The Girl Who Ate Everything

Pretend that it's still 2005. Or maybe you don't have to because it actually is 2005. I am living it up in 2006 right now, in the future, where we have flying cars and ninja squirrels, while some of you are still in...the past, where there are no ninja squirrels. You poor souls. Yeah.

EVERYONE HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

...Man, I am making no sense. You know why? I'm full of carbs. You know why? Because I have awesome friends who can bake. You know why? God is punishing me.

rosemary bread

oatmeal raisin scone thingies

This is all some kind of ploy for me to eat so much that I outgrow all my clothing, thus requiring me to buy new, larger clothing and funnel money into the fashion industry. ...And the baked goods industry. But I don't think that's what Tristan had in mind when he sent me this gift. I sent him and Stephanie (they are actually one person named Tristephanie) an assortment of Pocky/almost-as-tasty-as-Pocky Japanese snacks, so we equally filled each other with refined carbs. Maybe. I guess less thought went into my present because I couldn't make the Pocky from scratch (in which case, it wouldn't be Pocky but ghetto "is this edible?" Pocky...I mean, "Pocky"). The bread is dense and soft, and I've already eaten HALF OF THAT GIANT LOAF. I'd say it's 1.5 bhs. Bh is short for "baby's head". I think I have two scones left. Ohhh boy.

I'm kidding about the outgrowing my pants thing. I seem to have a peak weight that doesn't fluctuate much. I suppose if it did, it's because I grew a new arm or other appendage. Or someone superglued a gerbil to my head. (Those are the only reasonable explanations.)

Would you like to see some more cute/questionable Chinatown bakery creations? No? Well, I can't actually hear you; this is a one-way conversation. My favorite bakery is the Golden Dragon Boat Cafe and Bakery on Bowery between Canal Street and Hester (or somewhere around there) because they have lots of...stuff. And you know how I like stuff! But not all stuff is good. I'll start with the bad and ease into the cuteness:

this cake has issues

I'm not saying that I have any cake decorating skills, but...um. Ummm. What's with the pack of blue dog/bear things lying in wait in front of the cake (next to the fruit and candy gardens) and the two red plastic bears that seem to be (passively) chasing the two blue dog/bear things (which aren't exactly like the other blue things, but close enough that they could be cousins, or the ones on the cake are female since they have red lips?) atop a picture of a bunch of motorcycling robot things? And the overall message is "Happy Birthday!"? Without that message, I'd think the cake was for the special person in your life with a "thing" for motorcycles, robots, teddy bears, and...I don't know what the blue thing is. I don't mean to be judgemental, but that is one weird person. I'd actually want this cake for my birthday though, just so I can say "For my 21st birthday, I had one of the weirdest, least appropriately-themed cakes ever."

doggie cakes

Ahh, these are kind of cute! Too bad the dog's ultimate demise is in your gastrointestinal fluids. I'd eat it!

elmo!

Elmo too can meet the same demise.

Keroppi?

I like the green-on-pink action going on here. I can't even draw Keroppi very well with a pencil yet here is his head recreated by frosting on a miniature cake for 80 cents. 80 cents! What can you buy with 80 cents? 80 pennies!...but that would be stupid. Get cake instead.

Alas, I didn't buy any cute cakes from the bakery. No no no, I have not failed you; I did get two egg custard tarts and ate them despite not being very hungry. Yes, what a sacrifice I made! I mean. No! Dammit. Once again, I ate when I wasn't hungry. That happens a lot.

ginger and honey egg custard tart

black sesame egg custard tart

Eating something other than plain egg tarts is about as adventurous as I get. My life is a 24 hour non-stop non-party! But enough about the lack of festivity in my life and back to the pastry-encrusted custard. As you may know (or not, but you will now), traditional Chinese egg custard tarts come in flaky pastry shells that would otherwise fall apart/get mashed if not kept in individual metal baking tins. At least, that's how I've seen them for my entire life. While the Dragon Boat Bakery's traditional egg custard tarts have the flaky crust, all their flavored tarts have mealier, crunchy cookie-esque crusts.

crust!

There's nothing wrong with this kind of crust, besides that it might not be what you're expecting. If I didn't look at it as a Chinese dessert, I'd probably think it were fine. And it is fine, but the flaky crust tastes better in my opinion. It's part of the whole "why egg custard tarts are so delicious" thing. I don't know why they couldn't use the same crust for the special tarts, but I'm sure there's some kind of reason, or ...or maybe not. Maybe. God hates me.

black sesame egg custard tart innards

But back to the tarts! Because of my flavor preferences, I liked the black sesame more than the ginger and honey. I'm not a huge fan of ginger in egg custard tarts (although ginger ice cream is delicious). I've found that black sesame is always a sure point for deliciousness in desserts, even more so in Pocky. Other flavors they have are dessert almond custard and crispy egg white custard. Are they tasty? I'll just have to find out. The regular tarts are 60 cents each and the flavored ones are 80 cents, so this won't exactly break the bank unless you buy 100 of them. (If you do, I expect you to invite me to your house to help ease the egg custard tart inventory, or else you'll break more than the bank. Like an organ. An important organ. Don't ask me which one; I'm no physician. If I were, I'd probably eat less sugar.) I want to try all the flavors to fulfill my adventuring quota (as you can tell, it's really low), but I think plain egg custards are the best. However, if someone made a chocolate one, I miiiight change my mind.

When the clock struck midnight, I...was fiddling away on my computer, unaware that it had just turned 2006. (Oh wait, it's still 2005! I said so in the beginning of this entry!...nevermind.) At some point I noticed it was past midnight and realized "Ah, I missed that ball dropping thing." However, I did spend most of my last day of 2005 at Amy's house, watching telly and eating foodstuffs, which I think is celebratory enough.

makin' crepes

Amy made crepes that were delicious, although seemed to possess some oily demons that kept spurting...fat. She said there was 1/4th cup of butter in the batter, which made about 14 small-ish crepes. I've never made crepes so I have no idea what the butter-to-rest-of-stuff-in-batter should be like, but it seemed like too much. But still, how often do I get to eat freshly made crepes? Never! I ate four. Certainly you're not surprised. Come on, they're not that big! And I slathered Nutella only on three of them. Half of them! Half of the three! 1.5! Yes. I haven't sinned. Stop looking at me like that.

dinner

Although I wasn't planning on staying past dinner, Amy said I could stay, all the while reminding me that the other option was going back to my dorm room, to be alone.. So terribly alone. In my room. By myself. (Which is what being alone implies.) I'm not one to stay at a place so long (I was there since noon) that my stay qualifies me as a participant in the next meal, but there ye go--I'm just a freeloader. My family doesn't do this nice "prepared dishes" thing (not to this extent, at least, and I didn't eat rice at all when I was at home last week) that it felt homey to get to eat rice and various Chinese foods, in this case duck, chicken, potatoes, broccoli, pork, and bok choy. Although I say I don't like duck, that might just be because I don't eat it much. Or ever. And I wouldn't say it's my favorite meat, but it's good, if prepared well. In this case, it was very tender, juicy, flavorful, other good things you want in meat, etc. The fattiness of duck turns me off sometimes but it's not like anyone's forcing me to eat the skin (and I did eat most of it...which was okay, although not my favorite thing).

When I got back to my dorm, I ate too much of Tristan's bread and scones. Just. Couldn't. Stop. The carbs demanded eating. Or I have voices in my head. It's a bit of both.

...HAPPY 2006! I hope the voices leave soon.

[pokes upper arm]

...Not so bad that it would score the cover of "Atrophy: The Quarterly of Terribly Out of Shape Humans Who Must Be Mocked" but still flabby and lacking in the department of "any sign of muscular development, no matter how miniscule".

Around midnight/1 AM (times blur together when it's that late, probably from the gradual decline in brain cell activity), I ate a persimmon, despite that I had brushed my teeth four hours earlier, a signal to myself (and my stomach, if it listens) that "Robyn is done eating for the day. Yes, yes, she is. Robyn is talking to herself in the third person. Yes, she's lost it." After that persimmon, I went back for another, making sure to pause my Gilmore Girls DVD (the complete fourth season!) as to not miss any of the so-witty-I-want-to-kill-myself bater of Stars Hollow. I waited, knowing that after a while, my stomach adjusts to the presence of food sloshing around, mingling with the acids, laughing, playing beach volleyball, etc. And then, I went back for another, pausing my DVD again because technology lets you do that, although probably not because the person who invented the "pause" function thought the viewer was sprinting to the kitchen to eat persimmons and tax her digestive system at an inopportune time.

But ye know, fruit. It's healthy; you're supposed to eat it. You're probably not supposed to eat it at midnight, but I guess eating a piece of bread or downing a bottle of Vodka would've been worse. I'm sure my mum would say something like that in Chinese medicine, midnight is when your digestive system must rest. Or else you'll get cancer. At 3 AM, the liver takes a nap; disturbing its slumber will result in death by a dragon bite. At 5 AM, the pancreas bangs the ceiling with a broomstick because that's when the upstairs neighbors (eh, I dunno which organ that is) wants to party and...I dunno what I'm talking about. I didn't listen to my mum very closely.

So I ate some fruit. If that were all I had eaten all day, that'd be fine. But. I welcomed 2006 into my calorie-laden world by waking up around noon, eating too much lunch, going back to sleep, bolting out of bed at the horrification that I had just slept for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon, thinking about going out and breathing that thing called "fresh Earth fumes" but realizing if I did, the end result would probably be me bartering cash for baked goods, staying inside, eating dinner, watching Yakitate to enforce the fact that Japan is insane, eating bread, watching Gilmore Girls while making Poofies and getting fuzz all over myself, eating those persimmons at some point, thinking about writing a blog entry, not writing the blog entry but instead doing "research" at Menupages and Chowhound for a lunch date that I will be partaking in in less than 12 hours, meandering on the World Wide Web (of procrastination), and then deciding that indeed, I will fill you in on this wonderous start to the new year in all its wonderous wonderousness.

If you didn't read that whole paragraph, I don't blame you. Summation: the day was rather unproductive, with little to negative physical activity that a sloth would laugh at, but plenty of curry-scented burping during the night after making curry for dinner, which I plopped over not-quite-cooked rice because the bag of rice lies when it says to use this amount of water for this amount of dry rice and cook for this amount of time (shorten the time, increase the water, and BOOM: rice explosion). I've made the rice at least four times before, so it's not really the bag's fault. ...

There's a comically tiny wedge of bread left from that loaf I pictured yesterday and one scone left who's fate shall be sealed sometime tomorrow. Or today rather, since it's past midnight.

I'm gonna go outside today and smell the Earth's fumes, which in NYC tends to resemble automobiles, garbage, and urine.

Today I woke up to the mellifluous sound of mucus attempting to climb out of my lungs, propelled out of my breathing tube by repeated hacking and coughing (it's the 3rd class route...not that I know what 1st class is). Great for the mucus, but bad for my ability to snooze and lie down comfortably amidst convulsions. So for all the hacking and guzzling half a bottle of water resulting in the constant need to urinate, did it work? Perhaps it would've, if I had actually spat the mucus out. I guess the mucus is still inside of me, being all...mucusy and lubricating my innards.

I know you need mucus, but unlike ice cream or bunnies, it's not fun to have in excess. And while you could get to the point where an excess of ice cream or bunnies becomes unfavorable, mucus fails to possess any appealing tasty or cute characteristics. In gym class, mucus is the awkward, last guy to be chosen on the dodgeball team, sitting alone on the floor until his name is called out in disgust, not because ice cream or bunnies are better at dodgeball than he is, but because he's slimy and gross looking and nobody wants to be within a 10 foot range of him without being encapsulated in a sanitized plastic bubble.

Or something. So, on to the food!

Tenzan

Yesterday I met up with Liz for a game of ice hockey. I mean, fooding on the Upper West Side. I found Tenzan online and it sounded promising. It also helped that it was open, unlike many Japanese restaurants that decide you only need dinner and thus open...for dinner.

unagi don

However, you do only need one meal at Tenzan. Their lunch portions are friggen huge! An entire colony of eel gave its life to be draped over a mountain of rice in a sunburst fashion for my lunch special that cost $10.50. I really, really wanted to finish it, and...well, I did, for the most part. I couldn't finish all the rice, but I ate all the eel. If you've never had Japanese eel before, you must try it before deciding it's gross, which is what people tend to do when I mention how much I love eel. Its taste and texture is unlike that of any other fish, in that it is almost always slathered in a special sweet sauce and the meat is very soft, almost pate-like. Would I ever steer you wrong? Would I? And if you happen to not like eel...well, I can't help you there.

katsu lunch box

Liz ordered the pork katsu lunch box, which came with salad, miso soup, shumai, a california roll, and spring rolls. I wonder, how much food would a "lunch special" include in Japan? Again, this is a crapload of food. Of course, it's very nicely presented, in a fan-shaped plate with separate compartments and paper doilies under the katsu and spring rolls to soak up oil along with two separate sauce dishes for the katsu and the shumai (or maybe it was for the spring rolls, but hey, it's sauce; you can put it on anything), but ...whoa? Whoa.

pork katsu closeup

Tenzan's katsu was one of the best I've ever had. The panko crust was very light, not greasy, and didn't come off the meat easily. I also tried the spring roll and sushi (ahem, there were leftovers) and those were very good. I have no complaints about the food, besides that it was a lot. Then again, I'm a small person and shouldn't be eating that much anyway. (Except I am..)

broiled eggplant

seaweed salad

If we had known how large the entrees would be, we probably would've skipped appetizers. Oh well. I wanted to try the broiled eggplant since I had such good eggplant at Goodies a few weeks ago. Of course, it wasn't the same here, but it was still really good and kind of turned into eggplant pudding while scooping it with my spoon. Liz's seaweed salad seed good also, although I was a little perplexed by the cherry on top. I wonder if there's seaweed ice cream...actually, I don't want to know. I already know there's eel ice cream and other flavors featuring creatures of the sea, and that's disturbing enough.

Overall, it's definitely a good place to go, at least if you like unagi or katsu. Or that midday eating ritual called "lunch". The service is quick and friendly and while the first floor is small, there's a second floor that is...probably less so.

Before visiting Tenzan, we actually did a little cupcake hunting at Crumbs, the cupcake bakery that specializes in making behemonths of all different flavors and toppings, sometimes with fillings. These are intense cupcakes that while cute, are kind of excessive. It's not really a cute cupcake as much as a cupcake on steroids, with too much makeup. (Tell me that makes sense, somehow.)

too many cupcakes

That doesn't mean they don't taste good. I've had the Devil Dog cupcake before (my school's cafeteria carries them) and it was...alright. Enjoyable, but too large and not necessarily worth eating again. Even though they have a gazillion kinds of cupcakes and a selection of cakes and cookies I knew nothing about, I decided to give the bakery another shot by getting a "mini" cupcake.

mini raspberry cupcake

Considering how large the normal ones are, the "mini" cupcakes are about the same size as regular cupcakes at most bakeries, although maybe more expensive. I bought a lemon one (other choices are raspberry, vanilla, and chocolate) and it was alright. Nothing to write home about, but not bad either after popping it in the microwave. If you want to try these cupcakes, go for it.

sea of cupcakes

Since Alice's Tea Cup was within eye-shot (like ear-shot, but with the sense of sight, unless you can hear cupcakes) of Tenzan, we went there after our gut-busting meal. Why? WHY? We're motivated, dammit. Being full doesn't stop one from continual feasting; that is the sign of a true insane person. Like me! And how can you resist a sea of cupcakes? That's unpossible! (I'm channeling Ralph Wiggum here; I know it's "inpossibly".)

chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting

Liz and I eat got a vanilla and chocolate cupcake for $2.50 each. These guys are pretty hefty, somewhere in between Crumbs' normal and mini cupcakes size-wise, although far from resembling the Baskin Robbins approach to selection of cupcake flavors. Then again, how can you go wrong with chocolate or vanilla? If you don't like either flavor, you're not human. (Sorry to burst your bubble if you're a robot. Just give up already.)

chocolate cupcake blop

After I got back to my dorm, I microwaved the slightly squished cupcake for 10 seconds to inject some life into it (electromagnetic style). It didn't warm up, but the frosting became a chocolate sauce sac, as a thin skin kept in the melted goo underneath. Thankfully, the goo didn't run out all over the cupcake, despite its light body. (Did I just describe frosting as having body? Is that allowable?) It made for an especially tasty cupcake eating experience, probably not the way Alice intended it, but whatevs. She handed its soul over to me when I relenquished my $2.50. I OWN THAT CUPCAKE, YE HEAR? YE HEEEAAAR? I OWE ALICE NOTHING. I AM SHOUTING. YEAH.

...I'll end this entry now that I've apparently gone insane. It'll put me behind, as I've eaten rather gluttonously today as well and GOD KNOWS you want to hear about that and my moaning belly. To make a long story short, my first meal was at 5 PM for no particular reason besides that I wasn't hungry after an 18 hour fast, but I ate because I figured, "Why not, 'dinner' has become a rather popular ritual in today's world." The end result was that i ate two meals in very close proximity, not really giving my stomach enough time to figure out what I was stuffing into it. A bad bad bad habit, that is. Don't do it. Stay in school and don't do drugs.

• Chocolate Obsession: Chocolate Motherlode Cake: Guess what Chocolate Obsession is about? GUESS! Okay, good job. I'm glad they linked to my site or else I may not have heard about this GREAT GREAT BLOG ABOUT CHOCOLATE, BECAUSE YOU CAN'T GET MUCH GREATER THAN CHOCOLATE. The post I linked to is about an absolutely monstrous six-layer chocolate cake that can either be the thing of dreams, or the thing of nightmares. As much as I love chocolate, I cannot imagine daring to ever try it since its presence would probably add a few pounds to my pinky finger. The funny thing is that Wei actually told me an involved story about the time he ate the cake (at least I think it was the same one). HE ATE THE CAKE. Hell, someone actually ORDERED the cake. I couldn't really picture the cake in my head because it sounded so ridiculously unreal (along with the name of the restaurant, Claim Jumper), but there it is, and it's still ridiculously unreal. It's a good story; you should hear it.
• The Fresh Loaf: Guess what this blog is about? Alas, it's another favorite topic of mine! Sweet. If you've never baked bread (like me, a most terribly unlearned baker, but quite good at eating the results), you may want to look at the baking primer.
• IHOP Brings Back "All You Can Eat" Pancakes: Oh Jesus. Until February 19th, you can eat ALL THE FREAKIN' PANCAKES YOU WANT, for the low low price of $4.99! Why would you want to do this? Drunken stupor? Bad dare? Pancakes are one of those things you can't eat a crapload of; I know, I've tried. I think pancakes form a huge anvil-like mass in your stomach, preventing you from thinking of much else besides, "Why did I eat so much pancake?" You'll regret it.
• Yongfook.com: bread, bread all around: I love how two of the funniest blogs about food (in my opinion) aren't really food blogs. Yong Fook is one of em. If you don't think he's funny, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? Anyway, I'm chatting with Allen right now about bread (because "baked goods" is a hot topic when you chat with me; the excitement never ends!...oh god, no wonder I'm so unpopular) and a little googling brought me to Yong Fook. His rant about Japanese bread is hilarious, although I'd give the bread at least a 4/5. For one thing, I don't think Japanese bread is as dense as he makes it seem. Actually, to me it's very light and fluffy, like a cloud...made of yeasty dough. I LOVE Japanese bread because it's so thick. I prefer to buy my bread uncut so I can slice to my heart's content, fulfilling my desire for eating thick slices and weilding large knives to cut the thick slices. When I bought a loaf of bread from Blue Ribbon Bakery, they did slice it for me but in thick, Japanese-esque slices. Oooh, delicious. However, that's where the resemblance to Japanese bread ended, as methinks it didn't have much sugar or egg (if any) because it went stale about 3 minutes after I ate a fresh slice. This is an example of a crazy slice of Japanese bread:

  

  honey butter toast

  But that's obviously not meant for a sammich. Ain't it a beaut? I'd love some honey butter brick-like toast. That is the toast of my dreams. I have weird dreams. ...And this is getting too long.

