The Girl Who Ate Everything

My school's department has a mailing list that sends out food related job/internship/volunteer opportunities, usually not ones I'm interested in or capable of doing. ...which is still the case. But YOU might be interested! Um.

Want to educate kids about nutrition, food, agriculture and everything in between? Come this Friday, the 28th, at 4:30pm to The Campus Plaza Center, which is a recreation center, located at 13th St. and Avenue B. We will be teaching kids at an afterschool program through the art of carving pumpkins, roasting their seeds and whatever else you can do with pumpkins. A new food literacy program is starting so come on down to find out more.

Actually, that one sounds fun. I can be like, "THE PUMPKINS, THEY ARE MIIINE!" and horrify little kids while wielding those little plastic carving knives. Or not. I've only carved a pumpkin once in my life in 6th grade when I lived in Taiwan (it was an American school but with craploads of international students, who we had to indoctrinate with the custom that is Halloween and gouging out pumpkin brains). The entire class had a big pumpkin carving session in groups of four. There must've been a lot of pumpkin goop by the end of the day.

Here's another, very different posting:

We are Casting Season 2 of Hell's Kitchen on Fox TV....Please forward on the information to your Staff, coworkers, family & friends....

Thank you

Debbie-Billywonka@aol.com

Hell's Kitchen - Casting Director

212-289-1777

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HELL�S KITCHEN

FOX TV - SEASON 2

CASTING CALL

Do you think you have what it takes to win Hell's Kitchen �Season 2?
IF SO, WE WANT YOU!

HELL'S KITCHEN with Acclaimed Chef-Gordon Ramsay is looking to cast Chefs, Cooks & Foodies over the age of 21. Whether you are an Executive chef, you've just graduated from a culinary institute, cooking is your hobby or you have a fascination AND PASSION FOR food�.WE WANT TO MEET YOU!

This is a culinary opportunity of a lifetime!
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If interested in auditioning please EMAIL us immediately:
twinsworld1@aol.com or billywonka@aol.com
917-678-9996 LISA AND DEBBIE - CASTING DIRECTORS
Please write: HELL'S KITCHEN 2- in the subject matter
Include your full name, age, contact numbers & why you would be the perfect contestant for the show
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HELL'S KITCHEN is a culinary boot camp that features contestants running a top-class restaurant overseen by world-renowned Head Chef GORDON RAMSAY.

RAMSAY AND HELL'S KITCHEN will serve helpings of terrors, tears, tantrums and triumphs in this dramatic unscripted series.

HELL'S KITCHEN will follow the competing CONTESTANTS 24/7, capturing the drama, intrigue and high emotion each night the restaurant opens. These ambitious hopefuls believe they have the drive, talent and desire to win and be the last one standing next to Chef Ramsay. The contestants will be tossed into the cauldron and will be fighting for their survival.

Culinary boot camp? (shudders) Not my thing.

Yesterday I spent my whole day inside attempting to do homework (which wasn't very successful; I have to cram for my wine mid-term tomorrow). As for sustenance, I ...COOKED. Yes, I took out pots and pans and put it on the stove, and put ingredients in the pots and pans, and heated them with hot gassy flames, and put some seasoning on the food to make it pseudo-palatable, and ended up with something kind of edible, but that's open to debate.

Lunch was steel cut oats with honey and chopped apples. I rarely eat oatmeal but since I'm doing the no-wheat thing, I figured "Hey, oatmeal can potentially tastes good, despite looking like puke." As much as I love the taste of oatmeal, I rarely eat it because it usually makes me feel nauseous after eating/smelling it for a while. It's odd because oatmeal has this very comforting feel...and then comes the nausea. Hm.

Unfortunately, I felt icky after eating most of it (I cooked 1/2 dry cup, which is one serving too many). It would've benefited from more honey and some milk, but you make do with what you have, which in my case was honey and chopped apples. It was pretty unsatisfying, although at the very least, I wasn't hungry after that (just disappointed).

For dinner I caramelized a chopped onion and sauteed thin potato slices. Although I looked online for recipes to get some kind of idea of what to do, in the end I decided I didn't want to follow a recipe, thus resulting in something that didn't necessarily suck, but wouldn't find its way into a restaurant either. Or even someone's home. Since I went on an herbs and spices buying craze last week, I decided to try a crapload of them; "This will make my food taste better! Or mask its deficiencies!" I don't think I used enough, as all I could taste was pepper (and I threw on about 5 things). Oooops. I love onions and potatoes but eating a whole bowl of them didn't appease my stomach, and I'd certainly never feed it to another human being, unless I wanted to make someone cry.

Somewhere in between those meals, I ate two persimmons. Ah...persimmons never fail me. Because I don't have to cook them.

While trying to make some progress on my food blog essay (a topic that i obviously have to narrow down), I attempted to categorize all the food blogs (plust a few others) that I'm subscribed to by region, specific food, restaurant reviews, recipes, and so on. It took...seemingly forever. I skipped blogs that I didn't know how to categorize or haven't updated in more than a month, but I basically scrapped the most itty bitty tiniest percentage of the top micron layer of food blogs, methinks. I think someone (if it hasn't already been done) needs to make a blog/directory about other food blogs that goes beyond just listing them in alphabetical order, but only listing the ones that actually get...updated (Kiplog's links is ...uh, as comprehensive as I'd want to get, so I think I'll just leave it at that. I don't feel like my blog is real though because it's not on it, nor is it on food porn watch. HAHARRR!). When I make a better list, I'll show you. Most of the blogs I read are unsurprisingly NYC-based but second in line were California-based blogs, mainly SF. There were also a lot of blogs from Sydney.

Speaking of SF, check out San Jellocisco. IS THAT NOT ONE OF THE MOST AWESOME THINGS EVER? Yeah. The creator Elizabeth Hickok even made a jiggly earthquake video.

My latest food blog subscription (oh god, make it stop) is Twenty bucks a day. I already spent $20 on groceries before 8:30 AM. Isn't that...not good? It wasn't all for me (I bought Swedish cookies for my "Food & Society" class, for which we had to read an essay about Swedish food) but it was probably the most junkf food-ified purchase I've made from Whole Foods in ages. Or ever. I also bought a bar of chocolate (yesss), a cherry spelt scone (delicious, soft, buttery texture, really impressed) and gluten-free ginger snaps for myself since I can't eat the Swedish cookies and GOD DAMMIT, COOKIES. (That wasn't a real sentence.) I never knew how many gluten-free snacks there were until I perused the cookie aisle. I was surprised to even find a bag of Swedish gingersnaps (although I also bought a bag of "Swedish style" lemon cookies...I don't know what the Swedish style is!). I also got a container of Greek yogurt and honey for dinner.

...but I did buy apples from the farmer's market! Yes, something fresh! Something raw! There's my healthy thing of the day.