The Girl Who Ate Everything

I Should Eat More Pastrami Reubens from Katz's Deli

2012-05-16T08:02:00Z

: I love that sign.

When you live in New York City, it's easy to overlook popular, tourist destination restaurants that are actually good. Take Katz's, the over century-year-old home to hefty meatpiles featuring pastrami, corned beef, brisket, and other sliced or ground up animal parts. It's one of the city's most famous restaurants; you don't need me to tell you to go there.

But every now and then, I need people to remind me to go there. Because two years went by between my most recent Katz's visit in March and the one before that. And thus I was reminded of what I'm missing when I don't eat at Katz's:

: Reuben. I love you.

That's half of their Reuben sandwich: a floppily stacked mound of hand sliced, meltingly fatty, tender pastrami (by request; the default is corned beef) topped with sauerkraut, a few slices of Swiss, and a slathering of Russian dressing for $16.55. Sure, the pastrami doesn't need extras, but they don't hurt. It's a different kind of awesome from eating a plain pastrami or corned beef sandwich. Also, messier.

Although $16.55 may sound like a lot for a sandwich, consider that half a sandwich should overly satisfy most normal-sized stomachs—and the sandwich comes with a generous plate of pickles to further pad your belly—making it an awesome dinner-for-two for about $8 per person. I say that's a steal. Why the hell don't I eat here more often?

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Chichi, with sandwich entrails.

My sandwich split-ee for the evening: Chichi. Or, more like, I was her sandwich split-ee; she asked me to join her. Her reason? "I've never been to Katz's before."

...Whaaaa? I'd assumed that Chichi had tried every awesome meatstuff in the city because that seems like the kinda thing she'd do during every waking moment she's not writing or exercising. For those who don't know Chichi, here are a few facts to give you some insight into her deep appreciation of meat: She writes an offal-centric recipe column called The Nasty Bits, she's apprenticed at a butcher shop, and she's been known to eat chunks of meat in bed as a nighttime snack. ...At least I think the last bit is true. Probably.

: Chichi at the sandwich counter. She's got that special meat-loving glow in her eyes.

If you've never been to Katz's before, here's a rough guide on what to do when you visit. Hold on to the ticket you're given as you walk in; you'll use this to pay when you leave. Smush yourself into the shortest line of huddled bodies* waiting for pastrami or corned beef-centric sandwiches (I think there are four or five lines). If you want other foodstuffs like soup or fries, you'll have to wait in a different line, but you can do those later. (Actually, what am I talking about; ignore the other stuff.) Wait in line. Give ticket to dude behind the counter. Place your order. Watch him make your sandwich. Eat the freshly sliced meat samples he plops in front of you. Take sandwich to table. Grab a cup of water at the water station along the restaurant's back wall. EAT. (Later: massage belly while falling asleep.)

: Meat sample grab.

: Water!

: A quiet morning at Katz's with Ed Levine, Ferran Adrià, and others. Aka, a totally atypical morning. I was there to take a bunch of photos when Adrià visited in 2008.

* Katz's isn't always mobbed. I've been twice for breakfast on a weekday when each customer had a comfortable, far-from-smushy amount of breathing space.

Katz's Delicatessen
205 East Houston Street New York, NY 10002 (map)
212-254-2246; katzsdelicatessen.com‎

Flour Tortilla Chips: I Am Not Ok With You (When I'm Expecting Corn)

2012-05-16T06:01:12Z

I first started writing this post in January, when my brain was still fresh with tortilla chip-induced rage. After I lashed out at Whole Foods with the almighty power of the written word—which isn't that powerful when it's sitting as a draft in Gmail for four months—I realized how dumb it was to care that much about tortilla chips. ...Well. Maybe "dumb" isn't the right word. But my first impression was something like, "Man, that's dumb." And I definitely spent too long drawing the doodle below. That was probably a bad use of my time. I've been told I need to sleep more to stave off death. On the other hand, I thought, "Well, I already spent too much time drawing that doodle; I don't want that to go to waste. All that hard work. I even shaded the thing. I am rarely compelled to shade." The real reason I decided to finish this post, though, was because I found a brand of tortilla chips I really liked and I thought it was worth blogging about, even though I rarely blog about snack products. Aaaand the end. You probably didn't need all that explanation.

: Sometimes, this is how I feel.

"THOSE ARE THE CHIPS I WANT. RIGHT THERE. RIGHTTHEEEERRRRE."

I don't usually think that loudly while shopping at Whole Foods, but my bag of chips was right there, and I wasn't expecting to find it. What I wanted was, quite specifically, a small-ish bag of tortilla chips fit for one woman and a bowl of guacamole (as opposed to the more typical one-pound bags fit for a Super Bowl party-for-20), filled with chips of the thick and freshly fried variety. My shopping basket was chip-less as I reached the store's final frontier of prepared foods and steam tables. I was ready to give into subpar tortilla chips.

But on top of the salad bar was a row of small, lunch-sized paper bags filled with freshly fried tortilla chips—"Our Own Homemade Tortilla Chips," according to the Whole Foods-branded sticker on the bag. The chips looked appropriately golden and thick. Could...could it be? Could I be this close to filling my mouth with the painfully sharp shards of crunchy, corny awesomeness I so madly craved? I could see my future in those chips, the grand night of tortilla-chip-and-homemade-guacamole that would ensue, aka "EPIC ROBYN PARTY FOR ONE."

And then, as soon as I got home and dumped all my stuff on the ground because that's where stuff goes (my mom didn't teach me that; I learned it on my own, after many years of honing my dumping technique), I hastily shoved a chip in my mouth. And that high I was riding—the high that comes when you get something you really wanted but didn't expect—suddenly stopped. And, following the laws of physics, even though this is metaphorical, I was flung off into a wall of disappoint (which is a bit different from disappoinment, but I don't feel like explaining that now). After one bite, the chips crumbled like my dreams-of-one-second-ago. The chips looked hearty, but it was a lie; their texture was brittle. They looked corn-alicious, but their flavor was wan and marginally salted. And then the ingredient list gave away their substandard origins: They were made of flour tortillas.

]]> Why? Why would you do that, Whole Foods? If the label had said "Shitty Pita Chips" then I wouldn't have been as disappointed because it would've tasted like what it said on the bag. (I continued to eat a handful of chips, trying to convince myself it was worth saving, but...no. In the trash the bag went.) And while you technically delivered "Homemade Tortilla Chip" as advertised, I don't know why you're catering to whatever microscopic subset of the tortilla chip-eating population that expects flour tortilla chips instead of corn tortilla chips when they see the words "tortilla chips." These people are fools, FOOLS; let 'em fend for their own weird chip preference selves*. I'm telling you, most people would expect corn.

* Sorry if you prefer flour tortilla chips over corn. ...Ok not really. But I'll add that I freakin' love good pita chips. They're almost right up there with a good, hearty tortilla chip.

: Image: Laurie's Buffalo Gourmet

But, months later, Whole Foods redeemed itself by giving me my first taste of Laurie's Buffalo Gourmet's Thick and Hearty tortilla chips. Prominent display + two bags for $5 price = okay, I'll try it. And, jeez, it worked; I'm hooked on these chips. They're now my favorite mass-market brand of tortilla chips, my favorite tortilla chips overall being these guys from a Mexican supermarket in Phoenix. They're super thick, corn-tastic, well salted, and if I didn't chew well I'd fear those heartily crunchy shards would threaten to pierce my throat. Aw yeah, that's the stuff.

Momma, What's a Fried Salad? (Or That Time I Ate Fried Salad, Among Other Things, at Mei Li Wah)

2012-05-03T04:18:51Z

Happy May, guys! Oh hey, did I only write one post last month? I think that's a new record of non-productivity. Yeeeaah. [sticks head in a chum bucket] [Spongebob reference not intentional] As always, thanks for sticking around! Let's hope I can do better this month. Once I get my 600-and-something vacation photos from Berlin up, I'll feel more prepared to actually write about it.

: Mei Li Wah

UPDATE (5/5/12): Just days after writing this post, I must dock Mei Li Wah a few points. :C Last night I went there around 8:30 p.m. only to find that they don't make rice noodles that late—thus no rice noodle roll-wrapped crullers for my friend and me. Make sure to go earlier for rice noodle action. We also tried their "Big Bun" stuffed with pork, chicken, mushroom, hard boiled egg, and sausage, but it tasted like one of the ingredients had died and infused everything else with the mild scent of decay.

In my mind, there's only one appropriate reaction to reading the words "Fried Salad (3 Pcs.)" on a menu:

"Holy shit what is a fried salad what what what oh my I AM DEFINITELY ORDERING THAT."

If you though the same thing, great! We are obviously very mature adults with progressive curiosities, like a modern-day Archimedes. Before I take you on a magical journey to reveal the mysteries of the salad, let us indulge in a celebratory fist bump. [bump]

As for the rest of you who didn't think the same thing...well. I guess you can come too. TAKE MY HAND I WASHED IT AND EVERYTHING, JUST FOR YOU...

All I knew about Mei Li Wah's fried salad before I ordered it was that it could be measured in pieces and each piece was worth $1.316. Otherwise, it was a mystery. A fried, oily mystery. I assumed it also involved fried vegetables. Or fried toppings. Or perhaps a variety of fried crust bits, tossed with dressing.

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That's it.

Or maybe it's a breaded and deep fried, thin-skinned, egg roll-esque log filled with burning hot mayo-based fruit and shrimp salad, atop a scattering of shredded lettuce, with a glob of dipping mayo on the side. Just like mom used to make in a parallel universe.

: Innards.