• Cakehead: Google has the best corporate cafeteria: And the most insane drink dispensive ice sculpture. You have to see it.
• Raw Food, brought to you by Nexium: Because the best source of health information is from a drug company. And you should get all your information about meat from Zip4Tweens.
• Gothamist: Girl gets raped in East Side bar: I'm linking to a specific comment, the one that's most informative and not moronic like some of the others. I've never been to a bar and I don't like to drink (hoorah?) but if you do...uh. Well, obviously, I hope this doesn't happen to you or anyone else.
• Restaurant Week 2006: It's coming up in a few weeks. I've never done any of these before but this year, I want to try at LEAST one. Preferably, more than one. If you have suggestions, pass em on.

I don't watch much TV. It's distracting. It's loud. It plays commercials that try to sell me crap I don't want. More importantly, I can't feasibly watch TV because I'm on my computer 24 hours a day (I've got an IV hookup). However, I was just roaming around the Internet because, hell, what else am I going to do with my life, and came upon a torrent for the first season of Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour. Hm. [strokes chin]

After leaving my computer on for a few days, channeling its insomniac hyper-downloading mode, I got the first season. Woo! So I watched a couple of episodes. Woo! And I became quite nauseous from the hand-held camera movements to the point that I don't think I can watch any more episodes without feeling my stomach do the "You upset me and now I shall vomit" dance. Less woo!

...Yeah, I really can't watch TV shows, especially those involving food. After watching the episode in Vietnam, I really really really want Vietnamese food, in ways I've never wanted it befoooore. It's an easy task because I never crave Vietnamese food. The two times I've really gone out for it in NYC was 1) with friends else who wanted it more than I did and 2) with a friend who was as indifferent as I was about what we ate for dinner and chose Vietnamese because that was the closest restaurant.

But I'd really like some Vietnamese food now. Or later today. Or tomorrow. Anyone else up for it? Thursday afternoon? Thursday night? Chinatown? Teapot cactus? Poodle mittens? Bueller? (I'm losing my mind; don't ask.)

It's around 3:30 AM so maybe I'll change my mind soon. Wait, I should be sleeping. Jesus. The drawback of blogging is that I get to puke my brains at the click of a mouse. I want Vietnamese food and you don't care that I want Vietnamese food but I'm going to tell you that I want Vietnamese food because I can press the "publish" button. You're doomed. I'm doomed. We're one big happy family. Or...rather, a kind of small family. A three-person family. We're a family in China with one child.

Uh. Oh, I have links. I'm too lazy to do the full-out food porn + overview of my food filled day, but I guess I'll have to do that later. Here's one boring thing:

egg sammich

I made an egg and snow pea sammich two nights in a row. Tasty, filling, and faster to cook than...um...[insert a witty comparison]. Hey, I tried. Actually, I didn't, which is the problem. It's faster than rolling a ball of yarn.

Okay, random link time.

• Weeber World: I Heart Guts!: So it's not really food related, but it's organ related. You have organs and they digest your food. Hell, you can eat organs too. Preferably not your own species, but hey, whatever floats your boat. These drawings are insanely cute and if they made an intestine t-shirt, I'd pick it up in a heartbeat. Or...intestine beat. Do intestines beat? Not by themselves. ...Well. They must gush around and stuff. Think about that the next time you eat something. Be one with your intestines. ...Padawan. [via Preshrunk
• Pagliei's Dumpling Jewelry: Aw, that's cute. I don't like jewelry, but if I did, I'd request food-shaped jewelry. I could show it to my friends, thus ensuring them that I am truly insane. [via notcot]
• Coolhunting: Evan's Favorite Food Stuff: Yup, I'm giving you a link to a page with more links.
• Table of Condiments that Periodically Go Bad: Ha ha ha. Someone has too much time on their hands. If butter goes bad in 1.5 months, I need to use my butter...a month ago.
• Office Glico: GODDAMN JAPAN, MAKING ALL THIS COOL STUFF! I can't read Japanese but two people mentioned this to me as a self-serve convenience snack thinger that looks like the storage drawer system I have in my closet at home. Yeah, that was a really bad description. I guess the drawer system makes it fit in better in an office environment. However, it does stand out in one aspect. Do you see the coin deposit? IT IS SHAPED LIKE A FROG. FROG. OKAY...am I the only person who thinks this is hilarious? My god. I guess it keeps the Japanese office workers happy. I'd be happy. [via jetalone]

[presses palm onto abdomen]

Oh god. Oh...noo. What's in here? Food in a state of pseudo digestion, riding on waves of bile? Get out of there, GET OUT, RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

Actually, I don't feel that bad. However, I kept on eating chocolate and even a slice of bread despite being negative hungry (I guess "full" is the correct term). Why? What's up with that? Have I destroyed any hopes of eating in moderation? Destroyed...with excessive pastries? Oops.

Fusion Crepes

On Tuesday (I forgot what day it was; my brain is failing) I went to Fusion Crepes in Chinatown amidst some dreary rain and grayness. It's not that old, but for the life of me I can't remember what used to be in its spot on Bowery right below Grand Street. (That's more brain failure for ya.) It's kind of odd to find a creperie in Chinatown because it's kind of...not something you'd expect to find in Chinatown. Noodles? Yes. Bakeries? Sure. Old guys hacking up phlegm? Of course. However, it's for that reason I wanted to try it (uniqueness, not phlegm). Also, I like sweet things. Maybe it's more of the second reason than the first, but...whatever.

adding condensed milk

After looking at the menu, it was obvious that I needed to get the Nuts-4-Nuts: 4 kinds nuts and peanut cream (roasted almonds + peanuts + pinenuts + crushed walnut + whip cream + condensed milk). Four kinds of fatty substances, atop a creamy fatty substance, covered in thick and airy sweet, dairy substances? How can you go wrong with that? IMPOSSIBLE. ...Unless you're allergic to nuts or are lactose intolerant, in which case this would kill you.

The owner (I think) poured a batter blop onto the griddle, pushed the batter around to coat every square inch of the surface, and after letting the crepe cook through, splodged on some peanut cream, sprinkled on the crushed nuts, and squeezed on the condensed milk in a zip-zag manner. He folded up three sides of the crepe and placed it in a plastic container where a young woman (who works there...as opposed to a totally random young woman) added whipped cream and even more condensed milk.

crepe innards

Unfortunately, I didn't get to eat the crepe for another 30 minutes or so, factoring in the time it took for me to walk back to my dorm and the social interaction that took place in the front lobby where one of my good friends works. The warmth had dissipated. The whipped cream seemed to had vanished. However, it gave off a nice eggy scent and was thankfully still delicious, albeit a bit soggy from sitting in dairy-filled juices for half an hour. On a nicer day when the sky wasn't peeing on my head, I would've eaten it right there; they'll pack the crepe in a different holder if you want to eat it while walking around. I'll try that next time.

Oh, so the crepe; how'd it taste? I'm no expert nor have I ever eaten an "authentic" crepe, but I thought it was really good! I was afraid that there may not be enough nuttiness but crepes are thin and don't require a mountain of crushed nuts to retain an optimal crepe-to-filling ratio. I thought the peanut cream was great, as it's not something you find often in desserts. Of course, I like nuts, so I don't know how it would taste bad. I'm sure it would've tasted much better if I had eaten it fresh, so taking that into account, it's definitely worth trying. The sweet crepes cost $3.50 and the savory ones, $5, which I think are fairly inexpensive prices for crepes. Another bonus is that their menu is probably the most interesting one you'll find as something that goes beyond standard fruits and nutella combinations:

SWEET:

• Vicky pinky: Strawberry + banana (cream, caramel, sugar icing)
• Mango Jango: Mango + Kiwi (butterscotch, cream, sugar icing)
• Ebony harmony: Banana + chocolate (nutella chocolate, cream, butterscotch, sugar icing)
• Peach blanco: Peach + banana (butterscotch, cream, sugar icing)
• Nutty Nana: Banana + peanut butter (honey, peanut cream)
• Crunchy Munchy: Marshmallow + rice krispies (peanut cream, cream, whip cream, caramel)
• Apple Zapple: slice apple w/cinnamon + honey (whip cream + caramel)
• Nuts-4-Nuts: 4 kinds nuts + peanut cream (roasted almonds + peanuts + pinenuts + crushed walnut + whip cream + condensed milk)

SAVORY:

• Nippon desuku: Tofu + mushroom (bonito flakes, konomi sauce, seaweed)
• Salmon D-lite: Smoked salmon + mushroom (spiced tomatoes, veg cream)
• Itsy bitsy fishy: Sardine + tomato (parsley, spiced tomatoes, cucumber)
• Cheesey Sleazy: Spam + cheese (cheese, chives, onion, mayo sauce)
• Mediterranean Vegetarian: Mediterranean mix (chopped spinach, feta cheese, raisins, chestnut)
• Hurry Curry: Thick curry sauce + potato (no meat, yellow curry, beans, veg)
• Eggs n Clams: Omelet style eggs w/clams (scallions, onions, paprika)

You know you want eggs and clam! Try this place out and tell me what you think.

Wednesday was a solitary food hunt as I went around Manhattan gathering sweets for a food trade. Like a squirrel gathering nuts...except not at all. I planned it all out in my head: Levain Bakery for cookies, Whole Foods for chocolate, and Chelsea Market for whatever they happened to have. ...Okay, it wasn't much of a plan, but I don't usually take the subway three times in one day due to my reluctance to leave the downtown area and my uber-cheapness that sometimes drives me to haul ass over long distances to avoid taking the subway (I've taken a cab once in my life, after a friend insisted I take it lest I wanted to risk being kidnapped in Tribeca at 2 AM).

scone innards

I got my tradee a walnut chocolate chip cookie and a chocolate chocolate chip cookie and a walnut chocoalte chip cookie to split with two of my friends. ...Andasconeformyself. The scone is easily one of the best scones I've ever had, the other one being from Financier. It wasn't too soft, nor dry, nor crumbly, nor tough, nor sweet, nor salty. I'd describe it more but I can't give it justice with my plankton-grade vocabulary. The scone perfectly balanced all the properties of a scone you could want (which you wouldn't know about until you ate it), for the price for $2.50. Thankfully, the one from Financier is almost the same (in my opinion) so I don't have to go to Levain for a scone fix. It's food epiphanies such as Levain's scone that make me think, "Jesus, I can never eat a scone from another place. If I do, I will be disappointed and want to kick myself repeatedly and wash out my mouth with chlorine for wasting calories on such unworthy foods." The same goes for Il Laboratorio del Gelato's ice cream. (I know ice cream and gelato aren't one in the same, but I can't tell if they serve ice cream or gelato since they refer to everything as ice cream despite their name. And who cares; it's all good.)

Chelsea Market

After getting a Toffee and Almonds Chocolate bar from Whole Foods, I made my way to Chelsea Market, an avenue-long hall of bakeries, meats, fish, produce, and other things most people like to eat. I've never been there before and thought I had never passed it, but I instantly recognized it as "the weird building thatI couldn't recognize as having a distinct purpose." I suppose I'm a moron because I could've sworn that they didn't have a sign. Actually, I still don't see a sign--I did walk around it a bit--but obviously there must be one somewhere (er, there's one inside). Maybe that thing above the door is the sign, but if it is, it's not very obvious. Overall, it doesn't look like a food market at all from the outside and it's not something I'd randomly enter unless I happened to walk right by it, which is unlikely to happen as 9th Avenue rarely comes into my strolling route. And if you're wondering if I'm blind, well...n-no, other people are too, as a woman asked me where Chelsea Market was as we were standing outside just a few feet away from it. Seriously.

Fat Witch

I've heard about Fat Witch's brownies so I picked one up for the food trade. And...um, for myself. They don't allow photos inside, hence this outside view, but just picture a bunch of brownies and you'll get the idea. I tried a sample and it was pretty good, maybe too sweet if you don't have a high sugar tolerance. I bought two for $2.30 each, and the cashier gave me two baby brownies with my purchase. Woo, freebies!

breakfast witch

Sadly, I wasn't very impressed by the breakfast witch, which is 2/3rds oatmeal-ish blondie atop 1/3rd brownie. It wasn't bad, but there was no wow-factor, no "OMG, I want more, and when I say 'more' I mean I want a truckload of this stuff right by my bed to wake up to eveerrry day and I want to eat it by the bucket-load." It didn't taste much oatmeal and the brownie part wasn't very chocolate-y. The sample I had was more flavorful so I don't know what was up with this one. As someone who tends to eat everything, I amazingly didn't eat the whole thing. It's not just that I like to consume baked goods in their entirety (oh, how I love to do that), but I like to get my money's worth. But sometimes...it's not worth it. This was a "not worth it moment". [sniff] To me, the problem was that the flavor didn't deliver, as the texture was okay. Maybe I was expecting too much. I rarely eat brownies, but I've enjoyed Polka Dot Cake Studio's "better than Brad Pitt" brownie.

bag o sugar

Due to my Vietnamese food craving I expressed in my last entry less than 24 hours ago, I went to Cong Ly on Hester Street just west of Christie with Mary for dinner yesterday. She's pointing to the random 100 lb bag of sugar that was next to our table, kindly keeping us company I suppose. I'd think of something funny to say about the bag of sugar, but I think it speaks for itself. If not, think of something. You can mull it over for a while. (Okay, my question is: What's with the astronaut?) The restaurant is medium sized and lacks in decorations (but provides some...um, Cantonese music for ambience, methinks?), but it's OH SO TASTY AND CHEAP, which is all that matters, figuring the waiters aren't scary.

rice noodles with some hot sauce

rice noodles in chicken curry

I ordered the rice noodles in beef broth with grilled pork and Mary ordered rice noodles with chicken curry. Since there was a wide selection of sauces, I figured "Hell, I'll try em all!", recalling the days in middle school when at the fountain soda dispenser, I'd fill my cup with a little of each choice (orange AND grape Fanta, yeah!), resulting in a blue substance, maybe a chemical reaction from the sodas as I couldn't figure out how the colors could combine to form blue. Anyway, I didn't actually combine all the sauces, but I should have for kicks. Mounds of used napkins formed next to my bowl and Mary's as Mary had to constantly clean her curry-covered fingers from eating the chicken and the chili sauce unleashed torrents of mucus from my nasal passages.

<

aftermath

Damn, those were some good noods. Eating the huge bowl of noodles for $5 made me realize that cooking my food is useless, as it tastes...not so good. If i don't mind walking 15-20 minutes, I can eat this stuff all the time. Alllll the tiiiiime.

grilled pork

God knows I want to eat sweet grill pork all the time. I grew up thinking I didn't like pork, but I think I've been eating the wrong kind of pork...you know, the kind whose smell makes me nauseous (usually the breakfast variety). This pork is the right kind. Agahrghrha [drooling noises].

Galette de Rois innards

This entry is officially taking me 300% more time than it should, so to sum things up, after Vietnamese-ing, Mary and I went to Financier where she got tea and biscotti and I procured a personal Galette de Rois, a French (okay, you figured that one out) almond paste-filled puff pastry. Apparently, it's Galette de Rois season, as they had a crapload of full-sized ones on display cutely wearing paper crowns. The first time I had this was in a French class way back when (I took French from 6th-10th grade, although I have almost nothing to show for it besides "Je suis le fromage!", which isn't exactly something I picked up in class, unless my teacher was really weird) and since it's seasonal, I figured...hell, I'll get that rois majiggy. It was pretty good, although not something I'd get again. My tastes demand less puff and more paste.

If you read this whole thing, then CONGRATUATIONS, you have too much time, although I have even more too much time. My parting link to you is Natalie Dee's shop, where she's currently selling a good/evil hot dog shirt. You have to go there to see what I mean...and even then, it's kind of weird. She's also selling a pea t-shirt. Yup.

shabu shabu-ing?

Yesterday I went to Quickly Shabu Shabu with Amy and Diana. ...Or rather, I forced them to join me since I felt like trying shabu shabu, aka "cooking your own stuff in a hot pot because it's fun, heehee!" and it wasn't something I'd do on my own because then it'd be "cooking your own stuff in a hot pot because you're alone, which is kind of sad."

inside

Quickly Shabu Shabu wins the award for "least eye-raping interior in Chinatown" I've seen so far. It's clean, bright, and "hip", with glowing, sun-like orbs dangling above each table and round mirrors on the wall that don't serve much purpose besides...reflecting light. I didn't write it down, but I think there are three two-person tables and three four-person tables. It's a small place, but the tables are huge to accomodate the numerous bowls of boiling liquid and tiered plates full of raw ingredients.

hot pot control

Eat person gets their own hot pot control thinger. I didn't really know how to use it, but at some point my soup boiled so I must've done something right. ...Actually, I lied; Diana helped me.

condiments

Right behind our table was the condiment station (which includes a basket of eggs; hell, I didn't need meat, I could've just eaten free eggs!). I had no idea what to use so I kind of mixed...a bunch of things. My recommendation: don't mix a bunch of things unless you know what you're doing. Also, add sauces/oils to the dry ingredients. Seems obvious, but some of us [points to self] are slow and are keeping the human race behind.

meeat

vegetables

I ordered the meal set that included two kinds of meat (I chose beef and pork), vegetables, and a drink. Amy chose to order a la carte and since Diana wasn't hungry, I figured we could share my food. However, to share food we had to order five more items. Ohh...hm. Okay, that doesn't really count as sharing food anymore, but we semi-randomly chose five more items, ultimately bringing our table spread to "way more than we can/should eat". It's not surprising that they'd have a minimum, but I would've rather they just charged a fee (not a large one, of course) than make us order more food.

yolk

Over the course of the night, I ate...all the meat, a lot of the vegetables (mainly spinach and cabbage, although there was a nice chunk of taro thrown in there), some rice noodles, some yam noodles, some rice, and of course, FREE EGGS. Throwing in the soup and our drinks, we were all stuffed by the end.

the damage

My part of the meal cost $25, which isn't really that bad. I probably made a mess, flinging stuff into the pot, and I did eat a lot, but there's no way the experience was really worth $25. Looking at the bill, wouldn't it have made most sense if we just all got a set meal? (shrugs) Anyway, it was cool to try once, but when I realized I paid for ingredients (fresh, nicely prepared ones) that I could cook myself because that's a novel experience that I don't already do enough in my own kitchen (of course, there are perks to doing it in a restaurant where someone will clean up after you, among other things), I thought it wasn't really "worth it", kind of like the Fat Witch brownie I ate the other day that disappointed me.

