Posts tagged ‘Small Tragedies’

Aug 16

When Life Gives You Lemons…

Every so often I have severe lapses in judgment that can hardly be explained away. There’s no way that ingesting only lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup for ten days can possibly be good for you. Call it a detox, a cleanse, whatever, but it’s got to be quackery. I thought so, and yet I couldn’t resist giving it a go. And well, the experience was extremely short-lived and beyond disastrous.

I was gung ho yesterday morning, drank my not all that grotesque concoction during the day and began feeling cloudy headed around lunch time. There’s no way I was starving already but figured I was missing my two usual cups of coffee. Around 2:30 I started getting a pounding headache and began sweating and getting dizzy and seriously started having second thoughts. Even though it would ruin my detox, I thought I would eat some lettuce so I ran downstairs and got a salad at Au Bon Pain. Before I could get back to my desk I started heaving and had to run to the communal one-stall bathroom and violently puked off and on for five minutes. My face was soaked in sweat and red as a ripe tomato (I always use a tomato to describe my face because I can’t think of a better description). All I could think was that I had to get out of there and get home somehow.

This is one of the many reasons why living in NYC sucks. Getting home rapidly is an ordeal and affords no privacy. At least in the rest of the country, if you’re sick you be so in the privacy of your own car. I considered getting a cab but that made me more nervous. I was going to have to subway it. Normally, I take two with a 10 minute walk but the walk seemed too treacherous so I had to do three subways. Miraculously, they all met up. The J came quickly, I switched to the A and it came immediately and I got a seat because it wasn’t quite rush hour but I was holding in vomit and sweating profusely the entire two stops. Then at Jay St. the F was sitting across the platform, which never ever happens. And it was nearly empty, so I took a seat and the guy across from me was skeeving me out, he kept staring at me and whispering to himself and I was a little delirious at this point and he might’ve been reading lines but I felt like I was being harassed, and the train wouldn’t go, it was just sitting there tormenting me.

I totally freaked out, jumped off and started barfing all over my salad in its bag. I was trying to get everything out so I could get back on the train but the doors started closing and I couldn’t stop wretching and I felt like my brain was swelling and hitting my skull. I almost started crying because I just wanted to get home and now I couldn’t stop puking and had to wait for another subway. I really felt crazy and unstable and swore people were looking at me exaggeratedly like I was high and paranoid. Well, I was hurling into a plastic bag but that’s nothing in the scheme of things. I’ve seen much worse.

So, I did manage to wait ten minutes or so for the next train and last the next two stops and the five blocks to my apartment before practically spewing out my entire stomach lining. I lied in bed from 5pm to about 9pm when I got up, tried to watch TV and ate one bite of cheese and one bite of granola bar. I promptly threw those up and went back to bed until 8am this morning when I tried to get up for work, decided to work from home, then felt too ill to even do that and went back to bed at 10am where I stayed until 1pm. It’s now 4pm and I still feel like shit (though I can now eat). And I feel like the outer layer of enamel has been eaten off my teeth and my throat and esophagus have been bathed in acid.

I don’t understand how just drinking lemon juice, cayenne and syrup for a day could make one so ill. Of course, all the hardcore diet freaks would just say that it was because I was so full of toxins that I was having a serve reaction and that I should stick with it. I say that’s nuts and that a regimen that induces severe vomiting can’t possibly be healthy. If anything, I was poisoned and not already full of poisons.

Or maybe I really am addicted to caffeine, sugar and fat. My last lapse in diet judgment occurred back in 2003 when I wanted to see what all the Atkin’s hubbub was about. I also threw up repeatedly the day after starting that horrible routine and had welts and hives all over my chest the entire six weeks I did it. And I lost a measly six pounds, which is what anyone would lose by just eating healthier for six weeks. On the other hand, I lost six pounds since yesterday with this wonderful master cleanse. Seriously. Puking ten times in a day apparently melts away the pounds. But I was trying to detox, not involuntarily become bulimic.

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Jul 11

Make it a True Daily Double

(Paraphrasing because I was only half-watching) “Which section of the New York Times allows critic Frank Bruni a $350,000 annual budget for expenses?” (And my own question, who’s flying him first class to Moscow?)

No one on this evening’s Jeopardy knew the answer (ok, Tim Abou-Sayed from Florida did eventually come up with “what is restaurants” as a sheer guess, right at the buzzer and after a miss from the ultimate winner Monica Lenhard of Michigan answered, “theater”).

