrease the recommended amount of sugar when I bake?), and I used less chocolate (which was stupid). I baked them for closer to 20 minutes than 13 as the recipe says since they didn't look done. Then again, I'm not familiar with cookie baking so maybe they were done before then. I'm not an intuitive baker or cook by any means.

stack of cookies

The cookies tasted good, but the texture was crispier than I prefer. The texture suffered the next day, but I guess that's expected when stuff shifts from the "freshly baked" end of the spectrum to the "exposed to oxygen and whatever toxins are floating around in the air" end. Luckily, the flavor was still good, and by good, I mean...um. I don't know, not bad? The cookies are four days old now but I'm still eating them because I made them, dammit! (I ate five on the first day. Oops.)

So...those were the pre-Thanksgiving food related things. For Thanksgiving I found out at the last minute that my mum, brother and I (dad is in Taiwan) would be joining my mum's uncle's family for a late buffet lunch at a country club near their house in Staten Island. (Oh, how I love country clubs and having to semi-dress up. ...not really. I haven't been to many country clubs in my life but with the exception of The American Club, which I was never a member of, but could "sneak" into with friends, they've tended to give me an odd feeling. Is it just me or do they always look the same? Oh, I just though of a reason why the American Club was cool: they had Japanese curry.) They also had a post-Thanksgiving dinner at their house today, but besides that my mum was dropped me off at my dorm, we weren't crazy about going to another dinner full of chatting and increasing one's caloric intake when we should really be purging. (I think they like to entertain people. The idea is foreign to my family, haha...BECAUSE WE'RE ANTISOCIAL.)

buffet room

Like all buffets, there was way too much food. Besides the regular hot dishes and salad bar, there were bread baskets, a meat carving station, oyster and shrimp cocktail bar, cold cuts, soups, and 75 golden camels...wait, that's Aladdin.

dessert

Oh, of course there were dessert tables, three nearly identical to the one above, and an ice cream station. Desserts included pumpkin pie, apple pie, some other kind of apple pie, maybe a blueberry pie, coconut custard pie, pecan pie, cannolis, napoleons, cream puffs, those Italian cream puff things, rice pudding, vanilla pudding, chocolate mousse, brownie-things, cookies, a legion of people afflicted with diabetes...you get the picture. I had eaten here once before and I remembered the desserts being better. Sadly, it was all pretty mediocre, although I did really like the apple pie with streusel topping (I didn't try the double-crust pie).

first place

Unsurprisingly, I got one plate of savory food and two plates of desserts. To be fair, the dessert plates are smaller and I didn't eat everything...just almost everything. You can probably tell that there's an absence of turkey on my plate; I forgot about it. Yup, I forgot about the most (or one of the most) symbolic American foods. well, it's not like I don't know what it tastes like, which for the most part is chicken. I wasn't particularly fond of any of the savory items so I just went for whatever seemed semi-healthy or tasty. See, there are vegetables on my plate! WOW. *smattering of applause* Actually, I lied, as I really liked the sweet potato stuffing. I suppose stuffing is supposed to stuff something. Well, it stuffed my spoon, is that good enough?

dessert plate #1

Clockwise from top left: cornbread (alright), apple pie (pretty good), cookie (not so good) on top of brownie (eeeh), funky cream puff (not so good, although I think that's just a matter of my taste) and normal cream puff (alright). You've just experienced my 2-second food reviews. Inspiring, no? No.

Okay, to expound upon the less favorable desserts, the cookie was too hard, the brownie was...I dunno what it was, and the funky cream puff was soaked in some sweet syrup and had a challah-like texture, which just isn't my thing. I didn't finish it. *gasp*

dessert plate #2

What do you know: I went back for MORE. Clockwise from top left: pecan pie (I really liked this, but I do love a good pecan pie), chocolate mousse (good), vanilla pudding (like a viscous vanilla sauce, which is fine with me), and coconut custard pie (not so good, but maybe I don't like coconut custard pie). I've rarely had pecan pie in my life but this one was very sweet and bursted with caramel-pecan-ness. It may be too sweet for most people, which was probably why I loved it. The coconut cream pie tasted just like the combination of coconut and custard would, but it disappointed me and I certainly didn't finish it. I shared a bit of my mum's napoleon and didn't like that either, but I've never liked napoleons. It has something to do with the...um, pastry part.