...Wow, I sound really unenthusiastic in this entry so far. SORRY! Okay! How can I make this more exciting? [injects glucose into bloodstream] Uhh....uhhh. Um.

I'd so rather spend $25 at Sugar Sweet Sunshine than on a shabu shabu meal. Of course, I know that's absolutely insane and would never do it...[thinks]...yes, neeever...do...it...glucose...but anyway, despite that we were all pretty full, we hauled our full stomachs to Sugar Sweet Sunshine. If it were any closer, I'd probably waddle there every day.

yum yum bar?

Since I'm on a horribly planned mission (a plan to become diseased?) to try everything in Sugar Sweet Sunshine, I got a "yum yum bar" (which may or may not be the real name, although I don't think the name is "doom fudge waddle bar", as appropriate as that may be), which consists of a base of shortbread cookie, covered with chocolate ganache/fudgey substance, covered with a layer of raspberry jelly, covered (yes, I need a thesaurus) with some crumbly stuff (...yeah, I really need one). Result: DELICIOUSNESS! Duh. This wasn't a "whoa I need another one now" moment since I don't actually like raspberry and chocolate (I prefer any nut and chocolate combination to fruit and chocolate and for some reason find raspberry and chocolate most distasteful...which can get annoying since I may be one of 10 people in the world who feel this way). However, my mission requires that I try everything, unless I think it will absolutely repulse me...but in that case it wouldn't be in Sugar Sweet Sunshine. So. I will try everything; just give me time.

Deb's Delectables

I won this box of Deb's Delectables chocolates from Deb for A Menu For Hope. Look at that layer of chocolates and multuply it by three, since that's how many are actually in the box. My assumption is that I didn't have a lot of competition or else I wouldn't have won the box. WHY WOULD MORE PEOPLE NOT GO FOR THIS? Obviously, it was one of the best prizes ("chocolate coma in a box") and I daresay gives me some Jersey pride (...I said wuh?) for Deb being based in NJ. I've seriously eaten about 15 of these already, so obviously they're good. Crisp smooth chocolate, a little sweeter than others I've had, and a wide variety of fillings (caramel, marzipan, coconut, almond, the good kind of peanut butter cream [if that distinction helps you], orange cream, and some others I can't remember) add up to "THIS IS WHY I ATE 15 PIECES ALREADY". Buy some and try em for yourself!

dim sum!

Dim sum is a lovely thing. Sit on your bum and wait for ladies to push their food-laden carts to your table so you can load up on mini-steamers and plates full of aaaanything your heart desires, as long as your heart desires mainly meaty and greasy Chinese appetizer-esque dishes. ...Actually, your heart probably doesn't want that. But whatever, it doesn't have taste buds. Just atherosclerosis! (Actually, I guess those are in the arteries, but let's not get technical.)

I went to 88 Palace in the East Broadway Mall (guess where that is) with Allen and Wei for a late lunch yesterday. The place was somewhat empty at 2:30 PM (because...it was 2:30 PM) but that meant most of the dishes were consolidated into one cart from which we seemingly took 20 dishes, but was probably more like eight. (...Yeah, that sentence wasn't worded correctly.)

funky dumplings

I don't know what these are exactly, but I ate them and they were tasty! Don't ask how often I eat things without knowing what they are. I mean, they're obviously dumplings. And they have green stuff. And they're shiny. Obviously these "Shiny Green Dumplings" are safe to eat. Right? Right.

ginormous meat balls

Here are some "Ginormous Meat Balls". That's not the official name, but I think it works in this case. Actually, they're more like "Ginormous Meat Balls That Taste Kind Of Like Beef But Have A Fish Ball-esque Texture". Pretty good.

Chinese sausage wrapped in steamed bread

As someone with a huge distaste for pork in the form of American sausage or bacon, I strangely like a lot of Asian-style pork, such as deathly Chinese sausages bursting with fat and sweetness. With each bite, you feel your heart die a little. And yet...you keep eating. I guess it's alright; one day your heart will die anyway. Keep that in mind the next time you scarf down a glistening sausage. :)

turnip cakes

Behold, the super awesome turnip cake. It may not look like much, but there is tastiness to be found! Turnip cakes are thankfully not just made of turnip, but also have rice and...stuff! Magic! Rice and magic. (Don't quote me on that.) And turnip. And little meat bits. And "brown sauce". Words and pictures can't do justice to turnip cakes; you must ingest them yourself. If you have never ingested them, you must go forth and ingest. Go! (points outside) And get me some chocolate while you're out.

...Methinks I'm really bad at describing Chinese food. So. How about a moment of "Oh boy, I'm really Chinese" zen? While Allen and I were waiting for Wei, we heard a guy at a nearby table hack some phlegm.

"It's kind of nice that people can comfortably do that in this environment," said Allen. (Those definitely weren't his exact words, but I know he didn't say, "Squirrel bandit stole my teapot.")

"Ah, yes, the sounds of my childhood," I reflected. Not so enthusiastically. But hey, these are the things memories are made of: the build up of mucosal substances in old Chinese men's respiratory systems.

Our final bill came out to about $10 per person for nine dishes. It's definitely one of the best deals you'll find, figuring you can bring at least two other people with you since most dishes come in threes, although some come in fours and others, in piles. The only dish I didn't like was the pork bun, which just tasted odd in my opinion. Dumplings, rice noodles, glutinous rice, vegetables, and pork are all good to go.

IMPORTANT EDIT: Allen reminded me of a rather important thing: it costs $1 to dry your hands in their bathroom. ...Well, if you want to use a paper towel and not your own clothing/hair/something else. I had washed my hands and an old woman started speaking to me in Chinese. As usual, I explained my stupidity/inability to speak Chinese and she asked if I wanted a towel. Well, hot damn, I sure love a good dry towel to un-moisten my hands with. So she hands me a towel...and conspicuously asks for a tip (by pointing to a metal container and saying, "Tips go in there"). I didn't have change so I gave her a five and she gave me four singles. Aaaawwwkward.

So! If you want to pay an old woman a dollar, be sure to get a paper towel. It's the thrill of a lifetime. I suppose the meal was cheap enough to incur a $1 fee for drying one's hands, but even this was a part of Chinese culture something-or-other I was highly unaware of. Every bathroom I've been in up until now (in America) where you could give a tip was set up like so because the bathroom was nice. Clean, sleek, softly lit sinks, scented, etc. This was just a regular bathroom you'd expect to find in Chinatown (not awful but rather small, not exactly up-to-date with the upkeep, uncomfortably bathed in fluorescent lights, worse than the ones in my school, probably not scented in an optimal way). So. So....soooo...that's just a warning. When you gotta pee, you gotta pee.

pistachio ice cream

We waddled down to Il Laboratorio del Gelato and peered into the dark storefront. Could it be closed? No, they just wanted to utilize the natural sunlight!...maybe. Stepping inside, we noticed that the freezer was empty. [cue Twilight Zone theme] Wha...what was going on? Empty? EMPTY! They had ice cream churning (or whatever it does) in the back, so not all was lost, but some magical-ness is lost when you can't see the person scooping your ice cream into a container.

All was forgotten when we tasted the pistachio ice cream. Mmm. Creamy. Creamier than everrrr befoooore. Out of my three Il Laboratorio visits, this definitely won the creamiest award. As usual, the flavor was better than any other ice cream I've had and there were plenty of pistachio chunks throughout. Mmmmmm.

We went off again for a Japanese food-stuffs tour at Sunrise Mart and JAS Mart. You think you've seen it all, but then you come across things like...

slow life

Slow Life Stew. (Meatless!)

FIBER

Diet Weider, fiberized. Also comes in collagen!

bitter melon drink

...This guy!

real?

"Real" spaghetti sauce taste! (Click to zoom in.) We think maybe the quotes can prevent legal action from people who don't think they're getting the real spaghetti sauce taste. "We used quotes! The realness was just a suggestion. You lose."

Pocari Sweat

Pocari Sweat brings back memories from those days in Taiwan where I'd need to replace my bodily fluids every 5 minutes because it would take about that long to get dehydrated under the brutal steamy sun. Actually, I only remember drinking it twice out of a mix of desperation and fascination over something with the world "sweat" in its name. It actually tastes kind of like sweat because it's salty, but...it's kind of good. Kind of. Then again, maybe I was dehydrated at the time and couldn't think straight.

LIFE PARTNER

Alas, another cloudy and mystery-flavored Japanese drink. While I don't usually spring for tasting different liquids (I did enough of that in my beverages class; guess what, I got an A-!), the cute bottle and name was enough to make me buy this. I drank the whole thing and I'm still not sure what it tastes like. It's sweet enough to not taste over-watered but not so much that it tastes like a sweet drink. Besides that, I don't know how to describe it. It tastes Japanese; that's seriously the best I can come up with.

pumpkin cheese pie tart thing

And then I ate a slice of pumpkin cheese pie tart thing (yes, I really should keep track of names from now on) and forced Allen and Wei to help me with the burden of eating my 45 piece box of chocolates. Pie? Great! Chocolate? Awesome! Waistline? Bad.

Right now, I feel like a freshly pumped tire. That's fine if you're a tire. However, I am not. [pokes self] Yup, I'm still just skin, bone, minimal muscle mass, saturated fats, failure and disappointment. (The last two aren't physical! Heehee!)

I feel more full right now than I did yesterday, which is kind of amazing. Why? Welllll, sit back, grab some unhealthy easy-to-munch-on foodstuffs, and I'll tell you the story of "Walking Around A Few Miles And Eating Along The Way With My Friend Jason Because Why Else Would We Walk For Miles? Hint: Not For Exercise."

Jason, my freshman bio lab parter with a penchant for fooding and other cool things, met me at my dorm at noon. I could see the mad sparkle in his eyes and hear the excitement in his voice at the prospect of roaming around for hours in the thankfully warm-ish weather while searching for foodstuffs. Jason's a great friend because I can drag him to shops of sugary delights and he won't think I'm insane! Kinda. ...Well. We're all insane. Jason and I have a few loose screws.

coconut macaron

pistachio macaron

First sugary stop was my neighborhood joint (where all the hip, cool kids hang out!...um, no) Financier. I wasn't very hungry so I didn't know what to get, but since Jason got a large pistachio macaron with pistachio filling ($1.50), I decided to also get a large, coconut macaron with lemon filling. Better than their mini-me counterparts in taste and value, I'd say they were...preeettty good. What does that mean? I wouldn't dream about them, but I'd eat them again. The problem with the miniature ones in my opinion is that they're too dry. Larger ones have more "innards" that can stay moist. Ye hear? Moist innards. It's all the rage. The coconut one wasn't very coconut-y and while the lemon filling was good, I would've prefered a less strong flavor. Pistachio was the clear winner. If you've never had a macaraon before, try it out. If you have had one before...try it anyway.

After walking through the high-rise (and "people in business suits") dominated, but picturesque Financial District, we walked through the less picturesque (but more food-filled) Chinatown until we reached Il Laboratorio del Gelato. As a testament to my love for this place, it was my second visit within a three-day period. I rarely visit the same place in such a narrow time frame, but when the situation calls for ice cream, is there any other choice? NOOOO. Everything else is just cat pee! Or. Not. Bad comparison. I wouldn't even know what cat pee tastes like.

pomegranate sorbet and cinnamon ice cream

black sesame and strawberry ice cream

...Anyway, as usual everything was "the best" I've ever had (which might not be saying much), strong flavors melding with creamy sweetness in lactose harmony (lactarmony!). I didn't have to think twice about getting black sesame, which reminded me a helluva lot of black sesame Pocky (I really wasn't kidding when I said black sesame Pocky was one of the best things I've ever tasted) but with actual sesame bits in it, and strawberry was a "on a whim" choice. It was good, not exactly like eating freshly picked summer strawberries, but it is January after all. Jason's cinnamon ice cream may have been the only cinnamon ice cream I've ever tasted, but I doubt anything will compare (there goes Il Lab, destroying all subsequent fooding experiences). A problem with his pomegranate sorbet/cinnamon ice cream combination was that the tartness and strength of the pomegranate flavor totally smothered the cinnamon. The cinnamon gave muffled, milky screams, while the pomegranate shoved a garden hoe in its face. Repeatedly. (Don't ask me where it got the garden hoe; it's sneaky.) Pomegranates are violent. So...don't combine those flavors.

Fried pork dumplings

Since Fried Dumpling was just a few steps away (kinda), I decided to show Jason one of my favorite cheap eats that I'd visit more often if it were closer and I were less lazy. If you're not a glutton, you may be satisfied plunking (...does anyone really "plunk"?) down $1 for five golden, fried pork dumplings of questionable quality, but undeniable tastiness due to being fried and costing as much as...[fill in the blank with something that costs $1 but is suckier than 5 dumplings].

sesame pancake

While Jason ate his dumpling, I munched on a sesame pancake, easily the best $0.50 slab of leavened wheat I've ever had. I've had sesame pancakes before, but never one that was fresh or as good as Fried Dumpling's. The "sesame" part of the name comes from the sesame sprinkled on top. The actual bread is pretty plain besides throwing chopped up chives bits at you every now and then. The beauty of the bread is in its soft texture and layered...layers. (I'm not patting myself on the back for that description.) File this under "Favorite Foods in NYC". It may also go under, "Food I'll Be Forced To Live On If I Become Really Poor And Am Not Driven To Suicide."

Jason wanted to check out Rice to Riches but we were still pretty stuffed from...ye know, everything we had already eaten. So we roamed. Ladeeda. Stepped into Ceci Cela to stare at some pastries before I remembered that Eileen's Cheesecake was nearby.

Eileen's Cheesecake

Alas, it was too nearby. We had practically stepped out of one bakery and entered another. (They're around the corner from each other, kinda. It just felt like an onslaught of tasty foods was FREAKIN' EVERYWHERE.) Jason cried, "Oh no, that was too close!" (we were hoping to walk longer than 30 seconds) but we were already inside the place. We shared a mini banana cheesecake ($2.50) which fortunately didn't do much stomach damage. You can get an idea of how large it is from the banana slices on top. I don't think the cheesecake was actually banana flavored, but...uh, it has banana slices on it! So. Yup. It was good, but far from "ZOMG, I'M GONNA SELL MY SOUL FOR THIS CHEESECAKE" good. I had only gone to Eileen's once and got a miniature mousse cake, of all things (because obviously, they specialize in cheesecake), but that was really good. I don't dislike cheesecake, but I'm definitely not a cheesecake lover and I really only eat it out of curiosity if I hear it's "good" than out of any craving. On the other hand, I'll eat most cupcakes and bread if they look...edible.

extra tasty?

Around another corner was Sur La Table, purveyor of baking supplies, multicolored sugar, categoried cookie cutters, dishware, cookbooks, a gazillion spatulas, and "extra tasty evoo". I've never seen Rachel Ray's olive oil before, so I thought it was worth photographing. IT'S EXTRA TASTY! SHE CANNOT LIE ABOUT THE EVOO! EVOOOOOOOOO!!!

rice pudding sizes

Jason wanted to try out Rice to Riches, so we made that our last eating destination. Rice to Riches was actually the first really "cooked" food I had while on my raw food diet more than a year ago. It made me break out of my shell (self portrait alert...SFW)! KABOOM! ...Okay, not really. I don't know what made rice pudding sound so appealing at the time, considering that it's not something I ever ate or desired on a regular basis up until that point. But a whole shop devoted to rice pudding? That's just insane! And you know me; I like insane food. And people. Some of them. The ones who don't foam at the mouth or stab random people.

rice pudding counter

Rice to Riches is like an ice cream shop, but with a gazillion flavors of pudding instead of ice cream. Why isn't there a plain, non-rice pudding shop like this? Seriously! I'd love to have one; it would be called Poobs' Pudding Shop. Of course, pudding with rice is great and I think this is the best rice pudding you'll ever find. I didn't know how good it was the first time since I didn't have much to compare it to, but since then after eating average rice pudding, I'm sure this is one of the best.

ship it anywhere

I suppose other people feel the same way or else it wouldn't make sense to have this sleek, technologically advanced (it's self cleaning!) pudding kiosk. Man, people are freakin' desperate. This was only my second visit to Rice to Riches since actually living in NYC and the other time I had gone was mainly because one of my friends wanted to go. I never get a craving for rice pudding, but I guess it's nice to know that if I ever find myself in such a vulnerable state, I can make a pact with the devil and get some puddin' after handing over my soul. And $5.

mascarpone with cherries

Jason and I shared a "solo" bowl of mascarpone and cherry pudding. Of course, it was great. Can't say much else about it. Creamy? Flavorful? It's pudalicious? You'll have to eat it yourself to find out. I highly recommend bringing someone to share with because unless you reallllly like rice pudding, the solo may be too much for one person. Of course, Jason and I had consumed 1000+ calories prior to eating the pudding, so we weren't especially hungry.

We roamed around some more to Japantown (ie, Sunrise Mart, JAS Mart, and Cafe Zaiya) before our final food-buying destination of Beard Papa's so Jason could buy cream puffs for his family. Aw. He also stocked up at Cafe Zaiya. My brother would never do such a thing...well, he stocks up on stuffed animal penguins but that's a whole other session with my psychologist. (Kidding about the psychologist! Not about the penguins. He's single, ladeez!)

Yesterday was fun, but obviously marked a turning point in massive eating (although you can keep in mind that we shared a lot of things and I walked about 5 miles in the process)...in that I should slow down, or stop. Today I thought, "I'll be good and try not to stuff my intestines like sausages," and I kind of succeeded, except I feel very full despite hopefully eating less than I did yesterday. (Yesterday I also ate some chocolate and a small dinner of rice noodles, snow peas, and an egg.) Or did I?

Today I didn't eat any "real" food until 5:30 PM after getting out of work and even at that point, I wasn't very hungry. Admittedly, I was thinking about food all throughout work but I couldn't think of what to buy because I wasn't hungry enough for anything in particular. Figuring visual cues would spark some desire, I walked home to pick up food (a slice of pizza bianca, which I surprisingly haven't finished yet, a bag of 50 pork and chive bun-like dumplings from Sun Dou Dumpling Shop which I haven't been to in ages, and a 2 1/2 pound head of Chinese cabbage for steaming dumplings) and then, like a reflex, automatically steamed some dumplings when I walked into my dorm room. I AM A ROBOT, AND I STEAM DUMPLINGS. (I'm not a very useful robot. Actually, I came from the "reject" factory and was bought at 90% off with the added bonus of a free juicer and recipe booklet. Or maybe that was for something else.)

So. I ate too many dumplings. 12. I could eat more than 12 dumplings 10 years ago! When did 12 dumplings become too many? Or maybe my stomach shrank.

But but BUT, the weirdest thing is that I didn't have much desire to eat sweet things. I walked past Chinatowns cheap-ass bakeries and didn't want a single thing. I don't know about you, but that scares me. It's not that I craved salty food (I actually found the pizza bianca too salty, for the first time ever), but it makes more sense to not eat sweet baked goods as a mean of sustenance if you don't crave them.

Not in the mood for sugar. (scratches head) My god, it's a nightmare.

Check out the last comment on this entry.