What? Yeah. Ok. It sounds awful—it's no surprise they went with a name more vague than "hot fruit and shrimp salad"—but it doesn't taste that bad. Unless you dislike mayo mixed with tiny fruit chunks and a dried shrimplet here and there, in which case, this is tailor made to fill you with disgust.

Although I can't say I'd order it again, I was fine with the fruit-mayo-shrimp-fried-crust combo. It's creamy and a bit sweet, and it's all encased in a light, crisp crust. It's like an egg roll-ified version of prawn fruit salad—prawns, melon, and mayo in some combination—if you're into that (I am). Nick liked it too, even more than I did.

Nick and I didn't stop at fried salad. Oh no; we wanted to get all the dishes with funny names. (Nick is a very good friend to have for this kind of task. He will eat anything. And everything. It's sometimes upsetting, but usually awesome.)

: Crispy egg shatters

Crispy egg shatters ($0.90) lived up to most of its name. It was crispy. It shattered. And I gather there's egg in the wonton skin-esque dough. If you like aggressively crunchy snacks, this is worth your 90 cents.

: Stuffed beef pasta fried fritters

Stuffed beef pasta fried fritters ($3.50) ended up being rice noodle roll-wrapped youtiao stuffed with pulverized beef goo. (I'm guessing they meant "paste" when they said "pasta," considering there's another dish on the menu called "stuffed fish paste fried fritters.") Turns out stuffing a stick of fried dough with a meatlog and wrapping it in a soft-and-slightly-chewy noodly sheath (not the most delicate and supple noodle, but when combined with the other parts, that's ok) is a very good idea. I've had the meatless version loads of times at dim sum—it's one of my dim sum standbys—but I'd never before seen the deluxe version with a meaty core. Give me all the meat cores.

: Fried rice noodle roll with XO sauce

I should point out that most of Mei Li Wah's menu mostly consists of items that don't have funny names. Fried rice noodle roll with XO sauce ($4.95) was damn satisfying. Just lots of rolled up rice noodle chunks with thin strips of red and green pepper, mung bean sprouts, and sesame seeds, all coated in XO sauce. Chewy, a smidge crunchy, a bit spicy.

: Roast pork buns and a cocktail bun; porky innards

You can't go to Mei Li Wah without getting their famous roast pork buns ($0.90). I don't know if they're the best in Chinatown—I haven't eaten enough to judge—but they're among the better ones I've eaten, and considering their popularity you know they're always fresh. I once tried the steamed version, but that was a mistake; the meat-to-bread ratio was out of whack. Stick with baked for a high fatty pork chunks-to-bread ratio.

I've heard people praise Mei Li Wah for their pork buns, but I've never heard anyone say it's one of their favorite restaurants for non-bun matter. So I'll say it: Mei Li Wah is one of my favorite places to eat in Chinatown. ...This might be evidence that I haven't eaten at enough places in Chinatown. It's not just about the food, which doesn't necessarily fit under the "must try" category—and that's ok. I find the restaurant comforting as a whole: the sea foam green walls, the diner-style booths, the baffling ceiling stubs, the gruff, geriatric waitress who sounds like she gives half a shit about you. And I'm just a big softie when it comes to restaurants that offer fried salad.

Mei Li Wah
64 Bayard Street, New York NY 10013 (map)
212-966-7866; meiliwah.com

That Time I Went to Boston 11 Months Ago

2012-04-03T06:39:57Z

I visited Boston last May. And I'm writing about it...11 months later. Yup. Enjoy the holes in my memory.

If you're wondering what to cook a lobster in, I highly suggest against this:

: Lobster, you're really not going to like this.

I mean, a clear steamer works, but it's also a sadistic viewing chamber into your lobster's final dance—or lethargic flails, more like—with death. Understandably. I too would flail a bit if I were being cooked alive.

And then one and a half hours later, we feasted on lobster rolls! Steam Chamber of Death was just a forgotten blip of the past! Yay!

But...let's go back in time a bit.

: Kåre's on a boat.

Last May I visited Boston with Kåre to visit Adelyn, one of our most favorite people in the world. I hadn't been to Boston in over a decade*, despite that it's close to New York City and seemingly every college student in the Tri-state area hops the Chinatown bus to Boston at some point to visit their army of friends who goes to college there. Of course, people also visit Boston if they don't know people there; it's a major city with...rich history...and stuff...to do.

* The last time I went to Boston (from New Jersey) was in 9th grade. ...To see a Beck concert. And to meet an Internet friend. To say I was a bit obsessed with Beck and the internet friend is an understatement. I thought I'd be a raging Beck fan forever and be friends with that person forever, neither of which happened. GUYS, REMEMBER HOW WEIRD IT WAS TO BE A TEENAGER? REALLY WEIRD. I AM SUPER GLAD THAT IS OVER.

But the main reason I wanted to visit Boston was to see Adelyn. I didn't care much about what else we did; we could hang out in a fetid landfill, and as long as Adelyn was there, it'd still be fun. (We did not hang out in a fetid landfill.) I didn't do much in the ways of food research, or, um, anything-not-food research.

Groupon helped us plan our first activity though: a trip on the Boston Lobster Tour. Adelyn found a nice deal where we could take the one-hour-ish tour around Boston Harbor for $90, 50 percent off the normal $180 price tag. Throw in the prospect of fresh lobsters—you get to keep whatever the captain pulls up—and it sounded like a fine deal.

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USA!

Luckily, we also hit fantastic weather. THANKS, NATURE. Youdabes.

: Saying stuff!

Our captain was great—very knowledgeable and friendly. Not that I could tell you what he told us since this was almost a year ago and I forget stuff that happened last week. Or this morning. But if we could go back in time to last May, then, boy, the knowledge I could foist upon you...would probably still be about the same.

: Getting the lobsters.

He pulled two cages out of the water, catching three lobsters in all.

: If I were one of these lobsters, I'd be pretty confused.

He broke out a ruler to measure the lobsters; small lobsters get returned to the water. Luckily (well, for us, not them), all the lobsters were large enough for eatin'.

: PREGGERS.

But pregnant lobsters also get a second chance at life, and one of our lobsters was mega-pregz. Alas, "From every 50,000 eggs only about 2 lobsters are expected to survive to legal size." Whenever life is gettin' you down, just think, "At least I'm not a lobster egg. That would suck for many reasons, at least two of which are, 1) I would probably die before I could live, and 2) if I lived, I'd be a lobster."

Ah well; we only needed two lobsters to feed the three of us for dinner, and two lobsters, we received!

: Boston Lobster Tours

If you go on a Boston Lobster Tour and head to the pier where the boat is supposed to be, thinking, "Is there really a boat over here?" the answer is yes. You probably didn't need me to tell you that, but for some reason we weren't sure if there was going to be a boat at the end of the pier. It...it looked un-boat-ed from afar. You might have thought so too. Or maybe you have eyes that, like, see stuff correctly. Good for you.

: Wellll here's a boring photo. You're welcome.

We drove to Shaws to pick up lobster roll-making ingredients, but on the way we passed—or rather, were passed by—something we would would remember forever. A unicorn of the urban jogging set. A woman wearing headphones while pushing a double-baby stroller.

...Ok, "unicorn" is giving her too much credit; she'd also have to be walking a pack of dogs and talking on her cell phone to earn that title. How about...a pony? No. A pygmy goat? Eh?

So, back to my boring story. I first spotted Serious Jogging Lady when we stopped at an intersection not far from the bridge in the photo above. We managed to drive by her because, well, we were in a car and she was a mere human pushing two babies in a mega-stroller. Surely our modern gas-powered marvel of locomotive engineering would win the race that Serious Jogging Lady didn't know she had entered.

But as we stood on that bridge, stuck in a long line of gassy metal deathtraps ("gassy metal deathtrap" is my loving pet name for a car), we saw Serious Jogging Lady come from behind, and pass us on the other side of the barrier, and continue to jog down the bridge until she was just a bouncing lavender speck on the horizon, soon disappearing from our view (but not our minds) forever.

No...noooo! We weren't ready to let the memory of Serious Jogging Lady go! We had to know where she was going. Or at least make it up. Yes, that was good enough.

"If we're stuck here long enough, she'll make a lap around us."

"But before she comes around again, she's going to drop her babies off at home...and steal someone else's babies."

"Two babies. And then. More babies."

"She's going to jog around with that stroller and just keep stealing new babies. She can't jog without babies. Her house is going to be FULL of babies."

Making up stories about babies is fun. Especially stolen babies. A mountain of them. But hearing true stories about stolen babies is terrifying. Man! That's life. Yes, you may close your textbooks now.

: Goodbye, lobster.

Aaaaand we're back to the lobsters! Back to the scene of death-by-steam. Kåre was in charge of holding down the lid in case the lobsters got feisty, while Adelyn and I were in charge of standing a few feet away and unhelpfully uttering, "Auuhhhhh," or "Oohnooooo," or "Aauuhrrugugh," accompanied by sad faces. Yes, yes, it was dumb of us—we were going to cook the lobsters in some way or another, and there was no reason to get all sad face-y—but we couldn't help ourselves.

: DING! It's done.

When the lobster was sufficiently dead/cooked, Adelyn and I let go of the wall we were clinging onto, remembered how hungry we were (on a scale of "not very" to "very," we were at "my stomach is kinda gurgly and I would love to eat now"), and went into lobster dismemberment mode.

: Get the meats out.

Actually, I was useless and left the meat removal to Adelyn and Kåre. I mean. I was in charge of documenting it. That's sort of useful.

: Lobster rolls!

Five of the freshest lobster rolls we'd ever eat on buns pan-fried in butter (yeah, I know my pan-frying skills are bad) plus five ears of steamed sweet corn left us super stuffed and happy.