So that was my Thanksgiving. I cut out the crap for you, such as most of what happened over the course of the three-hour meal. AT A BUFFET.

empty?

Where did everyone go? I don't know, home perhaps? Of course, it was nice for my great uncle to invite us and we were happy to be there, but three hours is pretty long for a buffet, especially when I don't understand 75% of what's being said at the table and everyone thinks I'll somehow learn Mandarin by the "soaking in what everyone else is saying" method, which, after 20 years of failure to learn Mandarin has taught me, doesn't work.

(I think some grammatical errors were made somewhere in there, but whatever.)

Other stuff happened this past week, but I'll talk about it later. Do you know how time consuming it is to write about what you eat all the time? Quite. Maybe I need a new hobby, like doing homework. Or exercising. Or stomach pumping.

For dinner I boiled some rice vermicelli and plopped it into a pan of sauteed coconut milk curry with green onions. After a while I plopped in an egg because, hell, why not? Could use some tasty unborn chickens in my dinner. End result: a weird curry laced noodley creature that veered towards the end of untastiness. I've actually made this dish before (sans the egg, although the egg was the best tasting thing this time) with equally disappointing results. Why did I make it? COS I'M A MORON. Also, I had a can of leftover coconut milk in my fridge and thought, "Hey, I can do something with that!" The curry just doesn't go with rice vermicelli, although it goes with plain rice just fine.

I ate my entire curry noodle creature, which is sitting somewhere in my digestive tract. (pokes ribs) For the love of god, it's hiding in my viscera! GOD KNOWS WHAT KIND OF EVIL IT'S PLOTTING! So why did I cook something that I was pretty certain would taste meh-full and just provide sustenance (which I don't need since I expended almost no energy today) instead of getting something tastier from the outside world, cooked by people who know what they're doing? (Damn, that's a pretty specific question.)

Adam just wrote a post about why he loves to cook. ...And it doesn't actually have much to do with my reason for cooking, but I agree with some of the things he says:

But more and more I make the effort to choose something that requires some effort; even if it's boiling some pasta and coating it with butter, nutmeg and parmesan. That takes 20 minutes, at the most. And it's pretty bad, nutrition-wise. But it's completely gratifying because I took the time to make it.

When I started cooking food, no matter how crappy (but sometimes pseudo-edible), I realized that it doesn't take that long to slap some food together from scratch. In my head, it's not worth saving time to reheat something mediocre that was frozen or canned when I could make a random dish from fresh ingredients (even if the thing I make tastes worse; don't ask me what principle I'm acting on, I just don't like buying frozen or canned foods most of the time, although you've probably noticed how often I buy chocolate bars and baked goods). It's somewhat more gratifying to eat something you made, or at least it's nice to know that you (hopefully) used good ingredients and aren't eating complete crap.

By no means am I a passionate cook. I don't even like following recipes (which could have something to do with why my food sucks) because that takes...effort. (The exception is for baked goods, since you kind of need to follow those recipes. However, I don't bake much because, as you're probably familiar with by now, I have a tendency to eat enough to feed small third world countries.) Actually, I usually go for what takes the least effort while still being something semi-nourishing and somewhat tasty.
I cringe when my mum says she wants rice noodles from Chinese take out. I usually reply with something like, "NOOOO!", not that I don't think Chinese take out is yummy, but because noodles cost less than $1 and in theory, you could make something like that at home somewhat easily. I'll admit, every time we make stir fried rice noodles, they never taste as good as from a restaurant, but...it's food, it's kind of decent, and it doesn't have any mysterious ingredients.

As much as I love eating, sometimes I think about how much easier and less stressful life would be if I didn't care about food. Today I ate one of my homemade chocolate chip cookies for lunch. At around 4 PM, I decided to eat a persimmon. After that, I ate the last fourth of my Seattle Chocolate dark chocolate truffle bar. For dinner around 8 PM, I made the splodgey curry noodle demon (while snacking on raw hazelnuts that I had completely forgotten about), after which I ate one of my homemade pumpkin cupcakes, another persimmon, and some random snacks (such as way too much Poifull).

