The Girl Who Ate Everything

UPDATE (3/9): Just bought these shoes on Etsy! I'm pretty sure my feet are too wide for them, but I'll let you know what happens. Thanks for your help!

Sorry for the non-food-related post, but this is the easiest way for me to reach a buttload of people at once. THANK YOU FOR READING! For without you, I am nothiiiiinnggg.

First off, I'm not a big fan of shoes. Most of them don't fit me well because my feet are wider than average, and although I primarily buy shoes for comfort, not fashion (no high heels, please), I don't want shoes that, while comfortable, look like crap. My shoe collection consists of sneakers from Camper (my most oft-worn shoes), flip flops I bought at a Gap outlet mall over three years ago, Birkenstocks from three years ago, red flats from Camper that don't fit well because I should've bought a 38 instead of a 37 (although even if I got a 38, I suspect they would still be too tight), black flats from Clarks that are thankfully comfortable that I bought...I don't know how long ago, super warm fuzzy boots that are great when it's super cold and were adequate for walking in the snow until one of the soles wore away, and yellow flats made of plastic that I bought last summer for fun but are impractical because my feet are just a smidge too wide for them.

Fun, semi-formal shoes just don't work for me. And I'm okay with that because there are very few I'd ever want.

EXCEPT! In an instance of super rare desires, for some reason I really want this one pair of boots (or booties, rather; photos after this paragraph) in a specific design, and I feel like they must exist in my size. Whether or not they would be comfortable, I don't know...because I haven't found them yet. I randomly passed a vintage store last week that had the boots I pictured in my mind, but they were a size 7 and I'm a 7.5 to 8.

Freshly baked cookies! AIEEE! They look sort of flat, but I swear they were good.

Last Saturday I made chocolate chip cookies using the Ad Hoc recipe to bring to Dahlia's birthday party. As I'm not exactly a maven in the kitchen, I generally only bake cookies (or make any sort of dessert) for special occasions, not for the purpose of fulfilling my incessant craving for chocolate chip cookies. When I'm awake, I want cookies. When I'm asleep, I want cookies. When I'm dead my disembodied soul will want cookies. (That gives me an idea for a picture book: Robyn Wants Cookies. Each page would be me in a different situation thinking about cookies. "In the deepest part of the ocean, Robyn wants cookies / In the eye of a tornado, Robyn wants cookies / In a town made of Jell-O, Robyn munches on a cherry-favored lamp post, and still wants cookies.")

Incessant. Yes. Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite dessert. Even more so than macarons. A warm chocolate chip cookie out of the oven, with the gooey chocolate bits, crispiness around the edge, and barely cooked middle, is...everything that is good in the world of cookies. Luckily, they're super easy to make and hard to mess up, if my experience is any indication.

Snow-covered Peter Luger.

On February 26, I was perfectly content to stay home and work in my pajamas as a snowstorm semi-raged outside, transforming my view of an unkempt backyard-turned-weed graveyard into a winter wonderland.

And then around lunchtime, Kathy asked me if I wanted to eat lunch at Peter Luger. And I said, "Yes." How did Kathy get me to willingly transform from "groggy, sleep-wear 'boppy" to "mildly more functional, real world 'boppy" in the midst of a snowstorm on such short notice? Because, as a fellow Serious Eats contributor, she proposed that we go on a work-related mission. (Also, I like eating with her.)

The mission: to get a hot fudge sundae and a burger. It's called "research." Man, the things we do for you. Not that I expended much effort to get to Peter Luger; it's about 20 minutes from my apartment in Bed-Stuy on the B44 bus. It's the agony of an overstuffed belly that I had to endure. Lipid-based agony.

There used to be another post here about tipping and stuff, but I didn't like it so I took it down. ABUSING MY POWER.

I mean, I didn't write it very well. Maybe some other time. If any non-Americans are curious about tipping practices over here though, this feature on Trip Advisor is a good start.

There be doom inside.

I rarely talk about snacks on this blog. That's because I rarely eat them. Most of my life is planned around full meals; by the time I waddle home from said meals, I'm too stuffed to eat anything else. Unless I'm planning a get-together where I can share foods like candy, ice cream, and chips, I rarely get the urge to buy them for myself.

But while I was shopping at Whole Foods after work last night, I spotted Spicy Carrot Chips by Danielle in the snack section and thought, "I like raw carrots. And cooked carrots. And carrot juice. Maybe I would like...carrot chips."

