The Girl Who Ate Everything

This is not food related in any way, but I thought this may make a nice lil' introduction to me for those of you who don't know what I sound or look like.

Or...maybe this is the worst introduction to me, but whatever.

About three weeks ago I went to Orlando with Greg (and although I doubt anyone would think otherwise, I'll clarify that we're just friiieennndddzzz) to attend the wedding of our friends Tam and Al (and what a freakin' beautiful wedding it was, as captured by Diana). Something I didn't know before I went to Orlando: It's rife with delicious Vietnamese food. And I hope to tell you about it someday before I die.

But this post isn't about food—it's about the effects of a certain gas through which the speed of sound is about three times faster than in your run-of-the-mill air.

Greg was in charge of getting a helium tank for the wedding ceremony and returning it to the balloon shop. Since there was helium left in the tank when we returned it, we decided to inhale some (it was my first time)...and...film the results. Here are those results:

I don't know why I felt compelled to exclaim, "I'm a duck!"

(Inhaling helium straight out of a tank is dangerous, by the way. So...don't do it. Or. Don't tell me I didn't warn ya. I managed to not kill myself, which was nice, although that headache burst was alarming.)

...So now you know who's behind the words you're reading right now. Even if you weren't wondering. I just wanted to set this straight so you know exactly who you're coming to for food advice. Ask yourself, "Do I really want to take advice from...this person?"

As I'm unintentionally posting this on my blog's 6th birthday (not exactly a landmark birthday...and come to think of it, my time as a 6-year-old was probably the least significant out of my 25 years of living), I think it's a good time to give you all a hearty virtual thank you-hug from the bottom of my fat-splotched heart for reading my blog and giving me the will to live continue writing in lieu of ever adopting a normal sleep pattern. Admittedly, even if I didn't have this blog I'd probably still be underslept, but thanks to you I try spent my nights blogging in a productive manner instead of watching Hulu. So. Thank you, tons. :)

This post originally took place on September 29. Read more about Weegie Week here, here, here, and here.

Per Se, so empty by the time we finished our meal.

We hobbled out of the Time Warner Center around 2 a.m.—hobbled because were stuffed to the brims of our digestive tracts, and some of us may have been a wee bit inebriated. The source of our food coma? A four-hour, nine-course dinner at Per Se.

Yup, that Per Se—the three-star Michelin restaurant from Thomas Keller. With a $275 price tag. Aka, not the sort of place I ever eat at. But for years I've been interested in going, as long as the right opportunity arose. Opportunity came in September.

Or February, perhaps, which was when Morten first told me about his plans to visit New York City in the fall with his girlfriend, Behnaz. As the trip was seven months away, he understandably didn't have any concrete plans—except for one specific bit: "I'd like to book a table at Per Se. Would you like to jo—"

YES.

I don't think I would've said yes to anyone else—at least, not so readily. I mean, Morten had to endure more than 10 hours of sitting in airplanes and airports to get from Norway to Per Se; all I had to do was hop on the subway. That put things in perspective. Also, out of all my best friends, Morten is one of the most appreciative of fine food. He, along with Behnaz and Kåre, made for some of the best dining companions I could hope for.

This post originally took place on September 30. Read more about Weegie Week (aka "Week with my friends Morten, Kåre, and Behnaz, who were visiting from Norway") here, here, here, here, and here.

Fromage de tête

There's something about a loaf of pig's head chunks suspended in cloudy aspic that fills me with Totoro-sized glee. (And if you don't know who Totoro is, you better watch this movie right now. Seriously, get out of my face and go watch a gigantic fuzzy imaginary creature instead.) When I saw head cheese on the menu at DBGB (more appealingly listed by its French name, fromage de tête,) I had to get it. You can have your saucisson sec and your pork rillette—just leave me my jellied head meats.

...I mean, I'll happily eat dry sausage and any sort of rillette, but if I had to choose just one I'd go with the head cheese.

Morten wrote a post about our Per Se experience at Upop.no...in Norwegian. I asked him to translate it to English so I could share it with y'all. You can check out my post about Per Se for more food porn and info about our meal. Enjoy!

This post originally took place on October 1. Read more about Weegie Week (aka "Week with my friends Morten, Kåre, and Behnaz, who were visiting from Norway") here, here, here, here, here, and here.

New York City is a sweaty, raucous hotbed of sweaty, raucous activities on Friday nights. ...So I assumed. My slothful ways prevent me from doing anything more strenuous than staring at my computer most of the time. To make sure I don't fuse to my chair, I've judiciously placed a box of tissues across my bedroom from my desk so that I'm forced to make a roundtrip of eight steps every two minutes if I want to propel the perpetual buildup of snot out of my nasal tubes.

But on the night of October 1, my apartment was a hotbed of activity! Well. Perhaps not all that raucous, but maybe a smidge sweaty...due to the oven and burners being used at full capacity.

Mm, veg.

If my kitchen were capable of feeling emotion and possessed olfactory senses, its primary feeling of the night would've been of excited confusion. "I'm...cooking stuff! With all the gaseous flames I can muster! And...[sniff sniff]...it actually smells good in here! This can't be the work of Robyn. How could this b—OH MY GOD SOMEONE BROKE INTO THE APARTMENT. AND POSSIBLY GOT RID OF ROBYN. Yeah, I'm okay with that."

Cha-An

Cha-An is one of those unique but unassuming places you walk by and think, "Ah, that looks nice; maybe I'll eat there someday." And then five years later after passing it upwards of fifty (or maybe...a hundred) times, you finally eat there.

And by "you" I mean me. I've had Cha-An on my "to visit" list since my college years, but seeing it as more of a tea house than a restaurant (because...well, it is) held me back. My favorite kind of tea is mixed with a few generous glugs of milk and sweetened with a quarter cup of sugar—serious tea drinker, I'm not. (I once described the flavor of tea as "dirty water" to a friend. His response: PURE HORROR. Oopsss. Of course, it doesn't always tastes like dirty water, but come onnnn, sometimes it totally does.)

I wasn't driven to eat at Cha-An until Halloween when I was in desperate need of escaping my cave-like apartment and engaging in human interaction (and thus changing out of my pajamas) for the first time in over 24 hours. I remembered Diana mentioning being fond of their lunch special and it sounded like a good place to go if I were forced to eat by my lonesome. (I stopped eating out by myself a long time ago—it feels like a waste of silently consumed calories when I'd much rather spend those calories over conversation with a good friend.) Luckily, Kwan answered my tweet of neediness, setting me up for an exciting day of not-sitting-in-my-apartment-bedecked-in-manatee-themed-pajama-pants.