Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Slightly Less Awful Lentil Soup

You know what sucks about winter? It's that no matter how much climate change makes it warmer and less snowy and generally less gloomy, the produce still sucks ass. So you're basically stuck eating root vegetables or canned beans for a few months.

Sure everyone says that frozen veg is great and awesome and tastes fresh and whatnot, but it's all a lie. Frozen broccoli tastes like nothing. And you can never get just regular frozen broccoli; it's always vegetable mixes, filled with vile crap like snow peas and sliced anemic carrots. Lastly, who the hell knows where these vegetables are from! They could be grown on toxic waste in a Chinese industrial city for all you know.

Anyways, the long and the short of it is that I don't like frozen veg and I'm not a big fan of root vegetables (screw Jamie Oliver!), so it's cans for me all winter. All. Fucking. Winter.

You know what the easiest thing is to make in winter? Canned lentil soup. It takes talent to make canned lentil soup taste like anything beside dirty water. You have to add spices or balsamic vinegar or tomatoes to it, and you have to do it in such a way that it doesn't just taste of whatever you added in.

A long, long time ago, my mom had a crunchy granola vegetarian recipe book that included many unremarkable soups that tasted like the inside of a health food store smells. However, there was this one recipe for curried apple lentil soup that was actually pretty good. My mom only made it once because she hates curry -- and because my mom is a traditionalist who will forever make lentil soup the same way.

The other day I found a bunch of bruised apples in the vegetable crisper. They were starting to go bad, but were still salvageable. So I said to myself, "Self, why don't we give curried apple lentil soup a try! We have a bottle of random curry powder in the pantry, so let's do this."

So I made it. It turned out OK, though not quite as awesome as I remembered it. But it was better than regular lentil soup.

Less Terrible Than Usual
As usual, I brought leftovers for lunch the next day and had one of those stupid low-fat yogurts for "dessert".

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Lean Mean Smoke Meat Machine

Spousal Unit and I were all on our own one day and decided that we would go for lunch at the Deli down the street. The deli is owned by expat Montrealers who actually know what smoke meat is supposed to taste like.

Lean smoke meat makes more crumbs than medium smoke meat.
For some reason the place was ultra-packed. It was 2pm; why would so many people be having lunch at 2pm? This is a question that remains unanswered, but the result was that they were all out of the medium smoke meat, so I had to settled for lean.

Lean smoke meat is not quite as awesome as medium smoke meat. Medium smoke meat is soft and velvety on the tongue. Lean smoke meat tastes like meat. That said, any kind of smoke meat is better than no smoke meat.

The meal was finished off with a slice of apple pie à la mode. Unfortunately, because I decided to not be all Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, the apple pie was cold. Tsk.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

A Tale of Two Yolks

You know that Italian hash I make? So the yolk is technically supposed to remain intact. I never managed it, ever, and was frankly thoroughly puzzled as to how one could even achieve a non-broken yolk when dealing with fried bread.

Success! Unbroken yolk!
But then a miracle happened!

OK, it wasn't a miracle. I just figured out that to not break the yolk you needed to make a little well in the middle of the fried bread, hot pepper and cheese and put the egg in there. Then you had to be very, very careful about flipping the entire concoction (yes, it requires flipping).

Failure. Broken yolk and sheepy cheese.
And this was how I managed to not break the yolk for the first time ever. Big round of applause for me!

I was so impressed with myself that I then decided to demonstrate my new mad non-egg-yolk-breaking-skillz to Spousal Unit. Unfortunately, I managed to break the yolk in the bowl before even dropping it into the pan. (Yes, I always crack eggs in a bowl first. This way I can check whether they're fertilized or bad. Yes I do realize this is somewhat crazy.)

Spousal Unit looked at the broken egg and asked me exactly what I wanted to show him. I lied and told him that I wanted to show him how if you mix Crotonese cheese with the Parmigiano it gets even gooier and tastier. And then Spousal Unit said that he didn't like sheep's milk cheese and that was the end of that.





Saturday, November 17, 2012

O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!

That's some strong coffee!
O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
That's some crazy-ass caffee-ine;
O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
That's some crazy-ass caffee-ine;
Not only strong in Espresso roast,
But in VIA form it packs the most.
O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
That's some crazy-ass caffee-ine!

 O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
Much jitters thou has given me;
O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
Much jitters thou has given me;
How often has my heart raced
After consuming you at a fast pace!
O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
Much jitters thou hast given me.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Soup for Breakfast

Yeah, you read right: soup for breakfast.

If you can have cereal for supper, you can have soup for breakfast.

Culturally-insensitive mug, meet your soup bowl counterpart.
Do you need backstory? Fine. We all woke up Sunday morning to no eggs, no bread and no OJ. It wasn't like it was a surprise: we had seen this coming for a week. Spousal Unit had a plan to go out and buy us breakfast. So off he went, forgetting that the time change would make The Toddler and me ravenous by 10am. The Toddler is happy having Cheerios at every meal, so there was no problem there. The problem was me.

All I wanted was hot soup because I had this nasty-ass cold that had decided to squat in my upper respiratory tract. We had leftover matzoh ball and kreplach soup (in chicken broth, natch) in the fridge. I warmed it up and the kreplach expanded to about 12 times their normal size.

At this point I should ask: do you know what kreplach is? Don't bother answering because I can't hear you. Also I am typing this in the past. Anyways, kreplach are dumplings filled with stuff, in this case mystery meat. We got them from the deli down the street because we're not really a dumpling-making family.