Ahhh, good words of advice, Rob at "fakeaddress". Good job doing important research and clicking on a link through eBay. ...How the heck did that happen? It's unlikely that "the cashews are full of doom" would be the final title of an important alert about the dangers of cashews, although if anyone's wondering, from my unscientific research as a plebeian nut eater, cashews are poisonous straight from the plant (the skin, that is) and require careful processing, usually in the form of heat. For that reason, many raw foodists are concerned about their raw cashews actually being uncooked or merely unroasted, which gave rise to purveyors of truly raw cashews where the skin is removed by...uh, careful knife skills? I've tried both raw and ...er, "raw" cashews, and I couldn't tell much of a difference, but my taste buds aren't too good. Anyway, don't quote me on anything; everything I just said may have been false, except for that last sentence.

Oops, that was a digression. Anyway, I have to admit I feel lucky that I don't get more hate comments since this is an open forum and there are lots of great people out there who want to voice their sub-positive opinions, which for someone like me is extremely destructive. Thankfully, I know I'm not actually that fat, so I can't take the "fatty" comment to heart. If I were fatter, I'd actually feel really bad right now, which is why I really should get too fat.

I just thought I'd point that out for your enjoyment. So. Enjoy!

...Actually, I have more thoughts about this related to the acceptance of demeaning other people for certain habits. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs, but can I tell other people that they suck for doing so in excessive, regretful quantities? I could, but I don't think it's necessary unless they're really screwed up, in which case I couldn't do anything to help them.

I think it was "Super Size Me" where a guy was interviewed saying that while it's acceptable to berate people for something unhealthy like smoking, it's insensitive to point out to fat people that they should eat less. Although eating unhealthily in (lack of) nutrition and quantity is likely to lead to being overweight, it doesn't always happen. And overweight people may just be at their weight way no matter what they do. I guess those are the exceptions. Not everyone who smokes is going to get lung cancer or die at an early age either.

...That wasn't a very good comparison since smoking and eating aren't exactly the same but I'm just blabbing out crap. That's what you get for having a blog.

The only people who called me fat growing up were my family members and really close friends (jokingly, I think). I didn't mind the friends as much as the family members. :P But hey, they're family so I can't exactly disown them. Many people seemed so proud of me when I managed to lose weight. I didn't get any backlash for gaining it back, besides having a bunch of clothing I can't fit into anymore.

But...it's not weight I should be so concerned about much as health (obviously they're related, but losing weight doesn't necessarily make one healthy, although it may be the main factor; it all depends!). Let's not forget that for a smidgen of time, I actually did want to be a nutritionist (until I decided I didn't like conventional nutrition, although to be unconvention you have to take the conventional route first...doh). I'm far from the healthiest person alive, but I hope to not destroy myself too much. How ya doin, pancreas? [waits for a reply] ...Uh oh.

Here are 10 Habits That Mess Up A Woman's Diet. Woman's. Men, what kind of problems do you have with dieting? I can identify with most of these habits except for the Happy Hour one and the last one (not that I've never eaten emotionally, but I don't honestly think that's a big problem; my life is rather dull). Can you imagine what would happen if I drank liquids with calories in em? Totally screwed! Water is tasty!

A commenter on that blog post wrote that "Once your body gets used to not eating refined sugar and processed food, it adjusts quite well and cravings really do go away." I do see that happening...I mean, we'd all benefit from eating smaller quantities of refined food. However, when I ate raw food, I craved sugar. A lot. I never craved sugar that much before. Perhaps I was doing something wrong, which is an interesting thing about diets that promote health (as opposed to those for just...weight loss, although not necessarily); when they don't work, many times the dieter takes the blame instead of seeing the diet as faulty. However, refined sugar and processed food are usually bad for you, so god knows what happened to me.

Once again, blogging has consumed my life. I'm going to watch Gilmore Girls now.

It's late, so this may come out even less sensical than normal. Or more nonsensical. ...See, it has already begun. Run now, my child.

dumplings

If anyone's wondering why I haven't had much to say lately, it's because for the past three days I've just eaten dinner (and dessert, *ahem*, as opposed to including breakfast and lunch) of no particular interestingness and those bun-like dumplings pictured above in particular were a two-day spread. I walked back to my dorm on Tuesday afternoon after work, picking up a bag of 50 "pork and chive steam juicy buns" from Sun Dou Dumpling Shop on the way. Since "steam" is in the name, I figured steaming would be the best way to cook them. I've rarely steamed dumplings in my life, but if the label says "steam", then by baby Jesus' holy camel (sorry, I'm not religious...just ignore me), I'm gonna steam.

So, steaming? Heating up water and converting it into gassy molecules whizzing by you at insaaane speeds? Kinda sucked. It wasn't necessarily on the level of a vacuum, but definitely a small straw. And it's not that steaming doesn't work, but rather that my ability to steam is sub-par; I didn't cook the dumplings long enough. On the second night, I pan fried/steamed my dumplings, a method which resulted in fully-cooked, crispy bottomed juicy buns. Or semi-juicy, if the juice hadn't escaped through lesions in the dumpling's skin. "My god, this dumpling is injured! Medic! Keep the fluids inside...NO WE LOST HIM, OH BABY JESUS' HOLY CAMEL, NO!"

...Um, I'm going to move to another topic.

Oh, the title of his entry. Well. Ye know. Ye knoooow. Sometimes you do stupid stuff. If you're me, you do a lot of stupid stuff. You don't necessarily repeat the stupid stuff, but...this sentence has no meaning.

Okay, I'm leaving in the nonsensical paragraph as a testament to this late night blogging.

Wednesday afternoon after work, I went to the Union Square Greenmarket and bought an olive and onion foccacia...loaf? What is it? A slab? A rectangle? A tablet of wheaty delights? Well, I bought this hunk of processed, leavened, and baked wheat-based dough and munched on it while walking down from Union Square. All's fiiiine and dandy. It's not the best bread in the world, after having sat out all day, and it seemed kinda pooty that they charge $4 for "end of the day bread that no one really wants", but I'm sure not going to make foccacia myself and it was filling.

I've probably mentioned before that buying loaves of bread ends up...not so good. Like when that kid thought he was Superman so he jumped out of a tree to test his flying skills? Not so good. I have a tendency to eat entire loaves of bread, whether or now I'm actually hungry. Over the past few days of waiting many hours in between meal times due to lack of hunger and time, I actually became less hungry, but still retained my bread craving-ness...ness...I have no idea what word I'm trying to form but I think you get the idea. (On a scary note, I lost my craving for cakes and sweet breads for a while. It's like I wasn't myself. I was a mere mortal, a normal person with a normal sugar cravings.) I munched on the focaccia slab over the night, but at some point I thought:

Oh, this bread is too tasty, but I just can't shove it down my throat anymore. No more! No more bread! ...Wait, it's so tasty. No, resist! Resist the wheat! Even though it's so chewy and tasty! NOOOO OO OO O O, etc!

Yeah, I'm insane. So I took the remaining bread in the paper bag, folded the top over, put that in the other plastic bag it came in, and put the focaccia-remnant-bundle in the trash. Ah. Yeah. All's well. It's either in the trash or in me, where it would ultimately come out as poo anyway.

Yesterday I didn't get to eat my first meal until 7 PM. I wasn't especially hungry (which is why I didn't eat earlier), but I was craving bread. Alas, I didn't have any.

...or did I?

Do you see where this is going? Um. The bread! It's in a paper bag! Which is wrapped in a plastic bag! And it's on top of the trash can, since it was the last thing I threw out! Uh huh! It's not like in Seinfeld where George at that eclair out of the trash can, is it? Was that even his trash can? I don't know.

ANYWAY. *clears throat* Yes, I took plenty of food safety related courses and anyone knows that eating something you put in the trash probably isn't a good idea, but IT WAS WRAPPED, AND IT WAS ON TOP, AND...STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT, I KNOW YOU ARE!

I don't know why I thought you should know that I ate bread that was in/on the trash can, but there ye go. I'm a freak. And if you're wondering, NO, I DO NOT REGULARLY OR EVEN IRREGULARLY DIVE INTO MY TRASH CAN LOOKING FOR EDIBLES. It was just yesterday. For bread. Cos. Yeah. Wanted. Carby. Bread. Stuff. Sentences. Don'twannaform.

So it's funny, yes. But maybe it's just the beginning. Next I'll be throwing out food willy nilly and then deciding, "NO WAIT, I WAS NOT FINISHED WITH THAT" (I'm well aware of the large, white rectangular cooling receptacle in my kitchen, yes) or going to random trash cans/dumpsters to pilfer...bread. Bread! Pilfer! I like the world pilfer. Hm. So. INSANITY! Pilfer. ...God, that's a weird word.

If you've had a similar experience of whatever the hell I just wrote about, I'd love to hear about it. We all would! This is an open forum of discussion about really...unimportant matters.

[tumbleweed rolls by]

Oh dear.

...And I don't usually get tagged, so I think I should fulfill my "having been tagged" duties and do as the tag tells me to do before it gets all mad and becomes a raging alcoholic because that's what happens when tags get mad. Or something.

SO, from Nerissa comes the task of "writing ten random and interesting facts about yourself and they need not be food-related". Hm. Um. This is going to be boring, but here are some things I may or may not have mentioned in this blog but are part of my life history...or present. Or. Future...wait, scratch the "future" bit. I guess it makes most sense to not talk about food because you always hear me talk about it and, jeez, aren't you tired of it yet?

1. Both of my parents are Chinese (by way of Taiwan) but neither my brother or I picked up any Mandarin. I still know almost nothing, except "da pi gu" (just laugh if you know what it means; my parents said it to me a lot). To make matters worse, we all lived in Taiwan from 1996-1998. My brother and I went to TAS where I took French and he took Spanish. My French is really bad/nonexistent. Although I've taken French, Russian, and Japanese (and of course, Mandarin, which never stuck), I'm totally unilingual. Another word for "unilingual" is "moron".
2. When I was in elementary school, I wanted to become an animator despite no visible evidence of drawing talent or the ability to draw a straight line. It seemed cool at the time. At least I didn't say "gynecologist"; someone in my 5th grade class wrote that and it was put in our yearbooks, and I think the "someone" was a guy.
3. I've been playing instruments since I was 4. However, that doesn't mean I'm good at it, so for any parents who think that starting their kids off playing instruments while still in the process of cutting the umbilical cord will result in genius-ness, it might (seemed to work for some of my cousins). Or you'll end up with me. The progression (age in parenthesis): piano (4), clarinet (9), guitar (13), drums (13), saxaphone (13, for about two seconds of my life; it's a lot like a clarinet), trumpet (13, again for about two seconds of my life; not at all like a clarinet), and lately, lap harp and theremin, which I'm not succeeding in at all. I lack harp-playing friends so I have no idea how to play it (but really, you just pluck the strings and it sounds purdy) and the theremin? I doubt I will ever be able to play it even 5% of the way towards competency, but I'll try. 5% of the way.
4. Two summers ago, I self-published a volume of Adventures in Poofyville comics. I think I ordered 150 of them, meaning I still have a crapload left. After two years. I can't say I'm trying very hard to sell them; it's easier to give them away. Surprisingly, people I don't know have bought the book, although I still recall one girl at Otakon looking over my Poofy wares and declaring me weird while she was dressed up in a costume of some sort. Uh huh. Right. (By the way, anime conventions are insane. Don't. Go.)
5. This is becoming way too long. But you're still reading! My god! Besides food, a major obsession in my life is music. While I did start off listening to pop (COME ON, WE ALL LIKED THE SPICE GIRLS), my first mega teen obsession was with The Wallflowers. Oh god. You didn't want to be around me during my obsession; all I'd talk about was Jakob Dylan. After that, it was Rufus Wainwright, Beck and Radiohead. And a million other things. I still have a Beck fansite, although I don't update it as much as I used to. Sad. I've never met Beck but I was given the opportunity once and...just couldn't do it. Psychologically. I have issues.
6. My main music obsession now is Magnet. I can't explain why I like his music so much, but it's just one of those gut feelings. I trust the feeling in my gut; it's squishy and warm. Although I try not to be too judgemental, I think I feel physically pained when people don't like Magnet. Best not to tell me these things. :) As a measurement of my fandom, I have a fansite and because of that site, I also manage the official site. I could use many words besides "weird" to describe the position, but...it's weird. I love doing it, but it's still weird.
7. The only club I was in all through high school was the math team. Yes. It was easy, as all I had to do was participate in math contests. We got free cookies, which I happily ate until I went on the raw food diet, at which point the only draw of the math club was taking math tests, not the chance to eat free cookies. Scary.
8. I was in marching band during 9th grade and I hated it with all my guts. Or some of my guts. I think marching band is fairly similar no matter where you are; it's a cult and you're either with it or you're not. I wasn't just not with the marching band, but I also quit regular band, an activity I had taken part in from 4th through 10th grade. God, I hated high school.
9. I never really wanted to go to college, but I knew I had no other choice. Of course, I felt guilty for not wanting to go to college when there are tons of people out there who would love to go but are unable to or have a really hard time coming up with the $5 million it takes to go to school today, but I can't pretend I never had that feeling. I basically did the minimum to get into a good college, if you can imagine such a thing (not a crapload of extracurriculars, not a lot of challenging classes, only took the SATs once, took the ACT instead of taking three SAT IIs, basically a bunch of things you probably couldn't get away with today and still get into a "good" school). If you're really curious, I got rejected from NYU, Barnard, and Tufts (duh on that one), and got into Rutgers, Skidmore, and Vassar (yup, I just applied to 6 schools, while one of my friends did 15 or so). If I didn't say it already in this blog, I went to Vassar for my freshman year and transferred to NYU. College is fine and my grades are good, but I'm not intellectual and just like every other place I've been in for most of my life, I don't "fit" in.
10. Are you actually reading this or skimming? Well. Last point. [scratches head] I'm really introverted and I blog too much.

Time to write my real food entry now.

I’d start off with something witty to grab your attention (or pretend I have Tourette’s) but I think this list is sufficient:

• Two Little Red Hens
• Fauchon
• Richart
• Minamoto Kitchoan
• Ruby et Violette
• Alice’s Tea Cup
• Levain Bakery
• Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven
• Magnolia Bakery
• Bruno Bakery
• Mary’s off Jane
• Chocolate Bar
• Myers of Keswick
• JAS Mart

“What is this list?”, you wonder? Welllllll, I’m glad you asked. It’s just about everywhere I went on Friday with Melody while attempting to gather goodies for a food trade with Sean. It was also a good way for me to show Melody around (at hyper-speed) and go to places I haven’t been before (and…many that I have). I don’t think I’ve ever covered so much ground or this many locations in one day around NYC in my life. It may have been a touristy thing to do, but I took solace in the fact that no one else was following the same route as our’s. We cavorted. We subwayed profusely. We ate less profusely. We turned money into sugar-based goods. And all in oddly warm January weather that made me stink of sweat after I finally returned to my dorm. Sweet.

I planned the route out fairly well. We’d start at Two Little Red Hens on the Upper East Side, go south to Midtown, go west, go north to the Upper West Side, go down to Soho, walk up to Chelsea, go east to the East Village, and for the first time ever feel like I got my money’s worth out of a 1-day unlimited Metro Card.

Two Little Red Hens

bakery case

I’ve wanted to check out TLRH forever (well, a year or so) ever since I heard of…it. It’s a bakery; what else do I need to know? I love homey American bakeries that carry frosting-slathered cakes (nicely slathered, not drunkenly slathered), cupcakes, cookies, and other fairly simple baked goods. Prices are a little higher here than in other bakeries I’ve been to, but no bakery is really off-limits pocketbook-wise.

banana cupcake

I didn’t feel like shelling out $4 for a banana cupcake as my first meal of the day, but it sure looked good. Most of their cakes were beautifully decorated, but not excessively so. Their baked goods are fun and simple, and some area little more sophisticated without being stuffy. That make sense? Good.

tarts n stuff

I just wanted to point out that their chocolate silk tart, while resembles a mouth-watering mound of what I’m sure is some massively delicious chocolate mousse-esque substance, also looks like a perfectly shaped heap of poo, Japanese style. You can thank Allen for that observation. I’m unofficially calling it the Poo Tart. And I’d really love to try this Poo Tart, if three other people would share it with me. The Poo Tart. I’ll never get to say Poo Tart this excessively again in my life so I’m taking advantage of the situation.

Love in the Clouds

Caramel Pecan bar

Melody and I shared as Love in the Clouds sandwich cookie and a Caramel Pecan bar. Both were good, although my preference leaned towards the caramel pecan bar. I like my caramel and I like my pecan. The cookie was great, like an Oreo, but with crispier, faintly spiced cookies that one can eat without the risk of supporting Philip Morris. (Philip Morris owns Kraft, which owns Nabisco, which makes Oreos…yadda yadda.) While I wouldn’t say these were the best things I’ve ever eaten in my life, zomg, !#!@$!, etc, they were very good. It’s a pointless description but you either know what caramel and pecans taste like or you don’t, and the cookie…tastes like a cookie.

I laid an egg

The bakery has a hen theme; can you tell? The chair is quite cute. I got up and it looked like I laid an egg. HAR HAR! If you were really crazy/drugged, you might think you actually laid an egg.

Fauchon

So! Next stop. We subwayed down to French food shop/bakery Fauchon (the above photo was taken last summer but it’s still French and very pink) where I bought a box of caramels for Sean. It was about $16. Damn, they better be some good caramels. Everything was very expensive to the point that I can’t imagine the food tastes as good as it costs, but I don’t know for sure since I’ve never actually tried anything besides their tea. Since I don’t really like tea, I can’t judge it. The store itself is very nice, a bit swanky, sophisticated, with lots of pink. It’s fun to check out but I can’t imagine ever going there on a semi-regular basis.

Richart window display

Richart was the first chocolate shop I ever had “gourmet” chocolates from, thus introducting me to the world of pricey, artisan chocolates. Some girls buy designer shoes and handbags; naturally, I buy chocolate. I’m not a chocolate connoiseur, but I think Richart is really good. It’s…um. Uh. It doesn’t suck. Not too sweet, not too bitter, unique, delicate flavors, smooth, crisp chocolate; really, what else can I say? One major difference between Richart’s chocolates and others is that they make a lot of tiny, cube-shaped pieces that are OH SO ADORABLE. It’s a superficial trait but I think it makes it easy to recognize their chocolates.

Like most artisan chocolates, Richart is pricey, but they sell a variety of affordable $6.50 bags with mendiants (chocolate with nuts and dried fruit) or filled chocolates. If I had to recommend just one thing, I’d say go for caramel filled chocolates, unless you don’t like caramel, in which case…god, why? Get away from me! Since I’ve had the caramel filled chocolates before, I bought a pack of hazelnut ganache-filled chocolates and they were unlike anything else I’ve had. I mean, I’ve eaten a fair share of chocolates with hazelnut ganache (fair share = buckets), but the chocolate was…soft and melty with a subtley flavored filling. Yes, another pointless description; you’ll just have to try em for yourself. I also bought a 16-piece herbal box for my mum, which at $22.50 isn’t too bad (although the pieces are really small). They don’t sell those trays individually on the website (which doesn’t sell the $6.50 bags either), so I’d recommend browsing the store (7 E 55th Street).

