Why am I updating in the middle of the day at work? Because right now I'm finishing off the final shard-like dregs of a bag of Arico Cassava Chips and they possess all kinds of crack-like addictive qualities. They beat potato chips by a light year for being less greasy, crispier, and lighter than their more well-known foe.

[shovels a handful of broken crunchy tuber bits into mouth]

I bought this bag of Sea Salt Mist cassava chips (seasoned with just the right amount of salt) at my local awesome grocery store, Ramsey Farms, but you can also get them at Whole Foods and, I would assume, other health-minded grocery stores. Not that these chips are necessarily healthy, but perhaps less deathly than potato chips.

[another shovel]

Or maybe these chips aren't that mindblowingly tasty and I'm just really hungry, but you tell me: are you a fan of cassava chips? Is my reaction normal? Is anything I do normal?

"It'll be fine in the end," is what I half-heartedly told myself all through the horror that was last Friday. Seeing as Tristan's birthday cake was ultimately cut by the birthday boy and shared amongst friends, the day had turned out fine. Or at least just inched itself off Tristan's list of "Candidates for 'Worst Day of My Life.'" I hope.

But it was one of those days during which time somehow managed to speed up and slow down at the same time, when seemingly everything that could go wrong did go wrong, aside from anyone dying, and even that was a close call. While Tristan summed up his Day of Doom rather neatly in his livejournal, I'll recount the day much less succinctly. With photos.

Check out my latest Chile post on Serious Eats: Snapshots from Chile: Hot Dogs and Sandwiches at Rapa Nui. Warning: if mayonnaise gives you nightmares, you probably shouldn't read it.

My head needs to deflate. This will all make sense soon. I think. Why my head is about to implode. I tend to have these internal battles where I want to do what's right even though I know it'll probably make me feel bad but as long as I don't show that I feel like crap it's okay this is a run on sentence.

Okay, here's some stuff I ate nearly four weeks ago.

Where pizzas are born

So where was I on April 7th? Getting totally drunk...on pizza at the Gothamist-Slice Pizza Party at Fornino. Not alcohol, silly. Ha! Ha ha! Huh.

I wasn't expecting to see anyone I knew (aside from my co-workers) when I walked through the crowded restaurant. Hot. Sweaty. Full of pizza. And humans. And sweat. Oh my god, it was hot. At that point I damned my sweater and jacket. So what a relief it was when I came across...

Oops.

Naturally, I ate big ol' crispy hunks of fried chicken. Oops.

U Like

"Do you want to get some dumplings?" asked John.

"OH SWEET JESUS YES!" was my internal reply, although I probably said something less frighteningly enthusiastic like, "Um...sure!"

Three weeks ago when I went to John's apartment in Brooklyn (Bed-Stuy) for an afternoon of movie watching, I skipped lunch since I had woken up so late and—by that point—figured I could just stave off caloric intake until dinner. And while I could've waited until dinner—I have the ability to will my appetite into dormancy for long periods of time if I really want—the prospect of dumplings was hard to resist. (And for anyone who's worried about how unhealthy it is to eat like that, trust me, I already know. But when I'm not hungry, I just don't want to eat. I think this is why I'm not obese. Yet.)

Just giving you a heads up that I've written a post about café con piernas (coffee with legs) on Serious Eats. I did a few Chilean "Photo of the Day" posts as well; here are all my Chile posts so far. Show me the luv, please! [waggles fingers] If you're not registered on Serious Eats, you should be. Because...that means you're supporting me! Yeah!!!

As for my next entry here, it will probably be about something I ate three weeks ago. EPIC FAIL.

"Do you want to eat at a restaurant called Pig Heaven?" asked Lauren, knowing very well what the answer would be. It was the best invitation I'd heard in a long time, in addition to possibly being the most awesome name of a restaurant I had I had ever heard of in New York City. In just three syllables, it goes straight to the heart of your desires: "We have pig, and we killed it for you."

But what if you don't eat pork? Hell, what if you don't eat meat? This Upper East Side institution—it's been around for over 20 years—has everyone covered. The menu outlines food in categories of pork, no pork, hot pork, cold pork, vegetarian, and then some. Vegetarians can eat their dishes of tofu and vegetables (somewhat) peacefully as their carnivorous friends dig into porky dishes wafting swinely fumes in their direction.

Check out my first Chile-related post on Serious Eats about clay bowls from Pomaire. Every photo of the day this week should be about Chile, unless my brain dies. I'm not posting about Chile in any order; it's basically whatever I feel like doing. Yeah, creative freedom!!!

Just a note to say that I'm back from Chile!...and hope to go back to writing real food entries soon. You know I'm good for it.

It was awesome.

Now I return to being sleepy.

Babbo

Tina and Helen

I couldn't tell you how many times I've strolled past Babbo during my three years of walking around NYU's West Village campus and thought, "Isn't that the place everyone loves? I should probably eat there." And over the three years, never actually eating there. Although it's not a restaurant you'd casually walk into for dinner, it's not that impossible to get a reservation, nor is the price extravagantly out of reach for a "splurge" restaurant. I just wanted to make sure I went with the right people who would further enhance the food with their gleeful presences.

Thankfully, Tina did all the grunt work for our girls' night (including Helen and Giulia) at Babbo, securing the reservation and going as far as making a spreadsheet outlining the dishes we could order based on other people's recommendations and calculating the final bill of each of us, including tax and tip. If anyone needs a personal dining assistant, she's your gal.