I ate the broth, the half-matzoh ball that was left and the two kreplach, then I washed it all down with an espresso because I didn't need a caffeine-withdrawal headache to amplify the sinus headache I already had.

By the time Spousal Unit got back with the breakfast sandwiches (sadly not Egg McMuffins), neither I nor The Toddler were hungry. Spousal Unit ate alone.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Chicken without Soup

Having a cold sucks.

After working from home, the cold had seemed to get better. Then I had a colossal lack of judgement and decided to go trick or treating in the cold rain with The Toddler. The next morning I woke up with a cough. The day after that I woke up with a cough and blocked sinuses. I felt like I had been run over by a truck. I elected to take a sick day.

Solid Gold
I did not have the energy to make soup. I went scavenging in the fridge and found some leftover oven-fried chicken. It wasn't soup, but it was chicken, so that counted for something. I reheated it and ate it on the sofa while watching some daytime talk show where they explained how to use the "exciting fall fashions" to hide "problem areas".

Minty Mouse
I drank so much mint tea, it wasn't even funny. My sweat had turned minty fresh. Even my coffee tasted minty fresh. The KitKat I stole from The Toddler's Hallowe'en stash was lovely, however.



Sunday, November 4, 2012

I Need to Do Groceries: Stale Wafers

Even mushier when dunked in coffee.

I desperately wanted some dessert. I was working from home with a cold. I was going to have some coffee and a I really desperately wanted something sweet to go with it.


I looked in the pantry and found an open pack of Loacker chocolate wafers with exactly two wafers left in them. I had no idea how long they had been there, forget about how long they'd been open. I was desperate, so I had them.

They weren't just stale, they were hellastale. There was no crispness left in them whatsoever. They bent rather than snapped. But at least they were dessert. Plus, once you dunk them in coffee, it doesn't make much of a difference.

At least they reminded me that I should put them on the list for the next grocery run.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Fractal Food!

Spousal Unit asked me what he should make for supper one night that I wasn't going to be home. I told him that I had bought a romanesco broccoli and that he should make that. To which Spousal Unit replied, "What's a romanesco? How do I make that? What are you talking about?" So I had to explain to him that it was the Fractal Broccoli. Then he understood.

We only make one dish with the fractal: a pasta dish that includes saffron, raisins, loads of cheese and, of course, the fractal. It's sweet and savoury and it's a great excuse to drink wine. Because you have to drink wine with this kind of dish. You just have to. Don't argue.

Anyways, it turned out really well and we had leftovers for lunch the next day.

That Fractal's a Bit Old.

As a rule, I don't bring pasta leftovers to work, but the fractal pasta is different: because there's no tomato sauce, there's no bizarre acidic aftertaste and the pasta doesn't because a revolting mushy mess. Instead it just tastes a little stale. Hmmmm...stale.


Saturday, October 6, 2012

Migraine Medicine

Drink Me!
I knew from the moment I got into the office that it was not going to be my day. I could feel the pressure around my temple and the heavy feeling around my eyes. I knew what was coming: a migraine.

I worked through it as much as I could, but then I couldn't do it anymore and went home.

The next day, I woke up and my migraine was slightly better, but not by much. So I worked from home and made myself some "migraine medicine": hot chocolate with coffee.

I swear this stuff keeps migraines at bay!

You make hot chocolate by combining cocoa, sugar, cinnamon and milk to make a paste, then you add boiling water a capful of (real) vanilla. Stir. Let cool so you don't burn your palate, and drink.

For migraine medicine, you add some instant coffee to the cocoa, sugar and cinnamon mix.

A few minutes after you drink it your migraine will miraculously go away.

Except when it doesn't and you end up in the dark, curled up in the fetal position.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Autumnal Eats: Lentil Stew and Apple Crumble

I made apple crumble.

Dessert That Tries Your Nerves
It wasn't even one of those spur-of-the-moment-temporary-insanity things either. I actually planned to make apple crumble. I went out and bought two different types of apples (Courtland for texture, MacIntosh for flavour), and made sure I had all the fixin' for the topping, and made the damned thing. In the process of peeling all the damned apples, I damaged a nerve in my wrist and my pinky finger now constantly feels tingly. It's not really as fun as it sounds.

Then I made lentil stew because it is easy and because sometimes all you have left in your pantry is cans of lentils, and all you have left in your fridge are some dying carrots and onions because you neglected to buy anything else while you were stocking up on apples for the damned crumble that damaged your wrist.

In the end, though, it was all worthwhile because you had seasonal apple crumble and lentil stew to bring to work and all your coworkers were like, "Oooh! How very autumnal of you!"

Or so you tell yourself as you try to ignore your tingly pinky.

Business Park Diner Quesadilla

When you don't have your car with you and you work in a business park, your options for lunch are limited. So it was either Business Park Bulgogi or the greasy spoon diner next door.

I decided to walk to the greasy spoon diner in the hopes of procuring a tasty BLT -- because why else would you visit a diner? -- but then I discovered that they had "quesadillas" on the menu.

Make yourself a danged quesadilla!
I've had the "quesadillas" before. They're a mass of cheese, red and green bell pepper, sautéed onions and grilled chicken in a tortilla. It's not bad and it was a fairer bet than the BLT, which I'd never had before.

This time, though, the quesadillas were heavy on the cheese and peppers, but rather light on the chicken. And the tortillas were these whole grain tortilla things that had been burnt on the grill.

At least they served it with piles of fries and sour cream. Salsa and guacamole would have been nice, but this diner doesn't really do "fresh".

