The Girl Who Ate Everything

Corner Bistro

"This place was hard to find!"

"What? Naaah."

"Yes."

"Oops."

Diana probably wasn't very happy to navigate the unfamiliar area around Corner Bistro while being pelted with rain...but hey, she told me to make the recommendation. She asked for burgers? I GAVE HER BURGERS! Admittedly, the google map is a bit off; the restaurant is on the corner of West 4th and Jane, not randomly splodged on 8th Ave.

appetizer?

But first, an appetizer! Right across the street from Corner Bistro is Lilac Chocolates, which I had surprisingly never tried before, despite having passed it a few times. Diana wanted to check it out to kill some time while we were waiting for out other friend Ava to meet us...and to fulfill a craving for a dark chocolate almond bar. I wasn't particularly hungry, but the mousse roll sounded promising. A mousse roll is is exactly what it sounds like: mousse in roll form. Covered in chocolate. I was very happy with my mousse roll. Every time I say "mousse roll" though, I think of a moose rolling down a hill. Which is odd.

Yes, it's time for burgers.

The restaurant was larger than it appeared from the outside. The front room was full, except for a few seats at the bar, so we squeezed past the kitchen into another back room of scrawled-on wooden tables and sparse natural (and unnatural) lighting. We felt like the waiter probably hated us after we weren't ready to give our orders when he came by, but we failed to notice the menu hanging on the wall. Luckily, ordering is very simple as your choices are primarily burgers and alcohol. Ava and I went for bistro burgers, even though we weren't sure what the name entailed, and Diana got a grilled chicken sandwich. She just had to be different.

mm, burgers

"That's man's food," commented Diana upon seeing our burgers. Hehe. Yes. Well, now it's ROBYN'S FOOD! It's okay—I'm still full of female chromosomes.

Our burgers came with a thick meat slab, sliced onion (under the meat slab), American cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a pile of crispy bacon that neither Ava or I was particularly fond of. (Bacon and ham are my least favorite forms of pig meat. Sorry if that preference horrifies you.) All those ingredients piled together in between toasted buns didn't make for a burger I could fully get my mouth around, although I found that taking out the thick slice of tomato helped decreased the massiveness of it. (Raw tomatoes only work for me when combined with mozzerella and basil for some reason. Without anything else, raw tomato makes me feel gaggy.)

still moo-ing

My rare burger was fortunately cooked to my order, unlike Big T's. There was no gray to speak of, just a mass of soft pink innards that made me feel more carnivorous than I normally do. I could feel guilty about it, but...nah, I was just thinking about the tastiness and how fast I should eat it to prevent getting burger pee all over my hands.

While I thought the burger was awesome and better than many others I've had, it was missing this meaty taste whose smell alone would make my mouth water. Know what I mean? Meat smell! I mean, good, cooked meat smell. It's not something you'd bottle up and market to young women, but it's pretty enticing.

I really liked the fries, none of which were limp, some of which were so fried that they had reached potato chip-crunchiness. They reminded me of less salty McDonald's fries (although most things are less salty than McDonald's fries, maybe even salt itself). The tastiness of McDonald's without the injected beef/wheat/dairy flavor...gimme.

creamy frozen things

Naturally, after eating a ball of ground beef and fat-soaked potato sticks one craves ice cream. We awkwardly walked down 4th Street while trying to maneuver our umbrellas around the humans that were just standing around of all things. Move it! OR YOU'LL BE BROLLY-POKED!

I tried hazelnut, pistachio, corn (which, if you're wondering, tastes like corn of all things...it's good, really), and something else before deciding to get dulce de leche. The guy behind the counter probably thought I was a little nuts after I had indecisively stared at the case for so long and then went with a flavor I didn't even sample. Well. I am weird.

dulce de leche

This not-so-great photo will give you some idea of the texture (along with the previous photos of the ice cream tubs). Uber smooth to the max 5000 deluxe laser rainbow power etc. The flavor would've had to have been stronger for it to really impress me (am I too picky?), but the whipped cream-smooth texture was a winner. It was better than the first time I went there, when my tiramisu ice cream tasted a little too airy to me. This time it didn't taste especially dense or airy. Just...good. It's a little pricy at almost $4 for a small, but definitely worth checking out if you're in the area.

Lassi

Lassi

During Tuesday's lunch break, I went to Lassi with my co-workers, Tony and Jason. Lassi is a nicer than most hole-in-the-wall that specializes in...oh my god, guess! I know you can do it. I'll give you a gold star.

small lassi

Lassi, good job! (I lied about the gold star. If you couldn't figure out the answer, I'd be scared.)

Anyhoo, Lassi's lassis come in small and large. If you want a medium, you'll get a funny look. In this case, small really does meal small, especially for $3.50; that wouldn't even satisfy me as a pudding cup. My coconut lassi was pretty good, although admittedly I have almost nothing to compare it to since I think I've only had a mango lassi once in my life. The somewhat viscous drink tasted of yogurty tang with a slight coconut flavor. The sticker on the cup gave it a little more personality. IT'S BEEN BRANDED.

parathamathuhmuh

Since I rarely eat things with daikon in them, I was compelled to get the mooli, or daikon paratha. I loved the extra Japanese paper folding-style touch of folding the flap down to make a decorative band around the whole package. Because I'm unobservant, I didn't even notice at first that it wasn't any kind of special design, rather just the default silver, insulating paper wrapper honeycomb design. Little touches like that make the eating experience a wee bit better. "That food sucked, but hey, that wrapper was really somethin'."

griddled, mm

Paratha is an Indian flat bread stuffed with...stuff. It looks pretty flat, yet surprisingly they stuff a lot in there.

innards?

I dunno what a wazoo is, but the daikon is coming out of it. Every bit of the accompanying boondi raita (yoghurt sauce with chick pea dumplings) went towards flavoring my paratha since I found the spices in the daikon overpowering without the sauce. As for what the spices were, I have no freakin' clue; unfortunately, I'm very unfamiliar with Indian food. The spices weren't hot-spicy, but they felt like they may cause above-average gastric juice frothiness in your belly.

...That didn't make sense. Anyhoo, if you have any idea what I may have been tasting, let me know.

After consuming the entire paratha, I was stuffed. The flatness of the paratha may deceive you into think it's not a lot of food, but the density makes up for it. I think an entire shredded daikon family was shoved into the bread, ff such a thing exists.

Overall, it's a cute, clean, nicely designed little place (five seats, methinks, although due to space constrictions they had the foresight to put little bag hooks under the counter) where you can get a quick lunch for under $10. I'm not sure if I would return since I don't have much taste for paratha (I wouldn't get daikon again), nor am I much of a lassi drinker, but if you have a hankering for either (and you know you do!), stop by Lassi.

me fail bread? yes.

As much as I love bread (more than cookies, for god's sake), I've never made it from scratch all by my non-chef-like self. My family has a bread machine that we'd sometimes use when I was little, but I was never a fan of the uniformly block-shaped bread loaves that the machine would pop out. It didn't taste bad, it's just...something was lost. A soul?

I de-virginized my bread baking status last weekend by attempting to make focaccia. Only my disappointing lack of human strength would mix the ingredients together and smush them into a gluten-filled blob of processed wheat bound by water. I smooshed the dough over and over again while thinking, "Holy shit, I'm gonna eat this pasty blob? You could glue kittens together with this." And then I'd continue to knead in disgust, getting sticky dough film all over my hands. After thwaking the dough on the counter a gajillion more times, I figured it wasn't kneaded very well, but that I would continue with the "rise" step of breadmaking because I didn't really know what I was doing anyway.

Left in an oiled bowl for more than an hour, the dough merely spread out flat instead of rising into a cute, Kirby-esque blob. I knew that screaming, "RISE, YOU BASTARD!" wouldn't do anything, so I refrained from vocalizing my frustration at the inanimate dough wad.

I guess my yeast didn't activate. Um. Crap. My mum took half of the dough and offered to make scallion-esque pancakes. She portioned the dough, rolled up some wad-things and I helped fry them in olive oil. They tasted pretty good, although kind of sweet due to the added sugar...ye know, the sugar meant to feed the yeast that didn't want to live.

"bread

I baked the other half of the dough into a semi-retangular blob that surprisingly did rise in the slighest, teeniest bit, although not enough to resemble the texture of a nice, floofy focaccia. Straight out of the oven, the crust was painfully hard (possibly like hard tack, not that I've ever eaten it), but it softened after cooling down. The resulting product resembled focaccia, except with a density factor rivaling that of a black hole.

I googled just for you

Corner Bistro
331 W 4th St
New York, NY 10014

Lilac Chocolates
40 8th Ave
New York, NY 10014

Cones
272 Bleecker St
New York, NY 10014

Lassi
28 Greenwich Ave
New York, NY 10011

food related, kinda

Going to Kitchen Secrets: Bill Buford with Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain on June 21st at the NYPL in Bryant Park? I am! Weeee.

Pete's pancakey words of wisdom:

i believe the only people that don't like pancakes are the toothless. and it's probably not that they don't want to eat them, they just can't. pancakes depress the people without teeth.

Right on.

that shine in my eyes is my insanity

The Poofy pancake shirts are here! I emailed everyone with the shipping/payment details already (before I actually received the shirts). If you ordered one and didn't get my email, then...that's toooo bad.

I mean. You should email me. If you don't get back to me before Wednesday, I won't be able to ship your shirt until after I get back from Norway on the 16th.

Pimp My Snack, one of the most awesome websites ever, has been forced to change its name by Viacom:

On the 17th May 2006 we received a letter from legal representatives of Viacom International Inc. advising us that they consider the use of 'Pimp My Snack' to be a breach of their trademark application number E4279493 which covers usage of the words 'Pimp My', and also E3992724 for 'Pimp My Ride'.

Pimp That Snack is still a fine name, but seriously? Check out the letter on their illegally named site.

Viacom. Fucktards! Now instead of my snack being pimped, it'll be that snack. The world is coming to an end. I think that started when "pimp my" was trademarked.

"You're in good health."

"Really?"

"You're surprised?"

"Hm...I ate a lot of crap this year."

"Well, you did gain 28 pounds since your last visit."

Yesterday I went to my pediatrician's office (yeah, yeah, I'm 20) for a checkup in order to get my study abroad medical forms filled out. As I'm not fond of most medical practitioners, I hadn't been there in three years since the last time I had to go was to get into college. During that period I was at my skinniest (not that I was actually "skinny") post-puberty, while right now as my bum exerts pressure on this padded seat, I'm at my highest weight...ever.

Everrrrr.

Everrrrr.

...Oh well. I'm rather surprised that this isn't bothering me more (although, of course, I'm wondering how to lose some weight without cutting off any appendages). During sophomore year (as in, my first year as a transfer student studying food at NYU), I wanted to switch my major because I thought I couldn't handle the stress that food gave me. It sounds ridiculous now, but I actually went through the trouble (as in, I exerted this thing called "effort") of seeing an advisor in the communications department and getting a form to change my major until I realized...there wasn't much point. I was halfway through the food studies program; I may as well finish it.

And of course, today I eat everything without much guilt. That may or may not be a good thing. It's probably not a good thing.

On a related note, there's an article about being afraid of food at Skinny Daily Post:

There are much sadder things in the world, but really, really, really, we should not be afraid of food.

If we're afraid of it, that means it's still in charge. We give food the power. And then we can't enjoy its company any more. Can't enjoy all the good traditions and associations that is food's rightful place. Can't enjoy it as nourishment, as celebration, as communion. As gift.

It's important to keep those ideas in mind if you ever become afraid of food (although if you're reading this blog, I doubt you'll ever be in that situation). It's hard to avoid something you're afraid of if you kind of need it to live and if everyone else seems to be having a good time with it. When I dieted, I ignored the communal aspect of food. Don't do that; it's moronic.

As for communal eating, WHO WANTS TO MAKE A FOOD MOB!? Okay, not a large mob. A few people would like to meet up after Kitchen Secrets on June 21st. I'd rather meet beforehand, but it may be tough to squeeze in something after people get out of work. Hohum. Anyway, feel free to think about where to eat and whether or not you're that interested in meeting me. I WOULDN'T, HAR HAR.

oh my god, it's the sky!...wait, it's always there

On that note, I had a lovely time sitting in this beautiful outdoor park thing at the Hudson Hotel for Sam's NYC food blogger meet up. As we walked through the posh hotel lobby around to the park and saw a huge table of people-who-looked-like-food-bloggers, I turned to John and said, "Crap, I'm really late!...crap, I don't know how to socialize!" When we got to the table, I stood there awkwardly due to a brain blackout. A few seconds later, Meg came by and asked me if I knew where the food bloggers were. Do I give off a food blogger aura? If so, that's kind of cool!...unless the aura is a weird odor, in which case it's not so cool..

John and I swiped chairs from another table and plopped ourselves down at the end of the table. Since I'm a douche, I didn't meet everyone, especially those sitting mere feet away from me at the other end of the table. Ye know, it's just so hard to stand up and say hello. (Actually, this is very difficult for me to do.) ...Yes, me fail socialization. Here's a list of the people who were there (besides Sam and Fred!):

The Wednesday Chef, A Chicken in Every Granny Cart, אין מױל ארײן, A Finger in Every Pie, The Amateur Gourmet (plus his friend, Craig), The Food Section (plus his wife who runs Celebrity Babies and their baby daughter), Megnut, Prepare to Meet Your Bakerina, and Cookin' in the Cuse.

fooood!

Sam provided us with caloric dense treats and espressed worry over my lack of access to the sugar due to my location at the end of the table. Aw! :) Of course, I did end up eating a fair share of things, like two caramels, four (or five?) truffles, and a chocolate covered caramel shortbread cookie sandwich. Best dinner ever? Yes! Unless you're diabetic.