Not that Jeopardy contestants are representative of the nation at large (more informed yet more socially retarded) but it relieved me that clearly no one outside of New York reads the New York Times dining section. I like to be reminded that NYC is not the center of the world, even though I admit to feeling anxious and out of touch with local media when I’m out of town (which is why I was reading “Off the Menu” on vacation in ’05 and learned about Fatty Crab. This was pre-food blog glut by the way, when I relied on print for restaurant openings. I swear I’m not obsessed with hating/loving Fatty Crab—I think I just like typing the word fatty).

Sometimes I wish I didn’t know things, the kinds of things in the New York Approval Matrix. I don’t want to know who The Splasher and Boerum Hill Crapper are (ok, maybe the crapper is alright), yet I do. Why? The person I live with has no knowledge of any of this non-importance (though it’s not as bad as the sixth grade dropout boyfriend raised in an orphanage who had never watched TV in his entire life. Honest to god, he had no clue who Tom Cruise was and that’s a hard one to avoid). Easily 85% of the people I come into contact daily for business and pleasure are not familiar with useless New York-ish pop culture talking points. Should I stop reading self-referential blogs for sanity’s sake? It’s not like I impress anyone with witty, informed banter. In fact, I often go all day without uttering more than a sentence or two, which likely contributes to my urge for spewing nonsense here.

Last night I saw an ad for a job I’d be perfect for. Not a cool job, library work, but definitely not hip as all (northern) Brooklyn librarians apparently now are. It involved food marketing. But it was in Virginia. I’ve seen Chicago ads and seriously think, but Virginia? Uh uh (it doesn’t help that James’s parents live in that state and would kill for him to live closer to home). It’s really out of the country or not at all.

Saturday I was informed that Manila might be in a business trip future. I’d love to go to the Philippines and have been interested in the country (well, the food) since I was a teenager. Shanghai was also tossed out as a possibility for the fall, maybe both. Could I stop reading the New York Times and placeblogs, whatever the fuck those are, for at least a few weeks?

Last month everyone (in the blogosphere, duh–my god, it’s worse than I thought) was doing the let’s live on food stamp allotments challenge (I had food stamps in college and ate quite well–$112/month for a Northwestern 19-year-old in ’91 was a lot of extra money. That doesn’t seem right considering that same state’s average allotment appears to be less sixteen years later). Boring. Maybe I’ll do the same with regional periodicals and blogs. You know, doing without, living like the poors. But then, I’d miss the rare, cool non-NYC-centric chain restaurant article like this one appearing in tomorrow’s print edition.

It’s not like I’m moving (back) to Oregon anytime soon. Wild west or not, the rugged individualist state probably isn’t all that welcoming of outlaw chefs. Jason Neroni will only luck out because no Oregonian has any inkling or interest about what goes on in NYC. God bless them.

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Jun 20

I’m With the Band

Ignoring T.G.I. Friday’s late-to-the-game attempts at small plates, Subway has introduced a new overstuffed behemoth (I can’t find any reference to this on their lame website or on the blogosphere—perhaps I imagined it?). Surely, to compete with Quizno’s girthier sandwiches. Sorry Jared. The commercial that I’ve only seen once initially caught my attention because I’m a sucker for chain food gimmicks, then I became fascinated by one of the eaters, a ~~office lady~~ woman dressed to look younger than she is. Office ladies eat Lean Cuisine, salads and microwave popcorn, not bulging hoagies. But I do appreciate the attempt to include the fairer sex in their marketing ploy.

Another weird ladylike eating habit presented itself to me on Sunday. I was scoping out the now slightly famous Red Hook ball fields. I hadn’t been this year, and wow, it has practically been taken over by South Brooklyn post-college, just barely pre-stroller/SUV set. Live and let live, but I couldn’t ignore the female members of these crews and their approach to a food-centric gathering.

There were a number of groups scattered around the hot grass and precious few shady tables, and they tended to be made up of two or three guys with one girl. The young men were all chowing down on sasquatch-sized huaraches or greasy pupusas while their accompanying gal pal remained empty handed. Ok, a few had agua frescas and one of the dudes tried scoring a Diet Coke for his little lady but the damn Mexicans only had full sugar versions.

So, that’s how you spend your Sunday? Sipping lemonade and watching a bunch of men eat? I don’t get the point. Maybe it’s the 2007 equivalent of being subjected to band practice, a ritual no self-respecting woman over 24 should engage in.