[INSERT GRATING BUZZER NOISE THAT SIGNIFIES FAILURE.] That was a stupid thought; carrot chips are nothing like carrots in raw, cooked, or juiced form. If I ate vegetable chips more often I'd probably know that. But seeing the chips reminded me that one of my favorite snacks when I was little was Hain's carrot-flavored corn chips. If I liked those, maybe I would prefer chips packed with 100% PURE CARROT POWER. That's pretty much what Danielle's chips are: the ingredients are just fresh carrots (yup, the package says "fresh"), palm oil, chili, and salt. The description on the back of the package, although probably too good to be true, also reeled me in (emphasis mine):

The Carrot is sweeter than many other vegetables and is an ideal ingredient in many side dishes and salads. Carrots are also popular as a juice or snack and make delicious sliced chips. Danielle™ Carrot chips are full of flavor and the perfect companion for all occasions.

(The copy editor in me wants to rewrite that paragraph.)

It's true that carrots are mega-sweet. And they make a nice ingredient in sides and salads. And are good in liquid form. And are nice to snack on. But does that mean they'd also be good as chips? Chips for tonight's special occasion of, "getting home late on a Thursday night, schlepping something edible together for dinner, and watching Lost by myself while mindlessly shoveling dinner down my throat"?

Alas...nope. This is the worst form of carrot I've ever eaten, not to say that it tasted terrible or made me feel like retching (I ate most of the bag for the purposes of this review...yeah), but that it was no better than any other form of carrot. Upon the first chew, I thought it was pleasantly crunchy. And then crunchy turns to soft. Which makes sense—that's what mastication does. But something about its texture felt drier, fluffier, and sandier than other chip-like snacks. The wad of dry carrot chip mush didn't go down easy; after swallowing, I felt like I had something stuck in the back of my throat that could only be alleviated by chasing it down with a glass of water. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what a cat feels like when it gets a hairball stuck in its throat.

This post took place on February 19. But I remember it like it happened yesterday... ...Nah, I'm lying, I remember it like it happened a month ago.

Glisten.

If the above photo of a pork belly chunk—50% meat, 50% jelly-like fat—sitting in a bowl of ramen appeals to you, you'd probably be a fan of Minca.

But I almost forgot about Minca's buttery pork chashu (simmered pork belly). Until Melissa suggested that we eat there, my previous visit to Minca was over a year ago. WHAT MADE ME STAY AWAY FOR SO LONG? (I TYPE IN CAPS A LOT; I HOPE YOU ARE OKAY WITH THAT.)

Their broth. It's heavy, stomach coatingly thick, umami-laden stuff, and in the budding stage of our relationship, it was the main reason I went to Minca more than any other ramen shop. But on that over-a-year-ago visit, the ramen left my belly feeling uncomfortably bloated, and while that is a common sensation for me, this time was different. It didn't taste worth it. The love was gone.

I know my posting schedule has fallen off over the past month or...more. And I can't even blame it on Lost anymore since I now only watch one episode a week instead of my previous four-episodes-a-night marathons when I was catching up on the first five seasons. (By the way [spoiler alert if you haven't watched the latest episode], I love this image from Videogum's episode recap.) My explanation: my brain has deteriorated about 50 years in the last month and my brain just ain't working to the point that I now go to bed at 3 a.m. in order to fit in all the stuff I want (mostly in the category of "watching videos of cute animals doing funny things") and need (work) to do.

Which is why it's no surprise that I'm staying in on this sunny (and chilly) Saturday afternoon with some sort of illness that is making my throat itchy and my coughs hacky and phlegmy. As my mom and just about everyone else in the world has reminded me, five to six hours of sleep a night isn't conducive to good health (which could explain why my brain isn't working so well—and thus I'm caught in a cycle of failure). And that's on top of my normally unhealthy habits of eating tons.

But before I retire to my cold, lumpy bed for a late nap, I'll give you a preview of my next post that hasn't been written yet, except in lil' bits and bobs in my head. Although it's rare that I ever want to pull something out of my stupidly long posts in fear of something good getting buried, this won my attention:

COMBO MEAL.

Last Sunday while I was in Queens for an afternoon of Filipino face stuffing with Veronica, Kelly, and Francine, we stopped into Red Ribbon for my first Filipino bakery experience. And that's where I discovered one of the best combo meals ever: the kind that comes with cake (and soda).