Jonamagashi

We took a look around the wagashi shop Minamoto Kitchoan, which I’ve tried a bunch of things at before because there’s one in NJ at Mitsuwa. To me it’s like the Japanese equivalent of an artisan French chocolatier, with fresh, beautiful, sophisticated desserts utilizing Japanese flavors and ingredients (sweet potato, persimmon, peach, chestnut, red bean, and so much more!). Everything is a little expensive but surely made with care and the best ingredients, straight from…somewhere in Japan. I recommend everything; how’s that for vague? Mochi is good, cake is good, candied chestnuts are good, jello-stuff is good…

kabocha manju

This “sweet bean paste mixed with pumpkin jam wrapped in a Japanese crepe in the shape of a pumpkin” wasn’t something I’d necessarily get again, but it was tasty and new to me. The flavor isn’t very sweet, but it’s fresh and…ye know, pumpkin-y. The pumpkin is just plain, not spiced like in American desserts. $2 may be a lot for this tiny treat, but it’s shaped like a pumpkin, kawaii!

Ruby et Violette

I’ve wanted to try Ruby et Violette for a while, but I kept forgetting about it because it’s somewhat out of the way on 50th Street between 9th and 10th Avenue. I guess I never wandered enough to actually pass the easily overlooked shop. Thankfully, NYC Nosh reminded me of its presence, thus making it a “must visit” on my “itinerary of bakery and chocolatier doom”. While Melody and I were walking along the street, it didn’t seem to fit in; we wondered, “WHERE IS THIS PLACE?” (Erm…closer to 10th Ave.) But then we saw the red awning and the neon script “cookies” sign that I’ve decided I must someday get for my own room and we knew the cookies were dangerously close.

burning calories?

Amusingly, they had a blurb from Oprah’s magazine in the window inapproriately positioned next to the magazine headline “BURNING CALORIES”. It’s like a message of things not to come, unless you’ve got crazy good metabolism. If you have this type of metabolism, I hate you. ...Just kiddin! [secretly scowls…well, not so secretly, since I just typed it]

cookies

The sweet-smelling shop is narrow with an unconventional display case compared to most cookies. It’s a bit dark with red-hued lighting and small stacks of cookies in small trays and plates made of different materials and colors. Here you’ll find unique flavors such as couch potato, kitchen sink, marshmallow, rose, and champagne & strawberry, but they also have a chocolate chip cookie simpled called “perfect”. Cookies are regular sized and $1.25 each. The woman in front (I didn’t see anyone else there but I figure…there were other people in the back kitchen) was very polite and helpful and I ended up buying 5 cookies: one for myself, one for a friend, and three for Sean.

couch potato

I was drawn to the “couch potato” since it contains potato sticks & pretzel pieces, a combination you don’t see every day. Or ever, in my case. It wasn’t “blow me away and give me a heart attack” good, but it was a very good cookie. I need to figure out a better rating system, but simply, there was nothing bad about this cookie; it was soft, had good flavor, and just the right amount of sweetness. The potato sticks provided an interesting texture in light of the lack of potato-y flavor (eh, it’s all starch). I wish the cookies were bigger because as one of those giant “baby head”-sized cookies, the combination of potato and pretzel sticks could be amazingly tasty in that “this is going to kill me” sense. Hell, they could add chocolate chips and nuts snd marshmallows and…okay, I’ll stop. (Nono, add caramel! And then dip the whole thing in chocolate! And then get two of them, put some kind of dairy-based cream in the center, and voila, cookie sammich!)

I need to stop writing this entry because 1) it’s past 5 AM and 2) a few civilizations have fallen and rebuilt themselves in the time it took me to write what you’ve read so far. Part 2 will come later.

[This is a continuation of Part 1. Of course, you need a first part before you have the second part. An exception is dessert, which you would normally eat after the first part (ie, something that isn’t dessert), but is perfectly okay to eat as the first and second part, and possibly a third part. Really! I don’t make these things up. However, you may want to consult your physician before heeding my words.]

mint cream cheese cupcakes

We headed to Alice’s Tea Cup to oogle at baked goods. Ah, the simple cupcake. So cute. So appealing. Why? WHYYYYY? Like a fuzzy baby bunny, I cannot turn away. Thank god these cupcakes were behind glass because otherwise I’d…um, breathe on them and render them unfit for human consumption. Except for myself. Which means I’d have to eat it. Have to. It’s my duty as an American. Or maybe that’s “joining the war on terrorism.”

almond honey scones

Oh lordy, these scones. These mountainous scones. Thank god Melody was there to share the scone with me or else I would’ve had to eat the whole thing (remember, it’s my DUTY, or something) and go into a scone coma (I daresay, a scoma). I’ve never been in a scoma and I’d rather not know what it entails.

Levain Bakery

Conveniently, Levain Bakery was nearby. Of course, I had to buy some of their fudgey “cookies” for food trading and to share with Melody. I have to say “cookies” because I don’t really know what these are. They’re called cookies and I suppose they resemble cookies more than they resemble cake, biscuits, or muffins, but what kind of cookie looks like this?

cookie innards

THE BEST COOKIE EVER. Obviously I jabbed it with my spoon to reveal uber-dense fudge-esque innards. If I thought the walnut chocolate chip cookie was intense, the peanut butter chocolate chocolate chip cookie was…more so. [Insert drooling sound effects] I can’t do it justice with my lacking vocabulary but anything that has the word “chocolate” in its name twice probably has a lot of chocolate, so if that’s your thing (envision me gasping if it’s not), you have to check out this cookie. They also have a sans-peanut butter version for those of you who were terrorized by peanuts in a previous life.

foggy

Out of the fog loomed Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven and in the window sat…

bags o beans

BAGS OF CACAO BEANS. Or. Well. I think they’re cacao beans. Whatever they are, you know they’re going to turn into delicious, calorie-dense chocolates.

chocs

See, I told you. I unfortunately couldn’t locate the Brulee Bar, which is my favorite one (not that I’ve had them all, but you can’t get much better than caramel flavored chocolate). However, they seem to have every other bar in stock. Everrrryyy oonnnne. I ended up buying a few bars and cookies for food trading but nothing for myself since I’ve gotten so much in the past (I’ve tried each of their three cookies, which are all among my favorites in NYC, and I’ve had a few bars and pieces and…oh god, I’ve had too much).

Magnolia

Walking north, we headed towards Magnolia, the infamous bakery that started a cupcake frenzy, cupcake bakery offshoots, and has shown the world that Americans are crazy because WE STAND IN LINES TO BUY CUPCAKES. Seriously, Magnolia has a “bouncer” to keep things moving smoothly. I love cupcakes, but holy crap, not that much. I think Magnolia’s cupcakes are good (best when right out of the oven, of course) but they suffer from mega-over-”stop it, they’re just cupcakes, not the Pope”-hype. Many people have asked me if Magnolia’s cupcakes are really good and I’d say yes, they’re good, but they’re just cupcakes. To me, cupcakes are muffin-shaped cakes with frosting. No-frills. Rather simple. Like a Chinese egg custard tart, except with more possibilities for being dressed up and two to three times more expensive. I enjoy cupcakes and I love simple food. But I can only go so crazy about a cupcake. Magnolia doesn’t always have a line so if you can, go at a less busy time. As for when that time is, I’m not sure. Friday nights are probably not a good time.

marzipan

While Melody was buying cupcakes, I rushed down Bleeker to Bruno Bakery to pick up some marzipan for food trading. Marzipan costs $28/lb? I’ve never bought mazipan from Bruno Bakery before, so I have no idea what it tastes like (I know what marzipan tastes like, just not…their’s). Hopefully, it’s good.

Mary’s off Jane

While walking up to 8th Avenue, we happened to pass Mary’s off Jane, which according to their sign closed yesterday. Sad! Bakery! Closing! NOOOO! I had to eat something from this bakery, anything, before it closed. THE WHEATY DELIGHTS MUST LIVE ON IN MY SUBCUTANEOUS LAYER OF FAT!

cakes!

While Jane said she wouldn’t normally allow photography, she said it didn’t matter now that she was closing. Wow, that’s depressing…and of course, I shot away. Her cakes, cookies, bars, muffins, and other pastries are so photogenic. I mean, were photogenic. Aw. As this was my first visit, I can’t say I helped it stay in business, but I don’t exactly live near it.

congo bar

I bought a congo bar, which had a shortbread-ish cookie base covered with a creamy coconut spread, topped with a layer of crispy chocolate. Mmm. Of course it was good.

I overheard a conversation between Jane and a customer about the bakery’s closing, who said something along the lines of, “Don’t make me go to Magnolia!” Hehe. ;) Mary’s off Jane seems like a very good bakery with a wide selection of baked goods and ample seating. It’s too bad it didn’t last.

Chocolate Bar

We took a quick stop at Chocolate Bar so I could buy a bar per food trade request. I’ve been there once before, but wasn’t very into the coconut cream pie bar I tried. I was disappointed by the sliver of filling when I was expecting…more. They have interesting flavors; maybe I was just unlucky.

artist bar

They’ve recently started selling artists bars with specially designed labels. A portion of the sales goes to the Third Street Music School Settlement, so if you feel bad about eating chocolate, at least someone is benefiting from your gorging. I was interested in getting one buuuuut…not enough to actually get one. It’s not like I’d keep the label and I already had a lot of chocolate. [sigh] Maybe another time.

candies

Nearby on Hudson Street was the British food shop/purveyor of meat pies Myers of Keswick. Melody wanted to pick up a British candy bar for her sister and while I would’ve loved to buy a box of Cadbury Roses, I resisted. Yes. Go me. Some other foods were easier to resist.

baked beans

I like beans, but I probably eat them most frequently in the form of red bean paste, which I don’t even eat that often. While Heinz may be equated to ketchup in the US, in England they seem to be the main producer of baked beans. Oh wait, I mean beanz. You can find these cans just about everywhere in England, from what I observed when I visited two summers ago, which was also when I had my first taste of beans on toast. Beans on toast is a fine meal/snack, but it’s not something I’d necessarily crave unless it held nostalgic meaning for me. It’s not gross or challenging to eat, but it sounds like a meal conjured out of boredom/drunkenness. “So I’ve got these beans. And this bread. NOW WHAT DO I DO?!” I might eat beans more often if I ate canned foods (I rarely do; I don’t like soup and otherwise, the only canned foods I’ve had in my kitchen are sardines and coconut milk, which aren’t as easily found in other forms). Anyway…I really like the Heinz can label. It’s cute and simple.

My god, I think that’s the end. We ate dinner at Soba Koh (which I should write a separate entry for) and went to JAS Mart afterwards where I picked up some Pocky for food trading, plus some for myself (finally got the soy powder flavor: it’s my second favorite, right after black sesame).

Well. That was a long day. I didn’t do much all weekend, although I did spend a large chunk of my Sunday making a loaf muffin (a loaffin?) since I didn’t have a muffin pan to help Diana with a film project. Over a couple of hours, she filmed about 7 minutes of me preparing the loaffin which she will have to edit down to 30 seconds. Lordy. When she finishes, I’ll let you see it.

Soba Koh

On Friday night after the scary-huge fooding tour, Melody and I ate at Soba Koh in the East Village. Guess what they specialize in? Hint: it's not Koh.

damn, that's fresh

SOBA. That's the answer to my not-very-serious question. See that guy up there in his little possibly sound-proof (but hopefully not air-tight) box? He's cutting soba. Soba-making is an insane process and by putting that guy in the spotlight, the restaurant reminds us of that (or maybe it's a threat; "make us angry and we'll put you in the box"). Hell, I have problems using a pasta machine. The machine rolls and cuts! THE MACHHIIIINNEEE!

egg custard

Melody and I ordered the early dinner set ($16), which included savory egg custard, soba (hot or cold), a tempura medley, and broccoli rabe. I had gone to the restroom while the waiter bought us the egg custards. He waited until I came back to take the lid off the cup, which I found very thoughtful. The egg custard was pretty hot so it may have benefited from airing out for a minute, but still. HE UN-LIDED THE CUSTARD! How nice. I loved the little wooden spoon that came with the custard. As for how the custard tasted, it tasted like...savory Japanese egg custard. I've had it before so I can't think of a new way to describe it. Eggy. Light. Subtle. With little crab bits dispersed throughout and pieces of green things every now and then. I wouldn't crave it, but it's good stuff.

soba set

Ahhh, time to be soba-fied. The soba was flat and thin with a light flavor. Of course, it was delicious; I'm not sure what else to say about it. I rarely eat soba so I don't have much to compare it to. The broccoli rabe was in a sesame-something sauce that we couldn't identify, aside from the sesame part. Something bitter?

tempura

I rarely eat tempura, but I don't know why. It's fried! FRIES EQUATES TO TASTINESS! l like tastiness! Why don't I eat more tempura? Once reason may be because two of the main tempura-ed foods are vegetables and shrimp. I'm not a huge fan of shrimp and although I like deep fried vegetables, to me that kind of defeats the purpose of eating a vegetable. "Hi, previously semi-healthy food! I just rolled you in batter and fried you in a vat of oil! NOW YOU ARE NUTRITIONALLY USELESS! But crispy and flavorful!"

Sure is. I loved every piece of tempura. The chile was new to me (tasty; duh it's fried) as was the fish. Shove in a ginormous shrimp, eggplant, and slice of squash, and you've got some...very tasty things. I've underestimated the power of tempura. It's a delicate version of frying; no heavy oily taste or batter. You almost don't feel guilty eating it all. Almost.

all done

Yeah, we cleaned up good.

EDIT (1/17/06): I forgot to mention that we were each given a little pitcher of soba water at the end of the meal. My first thought was, "Cool!" before the horrification set in that I had no idea what to do with the water. So. We didn't use it. Of course, google came to the rescue and from tastingmenu.com I got this bit of info:

You take the soba water and pour it into the teacup with the excess sauce, mix it up, and drink it. Crazy! But delicious. It makes a perfect "after-soup". The starchy water perfectly balanced and was brightened by the deep dark flavor of the sauce. With it's protocol of eating every last drop, soba may be one of the world's perfect foods.

CRAZY...DELICIOUS. I should've looked up what to do after my first encounter with soba water at Sobaya, but I forgot. ALAS, NO MORE. Next time I'm dumping the soba water into the tsuyu cup. ...That's what you do, I suppose? I don't think I had another cup to mix them together in. Uh. Yeah. So. That sounds yummy.

black sesame pudding

Even though I had plenty of desserts from that day of hoarding sweets, my mouth spoke before my brain could show any sign of restraint and I ended up ordering their black sesame pudding. LOOK AT THAT BEAUTY! [grabs your head and points it towards the monitor] This is good stuff. The pudding is not runny or gloppy like some puddings (not that I have anything against that texture) and is kind of mousse-esque in its stability, but even more so, just by a little (it's not fudgey and it ain't Jell-O). Not too light, not too sweet, a little grainy (from the sesame seeds, I suppose), and has a medium amount of sesame flavor (as in, not faint, but not too strong; someday I'll come up with a better way to describe it). I wouldn't have minded if it were sweeter, but I still loved it. ;)

Doyers Vietnamese

Diana spent a few hours in my dorm filming me preparing a loaffin (muffin batter baked in a loaf pan) for one of her class projects. After such a grueling session of stuffing ourselves with loaffin, we went out for dinner at Doyers Vietnamese, which is on...DOYERS STREET. My god, did you see that coming? I hope so. Doyers Street is the length of a paperclip (albeit, am ungodly large paperclip) so you should have no trouble finding this place.

vegetable crepe

Since there weren't photos on the menu and I'm a moron without visual or extensive written descriptions, I had no idea what to get. I also wasn't that hungry (because of the excessive loaffin) so I let Diana order whatever caught her eye. We had this vegetable crepe, which was ABSOLUTELY GINORMOUS, and surely a good deal at around $6. It came with raw lettuce leaves, mint leaves (um...I'm not sure, correct me if I'm wrong), pickled carrots, and cooked mung bean sprouts. The crepe was super-thin, crisp, and eggy, with bits of mushroom and maybe other stuff I can't remember mixed in. Although I didn't know the "right" way to eat this, I really liked it. I figure you just rip pieces off and put in whatever filling you want? Someone needs to teach me how to eat Vietnamese food. EDIT (1/17/06): Helen commented that you wrap stuff in the lettuce leaves, rather than the crepe. That does make more sense. Doh!

salmon

Also per Diana's request was this lemongrass salmon, which was really tasty (using the useless word "tasty" goes against everything I learned in my food journalism class...oops). We both agreed that we rarely eat salmon in Asian restaurants, although we don't know why. During my childhood, salmon was the main fish we ate at home to the point that I got majorly sick of it. I've gone long enough without it to appreciate its ...um, salmon-ness once again. The lemongrass flavor was faint, but it gave a nice touch and I've never had it with salmon before. I was a big fan of the tangy ginger sauce and the vinegar-y (I'm not very familiar with Vietnamese cuisine so jump in if you know the ingredients) celery salad that came with the salmon. We were also give a large bowl of rice, which was a ridiculous amount for two people (I think we ate half of it). If you want rice, get a small size. The final bill was about $20. Mmmmm.

muffin ingredients

So, that baking thing. Well. I don't usually bake (haven't done it in my dorm yet this school year) because I will eat everything. Really. (You read the garbage can entry, I assume.) The end result of me stuffed with carbs, unable to move, moaning, "Why did I do that?" while crumbs lay on my chin and fall onto my sweater is not a pretty one. Hell, throw in some drool and slurred speech...yes, now that's more disturbing. However, I shared the end result (Chocolate Chip Muffins; very good, I recommend it) with Diana and Mary, meaning I DID NOT EAT THE ENTIRE PAN OF MUFFINY GOODNESS, even though I would have loved to. At least, the masochistic part of me would've loved to. The part that likes the feeling of near-explody-ness. That freak.

muffin loaf

Ain't that a beaut? I didn't have a muffin pan but hey, no one said you needed to use one. Or maybe they did and now I'll be on a "Most Wanted" list and be forced to live as a subversive muffin-baking vagrant.

muffin slice

I used my roommate's pan and it worked beautifully. My main concern was that the center wouldn't be fully cooked, but it came out fine. I used two of the New Tree chocolate bars I received from Bea for "A Menu for Hope which was about half of what the recipe called for. If you use the full amount, you'll get some crazily chocolate-filled muffins. I also threw in chopped hazelnuts since that's what I had on hand (Diana and I combined our kitchens for the ingredients; all we needed was baking powder, so now I have a fresh container of baking powder that I'll probably never need again). The muffin recipe is freakishly easy so I'd recommend you try it, unless you're like me and can eat five gazillion muffins.

"The cookies fell out of the box! All of them." [points to large, sadly empty box]

"Oh no, how?"

"The cab was pulling away and the cookies...fell out! Now there are a bunch of City Bakery cookies on the road."

GASSSSP! NOOO! HOW COULD SUCH A THING HAPPEN? OH JESUS, WHY?! THERE IS NO GOD! PUPPIES ARE DYING!

That conversation isn't exactly word-for-word, and my reaction isn't as overemphasized as you may think it is. But the scenario happened! Kinda.

Build A Green Bakery

I went to City Bakery's new unnamed "green" bakery that has been the center of a bit of controversy for its hush-hush presence. Until its true identity was revealed, it denied any affiliation with City Bakery despite that it was either obviously associated with it or the new bakery hijacked its cookies (COOKIEJACK!).