Day 2

: Mike & Patty's

The next morning, we started our day at Mike & Patty's, highly recommended by fellow Serious Eater Carey Jones for good reason: They make awesome, comforting sandwiches; simple constructions handled with care. Also, the place is adorable and cozy (if I recall correctly, there's seating for 6 to 8 people) and charming and impossibly crams a truckload of stuff into a shoebox of a kitchen and is pretty much just what you'd want out of a neighborhood sandwich shop. All that.

: North South Classic

I was plenty happy with my North South Classic ($5): egg and cheese with collard greens and peameal bacon on a toasted English muffin, plus a side of home fries ($2).

: Breakfast grilled cheese

For Kåre, the breakfast grilled cheese ($5): white bread with cheddar and American cheese plush an overeasy egg. Kåre added bacon for $2.

: Grilled banana sandwich

For Adelyn, the grilled banana sandwich ($6.50) with cinnamon and honey butter on pain de mie.

Those last two sandwiches aren't listed on Mike and Patty's website—which says they're simplifying their menu—so I can't say for sure you'll find them there. But you should definitely go. Next time I visit Boston, I'll be there.

: Everything I've always dreamed of.

Chinatown was next on the to-do list. Highlights included shops rich with VCDs, DVDs, gifts, and goldfish...

: China Pearl

This eroding restaurant signage...

: Hing Shing Pastry

Hing Shing Pastry, from which I emerged with a wedge of squidgy brown sugar rice cake (80¢), a dessert I hadn't seen before (when I was a kid, I loved the rare treat of a white sugar cake)...

: Egg puffs

And egg puffs. Because I can't not investigate a sign that proclaims the presence of puffed egg matter. Egg puffs, sold in New York City as Hong Kong cakes, are sort of like mini pancake or waffle bites, but sweeter and eggier. They make a great little snack when straight out of the pan, but they lose their appeal after they cool down.

After walking along the freedom trail and escaping the rain at the Hub Pub—where I displayed my affinity towards alcohol by taking a nap in a booth (I mean, Adelyn and Kåre were there too, chatting; I didn't lumber off on my own and fall asleep in the corner of an empty bar)—we returned to Cambridge, Adelyn's hood. I had my eyes set on one place.

: Flavors at Toscanini's.

Toscanini's, known as one of the best ice cream shops in Boston, once called home of the best ice cream in the world by the New York Times*. The world? Did you eat all the ice cream in the world, New York Times? ...Ok, maybe you did.

* Toscanini's is also home to the measurement known as the "microscoop." Surely not the only one. That's cute. But ye know what a microscoop is? That's one scoop, You know what "1 scoop" is? That's two flavors in one scoop, which is actually two scoops. I know this sizing structure is common in ice cream shops, but what's the harm in using small, medium, and large instead? Why does the scoop prevail when it means nothing? WHY DOES THIS BOTHER ME SO MUCH? You know what else bothers me? What, you don't care? I'm going to babble on anyway. When an ice cream shop's single scoop is a FUCKIN' HUGE SCOOP and they don't allow you to get more than one flavor even though making that one scoop takes like three scoops. ...You know what I mean? ....[crosses arms.] #firstworldproblems

: Burnt caramel smooshed under maple walnut.

While I can't tell you if Toscanini's makes the best ice cream in the world, I can tell you after two visits that Toscanini's is now one of my most favorite ice cream shops. I don't remember much about the maple walnut I tried, but their burnt caramel is famous for a reason. It's a punch of burnt caramel to your mouth, if something in sweet-n-smooth-n-creamy form had the ability to punch. ...Maybe that's more like a forceful hug.

Anyway, that's all I've got; this happened 11 months ago, ye know. (If I couldn't give you lazy descriptions, I'd just give you no descriptions. Admittedly, that might make the Internet a better place.) Go eat it. If you don't like it, I'll know not to trust you.

: B3 and Early Grey.

On my second visit the next day, I tried the B3—brown sugar, brown butter, and brownies—and Early Grey. Again, get these flavors. They do what they say on the tin by tasting just like what they're supposed to, but...better. Like awesome gelato in Bologna.

: We ordered...many things. Click on the photos for more info.

We ate dinner at nearby Rendezvous in Central Square. After dinner I realized we should've eaten at also-nearby Craigie on Main, aka Kenji's favorite restaurant in the world. I'll just tell myself we wouldn't have been able to get a seat.

Not that there's anything wrong with Rendezvous. It was good, it just didn't make me think, "I MUST EAT HERE AGAIN."

: We ordered...many things. Click on the photos for more info.

Best part of the meal: my Gascon-style duck three ways ($26) featuring sliced breast, garlic sausage, and confit leg.

Day 3

: Cosmic moose.

The next morning during our stroll to Flour Bakery, we passed this epic cosmic moose fence. I'd tell you more about the fence if my googling turned up much, but it didn't. :C Head to the corner of Brookline and Franklin Streets for cosmic moose wisdom.

: There's a thing I want to eat, plus that thing, and that other thing, and that thing.

On to Flour Bakery, home of cupcakes, tarts, bread pudding, cakes, sandwiches, and other delicious gluten-laden things, the most famous of which is....

: Sticky bun. You can almost...feel the sticky.

...the sticky bun slathered with a thick layer of sticky caramel goo/sauce topped with toasted pecan bits. To be honest, I don't remember anything about the bun besides that I ate it (this post is sounding more and more useless with each passing sentence); for a much better description, read Liz Bomze's post on Serious Eats.

: Roasted lamb sandwich.

Maybe I should've eaten the bun before eating my roasted lamb sandwich ($7.95) with tomato chutney and goat cheese. I saved the bun for later since I felt full after eating the sandwich. Dessert should come first.

: Math!

We walked off the sandwiches by roaming around MIT's campus, the highlight of which was coming upon this wall of math graduate student seminar topics. It wasn't just the topics that made us go, "What the holy fugnut," but also the wide array of graphics chosen to represent the topics. Would you just look at these packages of mathematical whimsy? Example titles:

Introduction to Symplectic Geometry
Cohomological Induction for Beginners
The Magnificent World of Complex Cobordism
The Joy of Local Fields
Spheres: The Final Frontier
Etale Cohomology, Unplugged
Courier Analysis: It's Not the Law, It's Just a Good Idea
Can One Hear the Volume of a Drum?

I don't know what the hell any of that means, but I like knowing someone else does.

Related aside: I'm one of those people who actually enjoyed math growing up (it helped that I had great math teachers). The only reason I don't like it now is because I've forgotten so much—perhaps everything that came after 9th grade—that attempting to split a bill often makes me feel like an idiot. In 12th grade for my final semester calculus project after AP tests were over, I wrote a children's-style book about calculus, but reading it now, I basically look like this the whole time, just one of many colorful ways confusion manifests itself on my very smushable face. If I ever have kids, they'll have to explain it to me.

: Christina's

It was time for another ice cream break, this time at Christina's, another famous local ice cream shop. Unfortunately, none of us liked it as much as Toscanini's, although I've heard good things about it. Maybe we all ordered the wrong flavors? My coffee ice cream tasted alright, but if I recall correctly (and I very well may not be), the texture wasn't as agreeably creamy as Toscanini's. Overall, not bad, I just wouldn't feel compelled to go out of my way for it.

: Froyo time.

And after ice cream came...froyo! Adelyn directed us towards the Harvard Square location of BerryLine, a local froyo chain. My cup of plain froyo topped with mango chunks was some good stuff.

: I shall play this forever and ever.

More good stuff was found at In Your Ear Records where, after flipping through hundreds of records that smelled of old, I was rewarded with Songs of the Humpback Whale. Sure, I could've bought it on CD so I could actually listen to it on my computer as opposed to owning a record that now uselessly sits in my closet at home in New Jersey because that's where my record player is, but there's no adventure in that. And if I know anything about humpback whales (which I don't), it's that they're all about adventures.

: Harvard

We roamed around Harvard a bit, making sure to check out that famous statue tourists rub for good luck and students pee on because they can. Oh, John Harvard, we relinquish the use of our modern toilets in your honor.

: Harvard Square station.

And back to Cambridge we went.

: Alewife?

To end this post: After this trip, I shall always read "Alewife" as "Beer Wench."

I don't know when I'm going back to Boston, but I SHALL RETURN, and Adelyn will make sure my return IS AWESOME and FULL OF ICE CREAM.

Addresses

Mike & Patty's
12 Church Street, Boston, MA (map)
617-423-3447; mikeandpattys.com

Hing Shing Pastry
67 Beach Street, Boston, MA (map)
617-451-1162

Toscanini's
899 Main Street, Cambridge, MA (map)
617-491-5877; tosci.com

Rendezvous inn Central Square
502 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA (map)
617-576-1900; rendezvouscentralsquare.com

Flour Bakery
190 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA (map)
617-225-2525; flourbakery.com

Christina's
1255 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA (map)
617-492-7021; christinasicecream.com

Berryline
3 Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (map)
617-868-3500; berryline.com

Diet Update + Watching 'Eat Your Kimchi' Because That Pluot Was a Dick

2012-03-11T08:39:36Z

: Beware of the ORANGE ZONE.

"Do you feel healthier since going on your diet?"

This is the question I've heard the most in the last few months. I mean, aside from basic questions like, "How's it going?" or, "Did you go to bed at 3 again?" or, "What are you eating? Can I eat that?" (which is only asked by Hambone, the official Serious Eats dog, and it's not so much spoken as desperately transmitted through his glistening puppy eyes).

