The Girl Who Ate Everything

fat.

"Is that a layer of fat on top?"

Ed, Alaina, Adam, Raphael and I (aka the Serious Eats family of awesome people) were getting our first look at the Berkshire pork rillette while eating a congratulatory, "Hooray, you didn't eff up the redesign!" lunch at the Spotted Pig. It was the first time all five of us ate out as a group, meaning that there wasn't anyone left in the office to look after the site. It vaguely felt as though we had left an infant alone at home to fend for himself and if anything really bad were to happen in his life, it would be at this very point that the bad thing would happen, when the baby was most vulnerable. Like he would suddenly decide that the knobs in the bathtub were the height of all possible amusement, even better than that the stuffed animal cow that mooed when he hugged it, and that he must turn them while sitting in the tub and after a while he would experience a funny floating feeling and...oops, he's dead. Things like that are God's way of saying, "You really shouldn't have left your baby at home by himself."

But God doesn't care about websites and our baby website fared perfectly fine on its own. It didn't drown or poison itself or fall of a window or nuttin! What a good lil' website. So smart. So full of hope for the future.

So...back to our meal. As long as a layer of fat is an intentional part of a dish, it's probably a sign of good things to come. (Example of a bad thing: if your pizza is drowning under a pool of bright orange fat that drips down your hand in rivulets of grease as you lift up a slice. That is wrong.) And as this layer of fat lies atop a mash of pork and spices, that's even more of a sign of good things a-comin'. And, oh, HOW THE GOOD THINGS CAME!

It's the ZONA!

I was very, very grateful when we finally landed in Phoenix about half an hour ahead of schedule. One, I kind of had to pee but figured I could hold it until I got into the airport; two, I had been sitting next to a mother and her fidgety, screaming baby for the entire flight. It wasn't unbearable (baby needed to take a nap every now and then) and obviously the mother had a much worse off time than anyone sitting around her, but I wondered if I would've gotten more sleep on my 6:30 AM flight if I had sat more than a few inches away from the source of terrifying screechings and wailings and such.

My favorite Alex (you know, PARIS ALEX!) had the task of picking me up from the airport and entertaining me for the few hours before we would meet Lee Anne after church. He succeeded at both tasks by 500%. Yes, that's like 5 times the maximum. Because Alex can do that. He has powers that stretch beyond those of normal maaaaan.

[NOTE: This is the second entry I've posted today. Yes, two entries in one day; what craziness hath I wrought upon the Internet? Just make sure that you read the other one first, mmk? Mmk.]

In lieu of more fooding and subsequent sensations of stomach gurgling, Alex suggested that we visit the Phoenix Art Museum. "If they have this one special exhibit, it'll be worth the price of admission." Not only did they have it, but they bought it, people loved it so much.

whoooaAOAOAO

As did we. The exhibit, You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies (which totally sounds like the title of a yet to be made Múm song) by Yayoi Kusama, transported us mortal creatures into a freaky world of LIIGHT and DARKNESS and LEDS and MIRRORS and GIGGLINGS. I took loads of weird photos, putting my zoomy lens and long exposure times to good use. We would've stayed in the room longer had the museum employee not thought our happy fun dangling LED time was up. (For safety's sake you can't really shove a lot of people in there at once.)

I don't usually eat breakfast, but Lee Anne does. So in Phoenix, I EAT BREAKFAST.

Fig jam

Especially when it contains homemade fig jam from Bologna. Lee Anne worked on an organic farm in Bologna for two weeks over the summer and brought back a bounty of mashed fruits in jars, fig being the best one. Tender gobs of whole figs swam in their golden syrupy juices just waiting to be gutted by my spreading knife. Waiting...for the gutting...and then to be smashed upon the hearty raisin walnut bread Lee Anne bought from La Grande Orange the day before. Oh, the beautiful combination of fruity sugar and bready sugar to form an even more delicious mass of sugar.

[A note from your friendly blogger: I'm not in Phoenix anymore—I'm back in THE JERZ! I hope to have the rest of the Phoenix entries up by the end of the week. If you want more Phoenix action, read my review of Pizzeria Bianco on Slice. I'll write another version for this blog, aka one that is more mindless and wandering and has lots of made up words. PREPARE YOURSELVES.]

[Another note, 8/14/07: I have another review up on Serious Eats for Pane Bianco.]

In-N-Out, so clean, so fresh

I'm happy to report that I have finally ingested the meaty juices of the legendary In-N-Out, legendary for those of us who have read about its unsurpassable deliciousness for the past few years but reside on the In-N-Out-less side of America, also known as "The Region of Sadness." It might be strange to be a little thankful that I'm not surrounded by In-N-Outs, but that's because I'm afraid that if I were I would eat there all the freakin' time.

[Preamble: This entry is really long. Like. It has enough photos to fill five entries. If you want to skip to the section where I talk about Pizzeria Bianco, I don't blame you. But some of the stuff before then is kind of amusing. I mean, in my opinion. So. It's up to you. You can skip 60% of this entry if you want. Yeah. Yeeaaah.]

"Hey Robyn, do you want to make sweet potato pancakes?" Kimberly asked me last Thursday morning. Hell, who wouldn't? You know what making pancakes leads to? EATING PANCAKES! What a grand conclusion I have come to.