As you can see from the photo, it's somewhat no-frills (the ladder is a nice touch), but it's a pleasing design. And...it's so GREEN, in the environmental sense. Giving new life to materials like cork, bamboo, wheat, recycled jeans, and maybe somewhere, bits of millions of discarded Tamagotchis, you may feel like you're standing in a really nice garbage dump. Ha...ha. But maybe it's a sign of how we'll all be forced to live someday when we've robbed the earth of all its natural resources and must live in houses made of recycled fibers and like bunnies, eat our own poop. (What, would you rather eat SOYLENT?)

[Sidenote: For a crazy "green" structure, check out e-House. I made that website (because I made this one too), or else I wouldn't know about it. After having to look over all the info and such, it seems like making a "green" house is mega-super-duper-pricey, but I suppose it will be less taxing on the environment in the long run, which is the point. Or. Something. I don't know, I just want cookies.]

cookies, sittin' around

The main things here are the cookies, obviously. Look at them, sitting in towers all prettily in the window. Like puppies in a petshop, looking on the outside world for something better. Hoping. For an owner. "Won't somebody buy me? I AM TASTY AND DELICIOUS"...wait, dogs probably don't think that. I dunno what dogs think. My life is a pet-less one. I am sad. Maybe cookies are for people like me who have unfulfilled childhoods.

I think I digressed.

menu

I'm simple minded--I like simple menus. Ahhh, what do we have here...a simple menu! One price for an assortment of baked goods. And one drink that I don't like, so screw that. COOKIES! MUFFINS! OTHER STUFF I DON'T CARE AS MUCH ABOUT BUT I'M SURE IS MEGA TASTY! Hoorah!

Oh, so you're probably still wondering what that opening dialogue was about. When I was getting my cookies, a young woman delivering cookies from City Bakery looked a bit frazzled because she accidentally dropped a WHOLE BOX OF COOKIES ON THE ROAD. I suppose that if that's the worst thing that happens to you all day, your life is pretty peachy. No bombs. No war. No squirrel ninjas. But to think of all the cookies that gave their lives. Think of the children! I mean. Cookies! Wow, I need help.

chocolate chip cookie

I've only eaten a City Bakery cookie once (before the Beck concert last spring, ooh what a good day that was; I ate a cookie afterwards too) but I think this one was...better. It's been a while so I could just be remembering it wrong, but this chocolate chip cookie looked twice as big as the one I had before. As for deliciousness...

HOLY CRAP, SO GOOD. JEEEEZZZ WHAT DID THEY PUT IN THIS? Seriously. WHAT. IS. UP. WITHTHISCOOKIE?! I suppose it's almost the antithesis of Levain's cookie; flat, crisp, totally different taste. And it's cheaper (well, it's smaller too; Levain's cookie could probably flatten a kitten). And. I. I love it. I was put off by the "secretness" of this bakery but...the...the cookie. The cookie. The. I can't even form entire sentences! I really like this cookie.

Okay, I'm going to try and give you more useful sensory information. Um. After eating this cookie (and I ate the whole thing in one day, of course), I felt like I bitch-slapped the FDA's daily recommendations for calories, sugar, and fat. The flavor instantly reminded me of a flat, thin, rectangular cookie I recall eating as a small child (as opposed to the large, hulk-like child I never was). I have no idea what this cookie is called--maybe it's just "yellow rectangular cookie", but I doubt it. Googling for a photo wasn't successful: in this photo, it looks kinda like the right-most cookie on the left side. Any idea what I'm talking about? Yeah? No? No.

So in conclusion, I reeeeaaalllly like this cookie, and I reaaaalllly shouldn't have eaten the whole thing in one day because it was kind of large and my stomach is definitely not going to thank me in the morning. I ate lunch so late that I basically just ate dessert for dinner. Granted, I was eating dessert at my late lunch too, so my diet today was 2/3rds dessert and 1/3rd something else.

something else

That was my something else. Yup, fried chicken cutlet in a bun, accompanied with coldslaw (behind the meeeeat), a slice of hard boiled egg, and a few slivers of pepper. I love Cafe Zaiya's sammiches and I know they're not healthy, but it doesn't fall into the "baked good" category, so...so...it's good whenever i eat something that isn't primarily wheat or chocolate, right? Look, there's protein and minimal vegetal matter. Woo!

Sweet Melissa

Before Cafe Zaiya and "the bakery of many cookies", I went to Sweet Melissa on West Houston because I've never been there before and I like to greet my neighborhood bakeries by shoving my camera in their bellies and handing over my moolah for some unhealthy, sugary treats. We all win! Or lose. I haven't figured out which one it is. I guess when I get cancer, that'll count as losing.

orange scented scone

Since I'm usually in a scone-y mood, I bought this $2 orange scented scone (the other choice was currant) and bit in to find that indeed, it had a nice orange scent, and indeed, it was too dry. :( Look, sad face! See it again, this time in bold: :( Wait, how about "errgh face"? >__< The scone's flavor wasn't bad, but I was so disappointed by it's dryness. And it's not the driest scone I've had. It hovered around the middle on my scale of "scone goodness" (scoodness!...nah, that doesn't work).

HOWEVER, there is a happy ending. I reheated the leftover half in the microwave when I got home and it was warm and soft. Mm. Much better. It wasn't great, but it was good. Concluding thoughts: good if it's not too dry, not something I'd long to try again, but worth trying once...if it's not too dry.

mini banana cream pie

I think I will have to revisit the bakery for pie.

Before all the aforementioned fooding, I had gone to Jacques Torres to buy some gifts for a friend. NOTHING FOR MYSELF, believe it or not. ...Actually, I lied: I had initially bought a cookie for myself, but since I decided to go to the green bakery somewhat last-minute, I included the cookie in my friend's package. She can have the calories. :)

the door is bad

HI THERE. I didn't know how to start this entry, so I thought I'd thought I'd take the weight off myself of having to fulfill any expectations of coming up with something amusing (I'm not sure if that was worded correctly but...hey, you don't care) and just show you this funny sign that was on the door to the Golden Dragon Boat Cafe and Bakery (111 Bowery). The assumption is that this door is bad in the sense of "not working correctly", as opposed to "possessed by evil demons who can make the door shatter at will and impale you with lots and lots of lovely shards of glass". Carol and I walked inside without being impaled. Hoorah!

Pucca cake

The door may be bad, but the cakes are ADORABLE! I don't even like Pucca (for whatever reason my brain responds primarily to cute Japanese things, not Korean or Chinese [or any other Asian country that makes cute "fancy goods"]), who in my opinion is...um. She's not the opposite of cute, but something about her bothers me. She doesn't want me want to puke rainbows, you know what I mean? And god knows how I love puking rainbows.

...On that note, this cake is very cute. I like the use of clear mystery goo, which is probably like all the other goo, except weirder looking because it's clear. You don't see much clear goo on cakes, do you? It's a bit, dare I say, mucilaginous (don't you just love that word?). I don't know why they didn't just draw the facial features directly on the white colored frosting instead of floating it on a clear layer of goo, but it looks kinda cool and, golly gee, it might even taste good. Surely it's worth 80 cents.

golden dragon cake

However, it was this cake that really...took the cake. Sorry. I couldn't think of another way to say it because you know me and my disdain for thought processes. How about, "took the canned ham"?

So this cake really took the canned ham. That is one crazy dragon. You can see the damage that years of cocaine and alcohol abuse (or whatever it is that dragons abuse; how would I know?) took in its beady eyes. Frankly, I'm amazed at how much detail went into this 80 cent cake. It has eyelashes, a row of pointy teeth, perhaps some red moustache-thing going on, a blond mane, and some stuff coming out of its nose. Chocolate, I think. If this dragon were real, its eyes would be popping out all over the place like that scene in An American Tail: Fieval Goes West. You konw, the one with the eyes...um...you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? (On that note, An American Tail is one of my favorite childhood movies. By the way, the movie with that guy in the store talking to that other guy with the hair and the thing was really...good.)

frog coffee cake

Oh jeez, you thought I was done with the cute cakes? NO. IT NEVER ENDS. Look at those cute Keroppi-esque frogs. Not only are they smiling, but they're hugging red jelly hearts! It's your heart! Or their hearts! ...Or...wait, now it just got gross. Well, if you don't look at the frogs as hugging organs that shouldn't be outside of ones body (a category that most organs fall under), then they're pretty cute.

I wonder how many bakeries go nuts with the cake decorations like Golden Dragon Boat. We need to acknowledge its awesomness, yes? Sadly, I keep taking photos of these cakes without actually buying them. Someday one of you should go on a cake-tasting spree with me.

Hello Kitty cake

That's the last cake photo. Promise.

Oh, if you thought we left the bakery without getting anything, you are wrong. Dead wrong. ...But without the death. Carol got a regular red bean bun and an almond tea and we both shared shared a red bean "Mexican" bun, definitely one of the better red bean buns I've had in Chinatown. Carol said it best; the filling wasn't too sweet and tasted like RED BEAN. Yes yes, I know it's supposed to, but it tasted like red bean in the sense that the filling wasn't totally mashed up beans. You could really taste the beanyness. I also really like Golden Dragon Boat's Mexican buns in general, which I'm sure aren't really like Mexican pastries, but adapt a bit of Mexican pastry-ness into Chinese pastries. I know that's a pointless description, so...

...That's why we need a website dedicated to Chinatown bakeries and all the goodness they contain. Seriously! I had this idea last year, but the idea of going to every bakery and eating everything in order to best serve the Chinatown bakery-hunting public (a great lot of you, I'm sure) and subsequently becoming the only Chinese person to become obese from frequenting Chinese bakeries didn't appeal to me. Carol would certainly help me with reviews, but I don't really know how to set up the site. First I'd want to make a list of all the common pastries and then...well, I don't know, I didn't think it out. Even though just about all Chinese bakeries have similar items, they definitely vary a bit from place to place in taste and price ($0.60 versus $0.70, yo!). I SWEAR THAT THEY VARY!

So that's my crazy idea, not to come into fruition until school ends. Forever. And I gain a second stomach. And I lose some weight. And I design all the other websites I want to work on first.

cash register

While roaming the bakery-filled streets of Chinatown with Carol, one of the places she had to check out was Mei Lai Wah, an old coffeehouse reknown for its pork buns (cha sui bao). While they have other food besides pork buns (like egg custard tarts; go late and they may dump extras on you for free), the menu taped to their old non-electronic register just lists three things: roast pork baked bun (brown), steamed pork bun (white), and special big steamed (combination of pork, chicken, sausage egg). The regular buns will set you back $0.70 and the special bun, $1.40.

steamed bun

baked bun

I didn't mean to eat both at once, but...well, you know what happened. THEY JUMPED INTO MY MOUTH; I couldn't do anything about it. Although both were good (hell, I won't complain for $0.70), I liked the baked bun more than the steamed bun. I love steamed bread in all its plain, soft squishiness, but the baked bun had a little more personality by being shiny and golden on top and crusty on the bottom. On the other hand, the steamed bread was just...well, steamed bready. They both float my boat, but the baked one is more boat floating-worthy. I'd say more about the filling but I'm not very familiar with what pork bun filling "should" be like. How about this: it's chunky, fatty, a little sweet, and ...um, good.

fat glob

Ah, there's the fat cube. [shoves it in your face] My first thought when seeing the fat cube was "...uhm", but then I thought about how I slather butter or oil on bread and it didn't seem so strange. I don't see people eating pork fat toast, but they could and that might not be so weird.

...Or maybe it is.

Well. I think that's all you need to know about my fooding yesterday. If you're curious enough to know what I ate today in "I'm too lazy to write real content" bulleted-list form, here goes:

• Lunch: Tried a flan slice from Financier, which was just alright and not as good as I was hoping it would be. The blueberry muffin from City Bakery (the green bakery really, which is $0.50 less than City Bakery if I remember my prices correctly) was really good! I love muffins and it's definitely one of the better ones I've had, although not as "mouth open wide drooling" worthy as the cookies. I also had a persimmon in attempt to eat something healthy.
• Dinner: I made some not-so-good soup and mung bean thread noodles with Chinese cabbage. If I haven't mentioned it already, I'm not a big fan of liquids (I like eating calories, not drinking them). I thought I'd make life easier for myself by using up the leftover chicken broth in my fridge and cooking the noodles and cabbage at once. However, I had no idea how to flavor the soup and...well, it's fine for subsistence, let's say that. After that, I ate five of the little pork buns I got from Sun Dou Dumpling Shop, which were pretty good. Dessert was my last pack of kinako Pocky I bought last Friday. Damn, that stuff is good.

Actually, I have another list. Rose tagged me for 10 random facts. I just did the meme, but I'll do it again in a quicker, more easily digestible form:

1. I have a slight obsession with architecture (mainly modern). I used to buy random books and magazines dedicated to architecture and just stare at them. That's not healthy.
2. I also have a slight obsession with experimental electronic music, but like architecture, it's just a fraction of the genre that I like. However, within that style, I like just about everything I hear. I'm overly picky and not at the same time.
3. For a few years (end of middle school), my favorite movie was Happy Gilmore.
4. Green used to be my favorite color in middle school but soon became my most loathed color in high school since the school colors were green and white and I had to wear a not-so-lovely green and white uniform in marching band, in addition to the school being...ye know, green.
5. The name "roboppy" came from a few of my friends and I taking the first syllable of our names and adding "boppy" to them as screennames. I'm the only one who kept the name for this long though.
6. I don't drink, smoke, or have any piercings or tattoos. I've never gotten my hair colored either I don't really "get" the point of any of them for myself, but if it works for others that's fine.
7. I don't wear any makeup besides lip balm, which I highly doubt counts.
8. I've never had pets.
9. I stopped watching TV in 11th grade because one day, I just got sick of it. I download a few TV shows, but I wouldn't say it's to the level of the averages TV watcher.
10. My teachers tend to think I'm smarter than I actually am, but I don't know why.

I don't usually complain about much, do I? Or have unfavorable things to say? When I complain about becoming a monsterous blob-creature resulting from massive pastry consumption and subsequently taking advantage of my newfound corpulence to stomp around on children, puppies and other things people hold dear to them (cellphones, prosthetic legs, cheesy poofs), I'm just jokin'. I think. [stomps]...Yup, my stomping power has not reached the ability to kill organisms larger than small bugs.

flan

I had a very little "something" on my mind lately and unfortunately, you appear to be on the path to reading this "something". Well then. The other day I went to Financier with Carol and I bought a slice of flan (kinda like a flan bar). The price said $2.25 but the cashier asked for $2. Hm. Did I read wrong? Hear wrong? Did my brain poop itself? I asked again and she repeated $2 so I figured that while there was still a possibility that my brain did poop itself, at least I was sure that she asked for $2.

But of course, I WAS WRONG. Or she was wrong. As I was walking out, another cashier (one with more authority) told me it was another $0.25. Ah, okay, so I wasn't really crazy. I didn't mind, but it kind of bothered me in the way he said it. He almost made me feel like it was my fault, although I don't think it was. There was no, "Sorry, we made a mistake; it was $2.25" but just that it was another $0.25 and I MUST RELENQUISH THE MONEY NOW OR THE BAKERY ATTACK DOGS WILL GET ME (okay, not that last bit). I've encountered that employee a few times and I feel like at every experience he's been a bit...well, not the friendliest person who works there (I've found that most of the employees are really nice though). So that's my rather insignificant brainfart of the day.

During my lunch break, I went to Sweet Melissa to pick up some madeleines for my mum since those are one of her favorite snacks, in addition to a cookie for myself (seriously, it's research people) before heading further down into the not-very-crowded bowels of Soho. Inside Sullivan Street Bakery's wooden, bread-filled interior, I spotted two new things: spiced persimmon cake and panino del giorno ("sandwich of the day", according to google; I'm not sure if Sullivan Street bakery always had sandwiches but I've never seen them before), which had goat cheese, sliced roasted beets, some kind of herb that I couldn''t recognized (cilantro maybe?) and some kind of baby lettuce that I'm sure has a real name but of course, I don't know what it is or I would've said it already instead of rambling on like this. While SSB always has sweet baked goods, it may surprise you to know that I've only tried one of them. I usually go for the bread--that is what they're known for, after all.

sammich of the day

The cake slice was $3.50 and the sandwich was $9, but you could buy a half for $4.50. I went for the half since I didn't need a entire sandwich, nor did I feel like spending $9 on one. The sandwich was good, but I felt like $4.50 was a lot for the small piece (I know sandwiches usually cost a lot anyway, hence why I never buy them, unless it's Cafe Zaiya where the tastiness-to-cost ratio is high). I don't regret eating it, but I don't see myself buying it again since it didn't provide me with $4.50 worth of gastronomic delight. All the ingredients were fresh and there was enough of each for everything to balance out each other and not too much so that the filling exploded all over the place. It's a sandwich I wouldn't mind making for myself except that I hate preparing roasted beets. I had to make them for a cooking class last semester and after peeling and cutting more beets than I hope to ever encounter again in my life (or afterlife; I'm sure they make you peel beets in Hell), my beet juice stained fingers looked like evidence that I had killed a man with my bare hands through the "organ ripping" method. I hope no one actually thought I had day-old blood on my hands.

persimmon cake

As for the persimmon spice cake (more like quick bread than like a typical buttercake), it was flavorful with spices (you know...spices...don't ask me to identify them besides things that you'd find in fall/winter treats). Not good enough that I'd get it again, but nothing wrong with it either. I onlytook a little nibble so I'm not sure how much persimmon flavor is in it, but I think persimmons are best for eating plain (fuyu persimmons, although not necessarily used in this cake, are my favorite fruit, so maybe 'm biased). So...it's tasty.

cookie innards

While sitting outside the bakery, I decided to sample the cookie ($2.50) from Sweet Meliissa, which is actually a chocolate chunk almond cookie and not a plain chocolate chip cookie. But you know...it's close enough. The cookie is of the large, flat, and kind of crispy "but not in the dry crumbly sense" variety. It resembles a City Bakery or Jacques Torres cookie in composition, smushing layers of chocolate in between...well, the dough. The almonds are an added bonus (unless you're allergic/deathly afraid of miniscule amounts of cyanide/attacked by almonds as a child), and they're not like crushed almond bits but whole almonds, or sem-whole considering how flat the cookie is. The cookie is definitely above average, but in my opinion not as good as those from City Bakery or Jacques Torres (not comparing it to Levain since it's too different). It's missing something special (illicit stimulants?), that flavor in CB's or JT's (oh boy, now I'm too lazy to type) cookies, the thing that gives you intense cookie-lust, involving major mouth watering, robbing banks or extorting people for more cookie money, etc. Since it's not any cheaper than the other cookies, I wouldn't say that I'd go back for this cookie. But it does have almonds! They also have snickerdoodles, which I haven't seen in other places, so maybe I'll try that next time.

I got another spammy comment! I know I'm probably not supposed to spotlight negative sentiments, but I can't help it; they make interesting points of discussion (or maybe that's what the commenters want?). On chocs, meat pies, bread, and GMOs, Christina (whose name links to a site about...dogs?) says:

can i just say, that you are an apsolute pig- never known such an obsessed glut as yourself- do you not realize the harm you are doing to your body?!- your disgusting, but hey that's your body, and YOUR not complaining, even though i am- on your behalf- no you truley make me sick, and good luck to the whatever restricted lifespan you have left!