My not so encouraging answer: "Not really. Maybe less asthma, but otherwise I feel about the same." Not that I expect drastic changes so soon; it's only been about one and a half months since I started my healthier diet to prevent allergic reactions to food. The rough guidelines:

No deep fried food (Alas, after a month of avoiding french fries, I've caved in two times so far.)
No spicy food (I've cheated on this a few times too, but unlike with the fried food, it was accidental)
No pizza (pretty easy to stick to since I didn't eat much pizza in the first place)
Wheat only once a week (At first I wanted to cut it out completely, but it was too damn hard. And I must admit I ate wheat two days this week. Also, I still use soy sauce with wheat in it. I keep forgetting to look for the non-wheat kind.)
Fewer non-wheat products (I tend to eat rice when I go out, but I've stopped cooking it at home.)
More fruits and vegetables

]]> The biggest changes since I started my diet:

Don't need to take as much asthma medication (Perhaps not much of a victory since my doctor prescribed me a pretty large dose to begin with, but I'd like to believe this is an effect of the diet.)
Cook way more often than ever before (The best formula I've learned so far is lemon + ginger + coconut milk + anything tastes pretty good, but I have yet to reach the point where I'd feel comfortable feeding anyone else the stuff I cook, assuming I want that person to like me.)
Eat way more squash and potatoes (Pretty sure I've eaten more squash in the last one and a half months than in my whole life before then.)
Eat way more nuts and dried fruit (Prunes are da bomb. And I'm not talking about poop bombs. You probably weren't even thinking about poop bombs. BUT YOU ARE NOW. You're welcome.)
Eat way more bananas
Eat way more yogurt
Eat way more spinach
Eat way more carrots
Eat way more chocolate (mostly because I had accumulated a stash of Norwegian chocolate since last spring—a stash that lasted quite a long time until I started my diet, which sounds like the opposite of what should've happened)
Eat way more snacks in general as long as they're not wheaty or fried

So what I'm trying to say is that I still eat a buttload. Maybe not as much as before—man, I ate a lot before—and not as unhealthily as before, but surely more than my sedentary 5'1" self needs to be stuffed with. It's just taking me some time to get used to these new eating habits and to learn when to, um, stop eating. (First step: Buy fewer snacky things.) My mom thinks I lost some weight, but I can't say I feel like I have. Not that I care much; it wasn't my goal. I haven't gained weight, at least.

I'm fine with the way things are going. I'm not on this diet to transform into a beacon of glowing health—that would require doing a bunch of things I'm not doing now, like eating more healthily, sleeping more than six hours a night on a regular basis, and physically exerting myself until I reach the "sweating" stage. For now, I'm on this diet to be moderately healthy, decrease my chances of having an allergic attack, and more easily identify what I'm allergic to.

And identify, I HAVE. The results of the food allergy blood test I did back in January, pictured in the chart up top, helps guide my food choices (although I still eat some of the "orange zone" food without a problem, I'm avoiding eating, say, five of them in one go), but that test can't tell me everything. It couldn't tell me that I'd have an allergic reaction to day-old cole slaw—cole slaw that was benign the first day I ate it—or, as I found out yesterday afternoon, that a few bites of a pluot would give me the mega-wheezes.

Or maybe I should've known. Peaches and almonds are on my allergen list, and pluots are in the same genus. (What can I say; Prunus just doesn't enter my mind when I'm shopping for groceries.) But I've eaten lots of almonds and prunes lately without any problem. Maybe the pluot I ate yesterday was just a dick.

Here's what went down. After eating a few slices of the pluot, the lymph node under the left side of my chin started swelling, the floor of my mouth got mildly swollen (this is usually the first thing to happen when I get an allergic reaction), and not long after I went into crackly-flubby-lungs-ugh-WTF-can't-breath-so-good-(or-feel-compelled-to-be-grammaticallly-correct) mode. It wasn't nearly as bad as that time a pomelo took over my respiratory system, but bad enough to render me useless. It took about 45 minutes for me to feel normal again, at which point I was still mindset of, "Bluuh I don't wanna do nuuttinnn bllrurughgh [words degenerate into slurring] [shoves head into a pillow]."

So to pass the time, I poked around my YouTube subscriptions and, to my glee, saw a new WANK video (that is, "Wonderful Adventure Now Korea," duh) from Eat Your Kimchi. And thus I spent about half an hour watching Eat Your Kimchi videos while regaining full use of my lungs. It's one of my favorite YouTube channels (some other fave YouTubers: Freddie Wong, Nathan Barnatt, DJ Flula, Natalie Tran, Ninja Sex Party, and Henry Philips) and I hope some of you like them too. Because if you don't, I will judge you really hard. In a negative way.

For those who don't know what Eat Your Kimchi is, here's a super short summary: Four years ago, husband and wife team Simon and Martina moved from Canada to Seoul to teach English and in their spare time made awesome, funny, well produced videos about Korean culture. Loads of em. Today they no longer teach English; the success of EYK allows them to be full-time bloggers.

Their productivity astounds me. Shooting and editing videos (and blogging about the videos) is about 10000% more complicated than what I do, and I can't even pump out one blog post a week, nor can I keep up to date with editing my photos. (Granted, I have a full-time job, but even if I didn't, I don't think I'd be that productive.) How do I...I just...what...blurgh...aarhrhg [flails frantically, like swatting at invisible gnats].

: Eat Your Kimchi - "Korean Shabu Shabu"

Their latest WANK—more specifically, a FAPFAP, "Food Adventure Program For Awesome People"—is about Korean shabu shabu. If you're into sexy close ups of a bubbling pot of vegetables and meat and other good stuff, this is for you. Sadly, I've stopped eating Korean food ever since I started my diet because two out of the three last times I ate Korean food, specifically soondubu, my body reacted with mild to moderate lung wheezes. I'm sure there's some Korean food I can eat—I might just have a problem with spicy Korean food—but to be safe I've avoided all of it.

: Eat Your Kimchi - "Wonderful Adventure Now Korea" playlist

I'd recommend starting at the first WANK to get the lay of the land (or browse their channel of over 300 videos). What I love about the videos in this series is that they're not just, "Hey look at this cool thing in Seoul! Here's some info about it!" but, "Hey, look at this cool thing in Seoul and WATCH US FIND THE BEST ENGRISH and WATCH US FIND A KPOP IDOL and WATCH US COMPETE IN THIS RANDOM CHALLENGE then WATCH THE LOSER MAKE A FOOL OF HIM/HERSELF." Simon and Martina are a perfect blend of silly, funny, intelligent, and informative. And quite possibly the coolest couple out there. And they make me really really really really want to go back to Seoul (I've visited once, back in 2009).

Well, I lost an hour of my life tonight, so it's time for bed at this ripe hour of...4:40 a.m.? FFFFFUUUUUUUU-anyway, my next post will be about stuff I ate that didn't trigger an allergic reaction. [thumbs up]

Dear Ample Hills' Ooey Gooey Butter Cake Ice Cream: You're My Favorite

2012-03-07T07:35:00Z

: OGBC, don't ever leave me. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the actual ice cream.

Imagine a pen of a dozen playful kittens. Magical kittens made of marshmallows, with delicately velvety fur covering their cushiony, sugar-scented skin. Now, imagine you're lying in this pool of warm kittens. (If you're allergic to cats, also imagine that you're not allergic to cats. And if you don't like cats, imagine that you like cats.) You're surrounded by tender feline fluffballs hobbling over your torso with their nubbin paws and legs, gently licking your face with their wee tongues, overall just cuddling the shizz out of you, resulting in paroxysms of giggles, or permanent happy Tom Haverford face, or a bit of both.

Put that joy into food form and you've got Ample Hills' ooey gooey butter cake ice cream: small chunks of St. Louis ooey gooey butter cake (more commonly called gooey butter cake) suspended in vanilla ice cream. When it's cold, ooey gooey cake isn't especially ooey or gooey, but you can taste its potential for ooey gooey-ness. Its texture is less cake, more brownie—specifically, like a prized corner slice of brownie, blessed with maximum crustiness and chewiness by the pan's edges. Imagine that bit, condensed, sans chocolate, with more butter. Yes; that's the stuff. Despite its temperature, frozen ooey gooey butter cake tastes like sunshine. Sweet, buttery sunshine.

]]> The recipe for this sunshine: butter-enriched yellow cake mix baked with a top layer of cream cheese mixed with eggs, butter, sugar, and vanilla extract. More ambitious bakers can make it from scratch, but it seems most people go with the cake mix + cream cheese method, recipes of which are all over the interwubs. Although Paula Deen's recipe may be the top Google hit for "ooey gooey butter cake" and earn the disdain of serious eaters who prefer to distance themselves from the Deen name, keep in mind that it's not her creation (although it sounds like it has all the components of a perfect Dean recipe); the dessert was invented in St. Louis in the 1940s.

The cake can't take all the credit; the ice cream is plenty kitten-joy-filled too. As the sign declared, the vanilla ice cream was exceptionally smooth and creamy, with the bonus of unintentionally bearing a marshmallow-like flavor and texture. Or maybe the texture turned out fluffier than normal because I ate it after the pint had been sitting in Eric's* cooler pouch for an hour**. ...I'm not sure. What I do know is that it tasted far better than regular vanilla, and that combined with chunks of ooey gooey butter cake turned me into this:

: I still don't know how to draw humans.

Actually, you have to dial up the crazy of that blob by 10x for a more accurate depiction. I do believe the ice cream-eating session went at least 90 percent like this:

Me: [shovels a spoonful into mouth] Oh...oh god, why is this so good?

[Wait as other friends try the ice cream; five of us were sharing a pint. And two spoons. Don't ask.]