I mainly chatted with Craig ("Friend of a Food Blogger"), Josh, Danielle, John (my FoaFB) and of course, Sam! I didn't talk to Josh's and Danielle's baby daughter, Anya, but she spoke to the rest of us in the form of high-pitched elated gleefulness. ;) Aww....babiiiess...they're so freakin' happy. If you ever feel as sad as a skinny, wet, abandoned cat in a ditch who just evaded being run over by a truck, remember at that some point you were a cute, smiling baby and that everyone loved you. Even if they don't anymore.

....

Anyway! I'm bad at socializing. Considering how infrequently I do it, it's not a surprise. You know how college is supposed the time when people meet other people and do...stuff? I missed that memo. I have no problem meeting people one-on-one, but group situations are much more awkward for me. Unless I'm absolutely sure otherwise, my assumption is that no one really wants to talk to me. Also, I'm rarely one to approach others as another one of my assumptions is that I bother people. I'm not sure how I got into this mindset, but it's been there for years and won't come out, no matter how hard I scrub. [scrub scrub]

Maybe it'll just fade with time.

Thanks so much to Sam (HAPPYBIRTHDAYHAPPYBIRTHDAY!) for inviting me and organizing the get-together in such a funky hotel. Seriously, when we walked in it felt like...the future. In case anyone is wondering, the future has fluorescent green escalators and attractive waitresses who wear revealing clothing. Whoa! Okay.

Oh, food! I didn't forget...

the cupcake is miiiine

I met John at Burgers & Cupcakes for a day of Robyn-fooding. Since I wasn't very hungry, I just ate this cupcake. It's not nutritionally balanced, but neither am I! We're like twins, except I don't have a smooth lump of pink frosting on my head, nor am I made of soft vanilla butter cake. Also, I'm human, so being twins is biologically impossible. I hope.

The cupcake tasted fresh and inoffensive: not too sweet/unsweet, not too dry/moist. It sits at the nucleus of a cupcake...amoeba.

...That didn't make sense. I just wanted to say "nucleus" and "amoeba". Once you stop taking science classes, there really aren't enough opportunities to use those words.

salmon burger

John gave thumbs up to his salmon burger.

EAT MEAT, SUCKAZ!

I guess that guy would too.

holy moly

A hop on the 1 train brought us to Levain Bakery, also known as the Gateway to Cookie Heaven. As each cookie weighs 6 ounces and resembles a small boulder, this is not something you should eat by yourself. John and I shared a freshly baked chocolate chip walnut cookie (my favorite kind out of the four choices) whose cookie dough consistency spilled with melted, gooey chocolate chipness as I ripped off chunk after chunk. Shoving the warm pieces into our mouths a little faster that what's appropriate to sustain a comfortable digestive system resulted in fleeting cookie happiness. It was freakin' was awesome. I bought a few extra cookies to give to other friends.

After securing the cookie gifts, we stopped into Alice's Tea Cup about a block away where I bought a mini strawberry chocolate scone to eat later. We went back on the train to City Bakery so I could pick up a few more cookie gifts. And then...back on the train to go to Jacques Torres where I switched from cookie gifts to chocolate gifts.

I think we're gonna need more coffee

Although I work about a block away from Porto Rico, my lack of coffee interest must have caused my eyes to glaze over every time I walked by it. This place had so many open sacks of coffee beans that I could taste a film of coffee in every crevice of my mouth just from breathing the store's fumes. Jeebus. Oh, and it smelled a lot like coffee too. I bought a 1 pound bag as a gift for Morten (although since my mum thinks I should get more, I'm going back there today), a bag that will make everything in my suitcase smell like coffee when I get to Norway. If you like coffee, you'll definitely find something you like in this store. Or you can just stand there and get high from the coffee fumes. If you go on a Sunday afternoon, you will be smelling them for a looooong time as you wait in line to place your order.

And that's it. But wait! I got a new toy this weekend that will enhance your future blog reading experiences:

it's Bert!

Okay, it's not my brother standing in our yellow kitchen that will enhance your experience, but my NEW CAMERA that took this photo! That's right kiddies, I now have one of those digital SLR things that I'm not qualified to use. So far my photos are extremely unextraordinary (which I guess makes them...ordinary), but I'm working on it.

trees

That's part of my nonexistent backyard (plus my brother's friend's car in the driveway) that has been taken over by trees (actually I guess it's humans that have taken over the forest...but anyway). When people ask me if living in the city causes me to miss tree and other lovely natural things, I look at them quizzically and reply, "...No."

Ah, I'm going to Norway tomorrow! Fancy that.

RANDOM ADDENDUM!!!

NYC-ers, please help John find a place to live! OR ELSE HE'LL...LIVE IN A BOX. Okay, he won't ever get to that point, but he seriously needs an affordable place to live or else he's doomed. He's looking for places, but I figure I can reach a few trustworthy NYC-ers through this blog. If you or anyone you know has a cheap place to live around NYC available for rent/sublet/slave labor to a 38 year old guy (we realized this might be easier if he were a 20 year old girl, but time travel and sex changes can get tricky), contact me and I'll let him know. He's EXTREMELY cool, EXTREMELY harmless, and has the double platinum Robyn "seal of approval"! So. Yeah.

whoa

I'm too lazy to write anything very extensive, so I'll post photos and descriptions. But here's an overall description.

Obviously, Bergen is freakishly beautiful. Seriously...holy shizz. Cobblestone streets are adorable. Just about everything is clean and neat, aside from the other people who live in this building (if I didn't know what cat pee smelled like before, I do now!). My knees suck and I'm not good at walking down moutains. Brown cheese is tasty. Norway is nicer than anything I could imagine. I have amazing friends. I think I spent a few bucks attempting to use the payphone at the airport. Bergen is beautiful. I think I said that already.

walkin around

...Actually, I'm too lazy to describe photos. Just click on them. HOORAH. Diana and I spent most of the day with Morten and K�re. They are both very, very awesome.

I need a larger vocabluary, man.

Seriously though, do you think I would travel to Norway if I didn't think Morten and his friends were awesome? I knew they were. Some people find it hard to believe that you can sense this kind of awesomeness only though the Internet. YOU CAN. I wasn't kidding when I said Morten was a good friend. When I find people that I feel comfortable around, it's a big deal. For me.

wooden planky stuff

There were all these wooden sculpture thingies around H�konshallen, which is an old...place. Morten talked about its history and I nodded and went, "Mmhm." That's what I do.

goin up

We went up the side of this mountain on the Floibanen (or the cable car of awesomness) that was so quiet it made more noise when it was stopping than when it was moving. ...Yeah. And after we reached the top and I had taken those photos looking over the city...

goin down

...We walked back down. Taking many shortcuts. Involving carefully stepping on rocks at steep angles so that you don't kill yourself. As you can see due to my typing of this entry, I didn't kill myself, but my knees felt like they were under more pressure than normally, since normally they're...not. I'M FROM SURBURBIAAAA! My body is a noodle.

vegetation

Diana is chewing on this plant that Morten said tasted like lemon. ...Yup, it does. IT IS NOT TASTY. LIIIESS!! I chewed it and went, "Blechch ahhhdhdmuhflfuhf I see jesus". (Alright, it wasn't that bad.) We passed a ginormous patch of wild rhubarb, so Morten pulled one up to demonstrate the plant's hugeness.

scenes from the grocery store

Of course, I was excited to take photos of various things at the grocery store. LIKE TUBE BACON. I'm not sure what the pizza sauce is about.

makin bread

Morten made rolls for a midnight snack (which means he started making it houuurrrs before). I did nothing to help since, as you may recall, my bread making skills involve killing yeast, resulting in brick-like slabs of bread. Which we didn't want.

I didn't take photos of the finish product. [gasp] We ate the bread at around midnight while watching "The 40 Year Old Virgin", which we rented from 7-11 (because...you can rent DVDs there). It was delicious. Really. Damn. Tasty. We ate it with butter, brown cheese (which is sweet, like caramel mixed with cheese, and thus Robyn-approved) and strawberry-rhubarb jam.

Through the skylight in the wee hours of the morning I could see the faintly lit sky from the sun that refuses to go down. It's. Awesome. To always have some light.

walkin around

I really like it here. And it's only been one day.

I think we're gonna need more toast

The Norwegian day starts with toast. It's a good start.

Actually, my Norwegian day started with lung failure. Although I went to bed at 4 or 5 AM, I woke up around 9:30 (bust out those math skills to find out how sleep deprived I must be) due to having difficulty getting oxygen into my system. My asthma isn't that bad, but it's bad enough to wake me up. A few hacks and sips of tap water later, I was fresh as an asthmatic daisy!

Okay, maybe not. At least our "toast with stuff spread on it" breakfast (which was more like lunch since it was past 11 AM) made me feel better. I simply splodged fig jam on mine, which is probably the closest thing to fruit I've eaten since I've been in Norway. Oops. For reasons that you could probably figure out on your own, I don't think I'm ingesting enough fiber here.

fishies!...that are dead

Soon after the toast massacre, Morten, Diana and I went to the fish market by the harbor. Mmm, different kind of massacre!

meats of the sea

Despite being surrounded by fin fish and shelfish and ...whale (the stuff that looks black), the market didn't smell seafoody. Or maybe my nose wasn't working. They also had tanks of crabs and clams, piles of shrimp, ginormous crayfish, and cute little seafood salad-filled sandwiches. Besides seafood, the market also sells preseved meats (mm, reindeer!), tourist stuff (old fashion Norwegian-made sweaters that no one really wears, reindeer skins and horns, and t-shirts that said, "I came to Norway and all I got was this stupid"...okay, not that), jams (I'll have to pick up at least one of those), and...well, that was mainly it. I'm unfortunately very unfamiliar with food of the sea. Morten and Diana knew a lot more than I did at least. This is what I get for not growing up in a family with little food-prep history.

the claaaaw

We shared a crab claw from the market that Morten smashed into edibility on the stone seat. Mmm, fresh claw meat. It's quite good. (I'm not going to describe to you what crab tastes like. Hopefully you already know.) I wouldn't necessarily crave it, but I wouldn't refuse it if someone offered it to me, freshly smashed.

people!

What's with all these people just sitting around on this beautiful day? ...Oh. Yes, the loveliness of the weather was reflected in the perfectly cloudless blue-sky and mild weather.

it was fish at some point

After perusing some food shops that had large chunks of meat, we went to S�strene Hagelin for some fish cakes (fiskekake). I can't say the idea of a Norwegian fish cake sounds very foreign to me after growing up with the Chinese and Japanese versions, although it's not exactly the same either. In Asian cuisine, I've usually eaten boiled fish cakes as part of a soup. The ones we tried were like flat fish patties that had been lightly fried. There are plenty of free handi-wipes available at the counter, which become useful after your fingers get covered in oil as you eat the fish cake. Mm...me likey. Light, kinda spongey, but not as springy as Chinese/Japanese fish cakes. If that makes any sense to you, then thats great, as I have no other way to describe it.

small lung

We walked by the small lung lake (really, it's called "Lille Lungegardsvann", and there's a big lung...I think they used to be connected) where Morten pointed out the towering concrete block in the distance that could be mistaken as a prison, but is actually Bergen's main government building, or something to that effect. Yeah, it looks quite sunny and gleeful. Hats off to the architect.

smell that? it's the scent of burnin' wheaty happiness!

After much wandering around somewhere that I can't remember, we ended up in a mall where I was instantly drawn to Baker Brun. No surprise, eh? Morten bought a loaf of some kind of dark whole grain bread (...yeah, that wasn't a very helpful description) and I went with a cinnamon roll of mass deliciousness.

mm, sugarrr

I shared the duty of unraveling the soft, sweet bread with Diana. Mm mmm mmmm mm etc.

flavored water and juice cartons

I tried some flavored water. Not that I've never had flavored water before, but I tend to just go with the original flavor of two hydrogen atoms attached to an oxygen atom. The impression I got from flavored water was that it was like drinking an aroma. Of course, arom has a lot to do with taste, but...that's my description and I'm sticking to it. I didn't try the juice cartons, but I thought they were cute. Overall, juice doesn't seem to come in cartons as large as American ones (which is the same thing in Taipei...resulting in my ability to go through multiple cartons of juice in one night), although the ones in the photo seem more like a single-use type thing.

bunnnniiiies!!!!

After a failed attempt to visit the Lys�en Museum, we went to this mini animal farm-type thing seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It was kind of deserted human-wise, but animal-wise there were goats, horses, ducks, a peacock (seemed kinda random...or not), chickens, a donkey, sheep, and LOOK, BUNNIES, BUNNIIIES!!! I mean. Bunnies are cute.

foodstuffs!

We drove to a mall to buy some foodstuffs at Safari Supermarket. Apparently, Anne spotted me there, a coincidence so downright cool/freaky that I JUST DON'T GET IT, I DON'T. Think of all the things that had to be in perfect timing for that to work out. THINK! YES! OH GOD, my skull tingles. If Anne had said anything to me, that would've been the first time that I ever encountered a food blog reader randomly in public! Anywhere! I think I'll count it anyway.

...Uh. So, back to the food. There was when I first saw brown cheese singles (although not quite as scary as molded Kraft cheese singles since the brown cheese slices weren't individually wrapped in plastic) and a funky dry, porous (or maybe granular as wikipedia says) cheese called gamalost. Literally "old cheese", it's texture was unlike any other cheese's I had ever seen. Innnteresting?

"Morten, what's this?"

"Oh...that's the only cheese I don't like."