Hmm, I was just skimming through my feeds and couldn’t help but notice this post from a Food & Wine editorial assistant (#4 of Five Bites Outside of Aspen). It looks like the girl managed to at least choke down half a quesadilla. We must’ve been on different days.

I, too, had a quesadilla on Sunday. And yeah, they’re unnecessarily large (though I handled a whole one no problem). I’d never had a Red Hook version before and was hoping they’d be compact and cheesey like the one I recently had in Mexico City. The Brooklyn ones aren’t really like quesadillas at all since they put tons of stuff in them like lettuce, onions and they don’t stay stuck in a half moon shape because the cheese is only melted to the tortilla and there’s not enough of it. The insides need to be gooey and you really only need one simple filling.

Jeez, I had no idea I was such a street food snob. I’d remedy this with a Subway sandwich taste test, if I could only remember the name of their new supersized product.

Photo from the New York Times article, "The Boys in the Band Are in AARP"

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Jun 12

Red Hooks & Barbs

Welcome to another edition of talk (to myself) therapy. Last week I came to terms with trendy Macanese food, now I’m trying to come to terms with the rise of the Red Hook ball fields and the public (ok, the blogosphere) rallying to preserve them. I should care if the little guy gets put out of business, especially when the little guy crafts tasty snacks. Yet the more I hear about something, the more I begin to loathe it even when it’s worthy of constant comment. Sometimes I worry that that’s a horrible self-defeating attitude I need to rid myself of, then I read funny, possibly made up letters and feel vitriolic and at peace.

The Latin American food vendors in no way approximate the oversaturation of Shake Shack or Momofuku Ssam—there’s no attitude or ridiculous waits. And most importantly, I just live up the street. But I don’t even feel like going if it’s going to be douche central. I thought about taking my visiting mom and stepdude this past weekend but the Charles Schumer and friends save our salt of the earth artisans spectacle ensured that I’d steer clear. We went to Coney Island and Totonno’s instead.

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Jun 7

Ham on Wry

I don’t want to end up one of those cranks who constantly finds fault and starts writing letters to the editor (not emailing, writing—that’s when you know you’ve lost it). I’m more of a stewing and festering, then forgetting type.

But I was a little baffled by Time Out NY’s bit on jamon (by their new staff writer) that I read last night (I’m actually reading rather than skimming now that I temporarily have no internet or TV to entertain me into the wee hours). They get all gushy over the hand-cut serrano ham at Stinky Bkln. I like the place, nice enough people, but they can’t cut jamon to save their lives. This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned their mangling.

I was excited to see the meaty hooved leg around Christmas-time and had to get a pound. I ended up with a pile of chunks and stubs. I’m absolutely no Spanish expert but I have bought bellota in Barcelona and the cuts were invariably long and paper-thin.

I hoped my first Stinky Bkln foray was an aberration and tried again a few months ago. After watching the hip young man slicing off pudgy squares in a painfully slow fashion, I became nerved out and was like, “just give me a quarter pound.” It was unbearable to watch even for a few minutes. I’m trying to imagine shelling out $400 for three hours of this pleasure.

There are a lot of things I stay out of because I just don’t feel fit to judge. Barbecue and wine are two that immediately come to mind. Serve me swill and Dallas BBQ slop and I’ll hardly know better. But I do have a grasp on Spanish ham and there’s something wrong here.

Suicide food painting courtesy of lukecheuh.com

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Jun 6

Please Don’t Force Me to Read a Book

Irksome: having no internet, phone or television for four days. It can’t be a coincidence that as a new tenant moved into our building yesterday and the cable company was out setting him up that our cable inexplicably went out. Yet, our apartment is the only one of the four with a problem so Time Warner won’t consider it an outage and won’t come to see what’s going on until Friday. TV and phone won’t kill me but I can’t stand having no internet. I know it increases productivity (and I have plenty of friends with no computers, cell phones or TVs—in Portland, duh—and they survive) in the long run but I don’t feel like making life changes this week—I’m still in a post-vacation funk/readjustment period. I don't have any books to read, though I have a new New York, ReadyMade, Domino and Sabor (a pretty cool looking food magazine I picked up in D.F. but can only skim because it's in Spanish). James is losing his shit because he works all hours of the night (and doesn't read and can't entertain himself in an unplugged fashion). Honestly, I’ve never quite understood his schedule. He might get home at 7pm but will work from midnight to 3am downstairs. Now he’s going to have to make up this extra time in the office. Normally, it wouldn’t be the end of the world because the guy on the third floor doesn’t encrypt his wireless network. But um, he’s the person who moved out so the new tenant could fuck up our cable. This is actually posing a serious problem because we have to pick my mom up from the airport at 4pm on Friday and I had planned on taking a half-day and working from home in the morning. Now, I’ll have to go into the office for four hours (which feels needless) or use a full personal day. Plus, the cable guy (I really didn't want to think about Jim Carrey today or ever) is supposed to come between 1-4pm and you know how reliable those numbers are. And we need to leave by 3pm to get to Newark in time. I’m actually getting more annoyed as I type this. How am I going to post all of my brilliant thoughts on tacos and Nuevo Mexican cuisine without web access at home? (I don’t even have time at work because I’m a week behind still.)