So. My day was rather easy-going until dinner rolled around and I decided to eat THE FOOD WORLD AS CONTAINED IN MY KITCHEN. Bad, bad Robyn! It was so nice just not eating much all day (and of course, the chocolate didn't hurt) but then I tried making up for the disappointing noodle splodge by eating various sweets, which didn't work because I now resemble a pregnant woman in between her first and second trimesters. It's not very becoming, I assure you.

Ironically perhaps, the reason I wasn't eating much (aside from not being very hungry; if I had been craving something in particular I probably wouldn't have cooked the random noodle splodge but gone to Chinatown) was because I spent hours scouring the web for wines to put on my imaginary wine list. Food studies, I shake my fist at you! [shake] Making a wine list blindly, not just as someone who isn't legally old enough to drink, but as someone who doesn't even like alcohol, seems like the perfect formula for making a craptastic wine list, poised for failure, mocked by wine connoisseurs the world over. If you're curious enough to see my wine list, I'll put it at the end of this entry.

But first, a few random food related links!

• Lovescool goes to Japan: Kelli and Andrew of Lovescool, one of my favorite blogs, report about their trip to Japan, making me feel very sad that 1) I'm not in Japan and 2) I didn't pay much attention to the food when I was in Japan. One of my most vivid food-in-Japan memories is when my mum, brother and I ate at Haagen Dazs and were the only people not using a spoon to eat out of the cone. JAPANESE PEOPLE: THEY USE SPOONS! But anyway. The Lovescool entry gives a quick overview of yummy foods in Japan along with the almost eerily considerate ethos of Japanese employees.
• Kottke eats street food in Bangkok: Actually, he (and Meg) ends up eating a lot of food around Asia but I chose this entry because...I don't know. Scratch that, check out...
• Meg's delicious coconut tart discovery: Oh my god, I want one. No wait, I want ten. No wait, I want the machine that makes the coconut tarts. That's right.
• But going back to Jason's entry, his 7th footnote says that we shouldn't make excuses for not traveling due to lack of funds. I'd say the same about me making excuses about not doing lots of things. (sigh) I'm pretty lazy so I guess that's my main reason for not travelling. This last summer I didn't go anywhere outside of NJ or NY. No other states. Nada. The rest of the world is nonexistent. In the previous year I took a somewhat last minute trip to England, although I didn't plan it at all (I visited a friend) so it was like two weeks of sleeping late and hanging out with one of my best friends...in another country. The point of this drawn out babbling list item? I better go somewhere next year. It probably won't be Bangkok or Vietnam but I told my mum we should visit them (because we...haven't) and she didn't completely disagree with the idea! Score!
• Last link about this subject: ICE CREAM BOAT!!!
• HOOAH Energy Bar: It's one of those things I wish were a joke, but isn't. Via Metafilter.

The end. Today sucked. Instead of taking solace in the fact that I'm alive, well fed, edumuhcated, and have not a real care in the world, I'm thinking about all the sucky food I ate and how disappointed I am with myself and my impending doom once I fail all of my classes for the semester. Ironically, the only class I know I'm doing well in is cooking because I did all the assignments and I've showed up for all the classes.

...Oh. The wine list. The "restaurant" I made up is a dessert bar/bakery called Pudding (surely you're not surprised by my choice of cuisine). After much thinking, I decided that the design of the restaurant is kind of mediterranean (whatever the hell that means) and Japanese (...I don't have to actually provide a visual for the interior, thank god). The desserts are mainly homey American stuff, like cupcakes, pies, tarts, and cookies (well, the menu is seasonal so the one I wrote has things with apple and pumpkin), plus chocolates. Everything's pretty reasonably priced, nothing to break the bank. And...there's a wine list! Obviously, this place would never exist. So here's my list; it probably doesn't make much sense. If you know anything about wine, feel free to chime in. Despite taking a class on it, I know almost nothing besides what phylloxera is.