Wow. That's gotta suck.

fresh herbs

Maybe I'm deprived, but I don't think I've ever seen a section of herbs at a supermarket where all the herbs were actually planted in pots. They tend to come in little plastic containers where I come from (...Jersey). Besides that they looked nice, I stuck my nose in a few pots and took deep whiffs to come to the conclusion that they were nice 'n fresh. Or they at least looked and smelled good.

candy rack

I raided the candy rack. Yes'm. It's kind of funny that I find non-American candy so appealing since I don't eat much American candy. I don't eat much candy in general, but American chocolate bars rather bore me also. However, slap on an unfamiliar name and I'm all over it. I tried Daim and found it to be a lot like the chocolate covered toffee Skor bar, if not almost the same thing. But Daim seems cooler since I've never seen it in the US. Kvikk Lunsj (whose bold, simple packaging I really love for whatever reason) is just like Kit Kat, but tastes just slightly different. Maybe the chocolate is milkier. Or the wafers are...different. Of course it's not the same exact thing as a Kit Kat. IT'S COOLER BECAUSE IT'S NORWEGIAN. (It's also owned by Kraft though, so...that might lessen the coolness.)

extra salty? hot damn!

When Morten saw me taking this photo of salty licorice flavored extra gum, he asked if we had the same thing in the US. ...Nuh, don't think so. I guess that's just a Scandinavian thing. (I've never been a fan of licorice.) He bought a pack and let me try a piece, which instead of being a flat, foiled-wrapped strip came in the form of a giant elongated chiclet. Seems like most gum comes in that form instead of a short, floppy ribbon. Why not, I guess? Anyway, salty licorice tastes about as good as it sounds (although it doesn't taste that salty); it's not horrible, but I'll gladly refrain from ever eating it again. If I had the choice between salty licorice gum and raw tomatoes though, I'd choose the gum. Yipes.

the door is for freakishly tall people

At some point we arrived back home, which is on the third floor of what looks like a two-story building on the outside...because this apartment is stuffed under the roof, hence why the room Diana and I are staying in has a ceiling that slopes downward and has a skylight. It's pretty awesome.

is it sammich time?

Morten made the three of us open faced sandwiches for lunch/dinner (lunch at 6:30 PM). I tried to help cook the scrambled eggs, but...well, I suck and my stirring abilities are not so hot. I relenquished the egg stirring task to Morten and did something else, like take these photos. Oh, isn't Morten's shirt awesome? It's very stylin'. I wonder where he got it from. [cough hack wheeze]

the sandwiches are coming!

Morten asked if I ate my sandwiches closed. Closed is usually the default choice for me, with "open" coming along on rare occasions. If Norwegians like their sandwiches open, well then, I will eat my sandwich open. On each slice of buttered toast he put down a lettuce leaf liner topped with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on one slice and smoked mackerel and cucumber slices on the other.

So. Freakin'. Awesome. Really. This is damn tasty stuff if you like smoked fish. (And if you don't like smoked fish...sucks for you.) Why haven't I ever made anything that simple? Surely these sandwich combinations are no secret...ARE THEY? Although I may prefer them closed in the future, I'll stick to the open sandwich structure for a while. Ye know, for authenticity. Um.

We ate dinner at midnight. IT WAS SO GOOD. But. I'll talk about it later. Be excited!

[I'm falling behind terribly because editing photos from my new camera takes a gajillion times longer than with the old one. These entries are more abbreviated than I'd prefer.]

food time!

On Saturday, Diana, Morten, Giso (Morten's girlfriend) and I went to Cafe Aura for a lunch/breakfast type thing. Do I see sandwiches on the menu?

mm, sandwich time

YES. We all got sandwiches. For no particular reason, I went for the shrimp salad sandwich on an narrow baguette that could've been the width of someone's finger. I mean, if the dude's finger were really fat. The construction of the sandwich didn't make it something you could easily eat without the use of a fork and knife, but...hey, we had forks and knives, so I guess that worked out. The sandwich tasted like awesome due to the soft bread being slathered in copious amounts of butter. That'll do it. As for what the sandwich tasted like...um...shrimp? Yeah, that's helpful.

ham & cheese

Diana's ham & cheese sandwich looked good too. Except I don't really like ham. THAT'S JUST THE WAY I AM, OKAY?!

foodstuffs

After roaming around non-food shopping for a bit, we went to Kjottbasaren for some...food shopping. Look, meats! And stuffs! They also have ice cream and a bakery. Who cares about the other stuff, right? RIGHT!

mm, rolled up stuff

Actually, this lefse stuff is pretty awesome. It looks like a wrap, but it's more like a crepe. ...But it's not a crepe. It's kinda like cake. ...But it's not cake. It kind of tastes like cheesecake, but not. Um. It's got a thin layer of sweet buttery cream in it and I want to smuggle a case of this back home.

(These descriptions...they're digging deeper into horrible-ness.)

random!

Diana and I roamed around aimlessly, resulting in these random photos. THEY ARE NOT FOOD RELATED. Buildings are pretty and colorful, eh? We stumbled upon a great little music shop called Apollon where I blew some moolah on CDs (to be exact, Hakan Hellstrom and Professor Pez, if those names mean anything to you). They had a Magnet single on display and they had some Kapten Kaliber records! Wee! Cool! Just agree with me.

moolah

For no particular reason, here's some moolah. I didn't meat to exchange my bills into rolls of heavy 1 kr coins, but that's what happened at the airport where I couldn't read the instructions on the machine. I was horrified when the rolls thunked out, condemning me to lugging around a mountain of metal in my bag. Thankfully, I traded these rolls with Giso for bills of flat un-doom since she needed the coins for her job. I AM FREE OF THE SECOND TO LOWEST DEMOMINATION. (The lowest is a half kr, which isn't that useful.)

street

I'm not sure what order I'm going in now, but it's definiyely not chronological. Here's the street around the corner from the apartment. It's pretty.

beige food!

Here's the dinner Morten prepared on Friday night. Fish! Taters! White asparagus! Buttery sauce! I ate a crapload.

pizza?

I think this is from Saturday. Morten made pizza and it was pretty good. (Just my preference though: I would've liked a chewier crust.) The biggest problem was the pizza's refusal to detach itself from the parchment paper majiggy, resulting in hacking at it with a spatula majiggy.

...I need a larger vocabulary.

waffles holy shizz!

Where can you get a waffle stack? At the top of Mount Ulriken! I suppose there are other more easily accessible places to get waffles, but the view doesn't get much better than this:

double holy shizz!

Ye-yuh. If I had know that Morten, K�re, Diana and I be walking back down the moutain to the apartment from this point that we had reached by bus and cable car (in other words, it was hella far), I may not have felt so happy. But for now, the waffles placated me.

waffle = yum

Someone inquired about the lack of "Robyn stuffing her face" photos. HERE YOU GO. Happy now? Good.

Now sit back and watch as the mountain proceeded to bitch slap every muscle in my body for the next 4.5 hours.

blinded by the nature

Oh dear lord. Now I know how Frodo and Sam felt when they were climbing through...that place with all the rocks. You saw the movie, right? Norway is totally Middle Earth. Or a part of it.

waterrr!

Every now and then we'd come across random lakes and whatnot.

random snow piles

There were also random piles of snow. In the above photo you can make out a tiny Morten running back with some snowballs. Global warming will eradicate the snow in due time. HEEHEE. We're doomed.

I gotta walk down...where?

While Morten, K�re, and Diana practically skipped over the rocks and down the mountain as though we weren't fragile bipedal humans going down a deathly rocky moutainside, I lagged way behind like a disabled puppy left for the vultures. Not that they actually left me behind, just that I was very slow. Mentally slow, physically slow...da-yum, what else can Robyn do? HOHOHO! My slowness is unstoppable, which means I myself am...um, very stoppable. Unless I were to accidentally trip on a rock and roll down the mountain, in which case I'd just keep on goin' until a large rock or tree broke my fall and every bone in my body.

Anyway, we had to get down the mountain side taking the steep rocky shortcut, which Morten later admitted was more of a "funcut" since time-wise, not much was actually cut. Have you ever heard of a funcut? I think this one of those funny Norwegian things, like bacon cheese in a tube.

ah...the view

We eventually took a break and sat on some bushes while noshing on apples. I can't say that's something I'll ever get to do again. We really just plopped our bums down and stared at the surroundings. Like whoaa. Like whaaa. Like...

:O

...Holy crap, did we come from up there? I guess so. Hm.

where'd all these trees come from?!

At some point the rocky, grassy, bushy terrain turned into an army of perfectly straight trees. I felt a tinge of hope...we would see citivlization soon! Kinda!

hydration

Morten filled my and Diana's water bottles from this stream. Nice, eh? That was some tasty water.

Although I don't think I would ever voluntarily climb down a mountain again, I'm really glad I was forced to do it. I probably looked like hell during the entire hike while lugging around my bag and an unecessary jacket, and I sounded like...well, not a whole lot since I chose to refrain from speaking excessively to conserve energy that I needed to concentrate on not falling down/dying. I felt bad for being a slow-poke, but no one else seemed to mind that much. They were probably afraid that I would fall down and die.

It was cool. Really. I owe Morten a bagillion something-or-others for all the cool experiences he's exposed me to. Now I can tell people that I walked down a mountain. I didn't even need my inhaler! Yeeeehaw!!!!

And those were two days in a nutshell. My knees are in pain right now.

[Sorry these entries aren't better. Editing hundreds of photos with my new camera can become kind of a bitch. And...I am on vacation after all. The good thing about taking a gazillion photos is that I can refer to them when I inevitably forget what I did less than 24 hours ago.]

look, there's a vat of butter!

On Sunday evening after the hike of a million wheezes (in all honesty, it wasn't thaaaat horrible; I emphasized the pain to make it more comical), Morten brought Diana and me to his family's house for homemade food that didn't consist of open-faced sandwiches. His father made a bacalao (dried codfish) dish that included tomatoes, onions, peppers, and potatoes. And maybe something else. Altogether, you end up with a satisfying saucy stew that doesn't require any extras, although in this case we had the choice of bread, bread, and...oh, I can't put my finger on it. [scratches head] Oh my god, I think it was bread! YES! And don't forget the vat of softened butter.

dessert

For dessert we had homegrown rhubart tart (the rhubarb part, that is...because the last time I checked, tart didn't grow on stuff) and vanilla ice cream. Morten's father also gave Diana and me shots of...something. To aid our digestion. And by "aid our digestion" I mean "make small fires in our digestive tracts". Of course, the tart tasted slightly tart, and the ice cream was cold (who would've thought!), while the alcohol...well. After knocking that back, I felt like I had swallowed a chunk of Satan's soul that started writhing madly in my belly. And then two seconds later, it died. I dampened the churning of my Satan-filled stomach with more ice cream.

So. That was an awesome dinner. Many thanks to Morten's family for treating us random Internet friends with yummy food...and shots.

lunching!

On Monday, Morten made us more open faced sandwiches of lettuce and fish combined in tasty harmony. These things are a hit with the weegies ("weegies" is my new favorite word for "Norwegians" as taken from Jenny Blake). He also gave us bowls of blueberries from his father's home (frozen from last year's batch, as this year's blueberries haven't appeared yet) mixed with milk for something that was like cereal in milk topped with fruit, but without the cereal. So I guess it's not like that. But. Um. ...Yeah. It's yummy, you should try it! ALL THE WEEGIES ARE DOIN' IT.

PENGUINS!

We went to the aquarium and saw PENGUINS! HEEHEE, SEE THE PENGUINS?! AREN'T THEY SO CUTE AND FAT AND STUFF?!?!?! YESSS! HEHEHEHE, HEHEHE, HEHE...yeah, I really like penguins.

We also saw fish and other things that aren't as cute as penguins. Our primary comments about the fish were, "That tastes good," and "Mm...that also tastes good." Methinks that the point of the aquarium isn't to pick out your dinner, but they did promote the idea that the ocean is the foodbowl of the future, so...maybe that is the point.

parking garage

This parking garage was in a mountain. ISN'T THAT COOL? Kinda? Compared to just about all other parking garages I've been in, this on was especially neat and un-smelly. Who would think that vents could be so useful? Another cool thing they have in Norway that is really useful are heated floors in the bathroom so that you're not shocked into consciousness first thing in the morning by floors that have seemingly been replaced by ice. Feel toasty while you poop!

various baked goods

Morten brought us to Torggatens Konditori for some cakey goodness. Bergen's cake specialty that is supposedly a part of every one of their holidays is the White Lady (top left photo), a multi-tiered sponge and berry cream cake on a macaroon base blanketed with a thin layer of marzipan. My cake also had an orange blobby fruit on it whose name I didn't know.

innards shot!

While I liked the cake overall (how couldn't I?), my favorite part was actually the macaroon base. The marzipan layer isn't the easiest thing to smush through with a fork compared to the cake and cream parts, which may squish out as you try to cut off a piece. If you don't live in Bergen, I guess the only way to get this cake is to make it yourself. If I tried, my version wouldn't be nearly as beautiful as this one. It'd be like the mutated cousin twice-removed, banished to the upstairs attic away from the prying eyes of neighbors and...any other lifeforms. Even the squirrels.

boat time

Later in the day after checking out Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum, we went boating! For hours! To catch fish! And kill the fish! And eat the fish! And pee in the woods!

humans on the boat, oh god!

Morten, Giso, Diana and I went on Captain K�re's boat around...well, I don't really know where we were, but as you can see it was very pretty. While boating around wherever it was that we were, we passed a bunch of summer houses of questionable accessibility from civilization owned by people who probably had too much money. But hey, we have a boat! We're awesome!

goin' fishing

At some point Morten passed me the fishing line and told me to fish. I looked at him like he was crazy (which, admittedly, is usually how I look at him); "I do wuh?" My only meager experience with fishing involved a pole, while here we just had a thick fishing line wrapped around a...thingy. Morten unraveled the line and told me to let the line reach the bottom and then bop the line up and down to entice the dumb fish. Surprisingly, one latched on really quickly; he must've been pretty stupid. I declared victory.

it's brain pokin' time!