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May 9

Sock it to Me

Urgh, I lost my other camera sock (apparently, they’re quite popular—I’ve had more than a handful of internet searchers ending up here after Googling camera sock as well ugh this coworker naMED kRISTA, which I find disturbing for its implications and traumatic capitalization), which was probably a direct result of losing track of the number of mint juleps I’d consumed. This is the second year in a row that I’ve overindulged into near oblivion. It must be the convergence of Kentucky Derby and Cinco de Mayo. At least I was smart enough to eschew the Cuervo shots. I can’t resist a good limited edition promotion, though—green wax instead of red on the Maker’s Mark bottle is marketing gold as far as I’m concerned. I can't resist green non-vegetal foodstuffs.

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Mar 30

Tidbits: Bauhaus and Mayonnaise

1. Bauhaus in Starbucks is wrong. I could deal the other morning when my favorite New Order song “Age of Consent” was playing (it already got tainted in the Marie Antoinette trailer, anyway) but “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything” is wrong anywhere, but particularly at 10am in the Financial District in a coffee chain.

In the mid-‘90s I found a bunch of old dubbed from vinyl cassettes, including a few Bauhaus ones. I tried playing them while driving and it was intolerable, like really nuts and dramatic. In a way, Destroyer is a contemporary non-Goth version of this super theatrical style, and I can listen to it (maybe not driving, though).

2. Remind me to not go to Pret a Manger again. I’ve only gone twice in the past month but I keep forgetting that the not terribly filling sandwiches ring in at $7 on the dot with tax and are overly mayonnaisey (I’m not the first to note this overabundance). I end up hungry in a few hours, grossed out even after wiping excess mayo off with a napkin and annoyed that I’ve used way more than my allotted afternoon calories. Sad. I could deal with the heavy handed condiment application if the price was even a dollar cheaper because they do have interesting flavors. But after looking up the nutritional info on my cranberry, walnut, mesclun and brie version, I almost crapped myself. I might as well have eaten a Wendy’s value menu cheeseburger and saved fat and money. Um, except I don’t think they have Wendy’s down here.

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Mar 16

Boiling Point

Despite how it might seem, I don’t generally enjoy complaining. And I wasn’t ever going to mention how the heinous Starbucks sort of across the street from my new office makes me want to spit and scream and I’m always overly polite to customer service workers (though tonight our super late pizza delivery from Nino’s induced mild irritation mixed with light empathy because apparently the delivery guy, kind of an Italo-Mongloid hybrid, had dropped the pizza on the way over. I’d have felt bad if he had fallen but I think he was just butterfingers with the box. He was apologetic and waiting another 45-minutes, his estimate for a replacement pie, seemed unreasonable. But the pizza was all smooshed on one side of the box, like half the pie had all the fillings and the other part was mangled and topless) but today was free coffee day from 10am-12pm so it seemed timely to vent(i) my concerns.

I wouldn’t normally go to Starbucks, not because it’s inherently evil but because I’m cheap. But my mom has gone on this kick where she sends $25 Starbucks cards for holidays and I have no problem redeeming them. Since college she’s often mailed a twenty dollar bill on such occasions, I don’t know when or why the Starbucks changeover took hold.

I actually liked the “secret Starbucks,” as they’d call it, hidden in the back lobby of the building next to Newscorp with no external signage. It was never crowded and sometimes they’d give me larger coffees than I’d ordered. But the new-to-me Beaver St. location is like the setting for an episode of Boiling Points. I’ve gone about a handful of times and every time except for once I have no received my coffee. I order the simplest thing on the menu: a tall black coffee. That’s it. All they have to do is turn around and pour it from a spout or tell another worker to pour it from a spout. Yet, I pay, move to the side (not the larger area where 98% of people are waiting for fancier complicated beverages) and my coffee never arrives. On my first visit it was a solid five minutes before I realized no one was ever going to get my coffee. Frothy, whipped cream topped behemoths are flying out the door, everyone in line after me leaves, and I’m still waiting for my fucking drip coffee. I paid already, so it’s not like I can leave.