Me: [shovels another spoonful unto mouth] Ohhh gaaaawd ahhh ahh this cake is so good...

[Wait some more as the others dig in.]

Me: [another spoonful] Uuughuuuuadsdsa bluhhbbluhb [unintelligible happy sounds]

[Wait some more. Wonder why friends' reactions to the ice cream aren't as intense as mine. Realize this ice cream does to me what alcohol does to normal people. Goes into crazy babbly mode.]

Me: [shovels more] WHAT THE HELL, WHY IS IT SO GOOD. ...WHAT, YOU GUYS DON'T WANT MORE? LIKE HELL I'M LETTING THIS ICE CREAM GO TO WASTE. I CAN EAT THE REST. [shovels more]

I ate maybe a third to half of the pint, very much flouting that healthy diet thing I'm trying to stick to. And not a single fuck was given that day.

* Full disclosure: Eric is Ample Hills' general manager. Not that he was trying to win me over with free ice cream. ...Although that is a very good way to win me over. I mean. I'd be friends with Eric even if he worked in a sewage treatment plant and smelled of poop.

* In case you're wondering in what godless world would ice cream sit in a cooler pouch uneaten for an hour, it's because Eric toted the ice cream from the shop in Brooklyn to our mouths in Union Square, where were were meeting before seeing Traces. Traces is a fantastic show if you want to witness brain-numbingly awesome feats of human strength, balance, and agility, making you feel like a big ol' bag of useless fat and muscle in the process. The plus side? You get to indulge in the joy of cake bits mixed with ice cream. Because your body's not worth saving. ...Juuuuuust kidding. You should see Traces, and do what we did, which was buy day-of, front-row rush tickets at the box office at 6 p.m. for only $25 each.

Ample Hills
623 Vanderbilt Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11238 (map)
347-240-3926; amplehills.com

[Not Food-Related] Visiting Berlin; Got Any Advice?

2012-02-15T07:58:13Z

I can sum up most of what I know about Berlin in one word: CURRYWURST. (Ok, I know a bit more than that, but...um...overall, not much.) My lumpy brain first absorbed the word a few years ago when I watched Grace Lee's short documentary, Best of the Wurst, in which she goes on a currywust-eating mission all around Berlin. And other stuff happens. But I mostly remember how I felt after watching the film: "OMG GIVE ME ALL THE CURRYWURST I MUST GO TO BERLIN AND DO THAT THING."

A few months ago, Diana told me she wanted to go to Berlin. And I told her I did too. And then I invited Kåre. And thus, we are all going to Berlin from April 5 to 12.

We haven't really done any of that "planning what we're going to do" stuff yet—for one, we might take a train outside the city for a day or two, place TBD, time TBD, everything TBD—but we're definitely going because we already bought our plane tickets. And while we will research activities, places to visit, and restaurants to eat at, I'd rather ask you guys for advice first. Since I obviously don't know anything. And many of you are well traveled and have less lumpy brains than mine.

So! Have any of you guys been to Berlin? Or perhaps live there? I'd love food recommendations (I won't be super strict about my diet), but recommendations for...well, anything would be awesome.

Thank you for any help you can give me!

Hong Kong-Style Egg Sandwiches and Buttered Bolo Bao at Cha Chan Tang

2012-02-13T05:08:15Z

Whenever I go to a Hong Kong-style diner, it's mostly because I want this:

: Egg sandwich from Cha Chan Tang

Yup, a simple egg sandwich. Usually a folded omelet-thing or mass of semi-scrambled egg in between square slices of plain ol' white bread with the crusts cut off. Sitting on a menu next to more interesting items like salt and pepper squid or baked ham and chicken in cream sauce with spaghetti, it doesn't scream, "ORDER ME!" to the casual eater. It's a weenie snack of a sandwich that provides two textures: egg-soft and bread-soft. (Sometimes the bread is toasted, in which case you've got some crispness in there too, but it's mostly soft.)

But damn, how I love that soft-on-soft. Out of all the kinds of egg sandwiches in the world, this one is my favorite. That sort of buttery, fluffy scrambled egg mass on soft, squishy Chinese white bread. Sans crusts. That's important. There's no reason five-year-olds and tea sandwiches should get all the joys of a crust-less existence.

My attachment to these egg sandwiches may be sentimental—when I was a kid my mom made me egg sandwiches the way other moms made their kids peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—but ignoring my plaintive-grasping-of-childhood thing, I'm pretty sure these sandwiches taste awesome. Besides, my mom's egg sandwiches weren't very good. (She knows it's true. The whole wheat bread she used was the antithesis of Chinese white bread. And she sure as hell didn't slice the crusts off.)

]]> If you think the egg sandwich ($1.75) pictured above from Cha Chan Tang (the Cantonese name for Hong Kong-style diners) looks boring, check out the gold-star version from Australian Dairy Company in Hong Kong at The Ulterior Epicure. A beautiful example of fluffy egg mass on thick white bread.


: Cha Chan Tang

I don't mean to knock Cha Chang Tang; it's become my go-to when an egg sandwich craving hits. While I can't say it's the best—I haven't tried all the Hong Kong-style restaurants in Chinatown* to know, nor do I have any point of reference since I've never been to Hong Kong—it stands out for having a leg-up (wait, did I make a pun...I DIDN'T MEAN TO) in the decor department compared to other restaurants in the neighborhood.

* Some other HK-style places: Coluck, Hon Cafe, Ming's Cafe, S. Wan Cafe, 328 Cafe, and M Star Cafe (their website plays music automatically, but do check it out because it's kind of awesome).

: Bolo bao deluxe.

It also helps that their menu includes the almighty buttered bolo bao ($2.25). A bolo bao, or pineapple bun, is a beautiful thing when done well: mildly sweet, bready, soft-n-squishy, with a crumbly cookie-like top crust.

: The butter might come already spread. Or still a pat. Either way...[thumbs up]

But it's even better when warmed up, sliced through its belly, and given a good slathering of butter. Why have naked bread pores when you can have butter-soaked bread pores? The answer is, [blank stare, mouth slightly agape, tumbleweed], because there is no answer. I wouldn't want to put much else in the center of a pineapple bun—I like them because they're simple—but a hit of butter-derived moisture is always welcome in my book. And by book I mean mouth.

...Okay, I lied; I'd want to put ice cream in a pineapple bun. (Hey, it works for brioche!)

...And I guess I lied about it always being welcome in my mouth. That would've been valid before starting my asthmatic's diet. Oh well. Go enjoy it for me!

Cha Chang Tang
45 Mott Street, New York, 10013 (map)
212-577-2888

Doodle: Ripe Bananas

2012-02-07T04:53:47Z

Since I have a brain, I have thoughts. Mostly shallow thoughts. Not in the superficial sense, just...not deep.

Here's one of those thoughts. Been eating away at my brain. Just eatin'.

]]>

I should've skipped the first four panels and gone straight to the banana-with-bulbous-butt-cheeks because, honestly, that's all I wanted to draw.

'The Girl Who Is Not Eating Everything' Because My Lungs Suck

2012-01-27T05:01:44Z

Note: Sooo, this post is sort of the opposite of my previous post. There's no food porn in this post, no recommendations for where to eat. It's a pretty long explanation of why I'm changing my diet. Euh.

wheeeze

WHEEEEEEEZZZZE

wheeeeze

WHEEEEEEEEEEZZZZE

wheeeeeeeze

"...This is how I'm going to die, isn't it?"

Two Saturdays ago I had just finished eating half of a pomelo in my mom's kitchen in New Jersey when I felt the beginnings of a severe allergic reaction.

]]> It was day six of a two-week restricted food allergy diet as recommended by my allergist about...nine months ago. Yup. I waited a while on that one. I kept putting it off since it was hard to find a two-week period where I could easily abstain from eating herbs, spices, seafood, onions, chocolate, nuts, and garlic, among a few other things that I had no problem cutting out because I rarely ingested them in the first place (caffeine and alcohol). The other reason I didn't try it earlier was because after months of recording my allergic reactions to food, I couldn't tell exactly what I was allergic to. I had scratch tests for just about everything; positive results were all environmental-related (dust mites, cats, seemingly every tree pollen), with nothing conclusive related to food.(I've been getting regular allergy shots since last spring for pollen.) There were some food-related patterns—spicy food, fried food, pizza (PIZZA?!)—but these foods didn't trigger reactions every time I ate them.

I finally got down to it because about two weeks ago I had an allergic reaction from eating spicy instant noodles (yeah, dumb choice)—not a severe reaction, but an asthma-triggering one that made me want to curl into a ball on my bed for a few minutes—and I realized there would never be a two-week period where I could easily follow my doctor's diet.

And so about three weeks ago, I followed it. I messed up a few times when I ate out with my mom, but by cooking most of my own food it was easy to avoid everything on the "do not eat" list. If I didn't have any allergic reactions during those two weeks, then...great! Sort of. And if I did, it would be much easier to pin down the cause than if I weren't on the diet.

When I reacted to the pomelo, the cause was obvious. I had eaten nothing else that day. It was definitely you, Pomelo. After finishing half the pomelo, my throat started feeling itchy. The area under my tongue got a bit swollen. My breathing became a bit more labored. I went to my room to get my inhaler even though I learned from previous experience it wouldn't help.

I sat at the edge of my bed. My breaths became more wheeze-laden, rapid, and labored. My body temperature rose—I took off my pants and sweater and continued sweating. I coughed up mucus. I wheezed harder. Every cough made each breath harder to take. Repeat [x] a blagillion.