The fish was less victorious. I don't think Morten really expected me to impale the fish with the knife, but he did offer the task to me. Thanks, but no thanks. As I do find them quite tasty, maybe I'll try to kill a fish someday. In the future. The far off future when I've already died and don't have to skillfully shove sharp metal objects into tiny fish brains and watch their eyes bleed. Some time after the fish was beheaded, gutted and beyond dead, its remains spasmed for a disturbingly long period due to some leftover muscular...thingy thingy. You know what I mean, right? Either that or it was possessed by some angry fish demons. Giso also caught a fish, but when Diana tried she ended up catching the floor of the sea. :'( Twice.

like gilligan's island, but not an island, and with less annoying people

We eventually docked in a beautiful secluded camping area (equipped with a water pump, campfire, and outhouse) to feast on corn and the freshest fish that I'll ever eat. AWESOME.

cookin' stuff

But making the food more palatable takes some work. First, ye gotta find some wood. And making a fire helps. (Morten took the easy way out and used a lighter.) And then ye gotta find more wood. And throw it into the burning pile of wood to make a fire that Satan would be proud of. After that's all taken care of and you've wrapped your food in a protective layer of aluminum foil, toss those suckers (or carefully lower them with sticks) into the fire and watch em buuurn!....but ye know, take them out before they've completely transformed into atomic number 6.

better than a microwave

The corn was plump, juicy, and—this is for Morten—luscious.

...Nah, it wasn't luscious, but it was the best corn I've had in a long time. The fish, simply seasoned in salt and lemon juice, seeped with delicious...um, fish liquids. [scratches head] It was perfectly cooked, as far as I could tell.

dig in

The experience of cooking and eating so close to nature without excessive culinary accoutrements in the company of people who fit in the top 5% of the worldwide awesome population is a much more enjoyable and memorable experience than most others involving food. Screw restaurants, let's just kill our own fish and toss it into a fire! As long as there are other competant people around, at least.

someone poked a hole in the sky

Afer 10 PM, the sky was still bright with the light from the semi-setting sun. Few settings are as relaxing as this.

...Oh well.

On that note, I have one full day left here. Crap.

I actually have bought two tubes of tubed bacon cheese and a block of brown cheese for those who want it (not sure how serious you guys were). Methinks that stuff won't ship very well. Also, thanks for leaving comments on my entries, even if they're not the most fun to read. I've become too lazy to reply to all the comments (hell, I'm also too lazy to write the entries!), but hopefully that'll continue when I get back home. It's sad to think that I've been here for a week already! Nooo!!!

I know you like commentary, but...

colors

sitting by the sea

nightlife

Yiha! [taken by Morten]

break time [taken by Diana]

fishies

sleepy [taken by Morten]

Morten loves the swings [taken by Diana]

expanding our musical horizons

I like candy

patriotic (but we're not from Norway, we're from Bergen!)

It's very late, so this will be my last post in Norway. I'm about to do that thing where I reflect on my vacation and think about how awesome it was. If that kind of thing bores you, then you may move on to partipating in non-blog reading activities.

This was the best vacation I've ever been on and I don't see how anything can top it soon. Food, friends, and new experiences all combined into a great big chunk of awesomeness. It was my first time traveling for a long period of time with a friend sans-adult supervision, whether in or out of the country. I'll admit that after a while I felt weird not being able to understand 99% of the conversations around me, but it was cool. Too bad I can't learn Norwegian through auditory osmosis.

Morten is by far the coolest host ever. Everrrr. There was no doubt in my mind that he wouldn't be as good of a friend in real life as he has been online for the past five of so years that I've known him. Hopefully it wasn't too much of a disappointment to meet me in bodily form. I'll acknowledge that I'm much more shy in real life than how I may appear in this blog; it's not really apparent if you only meet me one-on-one. I'll also acknowledge that I'm weird, loud, annoying, and not as helpful as I should be. Overall, I have a gajillion faults and I'm really lucky to know someone like Morten who doesn't have all those faults.

Giso is also an awesome host—Diana and I (semi-random people from the INTERNETS) did stay in her apartment after all! Although I didn't get to know her very well, I didn't need to be around her for long to know that she embodies all kinds of awesome. (You can feel the vibes!) Morten already knows this, but he's lucky to have her. ;)

K�re! What a wonderfully funny and friendly guy. I don't know if I've ever met anyone who looked and sounded so smiley-happy all the time. If you met him, you would <3 him too.

Diana...well, of course she's cool. Why else would I want her to come to Norway with me?!

Okay, I'm really tired. I wish I could write something better, but the old neurotransmitters are getting lethargic. Overall, Bergen is awesome, weegies are awesome, and despite that I don't deserve to, I know way too many off-the-chart awesome people. I miss this place already.

This is all I know how to say, so...to everything and everyone that made this trip possible, tusen takk.

Back home.

sniffle

:'( My heart aches for Bergen.

The flight home went well (look ma, no crashing!) and the meal from KLM on the Amsterdam to NYC route was surprisingly good. (Keep in mind that I've eate a gajillion TV dinners in my life, thus have probably tasted some of the worst stuff that can be legally passed off as "food" out there.) Amazingly, I didn't take a photo of my meal, but I'll try to describe it to you. Main dish of swirly multicolored pasta topped with some tomato sauce and cheese, side salad of smoked turkey, chopped cucumber and black sesame (I really liked the salad!), dessert of a slightly tart mousse fruit cake, and a really good fresh tasting pillow-shaped bread roll with a thin, chewy crust and softer, chewy innards. Man, that bread...

[If you're not already familiar with it, be sure to check out AirlineMeals.net.]

But now, back to fooding in Norway. I only ate out a few times since 1) making stuff at home is funner and 2) making stuff at home is cheaper, but those few times we went out were great. I checked my account this morning to see how much money I actually took out in USD and it looks as though I spent more than $600 over about a week on...something. Weegie life. I obviously didn't spend money on anything very extravagant (besides that penguin farm...damn impulse buys), and I didn't even have to pay for my accomodations. We did split the cost of a rental car, which wasn't bad for about $100 out of my budget. Overall, if you visit Norway and plan to do things like...eat, ride on cable cars, visit museums, Rent-A-Wreck, and buy more jam than you need, then be sure to put buttloads of moolah into your bank account so you can ATM those kroners like crazy.

warning: excessively tall door

On Tuesday night, Diana, Morten and I ate dinner at B�lgen & Moi, a sleek and casual restaurant whose Bergen location (there's a handful of them throughout Norway) is smooshed inside the same building as the Bergen Art Museum.

mm, right angles

The interior felt modern and...clean. Simple. Bold. Bright. Comfortable. Scandinavian? Although you couldn't actually see much through it, the narrow fluorescent green window looking into the kitchen was a neat touch that gave a splash of color to the room and broke the monotony of the gray wall. The doors to the kitchen quietly swooshed opened automatically like something out of Star Trek, which I don't think is something I've ever seen in a restaurant. "OH MY GOD, THE DOORS OPEN BY THEMSELVES!" I know this amazing display of the latest in door technology is already in place in stores around the world, but it looked cooler in a restaurant than at 7-11.

my burger exploded

Morten recommended the burger, which is simply described on the menu as "Burger with cheese, bacon, crispy potatos and home-made bun." At 149 kr (about $24), it was probably the most expensive burger I ever had, although it's not very expensive if you live in Norway. Morten said it'd be large without going into the specifics of it being so large that no one could reasonably eat it with their hands, or pick it up for that matter. The only way to keep it from splodging everywhere while attempting to eat it was to leave it impaled on a long skewer. Even then, the burger layers shifted over time like tectonic plates.

Mmm...burger mountain. All for me!!!

chipping away at the burger

My first problem was cutting through the bread...as in, I couldn't. I'm not sure what kind of bread it was, but the texture was chewy, soft, and strong enough to hold up to the slab of meat covered in various stuffs smooshed inside. Mmm, good bun. From top the bottom, the burger went something like bun, mayo spread, cheese-n-bacon blanket, meat slab, tomato slices, side salad, tomato-based sauce, bun. The peripheral potato chunks, while not very crispy as the menu described, were very tasty. Like. Potatoes. I dragged them through the mayo and tomato sauce for opimum deliciousness. The burger part was unlike any other burger I've ever had. For lack of a better description, it actually reminded me of meatloaf, I suppose because of the seasonings mixed into the patty. It wasn't like one of those almost raw cow, purely meat-tasting burgers that I like to ingest so much (against the warnings of food sanitation commitees everywhere), but I still enjoyed it. I managed to eat most of my dish before the warning signs of passing out set in.

I love a good slab of butter

The complimentary bread plate was awesomely soft and fresh. Diana easily breezed through her ginormous bowl of mussels (which was listed on the menu as being appropriate for two people, haha!) and Morten ate...what looks like meat and veggies and stuff arranged in a pretty manner.

The service took a smidge longer than Morten expected, thus digging into his critical "World Cup watching time", but it wasn't too bad. ;) We all liked our food and I emerged stuffed and happy. Good times!

Zen Cafe Bar

On Wednesday, Morten, Giso, K�re, Diana and I ate at Zen Cafe Bar, an inexpensive, primarily Vietnamese eatery. Or somewhat Vietnamese? You pay and order at the counter and wait for them to bring your food over. It doesn't take long for most of the food to arrive, unless you're K�re, in which case it will. (It seems like they kinda forgot that he ordered pho, resulting in him having to watch the rest of us eat and ponder his bad luck while his stomach remained empty.)

fried noods

I don't remember the exact name of what I ordered, but I'll call it "noods and stuff". To be more specific, springly pan-fried noodles, mung bean sprouts, broccoli florets, shredded cabbage, chopped pepper, sliced carrot, sliced beef, and...[squints]...pepper. Most of the dishes were generously topped with white pepper, which I actually really liked. I ATE IT ALL. Certainly you're not surprised.

other dishes

Everyone else seemed to like their food. Spring rolls, wonton noodle soup, steak thing, and the pho that almost didn't exist. What's for dessert?

mm, carameled

If I had been hungrier, I would've wanted to eat Morten's fried bananas and vanilla ice cream. It's times like that when I think, "Why did I even bother eating real food? I SHOULD'VE JUST GONE FOR DESSERT!" You have to be reasonable sometimes, I guess.

fruktbar

We stopped into this cute, sunny little smoothie place called fruktbar. I wasn't in the mood for a smoothie, but I eyed Diana's mango banana smoothie while thinking, "Well, if I did want a smoothie, I'd really enjoy that one."

banana spread

Out of curiosity, I tried the questionable tasty Banos banana spread, which is like mashed bananas...in a plastic cup. With added sugar. That smells like baby food. But doesn't taste as good. I didn't think Banos tasted bad, just that it didn't taste good enough for me to think fondly of the next time I may ingest it. If it has anything going for it, it's that the simple yellow design of the package, like many other foodstuffs in Norway, is quite cute.

waffles!

On Wednesday night I helped make waffle batter!...which means I didn't do much. Um. But I did buy eggs! Yahoo! There was so much leftover batter (since we made enough to bathe a cat in) that Morten made a huge stack of the thin, golden, heart-shaped waffles the next morning, from which I ate five before feeling like I my stomach was going to pop.

mm, snack time!

On Thursday after shopping around the main square, Morten, Diana and I carbed ourselves at Godt Br�d, an organic bakery chain. While Morten and Diana ordered sandwiches, I was still overly waffled and only wanted to try a sweet blueberry jam and cream filled roll and their hot chocolate. I've never had hot chocolate before that came as frothy hot milk poured on top of chocolate chunks (as you can see in the middle of the photo) so I stupidly stirred the hell out of it to mix the two components together.

[ssssip] "This isn't as thick as I thought it would be."
"That's because you stirred it too hard."
"Oh...HEEEY, why didn't you stop me?!"
"You can do whatever you want to your drink."
"Buuuh.."
"You don't see me stirring my cappuccino." [said while gingerly folding the froth into the drink with his spoon]
"...Buuuh."

Yes, that's almost as eloquent as I am in real life. Anyhoo, the drink was still good. Would've been better if I didn't beat the hell out of it.

cookin' time

On Thursday night we made raspeballer, traditional boiled Norwegian potato balls (made of...guess!) that are served on Thursdays. (As for why they're served on Thursdays, I don't know.) With the potato balls we also made mashed turnip and cooked up some sausage and lamb that tasted as though at least 50% of it were composed of salt. Grating the raw potatoes was kind of a bitch, but mashing the cooked potatoes and turnip with a ricer took just a few splodgey moments.

telly time

Morten was eager to get back to watching the World Cup so we sat around the telly with our plates of meats and starchy root vegetables. Sadly, I cannot declare any undying love for potato balls. They don't even taste much like potato in my opinion, which is interesting since that is the main ingredient. I found them a bit gummy with a texture similar to glutinous rice goop found in some Chinese dishes except more gluey with an oddly chewy texture that didn't taste so much like food. Of course, it's partially a cultural thing that I'm not used to the potato balls (kinda like how I'm not a fan of salty black licorice, *shudders*), so...MAYBE YOU WILL LIKE EM! Yeah! Yeah. Well. If you're not sure, keep someone nearby you won't mind eating your leftover potato balls. I also couldn't eat much of the lamb since I suck at eating things off the bone and they contained enough sodium to last me a week. However, the high salt content kinda went with the unsalty potato balls. The creamy, buttery mashed turnips easily won the prize for being my favorite part of the meal.

hot dog!