THE HORRIFYING WINE LIST OF HORROR (unfinished, in messy note form, after hours of pointless research)

White Dessert Wine

Hogue Late Harvest White Riesling 2003
- flavors: dried apricot, tangerine, orange peel, vanilla, raisin, and powdered sugar
- goes with: apple, pear
- $10/bottle

Quady Essensia Orange Muscat 2004
- flavors: orange, apricot, nuts
- goes with: creamy desserts, chocolate, nuts
- $15

Lamoreaux Vidal Ice Wine 2002
- flavors: pineapple, pear
- goes with: apple, pear, pumpkin

Peter Lehmann Noble/Botrytis Semillon 2002
- flavors: honey, apricot, citrus
- goes with: custard, creamy desserts, apple, pear, pudding, cake

Bonny Doon Muscat Vin de Glaciere 2004
- flavors: honey, butterscotch, peaches, pear, pineapple, spices
- goes with: pumpkin, apple, pear
- $15/bottle

Red Dessert Wine

Mas Amiel Maury 2002
- flavors: red fruits, cherries, a little tannic
- goes with: chocolate

Chambers Rosewood Rutherglen Muscat NV
- flavors: honey, caramel, raisin
- goes with: chocolate
- $15/bottle

Achaia Clauss Mavrodaphne NV
- flavors: toffee, nuts, raisin, cherry, caramel
- goes with: dark chocolate, nuts

Sparkling

Silvan Ridge Early Muscat Semi-Sparkling 2004
- flavors: peach, orange, melon, floral
- goes with: fruit
- $16/bottle

---FORTIFIED WINES---

Cockburn's Fine Tawny Port
- flavors: nut, butterscotch
- goes with: creamy desserts, cheesecake, custard, nuts
- $14/bottle

Broadbent Five Year Reserve Madeira
- flavors: nut, caramel, toffee
- goes with: pumpkin, apple, nut
- $20/bottle

Alvear's Cream Montilla (Sherry)
- flavors: caramel, honey, pecan, walnut, maple syrup
- goes with: custard, nut
- $9/bottle

surely, you desire cupcake

Even though it's close by, I don't take enough advantage of all the fooding opportunities in the Lower East Side. Patricia, my fooding partner for the afternoon, said she felt like she's missed out on one and a half years of possible good eats. Our plan? TO MAKE UP FOR THIS GASTRONOMIC MONSTROSITY, ASAP.

...but a little at a time. We don't want to, ye know, have gasto-intestinal explosion. That'd be messy.

Our fooding wasn't completely in the name of eating, as we did our roaming around 4PM, a time when the stomach juices don't run buck-wild. My indecisiveness for the past few weeks led me to decide yesterday that I should see Rogue Wave and Mazarin this Friday because if I didn't, 1) I'd be yet again stuck in my dorm room on a Friday night, mulling over my lack of productivity and 2) I'd regret it. (We're planning to do more fooding on Friday before the concert, if anyone has any suggestions. Ahem.) I successfully convinced/prodded Patricia into joining me so we went to the Mercury Lounge to buy tickets. And what would we do after that? Go back to our rooms and commence the butt-numbing process of staring blankly at the computer while procrastinating on the Internet?

NO! That's for later. Like...[looks at watch]...now. First, we eat.

We started our food-roam with Sugar Sweet Sunshine, one of my favorite bakeries that I surprisingly don't go to very often. The last time I went was almost three months ago. THREE MONTHS! Almost 120 days! 2,880 hours! 172,800 MINUTES! My blood sugar level, oh how it wept (or stayed safely away from "diabetic"...eh, whatever). God knows how I survived, by going to all those other bakeries, the ones that fail to combine the words "sugar", "sweet", and "sunshine" into one beautiful conglomerate of exciting sucrose-filled possibilities. Oh, how I squeeze those possibilities. [squeeze] SQUEEZE! SQUEEZE THEM!

[Don't ask what's going on in my brain. I think the frosting got to me.]

Patricia refrained from giving into the cupcakes, but I got a Bob, or "yellow cake with chocolate almond buttercream". (I've never gotten the same cupcake twice and I think I've only tried three of them so far. ONLY. THREE. We need to do something about that.) With my bit of willpower, I safely tucked it away in my bag to save it for later, aka "the feeding".

Economy Candy chocolate

Down the street is Economy Candy, a store that is literally floor-to-ceiling covered in candy. Chocolate bars, candy bars, M&Ms in bulk, stuff you forgot you used to eat as a kid and probably wouldn't eat as an adult except for the nostalgic factor; it's all here, ready to give you tooth decay. Strangely, despite my penchant for sugar, the only candy I really like is chocolate, and within the chocolate category I only like some of it. However, the picture shelf full of chocolate bars is that category. Second on my list would be the shelf just out of the right of the photo that carries British chocolate bars. After that, most things are kind of "eh", although the first time I went to Economy Candy I stocked up. Ye know...just a tad. (cough) While I didn't think I was going to buy anything at first, I walked out with three chocolate bars. They have suction cups with a death-grip and just attached themselves to my hands. Right.