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Couscous!

This is different, isn't it?

Plastic makes it better. Kinda.
OK, not really because it's still an empty container. But the crumbs are different! See? They're couscous crumbs! Or rather individual couscou (one couscou, two couscous?). They were topped with stewed chickpeas that were made with lime and cinnamon, not that you could taste either because both flavours were obliterated by the tomato. Or maybe they were so harmonious that the flavours smoothly combined.

The last time I made this dish, the stewed chickpeas came out better, but the couscous was stale. I had just bought the friggin' couscous that day and it was already stale! That was the last time I bought boxed couscous. This couscous was happily hermetically sealed in a cellophane bag. Better living through plastics.


Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Veal, Broccoli, and Weight Loss

Apparently veal cutlets are a nice, tender meat. Apparently they're easy to cook. Apparently they're hard to fuck up.

And yet.

And yet my veal cutlets were chewy. I am pretty sure that I expended more energy chewing these cutlets than I actually got out of them. In addition to the veal, there was also barely-cooked broccoli which, let's face it, is pretty indigestible. So I'm guessing that I lost a couple of pounds eating my lunch.

Too bad that I made up for the calorie deficit with a ginormous helping of veggie straws. At least it was better than last week's Cheetos fest that I *ahem* forgot to take pictures of.

-546 Weight Watchers Points!

Monday, August 13, 2012

Award My Tuna!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Tuna Fish Sandwich! 

But not just any tuna fish sandwich! It's a tuna fish sandwich that was entered into a contest! Yes, you heard right: this is an award-submitted tuna fish sandwich!

The remains of the andwich-say
Spousal Unit saw an ad for an online sandwich contest sponsored by our favourite makers of crunchy granola, ultra-healthy, super-chewy bread. He decided that he should enter his "recipe" for tuna sandwich. Granted, his tuna sandwich, which is made with avocado instead of mayo (because I hate mayo) is very tasty. But whether or not it's award-winning is another story. Spousal Unit hasn't mentioned it since, so I'm guessing he didn't win squat.

Anyways, after the tuna, I tossed back a variety of crap: veggie straws, Doritos, Peek Freans Digestive Cookies, and these weird flattened pretzel things. Oh, yeah, and an espresso. An espresso made with Silvia. Because Silvia and I have made peace.

Don't think twice, it's alright.


Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Non-Vegan Beans on Toast

I was made with animal products.
Once upon a time, I did a radio show about books, and I was a vegetarian.  One day this vegan cookbook comes my way.

Now, my show was not a book review show, but an author interview show. I used to read the books, then interview authors about their books. Hence how I met Kirsten Koza. If the author wrote, say, a cookbook, I would have to, you know, make at least a few recipes from that cookbook.

This wasn't the first time I had a cookbook author on the show. On an earlier show I had eviscerated poor Evelyn Raab, author of The Clueless Baker, because my boyfriend at the time (aka Spousal Unit) totally fucked up every recipe he tried from that cookbook. And if my clueless boyfriend couldn't follow a muffin recipe from a book called "The Clueless Baker", then obviously that cookbook wasn't really made for the clueless.

Of course, the recipes rocked otherwise, but I still grilled that poor woman about why she claimed that the recipes were for the clueless when she had, evidently, never tested them on the clueless. It was ... not pretty.

Anyways, I decided that I would be nice to this vegan cookbook author. The problem was that I really hate tofu, I can't stand eating meatless (read: fake) meatballs, and, at the time, had the tiniest kitchen in the universe (that was also somewhat crawling with roaches). So any recipe that used tofu, required loads of kitchen prep, or involved faking meat was out of the question.

In other words, all I could make were the bean dishes.

So I made her black beans on toast. Of course, I made a million substitutions, like using real garlic instead of garlic powder, and using tomatoes and hot peppers instead of bottled salsa. I also added maple syrup, grated (real) cheddar all over it, and topped it off with a fried egg. It was very tasty, if not exactly vegan -- or anything like the original recipe.

It's a meal I enjoy to this day.

PS: The vegan cookbook author was really nice. I interviewed her over lunch at a vegan restaurant. I ate kohlrabi, chickpeas, and chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was made with tofu and its "frosting" was made with avocado and cocoa. It was OK, but I farted a lot.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Patrick Is Happy He Didn't Eat This

Impaled Wildlife For Sale!
You're probably sick of pictures of take out containers at this point, aren't you? OK, maybe you aren't because no one really comes to this blog expecting to see anything but take-out containers and empty plates. Which is probably why the readership is so low.

Anyways, as a special treat, here is a picture of some actual real food. (Would scorpions-on-a-stick be considered food, or impaled wild life?)

The picture is courtesy of Patrick, a friend of mine from my university days who's currently traveling the world on sabbatical.

He recently came back from Beijing where he took pictures of the local street food. He ate some of it, but took a pass on other, more "interesting" things, like the scorpions-on-a-stick and the sea-horses-on-a-stick.

One of his students tried the scorpions and said they tasted "salty". My guess is that it was incredibly awkward to eat, somewhat revolting to think about, and the student wanted to get out of eating the rest as gracefully as possible. "These are delicious, really, but I find them a bit salty for my taste. Would you like the rest?"

I mean granted, yes, we will all need to learn to eat scorpions and crickets and cockroaches once the End Times come and there isn't anything else left to eat.  But until then, I'll stick to not eating scorpions-on-a-stick, and so will Patrick.

You have to admit that display looks really pretty, though.  It looks even more impressive when you see it move!