Although we were nearly an hour late for our reservation (pointing the blame towards Ariel and his lateness to Tina's pre-dinner meal at Tailor), we still managed to fit in two relaxed courses before assuming that they would kick us out to make room for the next seating. The host was clear about our time limit: "You can stay until 10 PM; after that, we unleash the hounds." A reasonable request, of course.

And here comes the food porn.

I am not excited yet. This is why:

First flight out of Newark to Miami was delayed by more than two hours. Meaning I missed my original connection flight to Santiago in Miami, but I was easily transferred to another flight about two hours after the other one.

My two worries: would the people at Pro Chile know that my flight was delayed and know to pick me up from the airport later, and would my luggage get to Santiago?

Of course, no. And no. It gets worse. Or rather, it could be worse...maybe I should count my blessings.

The flight from Miami to Santiago was on American Airlines instead of the original LAN. I think LAN is probably better. Oh well. Fail. I don't know if I got much sleep on that 8 hour flight.

Of course, luggage is still in Miami since it was originally supposed to go on the flight that I missed. If AA doesn't fuck up too much, it'll be here tomorrow.

And of course, the people are Pro Chile didn't know my flight was messed up, so the driver who was supposed to pick me up didn't wait a million hours for me. Which is okay—I wouldn't expect other people to wait so long for me—but I called my mom when I was in Miami to email someone at Pro Chile to tell them I was delayed by two hours. Maybe the email didn't go through, or it wasn't checked...I tried to make sure someone would find out. Fail.

And the big "oh fuck shit this I want to go home" is that a cab driver (or two cab drivers) scammed me out of $555. I'd rather not explain how because it'll make me look like a total idiot, but one cab driver helped me figure out how much money to take out of the ATM (...yes, I look really dumb now) and I thought it was around $50, but no, extra zero, $500. Or $555 I realized after looking at my bank account info online. The more I think about how stupid I was the worse I feel, so I'm trying...not to...although it's really hard. Basically two cab drivers helped me get a cab; one guy was super nice, the other was kinda meh, and at first I thought maybe it was just the second guy who scammed me but maybe they were in it together, which makes me really....sad.

Maybe I'm lucky that that's the first time I've ever gotten scammed. I've never even had anything stolen from me before. I guess this counts though.

At least I didn't get my wallet stolen. I guess.

At least I didn't die on the plane. I guess.

It's hard to look at the bright side right now. I kind of just want to cry. But that won't solve anything. And I'm supposed to be happy that I'm in Chile, but so far, I'm not. And how, even though I know I have enough money to spend on ...various things, the notion that I just wasted $555 doesn't make me want to spend any money. Except for the $3 I'm spending on the Internet right now.

I feel so stupid. I feel stupid all the time. Why can't it ever end? And thinking that none of this would've happened if my first flight hadn't been delayed by two hours makes me angry as well. Stupid, angry, and frustrated do not make for happy excitement of any sort.

I'm closing comments because I may not get to go back on the Internet for a while. So whatever. This is just a little update.

Loreley

When I eat out with friends, food tends to fall into one of three categories: Asian, American, or pizza. It's easy to say that "German" never pops up, aside from a birthday dinner I held about three years ago at Lederhosen (and looking back, I don't know why I chose that restaurant—not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just random). That's three years without German food. Three years! And you know what I was missing out on all this time? Fried pork cutlets, french fries, and fresh pretzels. Why I would deny myself of such a deliciously nutrient-deficient meal for so long is a mystery to me.

At the suggestion of Jeanne's friend Stanley, six of us—including Jeanne's friends Gary, Grace, and Stephanie—went to German restaurant and biergarten Loreley two Thursdays ago. We started with a basket of fresh, warm pretzels studded with salt chunks and accompanied by brain-tingling mustard. I wouldn't want to eat any other kind of pretzel unless they also possessed just the slightest crispy crust encasing light, fluffy, bready innards. The only bad thing about these pretzels is that they had a short lifespan of awesomeness: as they cooled down, their tasty pretzel-powers disappeared. Then again, you should have no problem finishing these off before they dip far below peak-deliciousness.

Mm, chicken.

The saturated garlic-ness of the roast chicken with garlic sauce from Amazing 66 didn't really hit me until after I had I wiped my mouth with my food detritus-tainted napkin.

[sniff sniff]

It took me a while to realize that the napkin's intense garlic smell had come from the little bits of sauce that had transferred from the mouth to the napkin. And then back to my mouth. The napkin smelled intensely of garlic, even more so than what I could perceive from the dish itself.

Oh yes, it was some awesome chicken. Tender, juicy meat blanketed with a layer of fatty, slightly crisp skin. Flecked with chopped garlic bits. And doused in garlic essence. If only I didn't have to share it with Diana, John, and Rebecca...

Just kidding! I love sharing food with my friends!

...Because they help disperse the calories.

Since I've received a few emails lately asking me about my experience in NYU's Food Studies program, I figured it'd be easier to post an entry about it that the whole Internet-surfing world could refer to instead of write the same email repeatedly. If you have more questions beyond what I touch upon here, feel free to leave a comment.

So...what's it like?

No one actually asked me that. I'd say the program is pretty cool. Yeah.