After walking out of the environment of towering candy shelves, we considered going to Teany down the street. But instead, we found ourselves staring into 'inoteca's warm wooden belly. A belly full of...sammiches.

"I heard this is good. Ever been?"
"I've looked at the menu before, but nope."
"Wanna go?"
"Sure!"

Our conversation didn't go like that, but the basic thing is that it didn't take us long to decide to go inside. Patricia = good fooding partner.

they have a lot of wine

Since it was only about 4:30 PM, the place wasn't bustling, or semi-bustling, which was probably a good thing because the menu is mostly in Italian and our confusion required lengthy help from one of the waiters. He was very nice and patient while explaining to us all the meats (mm, different pig parts!) and sections of the menu. He also had some interesting mannerisms that led me to believe he's had to explain the menu many times before and/or he really liked working there. It was cute; I liked him. He asked if we wanted wine, which made me laugh inside because...well, you know; my unrefined palate just can't take wine. As you can see from the photo, they've got craploads of wine, if that's your thing. There's a wine menu on the back of the food menu, in addition to another separate wine menu. Maybe they have another secret wine list and celler. And a wine-mobile.

speck, fennel & fontina

While Patricia specifically wanted something without cheese, I wanted mine oozing with aged dairy product. As you can see, I got my wish for a "panini with cheese that poke outeth." (Don't ask why I said it that way; some things are mysteries. And many things taste like chicken.) Out of the "speck, fennel, & fontina" description, I was only familiar with fennel. Hell, I've never heard of speck before, which is a smoked Prosciutto. Overall, I'm very unlearned in the art of smoked meats, especially those of swine origin. Besides that I rarely eat Italian food these days and I have an untapped taste for pork products, I've only had a panini a handful of times in my life. There's no real reason for this besides that when presented with the choice of eating a sandwich or something else, I'd pick "something else". If I had to pick my favorte kind of sandwich though, the panini would be at the top. Cold sandwiches are usually disappointing and dry; grilled, pressed sandwiches with cheese are crunchy wheat pockets that break into toasty, soft, oozing visceral joy. And by visceral, I mean they're like warm innards.

...I just killed the mood.

Anyway. It was very good. To add to that lame description, it tasted like...cheese, meat, and some fennel. Actually, I couldn't really taste the fennel, so it was mainly cheese and meat. The bread was perfectly grilled and the amount of filling was just right (although I wouldn't object to more fennel). Since I haven't eaten many paninis in my life I don't have a base to rate this on, but I'd definitely go back for more. I love eating a good meal and feeling the perfect level of satisfaction, where I don't feel like my belly is going to pop open (why do I have to pepper my writing with such repelling thoughts?...eh, sucks for you) nor my digestive tract is gurgling from lack of organic matter to process.

On that note, time for dessert.

a cup of ice cream is better than a cup of coffee

We headed towards Il Laboratorio del Gelato, where about two months ago with Allen I had my first real ice cream revelation. I may be exaggerating but they churn out insanely tasty stuff that will ruin your chances of fully enjoying other, less worthy ice cream (which is most of it). (A sidenote, even though gelato is different than ice cream, is the word "gelato" also the Italian term for "ice cream" without actually having to be different from what we know to be ice cream? I don't know if I've ever had real gelato but Il Laboratorio calls their products ice cream and sorbet, which confused me a bit.)

ice cream case

Their flavors change every now and then with the season. Notable flavors they had on our visit (vanilla and chocolate might be their mainstays) were cinnamon, avocado, pear, hazelnut, black mission fig, and fresh mint. While I was very intrigued by avocado and hazelnut, I went for the fig and mint in a medium cup (you can get three flavors in a medium but I figure that two flavors are enough to mix). Something told me their mint would be awesome and...I love figs. Love. The other flavors will have to wait for another day (which could be this week; you never know).