Sunday, June 24, 2012

I'll Wait For My Quinoa To Be Fully Grown Next Time

The vegetarian kick continues.

Spousal Unit decided to be creative and buy kaniwa -- which is marketed as "baby quinoa" -- instead of the regular quinoa. According to The Internets, kaniwa is The Next Great Thing in ancient grain superfoods. Because we need more superfoods to combat the supervillains that are overrunning Gotham City.

I like regular quinoa. It's a bitch to clean and cook, but it makes for a nice summer salad. Kaniwa, on the other hand, is just kinda revolting. It's tiny, mealy and bleuch.

Mush
This kaniwa salad was made with chick peas, which is everyone's favourite legume to shove into a quinoa salad. In case you aren't savvy to the whole vegetarian thing, you need to find your protein somewhere, and quinoa and chick peas are "excellent sources" of protein. Plus the softness and mellowness of the chickpeas is a nice contrast to the nuttiness, and slight crunchiness, of the quinoa.

Adding chick peas to kaniwa, however? Ugh. Because kaniwa is so small and mealy, the whole dish becomes a grainy, mushy mess. Plus kaniwa doesn't taste of anything. So eating this salad was like eating tasteless, sandy mush.

I'm lobbying to have the remaining package of kaniwa thrown away. Or, alternately, I can send it to you so you can try it out for yourself. If you exist.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Eggs: In Greasiness and In Health

My new trainer -- the 24yo ultra-buff rugby player -- practically begged me to switch from fried eggs to soft-boiled eggs for breakfast. I told him I'd try it. And I did.

It tasted less like cardboard than I expected.
It wasn't as awful as I thought it would be, but contrary to what he claimed, I still needed to sprinkle a generous amount of salt all over the eggs to make them tasty.

I had them atop honey whole wheat bread to make the breakfast super-duper ultra healthy. And that whole wheat bread? It wasn't the supermarket variety with glucose-fructose -- it was the all-natural variety from the hippy bakery. It was somewhat cardboardish, but not as much as I expected.

If you fry whole wheat bread in olive oil, it's totally healthy.
But then I slipped back into my old ways. I really wanted a tasty breakfast, so I decided to make myself Italian Hash the Way My Mom Made It. I made it with the whole wheat bread, though, so it was somewhat healthy. And the oil was olive oil, so it was heart-healthy, too! It's the, um, Mediterranean Diet.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Grocery Store Calzone

It's been a while, hasn't it?  I blame the stupid Whatever S.  It's been synching stupid lately.  Like it unpublished the Pork Dumpling post for reasons unbeknownst to me, but beknownst to it.

Anyways.  Here we are, ages later.  I've been on a vegetarian kick ever since I had that burger.   Something inside me snapped and I was like, "Fuck, I've been eating a lot of grease and animal fat of late.  This can't be healthy."

I also started training with a new trainer.   He's a 24yo ultra-buff rugby player who "indulges" by having a soft-boiled egg in the morning, yolk and all.   At the end of each training session, he asks me how my diet has been. When I said, "I had a burger for lunch yesterday" he was all, "That's OK once in a while.  As long as you don't make a habit of it."  

So I had to atone.  I mean he didn't say, "Atone for your sins, you revolting slug!" but he might as well have.  I mean, the guy's all muscle and no fat.

I am so much more than the sum of my parts
This, here, was a vegetarian calzone. I contend that it was healthy, but my dining companion said that it wasn't. She said that while each component of the calzone was, on its own, healthy, the whole was not. Feta cheese? Healthy. Tomato sauce? Healthy.  Red bell peppers? Healthy. Whole wheat crust? Healthy. Vegetarian feta cheese calzone in a whole wheat crust? Not so healthy.  Especially when washed down with a lemonade. Though, in my defense, I only drank a few sips of the lemonade.

Monday, May 28, 2012

The Burger Siren Song

I was going to get a low-fat meal of grilled chicken and vegetables.  I really, really was.

I pulled up to the place, got out and was going to go in and get that bland grilled chicken with a side of grilled vegetables (Mediterranean Style!), but then I smelled the burger place next door.

That smell!  It called to me!  It said "Snad...Snad...you want a burger!  It's tasty!  It's hot!  It comes with a side of fries!  It will taste so much better than grilled chicken and vegetables!  You know you want it!"

That siren song!  How could I resist!  I walked, trance-like, to the burger place.   It was run by three old guys.  I ordered a cheeseburger.  They had the toppings laid out, like the Harvey's of old.  It was glorious.
Beauty

I brought it to work, sat down in the lunch room, unwrapped it and watched all the men stare at it and salivate.  "Where did you get that burger?" they asked.  "Down the street," I said.  "Near the Healthy Choice place."

And I ate the whole burger.

It was glorious.

No one needed to get snooty. Snooty? Snotty! Snotty?

It was our wedding anniversary.  Spousal Unit decided that we needed to go somewhere "special" instead of the place we always go to, which has super long line-ups and doesn't take reservations because it is Trendy and so you should feel honoured that they make room for you.

Instead we went somewhere fancy.  It was a place downtown that boasts healthy, locally-sourced, blahblahblah, yaddayaddayadda food.  You know the type.

The thing about this place, though, was that we needed to dress up to go there.  Now you've never met us.   You don't even exist, so how could you have met us?  But if you did exist and if you had ever met us, you'd know that Spousal Unit and I don't really get gussied up.  We don't clean up well.

But we had to.  Because we had reservations and a sitter and whatnot.