I decided this would be the time to try those pricey Epi-pens that had been sitting in my bag for months. I'd been carrying two Epi-pens with me since I used one in Norway last February, when I had a severe allergic reaction to a hot dog. That hot dog was the third time I had had a severe allergic reaction. The pomelo was the ninth time. I hadn't used the Epi-pens at all during the reactions in between because I always felt, perhaps foolishly, that I had things under control. I got used to the reactions and could tell when it was just shy of "really bad" or beyond.

The pomelo reaction felt like it was approaching beyond. I wasn't surprised; my asthma was at an all time worst and I had never before had a severe allergic reaction when my lungs were that unwell. I wasn't in great shape at my mom's place—I was coughing more than I should've, my body trying its best to get mucus out of my lungs despite the consequence of asthma. My asthma starting getting worse during my vacation in Norway. Shortly before my trip, I unsuccessfully tried to refill my prescription of Symbicort (asthma management medication), which was when I found out that my insurance company limits how many refills of Symbicort they'll cover in order to make you switch to a cheaper brand, but also limits how much of the medication you can buy at a pharmacy so that you'll buy it from a mail-order pharmaceuticals company instead.

...Yeah, I shouldn't be complaining about health insurance. I'm really glad I have it, trust me. I just wish it hadn't taken me a few weeks to sort out the medication order.

I brought an Epi-pen to the bathroom. Before sitting down I looked in the mirror for the first time since the onset of lungfail—the color seemed to be draining from my lips a bit. I gingerly removed the Epi-pen from its plastic tube and mulled over the instructions much longer than necessary. They're incredibly easy: Remove blue tab. Position over side of thigh. STABBOS! Even though the needle-in-your-thigh thing is nothing compared to the barely-breathing thing, I still had to psych myself up for it.

And then...dammit, nothing happened. I rolled the Epi-pen around in my hands and noticed a key bit of information; it had expired last November. FFFFFUUUUUU.

My lung construction didn't let up. If anything, it seemed to get worse. It was around this time I had that, "This is how I'm going to die, isn't it?" thought. I mean, I didn't really think I was going to die, but it was the worst reaction I had ever had and the most scared I had ever been by a reaction—scared like, "What if I don't live long enough to have my own family? Will I see Kåre again? What if I die before my mom dies? AHHHHH." For some reason the other eight reactions didn't properly whip up my fear of death.*

* What should've been scarier was Reaction #8. This only happened a month ago during my flight from New York to Amsterdam, on the way to Norway. I almost used my Epi-pen—the reaction was pretty bad, gurgly, labored breathing and all—but instead I went my non-stabbed gurgly way as the concerned woman sitting next to me probably wondered if I was dying. After the reaction passed I ended up with a major headache that gradually forced me to sleep. If not for the headache, I would've fallen asleep anyway due to my fun in-flight movie selection of "Melancholia."

I broke out Epi-pen number two—this one didn't expire until March. Thank the lord. Time to stabbos again. (Not on purpose, I picked a spot less than an inch from the first stab; soon after I found out if you jab yourself really hard with a blunt—I mean, blunt with a small needle at the end—plastic rod two times in nearly the same spot, you will end up an especially aching, stinging bruise.)

And then...dammit, nothing happened again. WHY, POMELO, WHY? When I had my reaction in Norway I thought I may have used the pen wrong, but this time I was sure I used it correctly.

After that, all I could do was wait. Wait while each inhalation felt like a steamroller squeezing the dregs of life from every meager air molecule my feeble lungs could carry. As usual, the reaction ran its course after about 40 minutes. (I look at my watch constantly during these reactions—it makes me feel better.) I didn't return to normal right away after the 40 minutes ran out, but I could at least talk in between wheezy breaths.

If you're wondering what my mom was doing this whole time, I suspect she was silently freaking out. This was the second time she had ever seen me have a severe reaction (she's also seen a few mild ones), and in these situations you have two options: Let it runs its course, or go to the hospital. If I felt like I had to go to the hospital, I would've told her. Later she told me she felt helpless. :C

After the reaction, my brother came over and we all went out for dinner. I felt fine by this point and, dammit, I wanted to have a nice dinner with my family.

The pomelo reaction made me type up a document of all my allergic reactions up until that point. I had written my reactions down in two notebooks, but never compiled them. Yesss, I should've done it earlier—point that wagging finger right at me. I brought my three-page list of reactions to the allergist's office last Friday, showed them to a new doctor (just because my original one wasn't there that day), and after taking a quick look at them she asked me if anyone told me I may have acid reflux.

Well...no, no one did. I suppose because I had never brought in a descriptive list of reactions, but I did tell my original doctor about some of my reactions, and they did test me for allergies with no conclusive results. So, honestly, I think someone could've brought up acid reflux earlier, even though the acid reflux I might have isn't the kind that feels like acid reflux.

The doctor gave me a list of foods to avoid:

: I haz discontent.

Apparently, the list was ripped out of My First Coloring Book of Dietary Restrictions.

The doctor told me Epi-pens don't work with acid reflux-triggered actions. Welllll, ain't that exactly what I didn't want to hear. I had seen that as my only safety net. She prescribed me acid reflux medication along with a prescription for Epi-pens, just in case I have a food-related allergic reaction.

But I've gotten to the point where I'm fed up with being this unhealthy, with being so at risk of having a fatal allergic reaction, with having to rely on drugs that I'm not confident I can rely on (nor do I want to rely on them). I'm thankful (and surprised) I'm not in worse shape, but I want to be better than this, and I know I can get better. It just requires a shift in habits.

...Okay, a big shift.

...Okay, a big dietary shift.

I'm not sure how many times I've mentioned this on my blog, but the reason I got into food was because for a short time during my teenage years I followed a raw food diet and was obsessed with nutrition. ...Yeah, quite the opposite of where I ended up. I started the raw food diet in the beginning of 2003 (second semester of 12th grade) and did it for one and a half years (until the end of freshman year of college). I wasn't a better person then, nor a happier person, but I have no doubt I was a healthier person.

If you think a raw food diet is crazy, I don't blame you. I'm not a nutritionist, obviously, so I can't sway you with facts and figures, and I wouldn't suggest that a raw food diet is for everyone—it's not. But it did help me during those one and a half years, if my results are any sort of proof: I didn't have asthma for the first time since I was a kid, I didn't have perpetually clogged sinuses, and I actually had a modicum of physical endurance. (This isn't to say I didn't still have some health issues, but whatever they were, they weren't nearly as bad as the problems I had lost.) I could run a mile on a treadmill without much problem; these days I get winded just walking up a flight of stairs. I'm not trying to make it sound like a miracle diet—it shouldn't be a miracle to have a fairly healthy body that does what it's supposed to— but some of the stuff I could do then would be unimaginable to me now.

Anyhoo, despite what I just said, I don't plan on doing a raw food diet again. There was always a cloud of stress hanging over me as I obsessed over whether or not I was doing the diet "right" (and I probably wasn't; I found I wasn't much of a fan of raw vegetables so I mostly ate fruits and nuts), and, as I said, that diet didn't make me the happiest person. I rarely ate with other people, and during my first semester of college I preferred spending my weekends in New Jersey with my mom instead of staying on campus and attempting to become friends with my classmates—you know, what normal freshmen are supposed to do. Easy to say, I didn't have a typical freshman experience. (I was much less hermit-like during my second semester when I got a job in campus.)

But I'm glad I did it or else I wouldn't have transferred to NYU for food studies and eventually end up working at Serious Eats. Even if the Serious Eats view (well, not just Serious Eats) that you should be able to eat whatever you want in moderation doesn't seem to be working for me. Or maybe I'm not doing the "moderation" thing correctly. Probably not.

So if I'm not going the extreme raw food route, what am I doing? I'm starting by cutting out spicy food, fried food, pizza, and wheat products, cutting down on anything too greasy or fatty, non-wheat grains, and refined sugar, and eating more fruits and vegetables. These changes are based on previous foods that have triggered allergic reactions, my doctor's suggestions, and nutritional advice for people with asthma. I'm okay cutting out most cookie and cake-like desserts, but I don't plan on totally cutting out ice cream and chocolate just because I already eat them sparingly and they pack a whoooole lotta joy into every calorie. ...I need to hold on to something.

So for the time being, I'm definitely not the girl who eats everything. :( (But I ate everything already, right? Eh? Uh?) I'll make exceptions for special occasions and vacations, but I'd like to keep on track for the next few months and see how it goes. That means eating out less often (I'd feel better preparing my own food) and not eating the tons of random foodstuffs at work. (I mean, aside from the 20 flavors of Jeni's ice cream we tasted the other day. Um. Yeah I ate those.)

On the bright side, I'm cooking way more than I ever have before! So far my favorite cooking method is "chop up a bunch of vegetables and shove 'em in the oven." ...Yes, I plan on learning more than that. Methinks I'll get better acquainted with 101 Cookbooks.

And...that's...the end. I'll definitely keep blogging—I have a big backlog of posts from last year I still have to write. (AW YEAH I KNEW THAT WOULD COME IN HANDY not really like this but whatever.) I'm sorry if I'm letting down people with this change in diet from, "Yay, I eat everything!" to, "Now my eating habits are super boring," but I really like breathing and not having to rely on drugs to do it, and I'd really like to not worry that my lungs are going to poop out before I turn 30. Hope y'all understand.

To lighten the mood, here's a doodle I drew today for the always-worthy-of-a-doodle Bravetart:

: That bunny is propelled by the power of rad.