Yesterday, I lost my shit after the four women in line behind me received their drinks while I was standing inches from the gentleman who’d taken my order. I was like, “um, I ordered a coffee before all of these people” and the counter guy as well as three workers who were literally just standing behind the counter doing nothing ignored me. The one other drip coffee lady who’d arrived well after me was less polite than I. She chided everyone in the way only a middle aged woman with nothing to lose can. I would've been scared if she hadn't been on my side. Free or not, I can’t allow myself to step foot in that caffeinated hell again.

Plain black coffee is all that I want so I would be fine with the coffee cart brew. The going rate for a large (and strangely called extra large one block down) around Wall Street is $1.15. I can deal with that despite hating to dig around for the 15 cents. But I was blessed by Au Bon Pain when the other day the cashier gave me one of those plastic commuter cups for no reason whatsoever (I used to frequent the 47th and 6th branch daily and never got such treatment) I always thought their $1.72 large was a rip off since the coffee isn’t really any better than street coffee but for $1.07 with the free cup, it’s the only bargain of my day and had induced irrational loyalty. And I’m not put off by their self-serve approach, at least I have control over how quickly I get my goods. Now if they’d only bring back their half price baked goods after 4pm deal, all would be right with the world.

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Feb 23

Emergen-C Isn’t Food

I have a very poor sense of portions and what’s normal, which is why I’ll never be wispy. I hate depravation. This morning I finally got around to skimming this week’s New York and became fixated on a few industry types’ eating diaries during Fashion Week (I was on the toilet while reading this, mind you, it was number one not number two. There was just something appropriate about expelling waste while reading such crap).

I was kind of appalled by the Elle editor’s regimen, but then I was like well, maybe that’s typical. I don’t really know, that’s not my world (though even the model ate some onion rings and rice krispie treat), I guess that’s how you stay thin. But only eating two ounces of ceviche (and knowing that you’d consumed two ounces) completely creeped me out.

I eat ceviche when I’m trying to be restrained and it’s lime-marinated fish instead of something fried, breaded or starchy. Like last night I was at Sofrito and skipped empanadas (which I might normally lean towards but I’d already eaten half a Margon cubano for lunch) in lieu of octopus salad. But I know I downed more than two ounces of the chopped cephalopod and I wasn’t bothered in the least. I proceeded to drink four glasses of Pinot Noir and then I cared even less.

So, I was very relieved when this afternoon I noticed Gawker and Gothamist had both called out this woman’s minimalist approach to dining. I can’t believe I’m relying on blogs as a window onto acceptable eating habits. Ok, so this style of eating is weird?

I actually do record (almost) everything I eat and drink because I’m one of those nasty point counters. Today was atypical because I stayed at home (since I start a new job Monday I thought I’d take off Thursday and Friday and be lazy and take care of odds and ends around the apt.) and I eat differently than if I was in an office. But so far I’ve had the other half of my leftover cubano from yesterday (I swear, it wasn’t as huge as a standard style Cuban sandwich so I didn’t feel so bad), ¼ cup white rice topped with chile radish, a handful of wasabi peas, two corn tortillas with a couple avocado and tomato slices and lots of black coffee and water. I guess I would call that a day if I were in the fashion industry but it’s only 6pm.

Around 9pm I’ll make Chairman Mao’s Red-Braised Pork (using ribs instead of belly) the cover star from my new Hunan cookbook and eat that with more white rice and leftover black bean chile Chinese broccoli from Tuesday night, while watching DVR’d Ugly Betty and The Office. And believe it or not, if I keep the pork to about six ounces I’m still within my point limit (I spent an hour on an elliptical trainer and lifted a few free weights so I could eat fatty pork). So there. If I’m lucky I’ll shed .25 pounds this week. No, the pound a month approach isn’t ideal.

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Posts tagged ‘Small Tragedies’

When Life Gives You Lemons…

Make it a True Daily Double

I’m With the Band

Red Hooks & Barbs

Ham on Wry

Please Don’t Force Me to Read a Book

Sock it to Me

Tidbits: Bauhaus and Mayonnaise

Boiling Point

Emergen-C Isn’t Food

Featured

Occasional Instagramming

Yes, it’s come to this

My Other Blogs

What?

The Past Will Haunt You

Pigeonholing 101