So we put on our best outfits and showed up at the restaurant and felt like Ferris Bueller, Cameron and Sloan at Chez Quis. I kept calling Spousal Unit "Abe" and we made pancreas jokes. Of course, we didn't eat pancreas, but Spousal Unit did eat diseased duck liver (foie gras). I had the 5 course vegetarian tasting menu and Spousal Unit had the 5 course meatatarian tasting menu. This place was so good, it made tofu palatable.

It came out to a little over $200 with tax and tip, but we still were greeted with trash when we walked out.

Awwww....How nice!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Industrial Park Indian Buffet

My second visit to the Indian buffet in the industrial park south of the business park was with people who don't care if I start taking pictures of yucky plates. 
Dahl is awesome.

A friend of mine said that the place was still too new to have started sucking, so we figured we'd go there as often as possible til it started sucking.

The place is pretty damned good.  I mean, it's not the best Indian food ever, but it's pretty good for an industrial park buffet.  And it has bottomless baskets of naan!  Bottomless. Baskets. Of.  Naan.

Gulab jamun (jamon?), aka "warm sweet balls".
The naan was good.  The fish was weird.  The desserts were awesome.  And we all sat around enraptured with the Bollywood movie playing on the TVs in the restaurant.   


Latkes with a Heaping Side Order of Hipster

Stupid Whatever S phone!  I took pictures of this musical buffet brunch and then the stupid phone lost them.  Actually, it lost a whole bunch of photos.  I had no idea where they were, but I knew I hadn't deleted them.  I had to mount the stupid phone onto my machine to retrieve the damned pictures.  Stupid Whatever S phone!

All this to say that I didn't get around to writing about this brunch until now.

Back when The Spousal Unit and I were young and child-free, we used to go to this place for shows on a semi-regular basis.  It's in a "bohemian" (read: filthy and decrepit) neighbourhood that is quasi-famous in Canada thanks to a short-lived early-80s sitcom.  Of course in the 80s the neighbourhood was "ethnic" and there was an actual market.  Or so I'm told. 

Now the place is just filthy and full of hipsters who long for an "authentic" "ethnic" experience.  Of course, I never realized this until I went there for brunch recently.

The World's Tiniest Latkes shared the table with The World's Tiniest Slivers of Dessert
I was there to watch a friend's band play.  They're really good and they aren't hipster authentic by any stretch of the imagination.  They're actually old guys who've been playing together for ages and are probably the farthest things from hipsters you can get.  I have no problem with them or their music. Hence why they're my friends.

Anyways.

The brunch.  It's a "yiddish" brunch.  And a bunch of hipsters go there for an "authentic" "Jewish" "experience".  It's very ironic and meta.  Everyone's there in their fanciest shitty cloths, eating The World's Tiniest Latkes and The World's Tiniest Slices of Dessert, feeling all self-congratulatory about their choice of eating establishment because it shows that they're, you know, urbane and shit.

The food was OK, but I was woefully inappropriately dressed for brunch.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Want Wonton?

It was Friday. It was a nice day and neither I nor The Guy in the Cube Next to Me had brought lunch. He suggested we drive off to get some food. We were both getting over colds, so we decided to go grab soup. But what kind of soup? He suggested phô, but I never have good luck with phô. So then he suggested this wonton soup place where he knew the owners. Or at least he knew the original owners.

The original owners had a family spat and then one brother opened a place under the original name in another part of town, and the original place was taken over by the other brother and its name changed to something else entirely. But apparently both places were exactly the same, with the same menu and everything.

The Guy in The Next Cube said that everything at this place, from the soup to the noodles to the wonton was made from scratch, but that the place itself was totally ghetto and had almost no parking.

The guy was right about the parking situation: the lot was cramped and there appeared to be way too few spots for the number of restaurants in the plaza.

Chopsticks, spoon and mystery noodle.
I let my coworker order for me because the menu wasn't really in English and my coworker speaks Cantonese. I think the broth was a fish broth. The wontons were these baseball-sized balls of shrimp (you can only get shrimp, not that the English menu mentions this) wrapped in thin wonton dough. The noodles were..something? No one could tell me what was in the noodles. They were "wonton noodles". I sometimes wish that I could get better info whenever I went to an "authentic" Asian place. I mean, seriously, why is it that I can't get a straight answer at these places? Am I just supposed to assume that the lack of straight answers and accurate English menu speaks to the authenticity?

*sigh*

Whetevs. It was tasty. And my coworker was impressed with my chopstick skills.

That's a Very Loose Interpretation of Pork Dumplings

I hate it sometimes when I forget my lunch at home.

On days when I've gotten a really shitty parking spot and figure that if I leave and come back I'll get a better spot, I don't mind getting in my car and driving to get something reasonable to eat. 

On other days, I get a really, really good parking spot and I'd rather not lose it just to go grab lunch.  On those days I'm at the whim of the two lunch counters that cater to my business park.

As you know (if you exist and if you've read anything beside this post on this blog) I have given up on the revoltingly greasy diner preferred by my coworkers and have instead started to frequent the "sandwich" place that boasts bulgogi and bim bim bap on their menu.  The other day I went to that place on Dumpling Tuesday.  I'd never had dumplings from them before and figured it couldn't be that bad.  I mean, their Business Park Bulgogi was pretty decent, and plus they have Sriracha to make their food palatable.

Why bother with the pork in pork dumplings?
Oh geez, how wrong I was!  The "pork" "dumplings" were these deep-fried things filled with what appeared to be pulverized cabbage.  They tasted of fried and that was about it.  They were served with rice and some random sauce.    Thank the Universe for Sriracha or else I don't think I would have eaten that day.