While waiting at the airport I found my last chance at eating a Norwegian hot dog whirling on a bed of heated metal rollers at the 7-11-esque Narvesen. Among the last minute purchases of candy (Toppris = pretty good, Japp = less good) and a magazine, I bought a hot dog and shared it with Diana. Mm...tasty I suppose. I have very little hot dog eating experience, so I have no idea how to rate the hot dog. It was hot. It was not a dog. Yum!

I think this entry is officially coming to a close. To look at more of the non-food things I did during my trip, take a look at my Bergen flickr set. Here's a list of cool Norwegian/Bergen-related things:

• Geitost
• Heated bathroom floors
• Cute wooden interiors of houses
• Greeness galore
• Hiking in mountains that resemble Middle Earth
• Clean, cobblestone streets
• Friendly people everywhere
• Bakeries everywhere
• Listening stations at Platekompaniet
• Really nice public buses
• Lefse
• Toffeepops
• Open faced sandwiches
• Cinnamon rolls
• Lots of fish
• Lots of chocs
• The un-setting sun (in the summer at least)
• That creepy child-molester sign for Ruben's (which is otherwise a cool store)
• Weegies

OH OH LASTLY, people who are going to the Kitchen Secrets thingy on Wednesday: if you want to meet up there, then...let me know? The idea to meet up afterwards seems kinda hard since it'll be late and I'll want to go home, but if you're free beforehand, I'm interested in checking out Starwich (Midtown East). Sooo if you're free around 5:30, then...yeeeah.

Update: Check out Morten's latest blog entry. It's in ENGLISH!!! Un-weegie! The first and probably the last! Don't let this opportunity pass you by! Observe Morten's awesomeness! Use excessive exclamation points!

I'll reply to his entry here, thus you should read what he wrote to make sense of what I'm writing. Yes? Good!

I didn't think about how it may be weird that I was bringing Diana with me. Not that it WAS weird...but. Um. I guess the way Morten trusted my judgement was the same way Diana trusted mine. "Who's this guy...uh, okay!" I met Diana online too. My god, how many times have I had this discussion about the awesomeness of people I meet online? Today my dad tried to talk to me about how it can be good or bad, as though I don't know this stuff already. [shakes head] That discussion is a tad late.

Morten gives a good abbreviated rundown of things we did over the vacation. I loved hiking over Ulriken! Can't say I really loved it at the time, but it was one of the coolest things I've ever done. I hope I didn't whine too much...I mean, I was trying to avoid much speaking overall since I figured it would make me tired to the point of wanting to roll down the mountain.

The foodstuffs I brought back home were brown cheese, jam, chocs, and lefse. Mmm mm [rubs belly]. Out of all that, I should've bought more chocolate. Cos. People love chocolate!

My mum thought it was funny when I told her we ate corn with the freshly caught fish. "That's American!" Yeah, well...um, so?

Returning to the homeland = sadness. :( No more pretty mountains and glaciers. No people speaking Norwegian, thus no reason for me to exclaim, "Weegies!" at random times. No Morten, K�re, or Giso to entertain me with their collective fun-ness. Of course, there are cool people here, buut...ye know....

[sigh]

Thanks so much again to Morten for being an awesome host. And weegies for their weegieness. Weeg. Weegie weeg. Heehee. God, I love that word; it rhymes with "squeegie"!

For people who are going to Kitchen Secrets this Wednesday (or not, but just want sandwiches), I plan to go to Starwich (6th Ave and 38th Street) at around 5:30 for some dinner before heading to the lecture. If you want to meet up and would like my cell phone number, email me. Update (6/20): GAAH I've been put on a diet that doesn't include sandwiches (no wheat), so...um. Nevermind.

random food related things

Norway to house seeds in doomsday vault [contributed by HML]. A Noah's Ark for up to 3 million seeds will be smooshed inside a Norwegian mountain. "Its purpose is to ensure the survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change, and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out." Let's plan for our doom, kiddies!!! Now all we gotta do is stop crapping up the planet and...yeah.

Bread in a can, bread in can!!!...we're doomed.

poofy doodle

I drew that doodle one night after attempting to make waffles last week. It expresses my culinary prowess. Or lack of. Ha...ha. I think "OOGLY MOOG MUTHA!" should be the new catchphrase that everyone hates.

mm, stealing amazon's bandwidth is fun!

Last night I was reading Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson (one of my favorite authors), a book that I started reading a few years ago but haven't finished because I unintentionally entered a contest to see who could leave a book unfinished for the longest period of time. For instance, I bought A Short History of Nearly Everything a few years ago, but I only got through a few pages. Oogly moog mutha, I'm totally going to win this contest.

Err, anyway. Reading anything by Bill Bryson kinda pisses me off because everything he writes sounds so natural and easy, as though no intense thought is needed for humorous anecdotes to spew out. STOP IT! Jeez! If I want to feel inferior, I'll just look in the mirror.

But I continue to read, and maybe learn something. Like. Uh. Stuff. A Walk in the Woods is great if you want to know what not to do when attempting to walk the Appalachian Trail. Which is something I'd never do. Unless I were paid to write a funny book about it. Which is unlikely. Most of it would read, "I wheezed for a while and wanted to die."

I have a bit of a dilemma involving something expensive that I probably shouldn't keep, but I would like to keep despite the lack of cash flow, especially when you consider that I took off almost two weeks of work to do that "vacation" thing everyone's talking about. If any photographers would like to give me their two cents (or maybe ten cents, adjusted for inflation), that'd be great.

I bought a used Sigma 20mm f/1.8 lens at Adorama in search of a nice macro lens. Silly me didn't know how much these babies cost. The modern miracle that is the credit card made it easy for me to fork over $350 for the "as far as I can tell, it's brand new" lens. Uh huh. ...Hm.

A more compact option is the Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8, which I think could get for around the same price. I don't know how the lenses compare, it's just that...um, that was the lens the handy Canon catalog-y thing included with my camera suggested for macro shots. I guess the only way for me to see what I like better is to use the Canon lens. I bought the Sigma lens without much hesitation because I know I can return it within 7 business days. I might. Or not. I don't know.

Here's a nice photo I took with the new lens of Diana's ice cream at Spumoni Gardens yesterday afternoon under the sun that threatened to drown us in own own pools of sweat:

mm, creamy

Of course, the clarity of the photo depended a lot on nice lighting from the burning, gassy sun. And pretty sprinkles.

hire her!

That's another photo I took of Diana's custom fortune cookies that she gave to prospective employers in need of a talented graphic designer. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY WON'T SOMEONE HIRE HER?

Oh, after stopping by Adorama I went to City Bakery to pick up some goodies to bring home. As I was paying, Jennifer from Slices of Me recognized my sweaty face. WEE!!! My first instance of being recognized where the recognizer came up to me! :) We didn't get to talk for long, but maybe we'll go fooding in the future.

I guess while I'm writing this blog entry, I may as well actually write about...food! That I ate! When can I stop? WHEN?

Spumoni Gardents

Diana mentioned that she wanted to try Spumoni Gardens, an Italian restaurant primarily known for its pizza (and...spumoni, I guess). It's kind of rare that we both want to check out a restaurant since I'm easily the more food minded one and she tends to express distaste for wheaty blankets dripping in gooey cheese (crazy, I know!). We were still sad about the whole "leaving Norway" thing, wondering what to do with ourselves as we returned to the overly moist and polluted NYC area, and thus had to do something fun to fill the void. Also, I had to return some things that she left in my luggage since she didn't have enough room in hers.

SO! We got pizza.

cheeeese!

Diana, her brother David and I shared a pie with two slices leftover. While I would've prefered less cheese (a pile of melted mozzerella slid off the first first too-hot slice that I picked up like lava down a churning volcano), the pizza was pretty good. Crust was thin without being too floppy and I didn't find the pizza overly greasy. It's not something I'd go out of my way to eat, but Diana happens to live nearby and it was nice to sit outside surrounded by people who were equally melting from intense solar radiation.

spumoni

I got a small cup of rainbow (pistachio, vanilla and chocolate) spumoni to offset 0.0001% of the pain inflicted upon me by Mr. Sun. I have to admit that I'm not really sure what spumoni is. Whatever I ate doesn't seem to fit The Food Lover's Companion's definition. It was kind of like less creamy ice cream. The bright green pistachio part had pistachio bits in it and left me burping pistachio fumes for the rest of the day, but the vanilla and chocolate flavors were either not that strong or were masked by the pistachio. Overall, not bad, not great, kind of weird flavors. My god, you really want to try it now, I know it.

pizza with extra sauce

Did I ever talk about Dolly Dimple's pizza? I may as well do it as I'm on the topic of pizza. Dolly Dimple's is a major Norwegian pizza chain (the other huge one being Peppe's Pizza...we saw these ALL OVER THE PLACE) named after fat ladies at freak shows. Yeah, don't ask me how that name came about. We got a pizza the night of our fishing trip since corn and fish weren't really enough to satiate five adults. I don't remember what the toppings on the medium-crust pizza were (it was spicy and full of meats), but I slathered my slices with what I think was sour cream and salsa. Hell, why not? It was good! It was also around midnight, so god knows what that did for my digestion.

a block of norway

If anyone is in need of brown cheese, you can get it at Whole Foods! Or at least the one in Ridgewood, which is a rather small location.

If you want other Norwegian things and live around NYC, check out Nordic Delicacies in Brooklyn. I went there once without any idea what Nordic delicacies existed. After I left, I still wasn't sure. I guess if I went now the fish cakes and waffles would make more sense to me. Also, I could load up on Daim, which despite being like Heath and Skor bars I like more because it's called...DAIM.

Wow, I've done nothing useful today. If anyone's curious enough to know, I made an open faced sandwich of baby greens and smoked makerel for lunch and ate fruit and a home-made zong zi courtesy of Diana's Aunt for dinner. I need to eat more healthily from now on since my lungs have gone into full "I hate you" mode, resulting in the need to use my inhaler ever day since I got back from Norway. I hadn't used my inhaler since last fall until I went to Norway (if you care to do the math, thats more than 6 months), and even then it was at the end of my vacation when my lungs decided that I deserved restricted airflow.

Meh. I hope your day was more productive than mine.

It's unlikely that many people reading this would be interested in this post, but...eh, it's my blog. And it's shilling time!

I'm selling a gazillion (er, okay, about 20) Beck related magazines on eBay, along with a gazillion Radiohead magazines and Bjork magazines. There's just too much stuff in my room and I need to start dumping the goods. I don't know if any of it is valuable, but I'm counting on some crazy fans to buy my junk. Isn't that what eBay is for? Yeeeah?

Also, I need some moolah. It turns out that going to Norway costs a lot. Hoho!

So. Erm. If any of these things interest you, bid away! Indulge in glossy stacks of outdated periodicals. Links and images follow:

20+ Beck mags

20+ Radiohead mags

8 Bjork mags

Also, I decided that I'm going to return the Sigma lens and not get a new one until I've made more money. Which is going to take forever at the rate that I'm going. A nice lens can wait. Hell, I have two cameras...(shakes head)...yup, that's excessive. Thanks to the photographers for their suggestions!

"$40 a day...tip, bitch!"

Anthony's outburst against a certain Satanic (his words, not mine!) celebrity chef was the most memorable quip of last night's Kitchen Secrets talk at the NYPL. Custom printed t-shirts, mugs, and totebags—I see them all.

crappy photo!

I sat with Janet, Allen, and Eunice in a location of low scenic value (behind other humans, I mean) while watching Bill Buford, Mario Batali, and Anthony Bourdain talk about food and...[scratches head]...yup, that was mainly it. Of course, all other topics are kind of unimportant, so that's no loss. It's doubtful I will get the chance to hear the term "kitchen bitch" uttered so many times in a one-hour sitting.

Actually, they didn't say it that much. So what else did they say? A lot. Funny things that made me bellow "ha-ha" less like a lady and more like Nelson Muntz. Which is now I laugh on a normal basis, but...let's ignore that for now.

I wouldn't say many secrets of the kitchen were actually revealed, but Bill Buford's latest book (and a main topic of the evening) Heat probably gives more insight into that (hopefully I'll read it soon!). Hearing them talk about cooking and working in restaurants, portraying a deep passion for food in the process, reminded me of my lack of passion and made me question what it is about food that I'm so into.

Answer?

basket of carbs

Uh, seriously though. I wish I had more interest in cooking, but I just...don't. Whenever I try to bring up the potentially cool things about cooking to my mum, she seems to brush them off. It's not like I have to take the same approach to cooking (it's a joyless chore) as she does, but if I were surrounded by "bread-baking, potato-ball-making, and more" people like Morten for a long enough period of time, I think my attitude towards cooking might change. I took two cooking courses in school, so I know it's not hard to prepare decent food. (I didn't show any culinary prowess in Norway though. "UHH WHAT DO I DO WITH THESE POTATOES UHH I DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE A TOASTER HUUH" etc. Yup, that's what I sound liike, kinda.) In my house, everyone prepares food for themselves (we all have different tastes, or diets), so I don't jump at the chance to cook for one.

On the upside, my mum likes to buy good quality ingredients and foodstuffs. She wants the best olive oil to dip her just-baked artisan bread in. The most unadulturated slab of butter from a small farm in the middle of nowhere with happy cows. Fresh fruit from the farm a few minutes drive down the road. It's not like she's out to buy expensive goods, just high quality version of basic things. Not that she'd be willing to out of her way to get a fresh whole fish or go through the trouble to bake our own bread. Just stop by Whole Foods!