Best New Things I Ate in NYC in 2011

2012-01-22T06:38:09Z

Happy New Year! ...A few weeks late. :(

As is the tradition with year-end/year-beginning posts, here's a roundup of the best new things I ate in New York City in 2011 ("new" being new to my stomach, not necessarily the city), focusing on dishes I didn't get around to blogging about last year because 2011 was my crowning year of being super lazy. (Just wait until you read about my vacation in Norway. I spent about 50 percent of the time sleeping. It was the best.)

Apologies if this list is rather boring. Despite my profession, I don't make the effort to be at the forefront of the NYC food scene—at least, not to the degree I used to. I rely on my friends and coworkers for the good stuff.

Ok, let's get on to the fun stuff.

Best Stuff I Never Blogged About on TGWAE

: Brussels sprouts sandwich

Bingo sandwich at Shopsins: "Fried brussels sprouts, guacamole, jack, ciabatta." The "fried brussels sprouts" part is what jumped out at me from Shopsins' 21,000+ word menu, and as usual, those little cruciferous, fart-inducing balls equated to a winner. Crisp and tender sprouts taste great on their own, but they taste reaaaally good topped with cool globs of creamy guacamole and a layer of gooey cheese in between crusty ciabatta.

The sandwich was $13 when I first tried it last March, but it's $16 on the current menu and comes on asparagus bread instead of ciabatta. I'd hope it still tastes just as good as the sandwich I tried.

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Caesar salad

Caesar salad with smoked herring dressing at M. Wells: M. Wells is best remembered (it closed last August) for its over-the-top meatified dishes like foie gras grilled cheese sandwiches and bibimbap topped with razor clams, scallops, and oysters, but out of everything I tried there (and I tried many things), the Caesar salad ended up being my favorite. Maybe because the combination of crisp romaine, delicate Parmesan shavings, and strong-but-not-overpowering smoked herring dressing was the only refreshing part of my meal after eating a fried head cheese sandwich and before eating a massive 1.5-pound burger.

: Crispy Chinese watercress salad

Crispy Chinese watercress salad at SriPraPhai: It's watercress that's battered and fried, resulting in a salad that tastes more like fried than watercress. Shrimp, squid, chicken, and cashews protein it up so you're not just eating a plate of delicate fried something-something. I sort of wish I could eat this every day.

: Large classic pie

Classic pie at Rubirosa: I wouldn't have eaten at Rubirosa four times last year if it weren't so close to my office, but the other reason is because they serve great Italian food at reasonable prices in a comfortable setting in a neighborhood I don't know much about food-wise. I've tried their pizza, pasta, sandwiches, salads, and bruschetta, and would recommend all of them, but their specialty is thin crust Staten Island-style pizza. Read more about it in Adam Kuban's review on Slice.

: Shengjianbao

Shengjianbao at 456 Shanghai Cuisine: Shengjianbao—commonly described on menus as something like "tiny fried juicy buns"—are one of my favorite Chinese dishes, but I didn't eat them often until I tried 456's version. It was the juiciest/soupiest version I had ever eaten, and the nicely crisp-bottomed bun was great. Since I've never had the real deal in Shanghai I can't tell you how authentic this version is, but they did send me on a hunt around Chinatown to see how others stack up. So far, not so well. Aside from 456 my favorite shengjianbao are from Shanghai Cafe Deluxe. The worst I had were from Shanghai Asian Manor, such soulless (or perhaps soul-sucking) bun sacks they were. I can still taste the fail just by looking at this photo. Nick has more to say about 'em.

: Delicious scoop of brown.

Crack caramel ice cream at Ample Hills: Salted butter caramel ice cream on its own is the stuff of dreams. Sugary, buttery, dairy-laden dreams. Take that ice cream and mix in bits of "crack" cookies made of Saltines, butter, sugar, and chocolate, and now you've got the stuff of dreams' dreams. Which are like, really damn good dreams, not weird ones where your teeth become filled with pus or you ride a physics-defying roller coaster at the edge of the universe or you walk into a floating theater whose walls are made of knitted yarn. Yeaaah.

Ample Hills gets extra points for being where my friend Eric works. If you're familiar with Eric's line of emotive art, then you know he's probably cooler than most of us. He would never settle for ice cream that wasn't as awesome as his face.

: Mountain of mochi cakes, come to meeee.

Mochi Cakes at Fatty Crab: Out of everything I ate at my first and only meal at Fatty Crab, the complementary mochi cakes (FREEEEE CAAAAKE!!!) we received at the end of our meal was my favorite part. I guess that doesn't speak well about the rest of the meal, which, while not bad, was nothing that would entice me to return. Maybe my expectations were too high after hearing so many good things about the restaurant over the last few years. ...But damn, those mochi cakes. Unsurprisingly, they taste somewhere between mochi and cake. Okay, more like mochi than cake. Bouncy-chewy, but not as dense as straight-up mochi.

: Egg custard tart innards

Egg custard tarts at Bread Talk: I've wondered where to get the best egg custard tart in Manhattan's Chinatown for a long time—because a fresh, warm, flaky egg custard tart is one of the greatest things...ever—but it wasn't until Serious Eats intern Shell Tu said she wanted to do a taste test to find the best egg custard tarts in Chinatown that I felt compelled to walk all around Chinatown and try an egg custard tart from every bakery we could find. And that's how we did the taste test: We walked along nearly every street in Chinatown and tried an egg custard tart from every bakery we passed (only a handful of bakeries didn't make them). We got most of the tasting done in two long Saturday afternoons, with a few other small tastings done in the office.

In the end we visited 43 bakeries. I'm sure we missed a few, but I think we put in a good effort. It was easy to pick the winning bakery, Bread Talk, since most of the tarts we tried were subpar. Not only was Bread Talk the best with its flaky, light, tender crust filled with smooth, creamy custard, but it was also the cheapest: two tarts for $1 (unless they recently raised the price). Read the full results here.

: Lengua cemita

Lengua cemita at El Tenampa: El Tenampa is my favorite place to eat in my neighborhood, hence why I've stopped going to...all these other places in my neighborhood. I already blogged about it on Serious Eats and Real Cheap Eats, but I shall repeat myself because this sandwich is delicious. It's mostly because of those big ol' chunks of tongue—my favorite kind of protein for any Mexican dish—with their crisp, charred edges and tender everything-else. All the condiments—avocado, onion, crema, cheese, and bean spread—come together so well, and in just the right amounts. The bread's no slouch either; the soft, well toasted cemita bun is perfectly suited for its fillings. (Thanks to Seth for the recommendation!)

: Yuba soba

Soba at Cocoron: Even though I haven't tried every soba shop in the city, I'm going to call Cocoron my favorite soba shop in the city because they have their own set of cute, cartoony mascots. (I'll take this opportunity to drop a semi-related link: a list of Japan's police mascots representing every prefecture in the country. I approve of this muchly. Especially this dude.) But even if they didn't have mascots, they'd win me over for the friendly service and fantastic soba. Read Kenji's great review at Serious Eats for more info and, um, actual descriptions of the dishes.

6 Memorable Dishes I've Already Blogged About

Because I've already written about these dishes, here's a quick list, in no particular order:

: Food x 6 = this (I can do math!)

Merry (Belated) Christmas from Norway, Plus a Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

2011-12-26T05:54:00Z

Merry (belated) Christmas, everyone! (And to those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, happy winter! And to those of you in the southern hemisphere, happy December! And to those of who aren't currently in December for whatever reason, happy whatever!) I hope everyone's having a great holiday.

I thought I would manage to sneak in this post just before December 26, but I totally failed. And I didn't just fail by an hour, like the timestamp says, but by seven hours because I'm currently in Norway, visiting Kåre in Bergen. Hell, I didn't even start writing this on December 25. :( But, if you do the math, you'll see that I stayed up until 7 a.m. to finish this post. Because I care! Yeah! YEAAAAHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhuuuh.

I know I've been sort of dead this whole month. Not that dead; the other dead where I'm not actually dead. I don't have any good reasons—just the same old dangerous combination of working inefficiently/wasting time/unintentionally killing brain cells/under and oversleeping I never escape. (I highly suggest not staying up until 7 a.m.)

: Norwegian Christmas Eve dinner.

I haven't edited all my photos yet, but here's the spread from Christmas Eve dinner at the Sandvik home. Kåre's mom made the traditional Norwegian Christmas dinner of pinnekjøtt (cured lamb ribs), mashed swedes (aka rutabagas), boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut. If this sounds familiar, it's because she made the same meal for us when I visited back in February, just this time she made a lot more of it since her daughter Anne-Kristen's family—husband David, daughter Haley, son Kristian, and mother-in-law Margaret—is also visiting from England for the holidays. (Last night for Christmas dinner, Anne-Kristin and David prepared an awesome British meal. I will blog about it...eventually.)

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Kåre's parents, Aslaug and Arne, ready to toast.

I can't remember the last time I attended a big family meal for Christmas. The food was hearty and delicious—worth burping potent, gamey pinnekjøtt fumes all night—and the company radiated friendliness and fun. Aside from the lack of snow (but Bergen's got gobs, just gobs of rain), there were joyful Christmas feelings all around.

: Weegie tree!

One of the best things about this Christmas is that it was probably the first one I've ever celebrated as an adult with small kids—or just one kid, Kristian, who's eight years old. Christmas is immeasurably more fun (or, if I had to measure, at least 500 times more fun) when the dinner table features an impatient kid teetering at the edge of his seat while using the concentrated power of pure Christmas excitement generated by his eyeballs to burn a hole into the pile of presents under the Christmas tree. Since it's Norwegian tradition to open gifts after Christmas Eve dinner, you can bet Kristian bolted from the table once given the ok. But he didn't tear into his gifts right away; he helped pass the others out and then opened his gifts with the rest of us. (I don't think I was that polite when I was his age.) We couldn't compare to his expression of Christmas-derived joy, of course. Kids are the best at that.