It was so bad that for the first time I regretted not going to the greasy diner; they had pierogies that day.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Smells of Eastern Europe

That's maple syrup, from happier brunches.
I made latkes for brunch over the weekend.

They were potato and sweet potato baked latkes -- or at least they were supposed to be baked. 

Spousal unit decided that the latkes "weren't turning out right" baked and fried a few.  The problem with that is that you can't fry latke batter made for baking; it absorbs way too much oil.

The long and the short of it was that the latkes ended up being revolting oily masses and the whole apartment stunk of fried food.  Spousal Unit (who is kinda Polishy/Russianesque) joked that the place smelled like Eastern Europe. 

At least the coffee was good.


Monday, April 23, 2012

The Dark Side

A friend of mine who works downtown in a hipper, more socially-responsible job than me, had the day off and decided to come up to the 'burbs to have lunch with me.  She's a vegetarian and so I figured she'd want to go to the panini place or the cheap-but-excellent Industrial Park Indian buffet. (The Indian buffet in the industrial park just south of the business park really is very good, but I was unable to take a picture when I ate there.  I had gone with civilized people and it's not OK to take pictures of empty, filthy place when you're in polite company.)

But for some reason my very cool, very hip, very vegetarian and very anti-establishment friend wanted to go to a chain restaurant that was reminiscent of the movie Office Space, only a bit more upscale.

We walked in and she exclaimed, "This place is full of men!"  And I was like, duh, it's a high-tech business park, what do you expect?  If we had gone to the panini place just outside the business park -- which, incidentally, makes an awesome veggie sandwich -- there would have have been more women.

Anyways.  I had the fish and chips because it seemed safe.  She had the fish tacos because there were no reasonable vegetarian options (surprise!) and she's actually a fishetarian.

She finished her fish tacos, but I couldn't finish my two giant, extra-oily battered fish fillets with extra-salty fries, so I got a doggy bag.

"Fat, I am your father."
The panini place might have been better, but I would never have experienced a black take-out container that reminded me of Darth Vader's dirty helmet at the beginning of Star Wars. (Though I suspect George Lucas scrubbed it for his digitally remastered abominations).


Monday, April 16, 2012

Grease is the Word

My mom made me breakfast.  It was an Italian version of hash made with stale baguette, chunks of parmiggiano cheese and eggs.  It was the most revolting, greasy mass of food I'd ever tasted.

Basically what my mom did was warm up some olive oil in a skillet and then she threw in the baguette  chunks.  While those were frying/sauteing, she cut up small cubes of parmiggiano.  When the bread had fried up and absorbed a lot of the oil, she threw in the cheese and some hot pepper flakes, and mixed it all up.  Once the cheese started to melt, she cracked two eggs into the oily mass and fried them.  The yolks broke, of course, and spilled all over the fried bread. 
It's going to take more than just Dawn to clean up that grease!

In the plate, it looked like a giant mass of oily stuff with egg yolk all over it.  I had a moment where I considered not eating it.  I was like, "What the hell, Mom?  Is this some kind of a joke?"  My mom rolled her eyes and told me that  my dad loved this dish, and that I could either eat it and shut up or make my own damned breakfast!

Anyways, despite the fact that the grease literally dripped off my fork, I ate the whole thing.  I can't believe I ate the whole thing.

It was the greasiest, most revolting breakfast ever.  EVER.  But it was also the most tastiest breakfast in the history of breakfast!  It was like all these elements in my mouth combined to be the Perfect Storm of umami salty spicy fat to start a morning. 

Damned.

Now I have to try making it myself and I'll probably get evicted for smelling up the floor.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Cupcakes! And Taming of Silvia!

Almost all my coworkers are guys.  They don't cook, let alone bake.  But they all appear to be married to women who do.  How it's possible that all these guys are married to successful career women who work full-time but yet have time in the evenings to make slow-cooker pulled pork and chocolate cake is a mystery that shall never be solved.
 
Most of the time I just hear about the desserts, though.  I see the leftovers of the roast guinea hen and mashed heirloom root vegetables (all organic, of course) when the guys bring them in for lunch, but I never see the desserts.  Information about the desserts is apocryphal:  "Ellen makes the best chocolate cake!"  "Tamsyn's trifle is really the best I've ever had!" etc.  
 
Then one time a guy brought in red velvet cupcakes that his wife had made.  They were really, really good.  I ate two.
 
And then on Wednesday I saw an email that said "Cupcakes.  Come get 'em".  The wife of one of the marketing guys had made a zillion white cupcakes (of indeterminate flavour and icing) and they were gone within 20 minutes.  I ate one.  It was very good.  It was downed with some instant coffee. 

Marketing Cupcake
But I could have had it with some espresso made by Silvia because I have tamed the shrew!

I found this page, Cheating Miss Silvia, and have used the information therein to make very, very tasty coffees.  I now make espressos for the office.  If anyone wants an espresso, they come to me.  I am the Queen of the Machine!  I am the suzerain! 

Monday, April 2, 2012

It's Oatmeal and Vegetables, It MUST Be Healthy!

The snack closet was full of Veggie Straws again.  After many weeks of having only multigrain crackers and granola bars (not the tasty ones, the healthy ones) and Motts Fruitsations, today the snack closet offered up Veggie Straws.  You could actually hear people give little cheers upon opening the closet.  They'd open the door, expecting some kind of high-fiber hell, and instead exclaim, "Hey!  Veggie Straws!  Awesome!"