Do I realize the harm I'm doing to my body? After being on a rather obsessive healthy diet for two years, well, I have some kind of idea. Thanks for pointing that out to me. [Note to self: "eating too much is bad for my body"...yes, got that.]

Is it okay if I berate every person who drinks soda, coffee, smokes too much, eats too many pop tarts, etc, with "HOLY SHIT YOU'RE GONNA DIE" related expressions? I got tired of lecturing people when I was eating healthier food...so I guess I'm on the other end of the spectrum now. To be honest, I think those things to myself, but I don't see the point of telling people these thoughts because it's your thing. You're not going to listen to me. If you know the health risks and don't care, well...that's fine, unless you're related to me and I really want you alive.

Maybe that's selfish. I only express concern for people I care about? INSTEAD OF THE WHOOOOLE WOOORLD?

As for the restricted lifespan thing, when I was on the raw food diet I used to think about how nice it would be to live a long, healthy life. I'd be nearly disease-free! I'd be full of life-force from fruit or whatever! And then I realized my life sucked because I wasn't very happy and I had no social life. Living a long time seemed a bit pointless in that sense. For example, my grandparents may live to be 120 at the rate their going, but their lives kinda suck. I won't get into it.

I don't mean to imply that eating raw food is a sentence to a craptastic life, as it's turned around many people's lives for the better (I hope), but a certain way of eating may not work for everyone. Obviously, we have different lifestyles. Some people have no problem eating the same five dishes all the time. Some people want to eat different things all the time. Some people can't control their eating. Some people are anorexic. I used to have less control over my eating but I think I'm marginally better now. Obviously, majoring in food shows you that I have food on the brain a lot; that's my thing. It's one of many hobbies.

I wonder how readers would perceive me if I were a guy instead of a girl. Certainly, different characeristics are expected of women. (I could be wrong, but I think most food blogs are written by women. That's just ...something I'm throwing out. Also, the food department is 99% female. That's not the official number but I've had all-female classes, or classes with 1 or 2 guys. From my observations, most students are slim or average.) I'm not saying that it's okay for guys to act as slovenly pigs, but I think it's more woman-like to not eat too much and hopefully to keep a good figure, annnnd whatnot. If my metabolism were any worse, I have to admit that I'd probably eat less. Or. I should.

Lastly, we're not going to pick on the grammatical errors in the comment, even if we want to, since they're irrelevant.

...Super-lastly, it's almost 2 AM, so I haven't edited this very well. Er. SAY SOMETHING.

9:00 AM.

The last time I puked before that? 5:30 AM.

The last time I puked before that? 4:30 AM.

The last time I puked before thaaaat? No idea. I honestly don’t recall throwing up at all in the past two years, thus the feeling of reverse peristalsis isn’t well-ingrained in my mind (which is probably a good thing). If you didn’t know, reverse peristalsis is pretty unpleasant, although a somewhat fascinating bodily function. Defying the laws of gravity, food can go back up the same tube it went down! SAAAAME TUUUUBE. GREAT. It doesn’t come up in the exact same form as it went down—there’s more mucus (which we like so our throats don’t get burned from stomach juice) and acid coming back up and the foodstuffs are less recognizable—but it’s still food. Kinda. As opposed to chunks in peanut butter, which I like, my puke was unpalatably chunky. However, the body knows best, and if it wants to expel my stomach contents, so be it. [reeetch]

I’m not sure if I got food poisoning, but I’m not sure what else it could be. And then what food poisoned me? [shrugs] My puke seemed to consist of persimmon bits, which is unsettling because I think the persimmon should’ve been in my intestines by that point.

I replied to all the comments in the previous entry. I see that some lurkers emerged…bwahahaaa!

My weekend was a bust food-wise. Plans to eat on Saturday were ruined by my stupidity and plans to function in any productive manner today were thwarted by tossing my cookies, brought upon by whatever evil microscoorganisms lurked in my digestive tract.

In the end, the microorganisms will get us all. Isn’t that disturbing? When you’re a corpse, the wee beasties will eat you. No one is safe. NO OOOONE!!! Not you, the puppies, the tulips, or the hobos. Doom doom d-doom doom doom.

Anyhoo, I think I feel better now after sleeping off most of the day and letting my body temperature raise to microoganism-killing temperatures (I hope). I suppose I’ll go to work tomorrow, if I don’t puke again.

I’ve been tagged by The Food Pornographer! PREPARE YOURSELF TO LEARN USELESS STUFF ABOUT MY LIFE!

Four jobs you�ve had in your life:

• bagger at Stop & Shop (2003): People were surprised at how much I could lift. I was too. Most people were really nice, but every now and then there’s be some disgruntled customer who'd freak out about where I put the bananas. Surprisingly, people would tip me every now and then. I wasn’t supposed to accept tips but they insisted I take em anyway. Bwahaha.
• employee at the “Vassar College Media Cloisters” (2004):http://mediacloisters.vassar.edu/ : I worked on the blog (which looked nothing like the current blog) and did…stuff? Helped people with scanning? I got the job after one of the employees say my Vassar homepage (still there, even though I’m not a student…hm).
• employee at the Vassar College Summer Media Studies…something…I forgot the real name (2004): This program doesn’t even exist anymore. I think they cancelled it after my year—HAR HAR. It was a lot of web development stuff, but sadly, it didn’t really go anywhere. I got to live in the suckest Vassar housing ever.
• currently in NYU Law’s web development office: I edit websites. Weee.

Four movies you could watch over and over:

Not OVER and over, but…a few times, yes.

• Happy Gilmore: Haha…ha.
• My Neighbor Totoro: SO CUTE.
• Kiki’s Delivery Service: Not as cute, but still cute!
• Castle in the Sky: The dubbed version annoys me though.

Four places you�ve lived:

• Franklin Lakes, New Jersey
• Taipei, Taiwan
• Poughkeepsie, NY
• NY, NY

Four TV shows you love to watch:

• Gilmore Girls
• Late Night with Conan ‘O Brien
• Yakitate (to a point)
• Uhhh…[shrugs] I don’t watch TV anymore, but one of my favorite shows used to be Roswell.

Four places you�ve been on holiday:

• Japan
• California
• Singapore
• France

Four websites you visit daily:

• Statcounter
• Bloglines
• Gmail
• Livejournal

Four of your favourite foods:

• persimmons
• bread & rice (eh, they're both staple carbs)
• cookies
• chocolate

Four places you�d rather be:

• Not
• In
• School
• Because I’d have a job that I like and would be OH SO HAPPY.

"Mm, this is delicious," Kathryn said enthusiastically after biting into her spearfish.

I plopped a small, delicate, cutely scrunched up duck raviole (it probably had a more descriptive name, but my receipt simply says RAVIOLE, thus I am actually giving you more information than I'm obligated to for not having taken notes) into my mouth. Commence chewing.

...Hm. Okay Robyn, come up with something to say, preferably descriptive, or at least more so than, "Tastes like raviole", not that you would even say that due to a lack of raviole eating experiences.

"...This tastes good."

NO NO, Robyn, you failed! Chuck Norris is gonna ninja-kick your face in for such a lame description. Say something better.

"...This...tastes good?"

You still failed.

"I DUNNO WHAT THIS TASTES LIKE, BUT I LIKE IT."

db Bistro Moderne

Okay, that's as good as I can do. I was looking forward to eating lunch at DB Bistro Moderne for Restaurant Week because as as the first expensive dining experience I've had in NYC (anywhere comparable would have occured NJ before I had a blog), I could have fun eating the food and writing something worthwhile about it. It also means that I have almost nothing to compare it to, since as you've noticed, my diet consists mainly of persimmons (the ones that make it all the way through my digestive tract), cookies, sugar, and carbs.

wall of horror

We were a bit late for our 11:45 AM lunch reservation due to evil medical practitioners (no offense to the non-evil medical practitioners; yer ooookay!) but we were still seated in the dining room, by the extra coveted space in front of "scary giant pictures of scary giant red flowers that might be carnivorous and would go really well in Satan's botanical garden".

[A sidenote: If I wasn't sure before, I'm pretty sure now that I'm not comfortable talking to adults, specifically of the maitre d' variety, more specifically of the tall maitre d' variety. While I usually fail at speaking skills, they get worse when I'm nervous and turn me into some unintentionally rude person who speaks too fast and doens't let the other person finish his sentences, perhaps like a nervous puppy, if the puppy were...oh, human. Whether I will ever rectify this simple rule of etiquette is unknown, but I'm thinking they won't since I'll be stuck in child-mode for the next 20 years. It's just a part of my genes.]

Scary flowers! What was I talking about? Oh yeah...food.

bread basket/canister?

We started off with the complimentary bread. Ain't that pretty? Unfortunately, we only got to try one piece each. Surprisingly, I didn't dig into the bread and slather it all with butter right away, deciding instead to leave my stomach open for the real food (not that bread isn't real food, but you probably shouldn't do what I sometimes do and eat it as a meal). But the bread! MY GOD, I LOVE BREAD YET I ONLY ATE ONE PIECE (one of the two center-slices)! And it was a really good piece! I wish I could say more about it than that, but I can't. The bread was good. Obviously. If they screwed up something so simple, I'd worry. Or blame it on the Satanic flowers.

bibb lettuce salad

I started with this bibb lettuce salad while Kathryn ordered a yummy smelling squash soup. It was a nice shade of yellow (just imagine what a nice shade of yellow is in squash terms) and had "surprises" in (well, the garnishes on top that Kathryn stirred in). I'm sure it was more satisfying than my salad, not because my salad was bad but because it was a salad. How often do you see me feature salads in this blog? Yeeeeah. I don't hate salads, but they're not in my "top ten non-sweet foods I'd choose to eat if I could eat anything I wanted". It's probably not in my top 20. ...Well, maybe a seaweed salad would be.

So, the salad! I wouldn't want to eat a bucket of it, but it was very nice and I naturally ate it all. The easiest way for me to describe anything is to say "there was nothing wrong with it". All the ingredients--lettuce, smoked salmon, sliced heart of palm, baby asparagus (or really thin normal asparagus?), baby tomatoes, and dill--were flavorful and nothing was too overpowering or weak. The vinegarette dressing was very light but gave just enough flavor (you know, of vinegar and oil; I probably didn't need to describe that to you). I really liked the dill, even though there was maybe a total of three pieces in the whole salad. But that's why it's not a "dill" salad...wait, maybe I would like a dill salad! Do people make dill salads? Make me one.

spearfish

Kathryn's spearfish (garnished with chickpeas and some kind of celery chutney, a little salad, and whatever that puddle-y sauce around it is) reminded me of tuna steak; it's a meaty fish. An unfishy fish. A fish that crosses the species barrier into POULTRY, perhaps. Anyhoo, I don't have much else to say besides that it was very tasty stuff and I wouldn't have minded eating it as my entree. Obviously, I forgot what the seasoning was exactly. "Tasty and inoffensive."

duck raviole

Ah HA, it's my indescribable duck raviole. The first impression I got before actually ingesting anything was of cheese. A pleasing, lightly cheesy scent wafted (oh man, don't you love that word?...okay, maybe not) into my face, which implies it went up my nose since that's a good place for smells to go. Unfortunately, I can't say much about the raviole (man, I just wanna call them "really cute dumplings") because I CANNOT INDENTIFY FLAVORS, making me wonder if I'm a nontaster, or if I'm just not familiar enough with flavors to be able to identify them. Well, whatever the flavors were (nothing easily recognizable I suppose, and nothing spicy or pungent), they well well together. The mashed duck filling (I like the word "mashed", alright?) nor the pasta skin was heavy. Once again, "there was nothing wrong with it". I guess that also means that nothing wowed me out of my pants (...I don't have an aside for this one) but the amount in the dish, the size of each REALLY CUTE DUMPLING (harhar, I said it!), and the consistency and density (I feel like there's a better word for that) of the filling all agree with me. Again, I cleaned my plate.

And what comes next? Only the BEST PART OF THE MEAL EVERRR!

chocolate mousse with...well, you can see

Kathryn and I got the same dessert, whose official name I don't know (the receipt descriptively labels it "Cherry"), but it's basically chocolate mousse in a chocolate crust with fresh cherry halves (not preserved or uber-sweet, thankfully) in some kind of cherry sauce accompanied by vanilla ice cream something-or-other.

drool

I feel awful for not knowing the "real" name of this frozen accompaniment, but it seemed to be listed as an afterhought on the menu. You know the subdued italic line of text below the ALL IN CAPS title that a dish has? You're like, "Oh, it comes with the thing in italics; that's nice." It's like a bonus, but the bonus isn't supposed to overpower the main thing. Is it? IS IT? Well. This little, lovingly shaped frozen vanilla blop was easily the best part of the whole meal. I think my exact words were:

"Oh my god, I love it." [blah blah blah, repeat 10x] It truly excited me.

We were perplexed because we didn't really know what it was made of. It wasn't ice cream, but not gelato. It didn't seem like sorbet either. But certainly it was...one of those? It reminded me of something made of nut milk but I'm pretty sure it wasn't. Our spoons cut through without any effort. I wanted to savor it, but frozen things have that problem of melting, which changes it from "delicious blop" into "inedible puddle that I would lick up if that weren't so unsightly". The blop rested on a bed of what Kathryn called "chocolate soil" (or [something] soil) which we thought tasted like an Oreo, but surely wasn't. If not for the vanilla blop, the dessert probably wouldn't been more disappointing than the other dishes, but instead it was SO AWESOME.

Overall impression: definitely worth $30 to have a three-course lunch with a good friend. The food was really fast and service was...efficient, maybe a little too much. Not that I planned on lingering, but since we were late we certainly wouldn't sit around and nibble our food for hours, but I was kinda surprised when one waiter (I'm not sure how many people served us; it probably wasn't that many, but I wasn't paying attention) moved my plate away and...it seemed random. It was a subtle way of shouting, "MAKE WAY FOR THE NEXT PLATE!" Anyhoo. Food was good, but I'd be happy just eating dessert and bread.

On a random note, I went to the Green Bakery and could've sworn I bought four cookies (three for a friend, one for me), but looked in my bag (long after I had left the bakery; hey, I stuffed it in my backpack and I was in a rush) and saw three. Hm. My first thought was, "NO WAY, I definitely paid for four!" but not I'm not sure because god knows my memory isn't exactly set in stone (more like an Etch-A-Sketch). However, after thinking about it for WAY TOO LONG, I really think I paid for four. Which is odd. Maybe the clerk was out of it. I'm going back tomorrow morning to see if I can REGAIN MY LOST $2 and shall let you know the demise of my oatmeal cookie that I longed for with all my tastebuds.

On a last note, my appetite is still in it's waned state. Despite what I just said about the cookie I "lost", cookies aren't that tempting when you're not hungry. But I'll still go back for it.

EDIT (1/25/06): I just remembered something that bothered me about the restaurant; the reception desk was in the middle of the room. Kinda. There's a pathway through the front dining room that leads to a raised reception and bar area and goes further to another dining room. Is this pretty common or am I right in thinking it's somewhat awkward? In order to get seated you first walk past tables of diners. During our lunch, there was a long line of people right by us waiting to get in (well, they were inside but...you know what I mean). I'm wondering why they'd plan the orientation that way; so far I've figured that at least with the desk far from the door, people will wait inside and not huddle around the entrance, but isn't it still an odd orientation? Oor...um...someone give me other reasons.

I thought more about the lack of bread eating and remembered that when I eat bread at a restaurant (which is rare since most restaurants I go to don't serve bread) it's because I'm waiting for my actual food. How to spend the time? EAT! However, the food was quick (not too quick as though the plates were being shot at us, but I was surprised by how fast it was) so I didn't give much thought to eating the bread. Also, I wasn't that hungry...but it's bread!

Another thing: I got my cookie! I probably shouldn't have felt so weird/embarrased about it, but...I did. I mean. IT'S ONE FREAKIN' COOKIE. The guy working at the bakery this morning (same guy I saw yesterday) was nice had no problem giving me another one after I told my "I though I bought four cookies" story, which probably made me look insane/stupid/cookie monster-esque. Sadly, I found that the oatmeal cookie isn't nearly as good as the chocolate chip cookie one, but it's hard for anything to be as tasty as that. I EXPECTED PERFECTION! *sobs* Oh well, more on that later.

Rai Rai Ken

If you live in/around NYC, then you'll know that yesterday felt blood-freezing (which I guess also means ...human freezing) cold. You know that feeling you get in your hands when it's cold and you're walking around and your hands absorb the cold and you can't feel your hands because it's cold but then you go to a warmer place and your hands regain some feeling after the aforementioned cold numbingness, but instead of feeling like normal hands, they feel kinda (WARNING: fake word up ahead) spingly like a hand transplant gone wrong? Yeah? ...No? Nevermind.

Last night I met up with Janet at Rai Rai Ken, a small Tampopo-esque ramen house in the East Village. Pulling from my feeble knowledge as opposed to doing online research (because I'm lazy and I don't want to stray from the non-academicness of this blog), ramen is one of many foreign foods, in this case from China, that Japan has adapted to the point that its synonymous with Japanese cuisine (some other popular Japanese foods or foreign origin: curry, tempura, and...omu-raisu, whose name I love for some reason). It wouldn't be strange then that a ramen house should have Chinese decorations (although much more pleasing ones than just about any Chinese place I've been to, harhar).

butter?

That's not an example of Chinese influence. That's butter. I like butter. No, I didn't go for the extra butter, but someday, who knows...I might just go for it. That'll be the "wild and crazy Robyn", the one who will do such "wild and crazy things" like garnishing my noodles with fat of bovine origin. Anyway, back to the Chinese thing.

Chinese-esque tea pot

Janet's green tea came in this kind of cute teapot. Kind...of. Cherubic, black hole-eyed kids with hands clasped, bowing to us as we pour our tea: freaky? I dunnoooo. Kindaaaa.

cuppa

Whoa, they really put the "green" in "green tea" (and I suppose they put the "tea" in there also...because it's green tea...), and maybe a dash of "radioactive". We thought it looked pretty cool. "MAN, this tea is green." Yeah, we're easily amused. I thought the cup was cute, and oh so Chinese. If I could bottle up a Chinese design, that little cup would be a good representation. Actually, that's if I could cup a design. A bottle would be the same, but in bottle form.

...[twiddles fingers]...I'm just going to leave that last babbling paragraph in and move on. Treat it like roadkill on the highway; acknowledge it and forget it soon; you know you'll see more roadkill down the line anyway.

innards

The seating is all along the kitchen, like sitting at a sushi bar...if the sushi bar had revolving seats bolted to the floor and didn't make sushi, but noodles. (So perhaps it's not really like a sushi bar; just work with me here.) The ceiling looks like layers of old newspapers randomly splodged down with red paint that's just opaque enough so that you can tell its newspaper, but can't actually read anything. The inability to read anything could also be due to a lack of upbringing in a household where everyone speaks Chinese, thus the assumption being that you would learn Chinese because, god, how could you not? It's so damn easy! Just memorize a bunch of tones that you can't differentiate and 100,000,000 characters that resemble stick formations on someone's tree-filled lawn after being hit by a typhoon and run over by a truck and you'll be able to converse with all your relatives, which come to think of it is what you'd rather not be able to do. (This is a roadkill moment. Movin' on...)

menu

The menu is pretty easy to navigate...because there it is. The other side of the menu has appetizers but I came for ramen, dammit. Janet and I ended up both ordering from another menu...

special curry ramen

Ah, the one item menu: for customers who are beyond indesive and need to be told what to get. I thought about getting one of the regular non-curry filled dishes, but...nah, that would've been insane.

curry ramen bowl

noodlefall!...bwaha

An ample bowl full of curry-fied soup over long, yellow strands of ramen, topped with thinly sliced pork, half of a hard boiled egg, chopped scallions, and a sheet of dried seaweed makes for some happy, curry-splattered eating. Janet commented that the meat was salty, but I thought it was okay salt-wise (not that I thought it wasn't salty, just not alarmingly so...oh god, do I have tastebuds?). The noodles were just right and not "peculiar, mashy, attacked by wetness dough" soft, which I wouldn't like. Of course, I liked the soup since it was full of curry, which would tell you that...um, if you like curry, you should like the soup (which you could've figured out yourself). Unlike the curry ramen soup I had at Men Kui Tei, which was more like curry sauce on top of the broth and noodles, Rai Rai Ken's curry sauce was completely mixed with the broth (the broth and the curry became ONE). Because of this, I figure the soup may have a little more body than the other non-curry ones.

