The Girl Who Ate Everything

not my beer cup

I recognize the funky odor that comes from the belly of the Bowery Ballroom as "concert stench", but for some reason it never occured to me that "concert stench" was borne from many open, wafting cups of beer. My short attention span plowed through while the first opener was performing; my thoughts were concentrated not on the musical prowess of what was going on in front of me but that the smell of fermented barley water reminded me of a bakery, which in turn reminded me of bread, which in turn reminded me that I wanted to eat bread. Right there. At that moment.

I guess my appetite is back. AWESOME. I am one step closer to obesity.

vegetarian friendly!

I ate out for dinner just once this week, which I realized is probably average (or above average), but that means I don't have much reason to update my blog more than once or twice a week unless you want to see every unexciting piece of store-bought food, piece of fruit, cookie or candy bar that goes into my mouth. Which you do not. I think.

Kashkaval

8 PM. Sitting at my table. Chomping down sweet, creamy, dairy-gasmic spoonfuls of flan flavored Palapa Azul ice cream. And then I hear a soft thud.

Meow.

Lotus

Lotus (Jo Jo's feline baby) suddenly appears to the right side of my table, either out of thin air or due to self-propellation through the small opening in my door—which one, I'm not sure. In the span of a split second my table goes from being cat-less to being cat-full.

It's not just the ice cream; Lotus will eat tissues if they're not carefully hidden. While I may have been uneasy with the idea of picking up Lotus (or any cat) a month ago, I'm now more used to looping my arm under her fluffy belly, feeling her tiny muscles squirm because she is probably not fond of being tossed out of a room with glorious ice cream tissues, and letting her hop out of my grasp in disgruntled defeat.

And then the cycle repeats...about once every day.

Cats are funneh.

I cook? Not really.

My trip back home to Jersey last weekend was rewarded with a mucus-laden cough and abdominal pain. Jersey luvs me!

According to my mum, driving uses abdominal muscles that otherwise lay stagnant and flabby as I spend the bulk of my NYC existence sitting and...shifting my butt between different sitting positions. She just got a new spiffy Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS Navigator, which is one of those handy devices that once you have makes you wonder how you ever felt like life was fulfilling and worthwhile without it. (Seriously, I would think that in the near future every car will have GPS built in, like door locks and glass windows, once such novel ideas that are standard in most cars, if they're legal. GPS knows everything. Everything..) We excitedly tested it on the wild roads of North Jersey, going point two miles and taking the left ramp whenever instructed by the computerized British female voice (British or Australian sounds nicer than American to us).

Apparently all that driving I did (which was actually very little, as GPS knows the fastest route to anywhere, even distant planets) disrupted the sleepy state of my abdominal muscles. Combined with the mucusy cough I developed in my dry, not well heated home, every time my body attempts to release a glob of bacteria-laden phlegm, a somehow dull and sharp pain erupts from my belly. My coughing isn't powerful enough to actually release the phlegm from its respiratory prison, meaning that the lovely glob just slithers back down as I put pressure on my abdomen as a post-cough remedy so that it feels less like someone just hurled a baby hippopotamus at my stomach.

Ah, it's not that bad. I'm just saying that New Jersey hates me.

But who cares. IT GREW!

Things that spring to mind when I think of Valentine's Day:

a) It marks yet another year of my unloved existence.
b) Oo, chocolate!
c) I totally want Polish food.

red...everywhere

While the first two points are 0% false, I'm fudging it a bit with the third. Polish food is not holiday specific to me (because I don't know what the Polish holidays are) and brings no images of Valentine's Day to mind, which is why John and I were so bewildered when we stepped into Polonia and felt like we had stumbled upon the vomitous aftermath of a monster that had eaten the entire V-Day section of a Hallmark store. In addition to the bright red walls (which I assume exist year-round and aren't a holiday special), red paper hearts of various sizes telling me to have a Happy Valentine's Day adorned the walls and heart-themed napkins decorated every table. I was most taken by the ornament hanging above our table of a plush heart embroidered with the words "Be Mine" in script and tightly hugged on each side by a smiling polar bear, either out or love or because of dependency issues.

My good friend Tristan, seen in previous episodes of TGWAE such as this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one, is currently studying abroad in London for his final semester of college and would like to meet some REAL BRITISH PEOPLE. Or at least people who are not American students in his program.

I referred him to some of my London-based friends, of which there are very few, before I realized that I HAVE A BLOG, which makes me feel like I HOLD THE POWER OF THE INTERNET IN MY NUBBLY FINGERTIPS and can CROSS THE OCEAN through the CYBERTUBES and so eloquently be like, "Hey London, how's it goin?"

Soo. Hey London, how's it...goin?

