Jul 18
One of my favorite May-December romances of 2008 was the pretty boy teen and the not-so-pretty 37-year-old teacher. Does, "I'm tapping that ass and there's nothing you can do about it" ring any bells?
Former model, Joshua Walter, has now been arrested for participating in a crime spree that ended this weekend at a Queens Dunkin' Donuts with a pistol-whipping instead of an ass-tapping. Thankfully, it was not a Tim Hortons.
Wow, so much (mostly snarky) blog chatter about fat acceptance today (thanks, to this New York Times article). As if it were a new and radical concept. Has dieting ever been a cure all or route to happiness?
Didn't we just see another study about how the overweight (not obese, mind you) live longer than both the average and underweight? An extra 20 pounds isn't going to kill anyone, I'm afraid, it'll just make you the subject of scorn, shame and derision. Maybe you will wish you were dead.
Meanwhile, soon-to-depart restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, confesses to being a "baby bulimic."
"Competitive Non-Eating Between Women" is a fun game discussed at Forbes.com.
The current New Yorker has a round-up review of books about why Americans are so fat and disgusting.
Even Fox News thinks eating-disordered fat-hating MeMe Roth has gone too far. That's saying something. [via Jezebel]
Ok, I'm off to the banh mi cart. My brought-from-home 80-calorie low-sodium tomato-red pepper soup lunch is bringing me down.
Many regional specialties get bastardized beyond comprehension once they leave their home state. I wouldn't necessarily know that first hand since the only vaguely NW-specific food I can recall eating are jo jo potatoes (definitely no morels or cedar-planked salmon).
I think California might lay claim to the monte cristo (proper version, above) but it has been a bountiful favorite of mine for years, one that I rarely indulge in here not out of concern for my health but because NYC has done terrible things to the poor sandwich. I learned this lesson a decade ago when I used to frequent Odessa in the wee hours. This weekend I relived the shock and horror at Carroll Gardens' Hill Diner (the dearth of post-midnight options in the area is sad).
The monte cristo I've always known and loved is essentially a club sandwich on French toast served with jelly (strawberry if you're classy, grape if you're not) and fries on the side. I'm pretty sure there's a layer of mustard too. Sweet, savory and yes, a little weird but if you like poultry, pastry and powdered sugary bisteeya like I do, this isn't much of a stretch. Moroccan…Californian…whatever. Some go as far as battering and deep-frying the whole thing, Disneyland-style, though I've yet to encounter such as beast.
My first clue that something was awry in New York was the sandwich's inclusion in the breakfast section, mingling with the omelets and pancakes. My version is lunch or dinner fare, tidy, not what I would consider overstuffed, and definitely handheld, which is why I balked when I was brought an enormous slab that nearly filled an entire plate. It seems that the NYC diner version (I've never had or seen one outside of a diner) is French toast—they have that part right—topped with thinly sliced turkey and ham and gelled together with a solid layer of melted swiss cheese, served open-faced. A pitcher of syrup is brought out with the confusing amalgam.
Not that I can't learn to love this gooey sugared package. I will say that this is a sandwich for these times; not only did I get post-Cyclones meal (beer and pretzels didn’t cut it) but also breakfast the following two mornings. Now that's good value.
After nearly forgetting about this sandwich—I think this was my first monte cristo of this millennium—my passion has been renewed. I am now determined to find a true monte cristo. There must be one lurking somewhere in the city. Anyone know anything?
Leave it to Martha Stewart to come up with a Ghost of Monte Cristo sandwich.
There was a time in the not so distant past when I declared my love of all things Swad, which appear to be the house brand at Patel's. Anything Indian you can think of, and they make it. Even though I can get fresh chiles and lotus root, I still like stocking up on their frozen their frozen versions, plus exotics like cubed ratlau (purple yam).
Clearly, I'm not the modern all-from-scratch woman. I like to cook, but on a weeknight I'm not always up for scrubbing and peeling, or more accurately sourcing ingredients on the fly. I don't even know who stocks any Indian items in Brooklyn.
I've always been fond of Swad’s 99-cent boxes (which contain pouches) of sides that knock Tasty Bite out of the water for price and variety. And that's where my love affair has turned tragic. Two weeks ago I whipped up a quick mid-week meal of madras curry chicken supplemented by a package of paneer makhani around 9pm. It all tasted fine. About four hours later, just around 1am, I was hit with sharp and sudden stomach pains, no gentle nausea or indigestion. I was violently puking within minutes. Urgh. I blamed the frozen chicken breasts and wondered if I should start shunning grocery store meat, after all. The inexplicable thing was that James ate the exact dinner and he was fine. The only thing I ate that he didn’t was a mango (fresh, thank you) that had been sitting on the counter for a week. A reluctant fruit eater, I wanted to blame the mango for my distress.
Then last night it happened again. We had leftover lamb chops and I thought they would go well with peas but being too lazy to track down fresh peas (yes, even though they are in season) I grabbed a box of methai mutter malai from downstairs. Indian peas with fenugreek in minutes. James questioned my use of readymade food after the last incident but I figured that was a fluke. After my first bite, I became hesitant even though the puree didn’t taste off, and only ate two more spoonfuls.
This time I was puking by 12:45am. And yet again, James wasn't sick. What is up with you, Swad?! Is this tough love pushing me to the greenmarket? I'd go if I could walk to one. That little sad one on Carroll Street has done nothing to motivate me and Grand Army Plaza isn't where I want to be on the weekend, it's all handholders and zombie pregnant women with cups of gelato sauntering in front of your car during green lights and giving you the evil eye if you act as if you'd, you know, like to Drive when you're legally allowed to do so.
