The Girl Who Ate Everything

I'm in Taipei! Right now! And tomorrow! And the day after that! Until Sunday! With Lee Anne!

So my infrequent updates will be even infrequent-er. Sorry. But I will certainly have many things to blog about after this trip, things that, if all goes well, you may be able to read about in the next six months. ... Maybe.

As for why I'm here, my dad and grandparents live here and I haven't visited Taipei in about 12 years; that streak had to be broken. Lee Anne came with me to visit her grandparents and bring me to her favorite eating spots. Together, we will digest SO VERY MUCH. If only Nick were here too; we'll have to tackle his list of recs without him. :(

Ideally I would've mentioned this earlier, but if I have any readers here who'd want to join Lee Anne and me on a food outing this week, email me (roboppy@gmail.com)!

As for the other part of this post's title, I'm visiting Valencia, Spain, from October 25 to 29 for a press trip. Yup, I'm crazy lucky. I doubt I have any readers there, but if you're out there, let me know!

OH BOY, AM I BEHIND OR WHAT. (Yes.) That's what going to Taiwan for a week will do to ya. As much as I've forced my body into its regular sleeping schedule, I think it's still jetlagged. Because I when I wake up my muscles don't really work, in a way that's more alarming than my everyday lack of muscular fortitude. The muscles I have to move myself, that is. The ones that move on their own, like my heart, are okay. [pats self on back] I've also had dreams two nights in a row that involved Disneyland. I don't know if that's a sign of having a case of the crazies, but I'm not ruling it out.

Anyhoo, if you want a super short version of this post, head to Real Cheap Eats where I wrote about the almighty Cookies-N-Cream Sundae for the site's latest update earlier this week. If not, just look below for the words. I put 'em there for ya so you won't leave me.

Cookie chunks a-plenty.

"I think these cookie chunks may be too large. It's a bit hard to e—"

"NO, THAT IS INCORRECT, IT IS PERFECT, aren't you perfect? YEAH THESE CHUNKS ARE PERFECT."

I'm the crazy second person in this conversation, by the way. And the towering cup above is the thing of perfection: three kinds of cookies, chunkified, and mixed with vanilla bean soft serve. Dessert Club Chikalicious calls this sundae Cookies-n-Cream, but it's nothing like your typical cookies and cream-flavored frozen concoction. The cookie chunks aren't embedded in the soft serve so much as coated in soft serve. This dessert is an excuse to eat a cup of cookie chunks glued together by soft serve, basically.

AND IT IS SO GLORIOUS.

Let's go back to those cookies: The Situation, Situation Dark, and Chocolate Chip. The Situation is a kitchen sink-sort of cookie mixed with chocolate chips, corn chips, peanut butter chips, marshmallow, and pretzel. The Situation Dark has a chocolate cookie base mixed with chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, toffee popcorn, and pretzel. Chocolate chip is ... chocolate chip. The cookies are light and crunchy in some parts, denser and chewier in others. Couple that with the creamy soft serve, it does all kinds of things in your mouth! All the things! ... A few things! Good things. And all this for $6.95.

You too could have five books!

This is one of those posts I probably should've written ages ago, but like everything else I should've written ages ago, didn't get written ages ago.

To remind y'all, I work full time at Serious Eats and did a bit of traveling last year to do research for our book.

And that book is NOW! ... HERE! Almost. It officially comes out on November 1, aka tomorrow. That gives you about one more day to pre-order it for $17.98, if you haven't already. Why should you pre-order it? So you can get some complimentary SWAG, specifically a Serious Eats bag and a bookplate autographed by the SE peeps and HAMBONE. THE DOG. HE IS AUTOGRAPHING TOOOOOOO. (We're just giving people what they want. They want us to exploit Hambone's paw.)

Oh, I should probably also mention why you should ... order it in general. Because it's full of info about our favorite breakfasts, sandwiches, desserts, fried foods, pizza, burgers, street food, and other stuff you probably like, along with recipes from Kenji, and a crapton of full-color photos that I spent a bunch of hours editing. (Also, you support my livelihood! I like living!)

So. Please considering buying a book (or five). Thank you!