From what I know, Diana's mum is very different from mine. She'll go out of her way for fresh seafood from a specialty market (Diana thinks her mum would like Norway, or at least the fish market) and prepare Chinese food from scratch. Diana also told me that her mum buys a lot of junk food for the men of the house. My mum doesn't buy stuff for my dad or brother if it's junky, but they don't expect her to.

Uh...crap, I was supposed to talk about the discussion thinger! It's all bits and pieces in my head, various anecdotes and references to things I didn't know much about since I hadn't read Heat. Anthony referred to following the Kalahari bushmen and eating a lot of meatstuffs with fur and poop in em (I'll cross "Kalahari desert" off my list of gastronomic vacation spots). Mario recalled an interview with a potential employee (yeaah, I forgot his name, but he's going to manage a new Batalli restaurant in Las Vegas if I remember correctly) who fell asleep during the interview, a good sign that he was relaxed and should be hired immediately. Related to the $40 a day quote, Anthony said that you should always tip $20% unless the service is really horrible (and arguments about tipping can be found at waiterrant). And something that you definitely shouldn't do is linger around a restaurant right before closing or additionally order a crapload of food while all the employees glare at in hope that you'll finish quickly (or wish death upon you...yeah, that's what the twitching in their eyes indicates) so that they can call it a night.

I also recall something about the banning of foie gras in Chicago. That we're all doomed? The world is coming to an end? [scratches head]

A Q&A session after the discussion provided more interesting information about...um...screamers! A woman asked about screaming chefs and Mario replied that he doesn't scream at people he's disappointed with as he finds it more effective to scold them within earshot of other people so that everyone knows that so-and-so screwed up. When asked what was on their iTunes, Mario mentioned the Raconteurs and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Anthony mentioned Brian Jonestown Massacre and...something else. All three of them agreed that while good chefs could be made just by staying in America, studying culinary arts in Europe and learning from people whose have long histories in certain kinds of food is an invaluable learning experience you can't get here. Anthony "recommended" smoking to stay slim. Oh, and their favorite fats...I think Anthony said pork. Mario seemed to like all of them.

Annnnnd...there were a gazillion other things. But my brain is tired and is in a lowered state of effectiveness due to lack of use. If you didn't go last night yet could've, you missed out! BOO! These guys showed a connection with food that I don't know I'll ever have. Or feel like having. I don't just want the feeling, I want to want the feeling. ...This made more sense in my head. [sigh] Sometimes people expect me to know more about food than I end up knowing since I study it, but I really don't know much about food. I think being familiar with how food is prepared, from farm to table, by actually doing it and not just reading about it is crucial to...um, it's crucial, period. Crucial to knowing stuff about food. I could google creme anglaise to find out what it is, but I wouldn't really know until I've made it. And I have made it, thus I can tell other people "Oh yeah, this is what you do," or rather, "Oh, for the love of god, don't do this," seeing as I've screwed it up more times than not.

Er. No one should think of asking me how to cook anything. Except frozen dumplings. I have that no-fail method down.

I stupidly didn't bring any books with me for Anthony to sign, and although he was just standing by the signing tables talking to a small crowd of people, neither I or any of my friends felt the need to go up to him and remind me that he is awesome, we love him, etc.

Before we left, I got to meet the sweet Annie, one of my readers (wow, that sounds so possessive) with an affinity for Poofy Pancake shirts and an interest in trying the cheeses of Norway (hopefully she'll fill us in on the tastiness of the tubed bacon cheese). It was great to meet her; I hope the feeling was mutual! She said my self deprecation was distracting, but I truly think that I suck and would rather not lie to all of you by playing down how much I think I suck. Or something. I think that came out wrong.

Things that do not suck: this insanely cute flufftastic baby bunny whose beady eyes don't just stare into your soul, but straight through it, because it's probably evil...but so cute, ye can't resist!

am I a stalker now?

As Janet and I left the quiet zone by the library on 5th Ave between 40th and 41st streets, she noticed Mario strolling by. Shall we continue on our way in the opposite direction or follow Mr. Batali (and in my case, take photos)? We [creepily] followed him from a safe non-stalker distance, funny since...well, we'd see him again in about an hour.

I like some kinds of salad

I went to Life Thyme, my favorite place for a quick meal and vegan/organic whatnots, twice yesterday for lunch and dinner. I went there the day before for lunch also. Why? It's cheap (about $3-$5 for an small, but filling salad), probably healthy, convenient, and tasty. Their salads are less boring leafy greens and more chopped/slaw-esque, Ah well, I take photos for a reason—so I don't have to describe anything. One of my favorite salads is the Vitamin A salad, which has cucumber, celery, broccoli, sunflower seeds (or pumpkin, but I'm sure they make a salad with sunflower), and cilantro (I suspect a lot of people hate cilantro, so...this wouldn't be for you), but I like most of them. The wakame salad is probably my favorite, although I didn't see it this week. The slight sweet cabbage salad, kinda like cole slaw without the mayo goop, is another favorite. Most of the salads are simply dressed in some kind of oil and herby concoction and are tossed with white sesame seeds. There's also a wide variety of bean-based salads and if you really want plain ol' leaves, they've got that too. I usually pick at least three salads and moosh em together for variety and pretty colors. To suit my tastes, Life Thyme makes the best salads.

puddingified pumpkin, mm!

Besides making the best salads, I think they make some of the best desserts I've ever had, whether vegan/organic or not. While avoiding baked goods, I've gone into vegan pudding eating mode. The pumpkin pie pudding I tried during Tuesday's lunch tasted like autumn. Sweet, squashy, creamy autumn. I started thinking that eating the whole 7.5 ounce container would make me feel uncomfortable, but as usual my stomach beat the odds and I felt juuust dandy after scraping the cup clean.

MORE PUDDING!

More pudding was required for yesterday's dinner, chocolate and banana (as in, half and half, not chocolate-banana) in this case. Once again, I scraped it clean. Despite that it's made mainly of tofu, it doesn't taste too tofu-esque. (The vanilla pudding has the strongest tofu flavor, in case you like that...or not.) The texture is as creamy as normal pudding. The chocolate flavor tasted a little weird in a way I'm not sure how to describe (er...not like typical chocolate), but I still like it, maybe a little more than the banana. Both flavors go well together though.

I ate too much for lunch. It involved meat since I figure this week...I'm gradually changing my diet. [massages tummy] And I'm going out for dinner. [massages tummy some more] Egad.

Hey, what was I doing a week ago?

mashing time!

Wow...this week flew by rather quickly. I miss weegie-land.

Balthazar

We did it! We...saved the whales.

I mean. We...ate the bread.

excessive bread baskets

Jessica and I indulged in Balthazar's bread basket. No, not the free one, the $15 one. I mean, we ate both. Um.

Because I'm cheap, everything at Balthazar seems to cost a lot more than it feels like its worth. In Norway, these prices wouldn't seem so off-putting. BUT I'M CHEAP, OKAY?! Actually, $7.50 for each of us to sample five of Balthazar's goodies wasn't a bad deal. We only managed to eat a little more than half of the basket in addition to the other things we ordered before feeling like our stomachs were going to explode in a shower of wheaty partially-digested delights.

So what delights did we digest (hopefully to the full extent of digestive power by this point of the day)? Sticky bun, brioche, fruit focaccia, chocolate bread, and cranberry raisin pecan bread. My favorite was the brioche, which was so buttery that it reminded me of cake. A cake with a light brioche texture, at least. I love it when baked goods have excessive amounts of (good) butter; you can taste the difference. And probably feel it in your hips later. The cranberry raisin pecan bread was my second favorite as I'll like just about any bread with a combination of dried fruits and nuts. The chocolate bread was my least favorite since it only tasted faintly of chocolate (there were some chunks in the bread, but not in any of the slices I tried!). If eaten in a blind taste test, I'd probably have trouble discerning the flavor. Of course, in a non-blind taste test its deep brown color kinda gives it away.

onion soup

I ordered the onion soup after hearing a few people say they loved it so much that they'd run over cute baby puppies to get it (okay, I made that up—the puppies have to be ugly). The little bowl quickly arrived at the table and presented me with disgruntled golden cheese quietly bubbling off the perimeter of the crusty mass of...stuff. More cheese. Seemingly endess strands of soft, melted, liquidy curdled milk stretched off my spoon as I attempted to consume the large globular cheese chunks nesting inside the spoon like rotund malformed babies made of mayonnaise (which makes no sense, but I'm sticking to my simile). Uh. How the hell do people eat this stuff? Cheese got all over my face, pretty much.

Oh, it was very yummy. Lots of cheese, lots of broth-soaked bread, not a lot of onion nor broth (I suspect it all got soaked up by the bread), but lots of cheese...which I already mentioned. Due to the density of stuff packed into the small bowl, I could only eat about 2/3rds of it (or whatever you don't see in the photo, which looks like a deflated half of the original contents). Of course, I also ate all that bread from the two bread baskets.

The restaurant wasn't crowded at 10 AM, but by the time we left shortly after 11 the place was packed and there was a hoard of people around the door waiting to plop their bums into one of the tighly packed tables. Like the first time I ate at Balthazar I thought the food was good, but not so awesome than I'd feel compelled to made repeated visits. Unless someone else footed the bill.

After brunch, I met up with John and roamed around, which proved to be a not so good idea because...

oops, rain

...someone gave the sky a diuretic. Actually, more like a bucket of diuretics. Maximum strength. He accompanied me to the Camper store where I bought my first (and maybe last) pair of footwear for the year to replace the shoes I stupidly wore that morning that weren't even mine (property of mum) and whose cushiony properties were deceptively comfortable. The evil shoes showed their true colors after I started walking around in them (good idea, yes) and found that they fit rather unwell, turning "Robyn, whose posture is already pretty bad" into "Robyn, who looks gimpy." The result of the evil shoes was the addition to my left pinky toe of something that resembles those plastic bubbles on plastic bubble wrap, except instead of being full of air, it's full of lymph.

I think I just gave you too much info. Just be glad I didn't take a photo of it.

Oh, the funky thing about the shoes is that the top cloth part is actually a pocket that holds...whatever. Fresh from the store, they come pre-packed with dried lavender. The result is that after walking around in them for a few hours, my feet smell like feet with a hint of lavender. Which is kind of an odd smell.

spot the human!...oh

On Thursday during my lunch break I went to Cuba with co-workers Tony and Jan. My experience with eating Cuban food is kind of...[thinks]...non-existent. Any American food south of Florida is kind of off my radar, sadly. It's not like I don't think it tastes good, but I guess I'm not very used to it.

black bean soup

The lunch specials come with black bean soup, a thick and hearty combination of black beans and...black beans. I enjoyed the soup (I'm a fan of soups you can chew, not drink), but I think I have to build up a tolerance for the heavy feeling you will unavoidably feel after gulping down whole black beans swimming in partially liquified black beans. It's a lot of beans.

pork thing

While I considered going for a healthier option, I ended up going for masitas de puerco, a dish with pork, potatoes, and onions accompanied by beans and rice. The other option, basically. I would've preferred slightly less-cooked pork, but I liked the dish overall. It had a strong citrus flavor that I couldn't discern until finding an online recipe that lists the marinade's ingredients as garlic, orange juice, olive oil, and...other stuff. My bean-speckled rice intrigued me; didn't I just eat a bucket of beans? The beans and rice mixed with the pork and potato chunks resulted in an alert to my brain to start forming a second stomach and the feeling of defeat that comes when I can't eat everything on my place, even if I want to.

more foods

Tony gave his crab cakes a semi-positive thumbs up (good, but not something he'd order again) and Jan gave his sandwich (whose name I forgot...maybe it was the Cubano) and semi-negative thumbs down. On the upside, he said the roast pork sandwich he had before was a lot better.

guess what this place sells

For dinner I met up with John and took him to Soy, a cute little place serving homey Japanese food in the Lower East Side.

hijiki salad

Hijiki is one of my favorite types of seaweed since it has some bite to it without being too chewy and it has a bit of a...meaty taste. Sea meat. Smeat.

Uh. So we shared the hijiki salad appetizer. It was good (duh, I like all hijiki), although not my favorite form of hijiki. I'm not sure why. [scratches head]

it's not mud, or...something else

Because we're so adventurous, we both ordered vegetarian curry. It's like regular curry, but with blocks of tofu and soybeans instead of delicious meat chunks (they also offer a meat version). This curry in particular was a smidge higher on the spicy scale than other Japanese curries I've had, which was fine with me. BRING IT ONNN. I seriously love all Japanese curry, unless someone really screws up the water content or the flavor is so hot that I can't eat it (both very rare cases). Although I wanted to finish off the generous portion, my defeat culminated through the slow, nearly comatose act of spooning small bits of sticky, short grain rice mixed with viscous curry into my mouth while slurring, "Uhh, so good...so full...SO TASTY, WHY?!" until I felt the need for a third stomach (the second stomach was needed after eating at Cuba). John finished off his plate, but that made sense as he didn't eat much lunch and he's a foot taller than I am.

sesame pudding

Yet I still wanted dessert. There's always room for dessert, right? If you share a small cup, sure! The sesame tofu pudding was packed with black sesame flavor due to the bajillion pulversized black sesame bits. Creamy, light, smooth, delicious, and not squeezed out of a cow's udders. It's squeezed from beeeeeeeeaaans! I'd eat it again.

Service was kind of slow, but the women who work there were nice and I couldn't say we were in a rush to go anywhere. If I lived closer to Soy I'd probably go there a lot.

Alas, I live in Jersey. The homey Japanese food does not roam widely here. Doh.