It's a very sad day when Veggie Straws cause that much excitement.  Of course there were also revoltingly bad-for-you "granola" bars.  You really didn't want to read the ingredient list before taking one.  I did and discovered that they contained shortening (SHORTENING!). I put the bar back, thus depriving myself of a "yogurt dipped" "chewy" bar.

I can feel myself getting healthier.
I ended up just having my homemade oatmeal-chocolate-chip muffin.  And some Veggie Straws, because you need your veggies.  I had actually wandered into the break room when Burton, the Senior Product Manager, was telling Arthur, the Senior R&D Manager, that the Veggie Straws must be healthy because it said right on the bag that they were "Garden Vegetable" flavour.  Then he started reading the ingredient list: They're made with potatoes, spinach powder and tomato paste.   We all agreed -- well all except for Arthur, who eats only whole grains and no animal fat -- that the Veggie Straws were very healthy.

And  of course I had coffee.  I've finally figured out how to bend Silvia to my will, but more on that another day.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Low-Fat Lunch With Vogue

There's been all this brouhaha of late about this article in the April 2012 Vogue about this lady who put her daughter on a diet.  Everyone on the internet has had their knickers in a knot for days (which is like years in internet time), so I had to buy the magazine and read the article.

Let's get skinny!
I read the article over lunch.  This was probably the first time a Vogue magazine had ever been in the breakroom at work.  Amazingly, no one said anything.  That was surprising because they all made such a fuss when I brought in Of Human Bondage, the novel by Somerset Maugham.  Though Vogue only has "editorial" "fashion" pictures of bondage, rather than "bondage" in the title, which I guess makes all the difference.

Anyhow.  The article wasn't anything that anyone needed to flip out about.  But I did think it was funny that the add next to its first page showed a bride "eating" a piece of wedding cake.  I would have loved a piece of wedding cake for dessert instead of the low-fat "key lime pie" yogurt that Spousal Unit gave me.  He said "It tastes like dessert!"  No.  What it tasted like was tart artificial lemon flavouring.  And what it looked like was light yellow-green paste.  But at least it was low fat, right?

Ugh.

My "main course" was leftover lentil and rice soup.  Low fat, vegetarian and probably all of 1 point on the Weight Watcher Jenny Craig LA Weight Loss scale of food you can eat piles of without worrying about thunder thighs.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

SUNOVABITCH!

My friend in the adjacent business park Skypes me to ask me if I'd like to join her for lunch at one of the fake Japanese restaurants in the area.  I'm like, sure, why not.

We get to Fake-O Sushi at 12:15.  We order something hot that doesn't even require the attention of the sushi chef because the guy is swamped making what appears to be a zillion take-out orders.

The losing meal.
We get our miso soups and we figure everything is going well.  Then we wait.  And wait.  And watch people who came in after us get served.  At around a quarter to 1, my friend starts fretting because she has to get back to the office.  She's got a 1:30 meeting.   I get up and ask the waitress about our order.  She says, "It'll be ready in 2 minutes." 

Two minutes come and go.  We get complementary spicy salmon hand rolls.  That's awesome, but I tell the waitress that we'd rather have our HOT meal than the complementary sushi. 

My friend doesn't like spicy salmon, so I give her hand roll to the guy next to us who's also been waiting.  He came in after us.  He got served about two seconds after I gave him the hand roll.

It's now 1pm.  My friend is like, "I gotta get back."  I go see the waitress again.  She says that our food is now ready.  That's fantastic, but we have to leave.  I ask to get it to go.

Meanwhile, someone's come to pick up the zillion take out orders.  She gives me a dirty look as I'm telling the waitress that I need the meals to go.  I tell the take-out order woman that we've been waiting almost an hour for our food.  She replies, haughtily, that she put in her order and hour and a half ago so it better be ready.  I congratulate her for getting her order.

The waitress puts both my friend and my order together in the same bag.  I tell her that my friend and I don't work at the same location.   I tell her how displeased we are with the service.  I tell her that now we're late for a meeting and hungry. I tell her that this was really Not OK.  She doesn't blink.  We tell her we won't be back.  Nothing.  But Take-Out Lady is giving us dirty looks for taking too long at the cash.

I get back to work and down my soggy tempura yam rolls and chicken katsu.  It was not good.

Mac'n'cheese: The leftovers that eat like slime.

Mac'n'cheese is one of those dishes that is really tasty on day 1, but becomes a congealed mass on day 2.  Actually, it becomes a congealed mass about an hour after it's made.  You'd think that it would microwave OK, that the sauce would re-become saucy and whatnot, but no.  It just kinda gets gross and oily and the pasta turns to mush.  It's not my favourite leftover.

Less than satisfactory lunch.
Now, if you fry leftover mac'n'cheese, it's a totally different story.  A nice crust forms and you get a lovely crunch out of it.  But, you know, the break room doesn't have a stove top or even a hot plate and I'm guessing that keeping one at my desk would violate some fire safety policy or something.  Which means that I won't be having fried mac'n'cheese at work.

For "dessert" I had one of those low-fat Greek yogurt thingies that promise a decadent, creamy texture without loads of fat, gelatin or cornstarch.   I gotta say that it wasn't bad, but it still lacked the fatty mouthfeel of full fat yogurt.  But I probably shouldn't be eating full fat yogurt.  Or at least the guys in the office tell me I shouldn't.  Apparently even though they down Wendy's burgers for lunch, they are very health-conscious.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

So It Has Come to This: Business Park Bulgogi

I used to work in a building that boasted its own shitty cafeteria/diner on the ground floor.  The place started off awful and then, by the time I left that job, was remarkably OK.  One of the things they served "special" on Fridays was dumplings.  It was Dumpling Fridays.