It's not just me, car-owning friends who moved from Oakland to Greenpoint who I think are returning to Oakland, were all what the hell is wrong with pedestrians here? They guessed that the problems stem from the city being a non-driving majority who don’t understand what it’s like to behind the wheel (I’m way too jumpy to drive in the city). That's the nice theory. You could also argue that people in New York are just self-absorbed to the point that they think cars should stop for them. Me, I'm a namby-pamby rule follower both ways because people drive like assholes in Brooklyn and I don’t want to get smooshed. Common sense would dictate that if you have a Don't Walk sign yet continue walking without looking, you might just get flattened.
Jeez, now oblivious, selfish Brooklynites have distracted me from the matter at hand–my poisonous stash of packaged Indian food! I think I’ll lay off the Swad for a while, it's making me delusional.
Whoa, it takes a lot to gross me out food-wise. My only real hang-ups are melons, edible flowers and stems. I have a hard time with raw foliage. For what felt like years (it was probably only one) during grade school there was a potted African Violet in the center of the dining table and I couldn't look at the thick, furry stems while eating my morning Grapenuts and yogurt without my throat clenching up. Too much nature first thing in the morning.
It still really grosses me out to see spinach, arugula and the like with tough protrusions hanging off the leaves (cooked spinach doesn't bother me unless there is an egregiously firm tail or two that survived the sautee). I'm also scared of currently in fashion fiddlehead ferns, one reason why I've never visited any super-jungle-y parts of Malaysia—this wild plant worries me way more than sago worms.
I've been waiting for a real Hunan restaurant to show up in NYC but I most definitely won't be ordering the Hunan House's "hollow stem vegetable" pictured above and blogged about on Fork in the Road today. An all stem dish?! I'm going to have nightmares.
Is someone messing with me? I bemoan Portland’s stranglehold on the food media and the pain of being the oldest gal in the bar, and then I get e-mailed an invite to an “UnConference” (I shit you not) called PDX Gen Y? Really?
I will always remember Dom Deluise’s shining moment as a food addict in Fatso, a touching movie that among other things spoofed Weight Watcher with a self-help group called the Chubby Checkers.
It’s practically like watching my life on the big screen (well, I’ve only ever seen it on the small screen).
No more ominous words than “Get the honey,” have ever been spoken on film.
I've had a few people ask about the status of the Financial District's (sorry for the Twitter FiDi usage but I'm horrible texter and need all lame abbreviations at my disposal) once-mobbed banh mi cart. Well, as of 1:30pm this afternoon, it appeared to be a no show.
Don't these guys know about the banh mi boomlet sweeping the city? They are seriously missing their opportunity to cash in five-bucks-a-pop on the trend.
But more importantly, I was deprived of the lunch I had been thinking about all morning. Maybe the growing Baoguette empire will hear my cries and expand way downtown.
Whenever James returns from visiting his parents in Northern Virginia I get scared. When returning from trips related to a gift-giving event such as Christmas or a birthday, I become even more frightened. I have a low tolerance for useless crap and clutter. If I had my way, it wouldn't enter the front door because once it has crossed the threshold you know it's stuck in the apartment for life (or until I move).
It's one thing to lug home lamps and potholders sourced from stores like Home Goods or the back section of Marshalls that looks just like Home Goods, but in some ways the oddball cast off food is even worse. Monday night I was faced with the following:
¾ of a white fruit-topped cake from Giant (I tried a slice because I can't resist desserts in the house and the damn thing was 85% whipped cream, 10% dry cake, 5% flavorless fruit…so disappointing)
2 packages of Oscar Meyer bacon
4 pounds of powdered sugar (have you ever heard of Holly brand?)
2 bananas
1 Chick-fil-A spicy chicken sandwich
1 Chick-fil-A waffle fries
1 packages of Vortman sugar free Almondette cookies
1 bag of Barcel pork rinds (a Mexican brand)
1 2.25 pound bag of Sun Maid raisins
1 bottle of V8
1 tray of Costco sweet rolls
1 pound of Costco butter
6 assorted Kashi TLC bars
18 extra large eggs
1 bag of stale looking cookies with lots of German and Russian words (The only English reads Ginger “Lux” cookies. These look to be a product of Moldova imported to Brighton Beach. I imagine these were purchased during a trip to Brooklyn, forgotten about, and now repatriated.
1 box of hard ribbon candy (about as foul a treat as candy corn, but it certainly is pretty)
So many abnormal sizes and peculiar brands, half probably past their expiration dates. EVen my cat is baffled. One would say that this bounty definitely provides a window into the psyche of the givers.
I was happy for the Chick-fil-A items, though, since those were specifically bought for me somewhere in Maryland. Now that I look at it, most of the non-sweet items are useful. I'm still not touching the unappealing cookies, candy, cake or the powdered sugar. I can't even recall the last time I used confectioner's sugar and I don't see any glazing or frosting in my future either. If only I could go a little re-gifting of my own.
Things have been quiet around here, not so much because I’m lazy, but because I can’t eat anything except mush and I’m foggy from pain killers. I had my wisdom tooth out over a week ago and something went awry and it’s not healing. Hmm, maybe I attempted corned beef, hamburgers and a pupu platter a bit too soon. I was being optimistic. After a return visit to the dentist and a new batch of vicodin, I am now back to oatmeal, soup and yogurt. Despite being three pounds lighter (temporarily, I’m sure) I am also greatly saddened, not to mention starving.
Reading about the opening of Num Pang makes me want to cry. I don’t know if I can read food blogs until I can eat real food again.
On the up side, I am just about exactly half-way through the 896-page 2666. A little book learning never killed anyone.
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