Oh, and if anyone's wondering, the bread and cheese eating was a one-time thing. I'm back to no wheat as of...now. My asthma is just as bad as usual (I go into wheezing mode constantly, hoho!...I scare little children), but it can't hurt for me to cut out junky food. Lung constriction really sucks, in case you're not familiar with it. I have to eat less overall so I'd prefer that if anyone was thinking of asking me to eat out if you could save your request for later when my lungs decide to work properly again.

Pickles?

...Pickles?

It doesn't stop there. Check out the woman who's deathly afraid of mustard.

Torturing these people with the objects of their phobias sounds horrible, but that's daytime television for ya. I wonder why all the people in this episode are women. Maybe the chance to be humiliated on Maury doesn't appeal as much to guys. As weird as it is to see a woman cower at the sight of a mustard mountain, it might be weirder to see a guy in the same position. Ah well, gender roles.

Uh...soo...does anyone have a phobia they want to share? Or does anyone care to explain the pickle thing?

GINORMOUS HAND ATTACK!!!

Oh my god, I read a book! About food, of all things.

I had the pleasure of reading Ayun Halliday's latest book/memoir (as in, she's got a few under her belt), Dirty Sugar Cookies in which she hilariously recounts food-related tales (maybe not so hilarious at the time, like the "Australian Pizza that microbes probably wouldn't even touch") from her childhood up to her children's childhoods in eerily exact detail. Okay, maybe the conversations are fudged a little, but it's not every day that your roommate exclaims, "I don't want to get diarrhea!" (page 104). Each anecdote ends with a personal recipe written in inimitable Ayun fashion, my favorite step being one from her brownie recipe: "Melt 2 sticks of butter. Sweet Jesus." If she wrote a recipe book, it'd be one of the few that I'd want to read and not just blankly stare at in a food porn-induced daze.

Since Ayun is an NYC resident, I asked her to provide some guidance to the best food related things in NYC. She went beyond my expectations and...really wrote a helluva lot, which is great because her writing is fun to read. :) AND READ IT, YOU SHALL, because I said so. I present to you...

Ayun's List of Best Things in NYC

(I'll add links soon.)

cookies

I have to admit, I'm not so into the bakery cookies. A cookie place called One Girl Cookies opened up down the street, and it's very pretty inside, but I can't make the mental leap that would allow me to pay 75 cents for something smaller than a Nilla wafer. They look like something you'd feed a doll. A toy poodle could devour one in a single bite.

muffins

Come on out to Brooklyn, baby! There's this little cafe in my hood called the Boerum Hill Food Company. It's owned by Saul and Lisa Boulton, who own Saul, one of the two Brooklyn restaurants awarded a Michelin star recently. How's that for pedigree? I recommend the Sunshine Muffin, but even better is the Ginger Scone, which tastes as though it has an entire stick of butter in it. If my past forays in scone baking are anything to go on, it probably does. (Note to scone and muffin pilgrims: if you make the trek, and Lynn, the bearded, bald waiter is on duty, make sure you give his necklace a gander and tell him I sent you!)

vegetarian restaurant

Well, I've mentioned the Vegetarian Dim Sum House quite a bit on this tour, so I'm going to go with 18 Arhens, which is run by a Buddhist nun, who occasionally leaves her post to worship at an altar in the back. No bathrooms, no chopsticks, no frills except the distinctive experience of seeing downtown office workers ministered to by a Buddhist nun... There's an amazing soup with edamame (i think the menu calls them green soybeans) and optional egg.

The runner up would be Tiengarden on Allen St.

cheap eat

In Red Hook, ringing the soccer fields across from the big public swimming pool, a few dozen street stalls materialize, seemingly out of thin air. It's sort of like Brigadoon, except that theyappear every weekend instead of once every hundred years, and they're not Scottish. They're Mexican, which is a real treat, as good Mexican food is elusive in this town. I had the best ceviche of my life here, for five bucks. It came in a disposable plastic cup like the kind you might find next to the ice bucket in a Holiday Inn.

Runner up is the Lahore Deli on Crosby Street, this little hole in the wall that's a Pakistani cabby hang out.

dessert

The molten chocolate cake at The Good Fork, a restaurant that some friends recently opened on Van Brunt in Red Hook.

I'm also partial to green tea ice cream from the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, the cream puffs at Beard Papa, and rice pudding from the pizza place on the corner of 1st Ave and 9th St.

late night spot

Decibel Sake Bar in a basement on east 9th street. Pass through that portal and you're in Tokyo. Accordingly, you should drink hearty and not obsess over how much it's going to cost.

early morning spot

Back before the feral young entered my life, I loved going out to breakfast at 7A and not just because I could get a big plate of eggs, toast and spuddies for a buck-ninety-nine! I liked sitting by the window, watching what few people were out and about in the East Village at that hour.

grocery store

I've got a sentimental attachment to Fairway. Our first apartment in NYC was on 79th and West End and I spent my first few months there pining for everything I'd left behind in Chicago, even though I had always wanted to live in New York. I spent a lot of time walking up and down Broadway (just like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver!). Fairway's abundant sidewalk produce displays were one thing that had the power to cheer me, though to be truthful I did the bulk of my shopping at the West Side Market because the cashiers were marginally nicer. Fairway was a legend, but not nearly the dynasty that it is today, with the organics upstairs and the cafe and the branches in Harlem and Red Hook (where the parking lot has a view of the Statue of Liberty!)

Then, there are the many groceries that cater to one particular ethnic group (and groupies like me). Some of my favorites are:

Patel Brothers on 74th st in Jackson Heights.
The Bangkok Grocery on Mosco.
Han Ah Reum on 32nd.
Sunrise Mart above St Mark's Books
Sahadi's on Atlantic Avenue

kitchen supply store

I'll have to split this one into sub-categories.

On the high end, A Cook's Companion on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn is one of those stores where I walk in and think I want or need everything, but usually walk out empty handed because, really, there's nothing wrong with my old whisk and I can probably find some cheerful oven mitts at a 99 cent store, no need to blow the budget on a bright pink, industrial rubber elbow length model that looks like the love child of a Swedish cartoon character and a sex toy. It's a good place to go for a present. I recently bought Tivoli rocket-shaped popsicle molds for this wild little boy of my acquaintance. I was like, "Hey, Toby, I got your birthday present yesterday!" and he was going nuts because he wanted to know what it was, so I said, "Okay, I'll give you a hint. It's something I read about in Bon Apetit.

On the low end, we have Hung Chong Imports on Bowery, right around the corner from my beloved Doyers Restaurant. One day I'm going to go buy myself a wok big enough to sled in and one of those little waffle iron dealies that turn out tiny cakes shaped exactly like walnuts. I love that the frankness with which they display their rat traps.

neighborhood to eat in

I have to go with Chinatown because of the prevalence of street food, cheap restaurants, and little groceries where you can pick up unfamiliar snacks (and bargain-rate squid.)

cuisine

Vietnamese

chocolate

Jacques Torres. Just don't go the day before Easter Sunday.

pizza

Totonno's on Neptune Avenue in Coney Island. Expect a long wait in line before you're served with a grimace (and in my case, twenty bucks worth of kiddie rides before we can venture west of the boardwalk) but the pies make everything worth it.

bakery

Nice One Bakery on Bayard. They've got the best coconut buns and the counter ladies live up to the name. Once I got a note from this woman who subscribes to my zine, who'd recently traveled to NYC with her toddler daughter, and they went to Nice One because I recommended it on my website. She enclosed several photos of her kid perched on the counter, surrounded by adoring, pink-kerchiefed counter ladies. She said it was the highlight of their trip.

bread

Jalapeno cheddar bread from the Union Square Farmer's Market. I forget what that bakery stall's name is, but I can confirm that as of a couple of weeks ago, they set up on the north side on Wednesdays (and probablyother days as well. I got hooked on the stuff when we lived in the East Village, having discovered it first at the little Sunday greenmarket on the west side of Tompkins Square. Look for the fierce and fit woman with a portrait of her cat tattooed on her much-tattooed arms.

best/worst dinng experience

I've had a lot of those, both kinds, but here is a memorable dining experience I had recently (last November 4, to be exact). Greg and I were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary and we'd planned to go to the Dominican Republic or something, but life intervened and eventually, our grand plan got whittled down to "Well, we'll go to Saul, and then a movie around the corner." But then I had a crisis of confidence that this wasn't special enough, so at the last minute, we got a reservation at Jewel Bako, with plans that we would continue the celebration at The New York Gypsy Festival. Greg had something to do in the city, and I had to await the babysitter in Brooklyn, so we arranged that when I came up out of the subway (in my red 40th birthday dress and lipstick!) I would call for his coordinates. He was at Kiev, having a martini, and he was all nervous-like.

"I got you something and you're going to hate it, but you have to like it because it was very expensive," he said, rather fiercely.

"Oh, whatever it is, I'm sure I'll love it," I said.

"No, you're going to hate it. But it was very expensive."

"Well, you know I'd love it even if you got it at a thrift store," I insisted, starting to get worried.

"You have to love it because I spent a lot of money on it. I went into Tiffany's and said, "I'm married to this hippie woman and it's our anniversary and I want to get her something nice."

"How'd that go over?" I cringed.

"The salesman suggested I should go down the street where there are these antique stores that would have something more to your taste. But, I didn't see anything there, so I came back. And I got this because Tiffany's is a New York icon and we moved to New York right before we got married, so..."

He hands me this turquoise Tiffany's bag, inside of which is another turquoise Tiffany's bag, inside of which is a turquoise Tiffany's box, inside of which is a turquoise Tiffany's pouch � they really know how to build suspense, and add to this the fact that I was now pretty convinced that I would hate it, and that the bartender had Kill Bill playing over the bar and I couldn't bear to look at it, since from the sound of things, it seemed like Uma Thurman was fixing to start slicing that other woman up with her sword. Well, Greg's present turned out to be a beautiful silver locket containing photographs of Inky and Milo as babies (though he said he almost put in two pictures of Milo because he couldn't tell them apart anymore.) His relief was palpable, as was mine.

So, we go to Jewel Bako and the owner, Jack Lamb, was there � I'd read all of those articles that declared him and his wife, Grace, the miraculously stylish wonder-couple of the East Village . He took our coats with a flourish, made a heroic fuss over my dress, wished us a happy anniversary, and shoe horned us into a little table just this side of the sushi bar. I was amazed at how tiny the place was and how the roof looked like the palate of the whale in Pinnochio. All these beautiful waitresses, wearing nice dresses instead of uniforms, slinking around the jammed-together tables.

The horror of the prices. I put on a brave front with regard to this last because it was our 10th anniversary and I was the one who'd suggested we go here. Then Jack Lamb appeared at Greg's elbow with three pink cocktails in tiny stem glasses and he held his glass aloft and made some theatrical, poetic toast to romantic love that was very much appreciated by the former bride. We ordered sake and tried to really savor our teeny portions of exquisitely plated appetizers and then sushi. I'm admiring the mackerel � which really did look like a jewel, possibly because it would have fit on a ring, and then, when I look up, I notice that Greg is totally bombed.

I have never seen someone go from not drunk to drunk that rapidly. It was like the blink of an eye. I was sure he was pulling my leg, but no, he was genuinely hammered, because in his nervousness that I wouldn't like the locket, he'd slammed down two martinis before I even arrived at Kiev! He was sort of weaving and moaning and smiling this silly, bleary smile. I guess it wouldn't be funny if he did this on a regular basis, but the last time he'd gotten this plastered was at our wedding reception, ten years earlier, so there was a kind of beautiful symmetry afoot. I noticed that Jack Lamb and all the discreet waitresses had started giving us as wide a berth as was possible in that itsy-bitsy space. Greg excused himself to go to the bathroom, and I sat there for like fifteen minutes, forcing myself to drink in all the details of this celebrated restaurant, since odds now seemed quite likely I would never return. It also seemed likely that Greg might never return to our table. I had visions that he'd passed out with his head in the toilet and that Jack Lamb would have to break down the door, but finally, he staggered back. It was a miracle he wasn't crawling on his hands and knees (as he did on Grand Ave the night we were wed!)

I whipped out my credit card and got us the hell out of there. Poor Jack Lamb! He'd probably intended to deliver one final speech on the wonders of love as he handed us our coats. Alas, the moment was necessarily subdued. I was just glad Greg didn't go crashing into the coat closet. The brisk November air revived him only enough to make it to the F train (no Gypsy Festival this anniversary!)

I have to say, I really got a bang out of it. For once, it was my husband and not me who'd fucked up in such a spectacular, public way, and this made me feel very tenderly toward him. As I recall, he wanted to stop for some pizza because our $200+ meal had not come close to filling him up. He kind of reminded me of the child who blurts out that the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Jewel Bako was good, but for folks like us, bustling, unfancy Taro Sushi in Brooklyn is a much more comfortable fit. If it hadn't been for Greg, my meal at Jewel Bako would have been pleasant, but ultimately forgettable.

Many thanks to Ayun for letting me be part of her book tour and for contributing to my site! I feel honored, like I'm a real blogger! Or something! To read the scoop from other food blogs, check out Ayun's website. I hope you guys consider reading her book since...you should. Obviously, I recommend it, unless you don't like funny things, in which case you kinda suck and must remove yourself from the Internets.

it's edible

For the past four days I've made my own dinner from the equation of salad + potato + fish + some kind of seasoning to make everything not taste like crap. Tonight I steam-baked half a filet of randomly seasoned rainbow trout wrapped in a foil pouch in the oven while boiling weeny red potatoes. When those foodstuffs were heated long enough for optimum chewability, I arranged them on my plate in a semi-pleasing manner and spooned seasoned melted butter chunk sauce on everything. The end result was pretty good...largely because of the butter chunk.