The batter, it is battered

She pureed some canned sweet potato while I gathered other ingredients for pancake making. The stage was set for creating flat rounds of mildly sweet dough primarily eaten in the morning hours.

Approved

A test pancake nugget soaked up its weight in butter as it cooked/partially fried. This nugget gained our hearty approval, giving us the go-ahead to make real, non-nugget pancakes.

One of my favorite things to do when I visit a new place is check out the local supermarkets. Your guidebook to Paris probably won't say, "And on the way to the Eiffel Tower, be sure to check out a Monoprix, for everyday low prices!" but hey, it's as Parisian as strolling through those outdoor markets bursting with fresh produce and disembodied frog legs and walking along the Seine and whatnot. Kind of. Maybe.

Or I might just be overly fascinated by the everyday destinations of regular people in other places. Until I'm sick of it, it's still new to me.

Since Arizona is in the same country as New Jersey (I know it sounds like a foreign country, but I checked a map and everything), the supermarkets were pretty much the same as what I can get back home. Or so I thought.

It's SUPER!

This supermarket was no ordinary market of superiority. It was a MERCADO of superiority. Which is a whole 'nother thing. If I were intoxicated enough and for some reason woke up in an aisle of the Super Mercado after a rough night of having my memory reconstructed, I would totally believe that I were in Mexico. And if my memory really had been reconstructed, I might even known Spanish. And kung-fu.

[Introductory message: I'm already back in NJ. Actually, right now I'm on the train back to AMERICA, but I'll be in NJ when I post this. I didn't have any time to post last week, not so much because my days were so action-packed but because my friend and I ended up staying up late sleeping a lot. Oops. Well. I'll probably spend this whole week recounting all of last week.]

"Robyn, you should wake up now."

I groaned, rolled over and squinted at my watch. It was 6:05, about 10 minutes before my mom was supposed to drive me to the train station. "Time...what...is...huh?" croaked my brain that had suddenly switched from dream-mode to confusion-mode.

"MOOOM, I WANTED TO WAKE UP AT 5:45, GAARRHG." I really had told my mom at 5:00 AM to wake me up in 45 minutes, but she happened to miss the "45 minutes" part. Sure, I probably should've set my alarm, but...but aren't moms supposed to know everything, including that their daughters might want more than 10 minutes to change into normal clothing and wash up a bit and regain consciousness?

My mom thought I was already awake. Well. Alright. Luckily I had already packed my bags; all I ended up forgetting was a mouse for my computer, which wasn't as big of a loss as I thought it would be. If forced to use a touchpad for extended periods of time, one will become quite skilled at using it. Not that it's a very useful skill.

Totally not in the sky

Toronto is just far enough that it's worthwhile to take a plane there, yet I decided to take a train. Why? A mixture of curiosity (I had never taken Amtrak before), penny pinching (it was somewhat cheaper to take a train, I assume by at least $100), convenience (the train would take me directly into the city) and masochism (HELLOOOO SITTING ON MY ASS FOR 12 HOURS, which is all honestly isn't much of a stretch from what I do on a normal day).

[Salutations: I'm not in Canada anymore. This is part 2 of a yet to be determined multiple part series of entries about my previous week in the land of people who say "eh" a lot. (THEY REALLY DO; I HEARD IT.) This is also the second entry I've posted today, although you should know that the first one is rather boring and doesn't contain any information about food.]

Kat and I planned to made trips to Toronto from Wednesday to Saturday, designating Tuesday as "Oakville Day," which given Kat's choice may have been titled, "Check Out How Crappy My Town Is Day."

It's so pretty!...wait, I was looking at a photo of a Hawaiian beach. This is not pretty.

Oakville isn't that bad. I mean, it's got more stuff than the town we went to high school in....which doesn't say much since our town was 99% houses, trees and squirrels, but it could've been worse. However, Oakville is a bitch to get around in without a car. As thankful as we were that the town had a public transportation system, it wasn't all that convenient for $2.50 per ride (with free transfers) on a schedule that would at most have two buses an hour (during the times we'd want to ride it, at least...which means after 10 AM). We walked to the closest mall, which took about 20 minutes. Yay exercise. We would need a lot of it considering all the food I would make us eat in the mall's food court.

Kat reaches for the meeeaat

"Oh my god, I love meat."

I'm sure that at some point during our lunch, Kat, Anne Marie and I all uttered this sentence in between mouthfuls of thinly sliced marinated beef and rice.

storefront

Since neither Kat nor I had any idea where to eat, Anne Marie took us to Korean Grill House on Queen Street. I figure it's pretty popular since there are four other locations in Toronto, popularity that I assume is based on the provision of endless meat. The draw for us was their all-you-can-eat lunch special for about $10. You could find cheaper food elsewhere, but for all the raw meat (beef, chicken, pork, white fish and squid) you can cook, probably not.

Street corner

We waiting around the corner from the supermarket for my food-crazy flickr friend, Renée. And she appeared! So we could EAT MOOOOAAAR. (I know how to spell "more," but sometimes I say it like "moar." What's the difference? "Moar" sounds crazier, like a hybrid of "more" and "mraaaawh." It's also lolcat friendly. I'll admit that my general speech patterns don't give any indication that I'm a college graduate. I've slipped through the cracks. That's what I've been saying ever since I was accepted into college.)