I don't know how many readers I have in London, but if any of you would be willing to help welcome Tristan to the Land of Eng (am I the only person who calls it that?), he would love you for it and I would feel the second level of happiness for knowing that my friend was being treated well by my awesome blog readers. If you think you'd like me in real life, you'll probably like Tristan too. Kathy can vouch for his coolness as well! He is not insane! For the most part.

So if this sounds at all appealing to you and you want to win some intangible karma points, email me at roboppy@gmail.com with some info about yourself and I will hook you up. You could count on him for a place to crash next time you're in Virginia! Yeah? Yeeeah?

This is what you see when you enter hell.

I just scared off a bunch of you, eh? Oops.

"I don't know how much meat I can eat."

I said those words not actually being unaware of how much meat I could fit into my belly—the meat in question being the bo ssam at Momofuku Ssam Bar—but with the assumption that the amount I could comfortably digest would be pathetically meager. What ended up happening was that my stomach miraculously grew by about five times to accomodate more tender pork butt than any human my size should eat in one sitting. Of course, my stomach didn't physically grow, so what happened? Did the essence of swine seep into my veins and do some magical stomach-expanding juju on my belly? It certainly infused my viscera, the results of which probably aren't going to lengthen my life. Overall, I really don't know what happened. It was mildly frightening.

Humans! Oh dear god!

But before the eight of us—Connie, Don (the main organizer of the night that we must bow down to), Doug, Eunice, Gerald, Janet, Megan, and me—could dig into a mountain of pork bathing in fat, covered in fat and infused with a combination of sixteen spices fat, we had a few appetizer-esque plates to get through. And by "a few" I mean "eight". I'm not sure the idea of moderation ever came into play during our dinner.

No drinkie for me

Last last Sunday I went to 7A with John, Pete, Aleks, Dean, and Madeleine (yes, that was too much LJ linkage) to celebrate's Aleks' birthday. It sits on the corner of 7th Street and Avenue A, so you can't miss it as long as you can remember the number 7 and the letter A. Or if you do, you're probably really drunk.

nachos mountain

We started off with a giant plate of nachos, which is the best form of nachos there is ("giant"). Hamster-sized splodges of guacamole, beans, pico de gallo, sour cream and streams (because it ain't a river...er) of cheddar cheese suffocated the tortilla chips, which was great because without the toppings all you have is flattened ground corn, and no one wants that. Maybe. Unfortunately many of the chips couldn't hold up to the massive amounts of non-corny substances (damn you, gravity) and many chips shattered mid-dip, mainly brought down by the heavy hand of mashed bean. Poor things. They gave their lives for a good cause though—our stomachs.

Wait, that's not a good cause, nevermind.

I haven't been in much of a mood to write lately. Maybe it's because it's been so cold in my room that retaining any mental stability requires wrapping oneself with a scarf and a jacket. I'd also wear gloves if I could type with them. No wait—it'd be much more convenient if I could inject thermal energy into my fingers. I suppose this is when one of those little portable heaters would come in handy, right next to my feet. I want my own miniature Sun. Containing the most powerful member of our solar system in my room is my ultimate dream...at the moment.

Maremma

A week ago I ate at Maremma with Nick, a friend/reader of this blog. Some things you should know before I get into the "review" part of this entry (that's what I do, right?) is that the dinner was Nick's treat (as prices are a bit out of my range) and my food blogger-ness was revealed through the completely conspicuous act of whipping out my Rebel XT and taking a gazillion sub-par photos in the meager lighting. Nick volunteered this information so the restaurant would know that there was a reason behind my snapping away, which possibly annoyed others (I refrained from using flash, at the very least). We think that in response to my (weak!) food blogger title, we received a few complimentary dishes.

I don't intend on using my "status" in the future to see what extras it may incur (it's never happened to me before!), but I just thought you should know the special circumstances of the meal, especially when you find out that Nick and I shared four desserts. Hell, as much as I love desserts even I wouldn't order that many. (I think.) It was very unexpected and generous of Maremma to stuff us silly and we were thankful for it. However, I feel bad because I'm sure my review isn't going to be that special, especially when you're as unfamiliar with Italian food that lies outside the golden categories of "pizza" and "gelato" as I am.

So I'll try to make this fairly quick and painless, but won't succeed in either respect. Now, onto the eleven dishes we ate that night.

cream-filled donut

Did the crazy-ass donut get your attention? Goodie! I'm going to write about it later.

If you have a few minutes (and you probably do because you wouldn't be reading my blog otherwise), please take this short survey about facial hair that my friend Rebecca is doing for one of her classes. It has 5 simple question. She told me that she needs more males than females, in case that sways the small percentage of male readership that I have (but everyone is welcome!...as long as they are human). Thanks for your help!

Update (3/1): Rebecca has enough replies now. Thank you for your help!

[Note: Rebecca didn't ask me to post a link to her survey on my site; I just figured it would be the best way to get the word out there.]