because you need another view

Oh. My. God. once again, my idea of what certain flavors of ice cream normally taste like have been blasted and beaten to a pulp, and then regenerated with, *gasp*, real ingredients. The mint! It's real! I've never had mint ice cream that tasted like real mint, grassy flavors and all, without the nasal-clearing properties. It's delicious; I basically kept repeating "THIS TASTES LIKE REAL MINT!" over and over like a moron. My only complaint is that I think the flavor would have benefited from a bit of melting, which went really well for the fig. THE FIG, IT IS AMAZING. IT TASTES LIKE...REAL FIG. Shit, you don't say! I've never had fig ice cream before but I think it's safe to say that this is at least the best fig ice cream in Manhattan. REAL FIG! REAL FIG SEEDS! It was like eating concentrated figs in a semi-frozen, syrupy state, comfortably coating the surface of my esophagus. Tasty. Yup.

a lone pink sprinkle

When I got back to my dorm, I tore into my cupcake (after taking photos, at least). The frosting got a bit splodgey but it was still delicious. The Bob is a keeper.

So. I hope you enjoyed my afternoon of fooding. If you're wondering, I had two biscotti for breakfast and skipped lunch since I had an early dinner. Of course, I still ate too much, but...eh. GOOD TIMES! It was a happy day.

[While I usually reply to comments through email, I think it'll be easier for me to do it on the individual entry page from now on. When I get to it. I WILL. Just. Wait.]

Pillows. Water balloons. Silly Putty. Guinea pigs. Myself. These things may seem incongruous when in fact they are all bonded by the characteristic of being squishy.

And that's okay. Sometimes. I'm sure guinea pigs are quite cute because of their squishiness (besides the attractiveness of being a small, furry being). But you know what else is squishy? STAY-PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN.

What's my point? Well. Today the squishiness of my...uh, uterine region alarmed me quite a bit. Nope, nothing's growing in there (and neverrrr wiillll), it's just squishy in an unsettling way. No, I don't expect it to be rock hard (that would be more alarming) but the level of squishiness I have attained (rather high) isn't very favorable. For a 20 year old.

...wow, why am I telling you this? Moving on.

the cookie has it's own fault line

This morning I had to go to the Time Warner Center since my Beverages class was scheduled for a tour of Cafe Gray. I timed my morning so that I could stop by Levain Bakery, which I had never been to before but heard had great cookies, before walking down to meet my class at 10:15 AM. Yes, I'm afraid that this is called "time management" in Robyn's world: "When do I leave my dorm so I can go to this bakery, get a good look around, inhale some freshly baked fumes, and give myself enough time to walk 15 blocks?" Miraculously, the time worked out perfectly and it turned out the subway I got on didn't stop at Columbus Circle anyway; I was destined to meet the cookie.

Why doesn't my basement have a bakery?

scones and cookies are your friends

I got a 6-ounce chocolate chip walnut cookie from the surprisingly small bakery, which also sold scones and...I forget, actually. Despite it's small-ness, (they give you your order from the baking trays behind the counter, not from the display, which makes everything seem very fresh) I failed to keep track of their other offerings. Because I'm braindead. I'm sure they had muffins, but I can't remember much else.

I actually got to eat the cookie after leaving the restaurant (I'll get to that), around 11:30. I took a bite (by elegantly ripping off a chunk) on the subway; first impression is that it was good, much better than average, but didn't exactly blow me away. The cookie is freakin' huge so it's kind of between a scone and a cookie. However, when I ate the cookie later at work and again at night (it took all day to eat), it tasted better. And better. My main thought was "Oh my god, this is my favorite cookie ever, why does it taste so good, what is happening to my tastebuds, what what what?!" And I realized I could never buy it again because 1) it was sin in crispy-soft cookie form and probably had 1000+ calories and 2) it destroyed my appetite. Don't get me wrong--I still ate, but not with as much gusto as I usually would, Monday for example; that was a good day. Mmm. So why did the cookie destroy my appetite? Well, it was a titanic calorie/deliciousness bomb, somewhat disguised as one serving (or five). I don't even know how to describe the cookie to you besides that it's not your average cookie. It's freakin' MOUNTAIN. Of DOUGH. And THINGS IN THE DOUGH THAT MAKE THE DOUGH TASTE REALLY GOOD. And then it's BAKED into a WONDEROUS BUMPY GOLDEN CHUNK. If there were cookie mines underground (oh, could you imagine?), this is what you'd fill your wheelbarrow with while hacking away at the walls. To add more to my completely pointless description, it just had this amazing flavor and smell. I've decided that smell, even if unidentifiable (although by gut instinct you know it's good), is key; if it smells good in that nice, fresh sense, the chances of it tasting good are somewhat high. The weird thing is that one of the smells it gave off was of dried fruit; I kept thinking of cranberries. Maybe they picked up the smell from one of the other pastries.