Another fun part about having Kristian around is that despite being tied to his Nintendo DS like it was a vital appendage, he eagerly showed me how to play Pokémon and he let me play a few rounds of Mario Kart. Oh, Mario Kart, it has been too long. (I grew up playing video games with my brother, but since the end of high school when we stopped living under the same roof I've played video games almost never.)

: Christmas trash bag, not a stylish dress.

And for a random photo, here's Kåre's dad holding up the special wrapping paper trash bag Norwegian waste management company BIR sends out before Christmas. (As for why you can't just throw out wrapping paper with regular trash, Kåre explained the "how to throw out trash" rules to me...that I forgot. But it made sense when he first told me.) We filled that baby up easily.

: Gift wrap carnage.

I gave out Serious Eats books and homemade chocolate chip cookies for gifts—both quite well received [insert sigh of relief]. I was worried about the cookies, made from Ad Hoc's recipe (my favorite for chocolate chip cookies), because I made them in Kåre's apartment and had to convert the US measurements to European-friendly weights (he doesn't have measuring cups or spoons). I found a few different weights for different ingredients, but in the end they came out just right.

Sooo, if anyone else is ever in my situation where you're only equipped with a scale and need to bake these cookies in an oven that only knows Celsius, here's the recipe. (I've mildly altered the steps to the recipe based on having made them a bunch of times, and I left the original ounce measurements as is.)

: Posted on Instagram from my iPhone, hence the crap quality. The cookies were about as dark in real life as they look here though, due to the molasses sugar.

Ad Hoc's Chocolate Chip Cookies, Now with More Grams

- makes 30 to 38 cookies -

Ingredients

300 grams AP flour
4 grams baking soda
6 grams kosher salt
5 ounces 55% chocolate, cut into chip-sized pieces
5 ounces 70 to 72% chocolate, cut into chip-sized pieces
8 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into small pieces
238 grams dark brown sugar, preferably molasses sugar
150 grams granulated sugar
2 large eggs

Procedure

Position the oven racks in the lower and upper thirds of the oven and preheat the oven to 175°C. Line two baking sheets with Silpats or parchment paper.
Whisk ﬂour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl.
In a large bowl, beat half the butter on medium speed until fairly smooth. Add both sugars and the remaining butter, and beat until well combined, then beat for a few minutes, until the mixture is light and creamy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until the first one is incorporated before adding the next, and scraping the bowl as necessary. Add the dry ingredients (I do this in two parts to prevent flour flying everywhere) and mix on low speed to combine.
Mix in chocolate with a large spoon or spatula until evenly incorporated. The dough or shaped cookies can be refrigerated, well wrapped, for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 2 weeks (I've totally kept them frozen longer and they tasted fine). Freeze shaped cookies on the baking sheets until firm, then transfer to freezer containers. (The directions say to defrost frozen cookies overnight in the refrigerator before baking, but I've baked em straight from the freezer and they came out fine. Might have to bake them a bit longer, though.)
Using about 2 level tablespoons per cookie, shape the dough into balls. Arrange 8 cookies on each pan, leaving about 2 inches between them, because the dough will spread. Bake for 12 minutes, or until the tops are no longer shiny, switching the position and rotating the pans halfway through baking.
Cool the cookies on the pans on cooling racks for about 2 minutes to firm up a bit, then transfer to the racks to cool completely. Repeat to bake the remaining cookies. (The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.)

[Not Food Related] Busted Memory Card: Oh Crap, Now What?

2011-12-10T00:10:30Z

Update: A friend has offered to take my card to a specialist who may be able to recover the photos. Thanks for your help!

: Bluhblahbleebloo.

Today I found an effective way to lose my appetite without inducing nausea: find out that my two-ish-year-old 16 GB CF card isn't readable on my camera or my computer. The illustration above shows how I felt on the inside. On the outside, I went ;_;.

It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have photos on it that I wanted, but since I procrastinated I probably have two weeks of photos on it. Somewhere. Deep down in its...guts. Made of...FAIL.

Since y'all are smart with the brainmeats, I figure some of you may have advice on what to do before I resort to one of these data recovery places. If so, I would love to harness your smarts. Here's some more info about the problem that may or may not be helpful.

The card is a SanDisk Extreme CF 16 GB 60 MB/S UDMA card. My camera is a Canon 7D. One moment it was all fine, then the next, the camera would no longer read the card. Not like I dropped the card in a puddle, ran over it with a car, smothered it in peanut butter, took it out of the camera while it was being read, etc. I put a different CF card in my camera and it works fine.

The first time i tried to read the 16 GB card on my computer (iMac, OS X) it appeared in Finder, but when I tried to access it, Finder crashed. The card no longer appears in Finder after I connect it to my computer. So. Hm. Yeah. I know there are programs that can try to recover data, but as my computer doesn't even detect the card, I'm guessing that's not going to work.

Doobeedoo. [twiddles fingers]

Well. Yup. If anyone has advice, please let me know (roboppy@gmail.com). Thank you!

Georgian Bread, Home of Awesome Cheese-filled Khachapuri

2011-12-05T01:02:05Z

: A straightforward name.

I'm not the kind of person who'd be labeled as "the life of the party"; I'm more like the person who stands in the corner and looks lost or confused. So to shoot myself up the ranks without gaining any social acuity, I bring out the big guns: Georgian cheesy bread, aka khachapuri.

: One loaf is the size of...a whole buttload of quarters.
: This one had congealed a bit before we dug in. Still tasty, though.

Georgian Bread in Brighton Beach is a small bakery well known for their imeruli khachapuri ($6), a large, flat round of soft, slightly chewy and crusty bread filled with a mixture of cheese, egg, and butter. Buy at least two of them: one to tear into right away (preferably shared with at least three other friends, who will subsequently loooove youuuu) when it's fresh out of the oven, and one to eat later at home.

...Or to bring to a oven-equipped party where people will fawn over your contribution of warm, soft, curd-y (not so much gooey), salty cheese wrapped in carbs. Those people may not remember your name, but they will remember the khachapuri.

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Get a behind-the-scenes look at Georgian Bread in this video from Chow.

I only bought two loaves (if that is the correct khachapuri unit) during my last visit to bring to two parties; on retrospect I should've bought more, considering how rarely I go to Brighton Beach. They reheat well and, I'm guessing, would freeze fine. Don't just buy two of 'em; buy...four. Or five. Yup, that should do it. Just make sure to hold the loaves horizontally when it's still hot or all the cheese may gloop to one side.

: Khachapuri from Pirosmani.

You may remember khachapuri from my post about Pirosmani, a Georgian restaurant that makes three kinds of khachapuri (among lots of other Georgian dishes). Their breadstuffs are all very good, but their imeruli khachapuri almost looks anemic compared to Georgian Bread's.

Another option for satisfying a khachapuri craving: make it yourself. (I keep forgetting this option exists. Is that what my kitchen is for? Oh yeah.) Here's a recipe that looks promising and fairly simple.

(Many thanks to Noah for introducing me to Georgian Bread!)

Georgian Bread
265 Neptune Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11235 (map)
718-332-8082

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-26T01:48:30Z

: I didn't have any good Thanksgiving photos to go with this post, so here's a random manatee from Sea World to get your attention. Did it work?

...I mean, Happy One-Day-After-Thanksgiving!

[insert blubbering sigh of failure]

This isn't too belated considering my usual track record of blogging about things that happened half a year ago, but it's nothing to be proud of.

I am extremely thankful you guys still read this blog—even if just once ever few months to make sure I'm not dead—despite the giant lag between posts and decline of helpful information. All tens of you—you mean a lot to me! Without your support this blog wouldn't have turned seven years old in mid-November. So: Thank you [x] the cuteness power of a thousand Marus.

I'm hoping this blog will make it to the big one-oh (which in Internet years is about middle-aged), even if by that point I'm only posting once every two months. But I will continue to drag my blog along, even when the path scrapes its legs down to bloody stumps and its wails of pain terrorize my dreams. Because I AM (sort of) DEDICATED. And for some reason, I'm imagining that my blog's path is made of loose, jagged gravel.

Other things I am thankful for, in no particular order: that I've managed to stay relatively healthy (and by that I mean I don't have cancer yet, because otherwise I'm pretty unhealthy), that I've still got a sweet job where I work with awesome people, that my family members are all healthy and doing well, that I have an excess of awesome friends, that I have an awesome boyfriend, that I have an awesome roommate, that I know Mandarin (this is totally false, but if I put it on the Internet, MAYBE IT WILL HAPPEN SOMEDAY), and blah de blah blup I'm going to stop now before I fully realize I have nothing to complain about, ever...oops, too late.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. My mom roasted a duck and we made two vegetable sides to go with it, along with cranberry sauce. (Making cranberry sauce is only a quarter-smidge more complicated than boiling water. I wonder if people who buy the canned stuff know this.) I also made a pumpkin mousse pie that may or may not have been tasty. Also, I got a mild allergic reaction of the "haha, you've got asthma now!" sort to one of the dishes, and my nose was (and continues to be) 97 percent stuffed.

...So I couldn't taste much and I didn't eat much, but I still had a great time with my mom and brother because they're fun people. And that's what matters.

Lastly, here's a random video about how to make a sandwich out of Thanksgiving leftovers, in case you see sliced bread and leftover turkey and cranberry sauce as a riddle that cannot be solved. The recipe is nothing special, but the editing is pretty sweet:

After watching this video, if you wished that every full-palm application of a sandwich's top slice of bread could be accompanied by a thunderous "BOOM," then we're on the same wavelength. [fist bump]