I was happy with it. My meal had a high ratio of tastiness-to-effort-exerted, in that it took very little effort. These are the things you strive for when you're lazy and an incompetant cook. Also, I'd say it was somewhat healthy. ...Until I stuffed my face with Terra Spiced Taro Chips (my favorite food to come in chip form) and chocolate covered cashews from Life Thyme.

I think I mentioned it before, but if not (or for anyone who needs reminding), I'm on a fairly lax "no wheat or dairy" diet. Butter is derived from dairy, but neither my mum or I find it a problem since it's mainly fat. Wheat isn't too hard besides that it cuts out all bread and baked goods (yes, I ate the Balthazar bread basket as a final blow-out type thing), which are things you can definitely live without. Kinda. I'll also admit that I've eaten some milk chocolates lately, but...damn, whatever.

In addition to my diet, I'm eating out less. Obviously it's a lot easier for me to control what I eat when I put the ingredients together myself. Also, it's hella cheaper.

I'm sure I mentioned why I'm dieting, but some people have been aghast at the idea that I would go on a diet. My history of dieting for health is probably more extensive than most people's, so I'll try to sum it up while explaning myself as clearly as I can.

I'm full of wheezes. My lungs make an unnatural sound when I breathe.

"What's that rumble?"

"Oh, that's just the vibration of my unnaturally resticted airways."

"Ohh, okay! I thought it was my cat. Dying."

There's a nice lung tube diagram at wikipedia that shows the effects of asthma. It's nice to know that my airways look like mutant four-fingered hands whose tips have curiously exploded with cotton poofs, all wrapped in tight rubber bands. But it's actually a good depiction of what asthma feels like.

Up until I made drastic changes to my diet, I relied on my rescue inhaler for any sudden attacks, which didn't occur very often. That didn't mean I didn't wheeze every now and then, just that the wheezing didn't feel bad enough for me to use an inhaler. Every winter morning during 9th grade that I walked from the student parking lot to school resulted in minor asthmatic symptoms where I'd just have to wait in my classroom's non-freezing temperature for my lungs to return to their normal, un-rubber banded state. It was only when I was very young (I figure I've had asthma since before I was 5 years old) that I had the most problems requiring my face being hooked up to an uninviting tube, except it was pretty awesome when it turned out the face tube let me breathe more easily.

The only time my asthma went away for a long period of time was when I was on a raw food diet during 12th grade and freshman year of college. While many people knock the raw food diet (hell, I do sometimes) as trendy, ridiculously drastic, or just stupid, it really does help some people. I'm not saying it should be exalted (which is what I probably did), but it shouldn't be blown off either. From my knowledge of raw foodists, most people who get into the diet are pushed by a health problem. Too fat, too skinny, bad digestion, bad skin, and a gazillion other things. Unless you're interested in the raw food diet, it's unlikely you've heard of Raw Family, also known as the Boutenkos. I haven't found any reason to believe that their support for a raw food lifestyle isn't genuine, so read about them if you're interested.

...Where am I going with this? Well. I'm not going to go over what I ate every day, even though people frequently ask me that. (It's kind of self explanatory: my diet almost entirely consisted of raw food. For some reason, a frequent question was whether tofu is raw. Nope.) The physical effects of the diet were clear. Almost no excess mucus, no asthma, overall better physical endurance, weight loss, clearer skin, less need for sleep, and maybe other things. (Keep in mind I wasn't the healthiest person to begin with, so I couldn't have gotten much worse.)You would not believe how much excess mucus I had the summer before I started the diet. At my worst, I used a neti pot and flushed out nightmare-inducing globular things.

Of course, it's hard to stay on the diet. I mentioned the positive health effects, but what about the psychological? Um. Same state. Or worse. In my case, adhering to a diet where you cut out most of the food that normal people eat takes a weird state of mind, almost like following a religion (not that I'd know much about religion since I don't practice any...it's just an example) being a religious extremist, in case the other thing I said didn't make sense. There are "normal" people and "extreme" people in religious and dietary circles; obviously most people are normal. It would take me too long to explain all the possible psychological reasons that cause one to stick to a restricted diet, but if you're interested in finding out more I highly recommend Health Food Junkies, which was actually the book that made me realize I didn't want to be a raw foodist in the long run. I wasn't majorly depressed, but I wasn't very happy either. My mum keeps telling me that diet alone didn't make me unhappy. Well yeah, there were other factors...one of which was diet, the subject that was constantly on my mind and gave me an excuse to eat nearly every meal during freshman year in my dorm room by myself, even if I didn't have to. The raw food diet made me feel healthier, but not happier.

During the summer that I ended my diet, I shacked up at Vassar College (which was where I studied freshman year, only to decide during my first semester that I wanted to transfer to NYU, although if you want to ask me about Vassar I think it's a great school) and worked in a summer media program of about 12 students. One of our supervisors asked if anyone would volunteer to help do some work on a house her family was renovating. Only I and one of my housemates stepped up to the vague job. I had absolutely no idea what the job entailed; I just needed money. (Also, the supervisor was really sweet.)

After being given heavy duty gloves, face masks and goggles to protect us in addition to the head covering she had instructed us to wear, we (four of us including her daughter and daughter's boyfriend) got to work. Work entailed tearing shit out of the walls, ceilings, and floors. Seriously. Whacking concrete-ish walls with hammers, ripping out dusty wooden panels, throwing planks studded with long, sharp nails (which thankfully had no effect on our heavy gloves) out the window onto a tarp on the ground for god knows how many hours. I took a few photos during the destruction that with the flash just looked like huge clouds of dust...since that's what we were surrounded by. It was probably the most intense labor I've ever done in my life.

I distinctly remember thinking a few things at the end of the day. First off, I'd never do that again. Second, we snorked up disturbingly black crap from all the dust. Third, I didn't get asthmatic. Amazingly. I got tired, but I didn't wheeze, nor did I even feel that achey despite whacking things with hammers and whatnot. Although I don't remember exactly what I ate, I know it couldn't have been much because I had to walk to a nearby gas station for food (and you know how gas stations are teeming with raw goodies) when there ended up only being pizza and snacks for lunch.

As of late, things like stepping out into the humid air is enough to constrict my airways. Walking down the stairs slows my pace down to an elderly hospital patient on meds as I gasp for breath. Talking on the phone also has a tendency to make me asthmatic, although that's happened for years. (If some of you wonder why I don't like talking on the phone, that's a major reason. Yeeaah. Once I had an awkward conversation with a friend where I was mainly silent since it took too much effort to actually say anything.)

Obviously, there's something wrong here. This academic year has been my most food filled ever. Or consciously food filled. Right now I'm at my heaviest weight ever (don't scoff; do you know how skinny most Taiwanese girls are?), although that's not what bothers me so much. It's the asthma...thing. The not being able to breathe. The dependence on an inhaler, which I've already used twice today, not so much because I needed it, but because I wanted to get rid of the residual "sound of a dying cat" wheezing.

I'm sure someone by now is wondering why I don't just take medication to get rid of asthma. Because...I don't think I need it. My mind is generally very malleable, embarrasingly so, but if there's one thing you can't get me to change my mind about (although you could make me angry by arguing about it) it's medicine. I'm not against it if you truly need it, but surely many people take drugs they wouldn't need if they were more cautious about their health. Call me crazy, but in my simple mind doctors would be needed for emergencies, surgeries, incurable diseases, epidemics, etc, while nutritionists would handle general health problems and help prevent the more serious diseases from happening in the first place. Have you heard the saying "Early detection is the best prevention"? Have you ever wondered how weird this sounds, or is it just me? If you can detect it, that means you already have it. Maybe I'm being too picky with semantics.

Um. ...Man, if you're still reading this, I hope you don't think I'm insane. I don't claim to be anywhere near a perfect vision of health or harbor vast nutritional knowledge (so it's probably best that you don't ask me for advice). One thing I learned from "Health Food Junkies" is that there are a gazillion views about what's best for health. In a way, it's comparable to religion. There's no reason for me to believe in one dietary tenet for all people; I'm just doing what I'm comfortable with. The more I learn about food culture around the world through my studies, the more I want to eat and experience all of it, figuring it won't kill me.

But it's summer and I'd like a break. I suppose this is a time to find activities that don't involve food. ANYONE WANNA GO TO A CONCERT? As my fooding has increased, my concerting has hit an all-time low. I'm scared. And it seems like I'm too young to see Mew, which is...grr...gah...[lets out some kind of distressed moan only Danish bands can induce]. Jason Lytle is also playing two shows on Sat, July 22nd and Monday, July 24th. Wooo?

Back to the food/health thing. People have asked me if I've seen any doctors about my recent asthma problems. Mm...nope. If you've gone to doctors for most of your life without having made much progress, you're not going to feel compelled to continue the cycle. Another thing people ask me is if I have a food allergy. I don't think I have a direct allergy. I'm going on a diet because what I eat affects my health, which in turn affects my asthma. People are mainly concerned with immediate effects, not what will happen down the road in a few years or even decades.

Another thing I may not have mentioned (or maybe you missed it) is that I'm studying abroad next semester in Paris (no subject in particular, just for the hell of it). Will I diet there? Hells no! I can deal with four months of baguettes and chocolates, asthma be damned.

If anyone wants me to explain something that I didn't touch upon in this too-long entry, feel free to ask.

Yes, it's time for a new topic.

oh, how I love Japanese things

Have any Californians been to Famima!!? No, the extraneous exclamation marks aren't my doing; the name of the store is really "Famima!!". And what the heck does that name mean? It's the Japanese shortening/bastardization of Family Mart. (There are a bunch of shortened English words adapted into Japanese that would sound odd to non-Japanese people, but make sense once you figure out what it is. My ineptitude has resulted in the inability to come up with any examples right now.) It's a little different from FM, so I guess using the same name wouldn't have been appropriate. And if you excitedly shout, "Who wants to go to FAMIMA!!?" it won't sound as insane as going, "Who wants to go to FAMILY MART!!?" Kinda.

(In Taiwan there was a Family Mart around the corner from my apartment that I frequented in search of steamed buns and onigiri. It was the first place where I tried a neon green slushie to quell the mystery around the infamous foodstuff and subsequently decided that anyone who drinks a slushie more than once out of gustatory satisfaction is a frightening human specimen. God, I loved that place.)

Update (7/4/06): Colleen reviews Famima!! with photos and whatnot! I wanna goooo.

Another update: Famima!! article in Newsweek, scanned by Sera.

What is brooklyn.no? The official website of a Brooklyn-themed (the period of 1950-1960 to be more specific) restaurant in Norway, of course! ...Yeah! I find it interesting.

Since people have a tendency to give me book recommendations, I'm going to make a list of what I've already read, amazon associates style. I wonder if that'll pay any of my bills? Hm. I'll let you know when that's finished.

A totally non-food related question for ya. Have you ever abruptly cut a friend out of your life for no apparent reason (at least, not to your friend) without giving any signs that you never intended on speaking to them again or telling them that you moved or got a new life or maybe a new name or joined the circus? Why would you do that? Is your "friend" just a naive moron for thinking there was ever a friendship? Maybe the friend is too stupid to let it go, but the picagram of confidence they had in thinking they knew what a friend was has been replaced by a feeling of inadequacy and possibly being hated for unknown reasons along with a bundle of wasted time and stress. No decent person would wish such feelings upon another, but you couldn't think that they'd respond to being ignored by feeling like happy fuzzy baby bunnies frolicking in a field of wildflowers.

Yeah, I feel like a million grams of awesome. Stop the madness.

OTHER BLOGS!

I like The Hungry Cabbie's latest post about dancing in a soul food restaurant in the Bronx, among other things. It sounds like something I'll never do, although I wouldn't mind. ...Well, I don't dance, but I'll eat the fried stuff.

I've also decided that Ken Jennings is very cool. Cos. He's funny. Funny in a non-silly way. The funny bits pop up randomly and make me happy, like thinking you've reached the end of a bag of chips before discovering one last unbroken perfect chip! Or something. Okay, not really.

In his latest post he mentions Wordplay, which I just watched last weekend at IFC. As someone who never does crossword puzzles, I really enjoyed it. Pumped up with crossword puzzle energy, I pitted my noggin against little white and black squares soon after watching the documentary. Turns out I just suck at crosswords. Will I give up? Yeah. Those little squares can suck it. But I'll try to do something else that's just as productive as crossword puzzles.

(On a totally unrelated note, HOLY SHIZZ, The Phantom Tollbooth is playing at IFC. Drag someone to go, I will.)

I'm glad you guys enjoyed the Ayun interview! I updated it later in the day with links to places that she mentioned. Thank god for google.

To answer Jeffrey's question, there aren't many perks in the way of free handouts from writing a blog. The mainly perks are meeting/interacting with cool people who love food, having a reason to try new things, and hopefully increasing my writing and photo-taking prowess. I did just get an email from the Country Pancake House thanking me for the reviews I wrote, which was completely unexpected and appreciated!

The only free food sample I've received through this blog is from Sweet Riot. Obviously, they're awesome. I like their chocolate and the cute container it comes in. The only problem is that you could easily stuff a whole container in your mouth; this stuff doesn't last long.

Being invited to the Chocolate Symposium was a pretty awesome perk. I don't see myself being invited to many related events since my blog isn't about any specific food, but...I wouldn't mind. [cough] After my asthma gets better, at least.

If you want free stuff for blogging, start a music blog. You don't even need a lot of readers; listening to some "cool" stuff is enough to make marketers fling stuff at you. I got a CD in the mail the other day and I didn't even remember giving out my home address. Odd. The marketers probably give up on me after I fail to review anything they send me (hey, it's my choice!), but those marketers...they're always lurking around. If only food could be so easily distributed.