(Thankfully, there are real food writers out there. Delusional people have told me that I have a future in writing. Oh, are you really sure? Read Rick's review and Clotilde's review. Rick succinctly states,

They are the Mike Tysons of the cookie world, swinging hard first and dealing with the legal implications later. Like the scones, they have a firm but soft composition, but they are beyond rich and meant to be consumed at a sensible pace.

And Clotilde reflects:

Nested in its increasingly see-through paper bag, this bulky half-pound little guy accompanied me for the next two days (and in fact all the way back to Paris), good-naturedly allowing me to tear off the occasional bite or two from its generous flanks. And this was exactly my kind of cookie -- crispy chunky chewy and all manner of adjectives rhyming in "-y".

Two days? Two day?! [curses] "Flanks" is one of the best words I've ever heard used to describe a cookie, but this may be the first cookie it applies to. Anyway, these descriptions are perfect and straight to the point, while mine is obviously a product of lack of...something...nevermind, I can only be so self deprecating in a public blog.)

cookie innards

Bottom line: if you like cookies and scones, this is so worth your $3.50, although I'd recommend sharing it with someone (there's no way I'm eating this again if I'm not sharing it, and don't even ask me about SAVING half of it for later...*pshaw*). If you don't like cookies and scones, you need to go far, far away, before your anti-cookie and scone demeanor taints my blog.

I have more to say, but I'll continue with my pointless meanderings tomorrow. However...

ATTENTION BLOGGERS!

I mentioned ages ago that I'm doing an essay about food blogs. As you can see, I've progressed so much...*hack cough vomit* or not. I'm having trouble with my thesis, not because I don't have anything in mind but because I don't know if they're plausible. If you run a food blog of any type, please give me some feedback on these ideas my teacher helped me come to (and I don't think this is "cheating" since I'm writing about you guys):

• Given the increasing importance of discourse about food (I brought up food media, food channel, magazines, blah blah), blogs arise as an alternative form of media allowing food enthusiasts--not otherwise professionals in the food world-- (well, I know that many are in the food business, but then there are people like me who have psychological problems that lead to unhealthy food obsessions) a voice.
• Food blogs are a deliberate counter culture against the glossy, idyllic food images of Gourmet, Cook's Illustrated, etc. (To me, this is more of a thing that bloggers wouldn't be doing consciously, thus I'd have to dig it out. With. Forks. And knives. And skewers. It's related to the first idea so I can smush these two together if they both seems plasusible...which they do. Surely there are many food bloggers who are obsessed with the Food Network and have favorite cooki=ng magazines, although oddly, I happen to not watch TV or read food magazines. Books, you betcha, but magazines, not so much. And not cookbooks, but as you've noticed, I don't cook "real" food; FAKE, IT IS. Er, anyway, I brought up commercial food media as sometimes being incredibly porn-y and unreal and bloggers as independent media going against the picture-perfect food world. Or something.)

So those are some thoughts. My teacher is under the impression that I know a lot about food blogs, but it's all a lie. Liiiie.

However, the squishiness of my baby-growing parts is not a lie.

Thanks for the replies on my last entry! They've made me rethink my thesis (although...I didn't really have one in the first place) and are a great help. Some of you touched upon ideas that I wrote in my draft, not that I would have wanted any of you to read the draft since it was horrible (because...it had no thesis). I'll talk more about my essay later plus other things of food-related nature (such as every waking moment of my life) but first, the "chocolate" part of this entry.

...Nope, I'm not giving you any, although I wish I could. If you're in NYC, there's a chocolate tasting/buying session going on tomorrow evening that one of my classmates told me about since she's interning for the woman who runs the business:

NEVERMIND, it was cancelled!