We ate just about everything we could while avoiding the risk of tearing our stomach linings. So, what's next? Oh. OH. You know.

Tarallucci e Vino

We walked a few blocks to the cover of 10th Street and 1st Avenue to Tarallucci e Vino, an Italian cafe and bakery. I've passed it many times before but, like for many Italian bakeries, had never actually tried it. Gasp! Horror! BAKERY! I don't know why I'm not more drawn to Italian desserts or food in general, but I must be missing something...in my brain. (Like...that big gray mass.) Since the mother nature was close to wonderfully preserving us in her deathly, frozen arms of cold hatred, we stayed inside the cafe and sampled two dichotomous desserts.

chocolate hazelnut cake

We both had our eyes on this chocolate cake, which had sat whole and pristine in the bakery case until we came by and destroyed its serenity. The waitress cut a chunk from its side to be presented to the two evil girls desiring chocolate decadence with no regard to the cake's feelings. "Where's mah chunk?" implored the cake, but no one listened, primarily because we couldn't understand cake language. ...And that we wanted to eat the cake. It's more the second reason than the first, but they're both pretty important.

We speared it with our forks ("Show no mercy, Janet, JUST GO FOR IT!"...okay, I didn't actually say that) and chewed. Our water levels immediately decreased by a few percent and we fainted from dehydration.

...This was one dry cake. It wasn't stale-dry, but inherently dry. Why would anyone bake a dry cake? It had so much going for it--chocolate, hazelnut, frosting, a steady job, a new home--but alas, no H2O. Where's the moistness? Where's the liquid content? Despite the dryness, we actually ate...um, almost all of it, which is just a testament to HOW VERY BADLY WE WANTED TO HONOR THIS CAKE, THIS CHUNK, THAT WE HAD BOUGHT OT FULFILL GLUTTONOUS CHOCOLATE DESIRES. OKAY? The frosting was great, like a mellow nutella (meaning you could easily eat more of it than you would nutella without feeling nauseous), but there wasn't enough. If the cake had been 50% frosting, maybe that would've saved it. And made us very sick.

panna cotta

But remember, we got two desserts. Ohhh yes. On the lowest part of the bakery case was a crowd of white, gelatinous blobs that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie involving Blobling overloads that descend upon helpless children and eat them for fuel for the journey back to the home planet. It was so unassuming and blobby I almost expected that, at this stage of it's life (the end of the gestation period), it would explode, unleashing a new army of terrorizing Bloblings.

innards

Of course, it was just panna cotta. BUT NOT JUST ANY! NOOO! UBER DELICIOUS PANNA COTTA. I may have only had panna cotta once or twice in my life, but this one defitely beat them out of the water. Or something. That doesn't sound like the right saying. How about: this one totally shot them in the heads and beat them with sticks a few times, then kicked them in the groins? Yeah. This was really tasty. Everything was just right: sweetness, texture, vanilla (quite real I think, judging from the taste and the little piles of vanilla beans around the perimeter) blob-ness. The little pool of strong raspberry sauce (well, a sauce-ish substance) in the center was a welcome accompaniment, and I'm not even a huge fan of raspberries. As you can see from the photo, the structure easily held up to a fork, but it was very soft, kind of like a mousse and Jell-O hybrid with a slight "skin" surrounding creeeaammy innards. Kind of like...humans!

...

So that was damn tasty. Go there now and hanf over $5 for DELICIOUS BLOB. At the same time, scold the cake, or dunk it in a bucket of water to rehydrate it.

gyu don

If you're curious enough, I ate gyu don for lunch at Win 49. While Win 49 isn't that far from campus, I rarely go there; yesterday's visit was begat from having to go to the Mercury Lounge to buy five Stars tickets (YOU KNOW YOU WANNA COME, RIIIGHT?). Thus gyu don left me full all day while burping beefy aromas. I wouldn't say it's my preferred burpable aroma, but that's my fault for eating too quickly or having a stomach that doesn't like to digest gyu don. But it's so good! I love simple dishes like beef on rice. It's not much for the eyes but it still looks neat and cute, even just with the little garnish of pink pickled something-or-other on a plastic green "leaf". Gaah, I love Japanese food.

Oh jesus, I'm falling behind. What did I eat? Yesterday? Day before? I...just don't know...the sky, it's getting darker...organ failure is commencing...heart palpitating...

[flumps over]

Thankfully, I have flickr to remind me what I ate, a handy tool when my brain is of no use. Absolutely. Useless. Thing. Taking up space. Forming these sentence fragments you see before you.

I ate out somewhat randomly on Friday night with Nancy (a friend/former classmate) and her friend, Dave, visiting from Cornell. We didn't have anything in mind but by browsing around Menupages, we settled on Mara's Homemade. The prospect of fried chicken and cake (mainly the cake for me) made out bodies moan, "Oh god, you're gonna fill me with crap, aren't you?", while at the same time made our tastebuds...um, they just drooled and made incomprehensible "mraaah"-like noises.

[On a totally unrelated note, my roommate put a plug-in type air freshener in the kitchen. It was alright for a while but now EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE A CANDY FACTORY EXPLODED IN OUR ROOM. Or. I don't know. It's not quite like a candy factory, but maybe...a factory that makes floral-esque scented candy? There's something uber-artificial about it (well, liquid scents that you plug into a wall probably tend to be that way) and...my nose...MY NOSE IS BEING RAPED WITH CHEMICALS. How's yours? Fine? Dandy? Good.]

Awash

Alas, Mara is too popular for us common folk (who don't make reservations on Friday nights...um) so we tried the neighboring Ethiopian restaurant, Awash. None of us had ever eaten Ethiopian food before, which to me was a clear reason as to why we should try it. CLEAR AS A PAPER BAG DIPPED IN GREASE. While there were a gazillion Indian restaurants nearby (I've never actually walked on East 6th Street before, fancy that) that we'd probably enjoy, I insisted, "WE WANT ETHIOPIAN!" and then dragged Nancy and Dave inside after shooting them with tranquilizer darts.

meat sambusa

Ordering was a bit hard considering we had no idea what Ethiopian food was like, but the waiter recommended meat sambusa as an appetizer, which consists of...meat and sambusa. To be more specific, the menu described it as "pastry shells filled with spiced chopped beef".

innards

Whoaaa, this was good. It reminded me of a delicate spring roll made of phyllo dough whose outside layers were light and crispy and the innermost layers, soft and chewy. The ground beef filling taste light (well, for meat) and flavorful without being fatty. As for the flavor, it was...um. Uh. "Spicy". Could I get any more vague? (YES: "meaty".) There's a bit of heat in the flavor, although nothing approaching unbearable. I'd love to eat a loaf of sambusa, but I doubt they come in loaf form. Overall, meat sambusa is delicious stuff that I wouldn't hesitate to eat again.

combo plate

For our main meal, we ordered a two-person combination platter of two meat dishes and three vegetarian dishes (which was why we were required to order an appetizer, although I think that worked out for the best since it was so good). Ethiopian food is eaten sans silverware; instead, you pick up food using teff injera, a pancake-like bread traditionally made from teff flour.

teff injera

The injera came in long, neat rolls, which instantly reminded me of carpet. Not that you need me to tell you, but it's much tastier than carpet. (Assuming I have any idea what carpet tastes like, which I don't. That's probably for the best.) The bread has a pancake-esque texture, but is spongier and more elastic than your regular breakfast pancake. Taste-wise, it's sour due to the dough being fermented; if you don't like sourdough bread, start learning to love it now. It's soft, moist, pliable, and doesn't easily become soggy in the process of handling sauces; overall, it's a great utensil for eating other...stuff, such as those that comes in sauce, paste, or cubed meat form. (Mmm, you know you want cubed meat.)

As for the exact names of what we ate, I can't really help you there. The meats were chicken and lamb and the vegetables included chickpea, potato, green bean, and other stuff of plant-origin I can't remember. What I can tell you is that we liked everything, resulting in this aftermath:

finished

Even though we split the two-person portion between the three of us, we were insanely stuffed (it would probably help to tell you that we went through about five injera rolls, which are definitely filling). The appetizer was pretty small so I wouldn't say it contributed greatly to our joint feeling of, "Oh shit, can't move."

Of course, you don't think we ended the night without dessert, do you? DO YOU? Nuh. You know me better than that. The chances of us not piling some sugary concoctions atop the mountains of savory protein, fat, and carb goo churning in our stomachs were as high as me ever failing to be amused by this bunny sticking its tongue out, which will NEVER FAIL TO AMUSE ME, EVER! Oh god, do you see that bunny? It's ripping out my organs and stomping on them repeatedly with pointy glass shards of cuteness! AGRHGARGHRH!! SWEET PAIN!

dessert trio

Uhh...so we waddled down to Sugar Sweet Sunshine and got some tasty treats (because Sugar Sweet Sunshine is capable of selling only tasty treats). Nancy got a chunk of pumpkin cake, Dave settled on a mini cheesecake, and I returned to the piggy pudding, the only dessert I've gotten twice so far in SSS.

piggy pudding

Ahhh, what do you see in this cross-section? Shortbread cookie crust, sweet cream cheese, chocolate pudding, whipped cream, and nuts. That feeling you just felt while reading that last sentence was of your body conjuring a few pounds out of nowhere and distributing it over your entire body. Swell! Despite all those fat-bomb ingredients, the dessert isn't actually that heavy. Per se. The cookie and the cream parts feel somewhat light. However, you will feel like a pig after eating it.

Of course, you can't go wrong with a combination like that (unless you're allergic to dairy, nuts, chocolate, or...um...), but for some reason it just didn't taste as good as the first time I ate it last summer. I think it's because I sampled Nancy's and Dave's desserts, which were sweeter, thus weakening the piggy pudding's flavor in comparison. Of course, there's always the chance that this batch just wasn't as good as the one I had before. [siiiiigh] However, I'd rather blame it on "too-many-desserts interference". Being the sugar freak that I am, I still ate the whole thing. I wouldn't object to eating a bucket of it if I didn't think that act may kill me/send me to hell.

Since Friday, I've eaten a lot. Unlike last Sunday, today wasn't spend getting better acquainted with my toilet bowl's topography (if you missed it, I was in a state of possibly food poisoning-induced puking-ness last week). I did pig out last night for my first Cantonese Chinese New Year dinner, but you'll have to hear about it later, or never if I'm lazy enough.

...so I don’t really know how to explain why I’m suddenly eating EVERYTHING, mainly consisting of foods HIGH IN CALORIC DENSITY.

Unless it’s the product of immaculate conception. But I kind of doubt that. God’s sense of humor can only go so far before it crosses the line between “Haha, good one, chief!” and “Haha…um…am I allowed to laugh or are you going to strike me dead now?”

When I got home from a 1+ hour trek from Bensonhurst (not so bad, since Diana was also suffering with me, not that that really distributes the frustration but I’m sure dying with someone else is better than dying alone…unless it’s especially painful and you have to watch their face as it writhes in all sorts of unspeakable anguish), that part of my brain that decides it wants sweets seemed to attack the other parts that regulate the cravings for sweets and…

zomg

...I subsequently dug into the “package of good stuff” that Sean gave me more than a week ago. I’m rather surprised it lasted that long with me barely chipping away at it, but I was sick last weekend resulting in a decreased appetite. I opened the 22-piece box of See’s candies and have so far eaten three. Or four? ...Yeah, it was four, dammit. The creamy peanut filling (edit) brown sugar buttercream (how the hell did I think it was peanut butter?) was the least aggreeable, but the chopped-nut covered toffee was great, as was another creamy nut-filled (edit) brown sugar buttercream (OH GOD, why is everything tasting like nuts?!) one, and the marzipan was pretty good (HAHA, THAT ONE IS MADE OF NUTS, I win). I ate a few of the cookies in the bottom left of the photo when I happily realized, “Holy crap, I have COOKIES!” (I doubt the cookies were as happy as I was). I ate one and a half of the Ghirardelli chocolate squares (they’re rather small, so I tasted half of the mint one to realize I didn’t like it enough to eat the entire thing; however, the caramelized almond one was very nice) and finally finished off the Richart chocolate squares I bought a few weeks ago (I can’t believe how long those lasted either, as that whole pack only weighed 1.75 ounces).

foods!

From this food trade with Kristen (I received the package the same day as i received Seans, leading to “way too much junk food in my kitchen”), I ate one and a half of the pink frosted cookies. Why one and a half? My original craving for sugar only lasted one cookie; biting into the second made me realize I could really just go for a loaf of bread, or something sans-frosting. However, I thought I could eat two! I THOUGHT I HAD THE POWER. Limits do exist in the world of “Robyn’s appetite”.

assorted baklawa

Wei sent me a 3 pound package of mixed baklawa from Shatila. While I had done rather well eating one a day at the most, this afternoon I ate two of the "finger" pastries (flaky filo dough rolled around ground cashews). Dude, this stuff is really good. I was under the impression that everything would be really sweet, but they're actually not. They're just sweet enough and lightly flavored. I've never had these exact pastries before and it's a shame they're not easier to come across. I remember seeing Middle Eastern bakeries in Bay Ridge but I was just roaming around by myself one Friday afternoon and wasn't adventurous enough to buy anything.

But not enough, I suppose. Besides everything I’m mentioned so far that I’ve stuffed in my mouth, I ate a vegetable bun, two persimmons, some of those TLC crackers (which are quite good, but I doubt I’d eat again because I never crave crackers), some leftover noodles that Diana gave me from last night’s dinner, and a sacrificial goat.

Where did this sugar craving come from? There’s obviously some kind of imbalance; maybe I’m full of yeast. Yeast like sugar. WHERE’S THE YEAST?! OHHH JESUS. (looks around)...nope, not there.

I’m just imbalanced in more ways than one. Physically, sometimes I feel like I have a hormonal imbalance, unless I’m actually balanced and everyone else is at fault. Hey, it’s possible. Waait…(looks at calendar)...

GAGHARHGAmrhaahr (mumble), I think my period is coming. Well. I guess that’s a reasonable explanation. Would that explain why I had to pee so much this morning that part of my dream last night actually involved feeling like my bladder was going to explode (yeah, my dreams are really dull), hence why I woke up at 10-something AM on a Sunday morning when I would usually lay in my bed comatose until the little hand goes past 12?

I have to admit, I get very few warning signs during my period. My mood doesn’t change and I don’t get any particularly weird cravings (you know I want sweets most of time). It comes, it goes, and it sucks, but I suppose I’d still rather me female than male, and I would never take drugs to artificially get rid of my period.

This isn’t much of a confession, but while I was on the raw food diet, I actually lost my period for a while. A few months, rather. While some people would be alarmed, I didn’t care; damn, I was really happy. There was probably something wrong with my hormones to mess up my period like that, but I didn’t feel sick, I wasn’t anywhere near being underweight, and my body functions were otherwise normal. (I don’t think I fit the bill for anything on this list at least). Anyway, that’s never going to happen again so there’s no use in being concerned about it. I’d be more concerned about getting cramps during my period, which I had no idea was “normal” until when in my 12th grade psychology class we were making up guides of advice for young students (or something like that) and everyone in my group (of females) agreed that having painkillers on hand during your period was a necessity. Someone please agree with me in that it shouldn’t be a necessity. I'm sure there are some people who will always be in pain no matter what they do, but not everyone is physically predisposed to having these problems. If you get bad cramps during your period and think there may be a part of your lifestyle worth making healthier, perhaps you should look into it. Of course, if you don't mind taking extraneous drugs, then it doesn't matter. (I happen to mind. If you ever need a drug as basic as aspirin or a salve as simple as hand cream, I won't be able to give you anything. Here, have some DENTAL FLOSS.)

Anyway, I’ve argued about some pretty stupid health-related matters before, which isn’t what I want this blog to dissolve into.

Uh. I got tagged by Adam, so I’m going to do this thing before I confuse any more male readers.

Seven things to do before I die

1. Be in a band and release an album, or just release one as a solo artist. (I highly doubt this will happen.)
2. Visit Antarctica. For the penguins.
3. Visit Iceland. For the…um, Iceland.
4. Visit Australia. Just because. Not like I’ve been there yet.
5. I haven’t been to Vietnam either.
6. Write a really funny book. Non-fiction. Prose. (I highly doubt this will happen either.)
7. I have another one but it’s pretty basic if you’re young, so I won’t even mention it. ...Actually I may have to clarify that. Um. Uh. ...Nevermind. It's an emotional thing.

Seven things I cannot do

1. Lie. I’d feel really guilty.
2. Speak up in class.
3. Eat worms. Or any bug for that matter. (Knowingly.)
4. Get enough sleep every day.
5. Develop a taste for wine or coffee.
6. Lose 20 pounds (considering my current diet).
7. Comfortably perform music in front of anyone. (I played guitar and sang just once in front of my Japanese class for a project. Wanted. To. Die.)
8. Oh jeez, I'm adding another one: Believe in myself. How lame is that? That should probably be number one on this list.

Seven things that attract me to blogging

1. Meeting cool people who don’t seem to be turned off by my strangeness.
2. Keeping track of all the places I’ve been to that I feel are worth sharing with others.
3. Talking about random crap.
4. Maybe sharpen my writing skills (actually, it might do the opposite…but at the very least, I may type faster).
5. Finding like-minded people who eat a crapload of food just like me.
6. Having an excuse to take photos of everything, before i eat it, half eaten, and afterwards.
7. Getting an excuse to eat out more.

Seven things I say most often

1. Crap.
2. Poop.
3. Like.
4. Huh?
5. What?
6. Mmmm…[insert food of choice]
7. Jesus.

Seven books I love

1. Books by Barbara Park *
2. Books by Louis Sacher *
3. Books by Gordon Korman *
4. Books by Jeffrey Steingarten
5. Books by Bill Bryson
6. Books by Dave Barry
7. Don’t you all love “The Giver” by Lois Lowry? Good.

[* I haven’t books by these authors in ages, but they were my favorites during my childhood.]

Seven movies/DVDs that I watch over and over again

1. Arggh…I’m not much of a movie person. If I watch anything over and over again, I’ll get sick of it. I’ll just say any Miyazaki movie will probably make me happy, but really, I could only watch “Princess Mononoke” or “Spirited Away” so many times.