At the time, I didn't know that business park cafeterias depended on this kind of predictability to keep the business of the business park denizens.  But now I know.

It was Friday and I did not want to eat the revolting Friday fish'n'chips from the cafeteria/diner in the building next door.  I wanted something else.  I was wondering if it would be bad form to drive to my old business park for Dumpling Friday. 

The classy grey Business Park Bulgogi Take Out Bag.
Then someone told me that the other cafeteria/diner in the other building next door had dumplings.  Off I went!

When I got there I discovered that it was California Roll Friday. Dumplings were on Tuesday:  Dumpling Tuesdays.  Wednesdays were Bim Bim Bap Wednesdays.  I don't know what Thursdays and Mondays are.  But I did find out that they have a "standing" special of Beef Bulgogi.  The lady behind me in line said it was good, and I figured it couldn't be much worse than the barely-edible fish'n'chips at that other place.

The bulgogi wasn't bad.  Apparently the proprietress makes her own marinade and it's a family secret.  Or it's from a bottle and she's trying to maintain an air of mystery and authenticity to have a one-up on the greasy spoon in the other building.  And unlike the other cafeteria/diner in the other building, this place had Sriracha sauce.  Sriracha:  The Miracle Condiment That Makes Everything Taste Awesome -- including Business Park Bulgogi. 

Floor Pancakes: Best Laid Plans


What's that Robbie Burns poem about best laid plans?  "The best laid plans of mice and men gang-a-lang-a-lay"? 

And now I've angered the entire membership of the Robbie Burns society. 

Thankfully I didn't confuse him with Robbie Williams the way I usually do.  Then I bet I would get hate mail. 

What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
Actually I wouldn't because I doubt anyone from either the Robbie Burns society or the Robbie Williams fan club reads this.

It was a Saturday morning, and Spousal Unit and I thought it would be great fun to make pancakes with The Toddler.  But unlike the other weekend mornings when we made pancakes with The Toddler, The Toddler did not cooperate.  Flour went everywhere, eggs were sacrificed and pancakes were burnt.  And we ended up eating on the play mats.

Did you know that baby wipes remove maple syrup from play mats?  Well now you know.

Finally Pasta!

As a nice Italian Girl, you would have expected that I'd have posted pictures of pasta earlier or more often.  (Actually, maybe I have.  I can't keep track anymore.)  The truth is:  I eat pasta so often, that I don't think it's "special" enough for this blog.   I mean, what's the point about writing about something you eat all the time? 

Did you really think there would be leftovers?

I know what you're thinking -- if you actually exist and are reading this --, you're thinking "What about coffee?  Do you know how many stupid pictures of Chartreuse Mug you've subjected me to?"  But coffee is special!  Coffee is always special!  The mere act of preparing and drinking a coffee is special. 

I would go so far to say that Chartreuse Mug deserves its own blog.  Something like "Life According to Chartreuse Mug".   It's coming.  You don't have to read it -- and I'm sure you won't -- but it's coming.  That's what happens when you offer free blogging.


In other words:  lay off the coffee.

Anyways: pasta.

The other night we made a big vat of meat sauce.  Please note that pasta and meat sauce is not the same as "Pasta Bolognese".  Bolognese sauce is some kind of magic, voodoo, slow-simmer sauce made with pork sausage and minimal tomato.  The Bolognese people are very sensitive about it. 

What we made was ground beef, fried with garlic and hot pepper, covered in pulverised canned tomato and then simmered for 20 minutes, just to warm it up.  Yeah, it sounds lame, but it's pretty damned tasty, especially when you smother it all in ground parmiggiano reggiano and wash it down with red wine.  And who are you to argue with me, a Genuine Italian Girl Who Learned How To Cook From Her Italian Mother? 

And, most importantly, who are you to argue with the clean plates?


Sunday, March 18, 2012

Finally! A Starbucks Bleuch That Doesn't Suck.

It took a while, but I finally found a Starbucks VIA bleuch that doesn't totally suck!  Starbucks VIA Tribute Bleuch is pretty OK.  I'm not going to say it's awesome, because it isn't.  The most I can say is that I didn't grimace and go "Euch" on my first sip.  I didn't get that disgusting acidic burnt flavour that is Starbuck's trademark.  It also didn't have a watered-down taste the way the Veranda Bleuch does. It doesn't taste of anything but coffee. Pretty decent, OK coffee.  In fact, I'd say that it tastes a lot like MacDonald's new coffee.

The espresso cup is amazed that the culturally insensitive mug was emptied of its contents.
Now you may be wondering why the hell I keep buying Starbucks VIA Bleuch when I obviously dislike it.  Well, it's because of all the instant coffees, it's the only one that doesn't taste absolutely hideous.  Most instants taste like coffee-flavoured syrup dissolved in water.  They have this weird, empty aftertaste that makes you question why anyone not stuck on a submarine in the South Pacific circa 1944 would agree to drink this shit.  It also confirms that instant Karma doesn't exist because the marketing geniuses who convinced people not stuck on a submarine in the South Pacific circa 1944 to drink this shit weren't automatically struck by lightning or hit by giant boulders on their ways home.

Starbucks VIA at least tastes like real coffee.  It tastes like Starbucks shitty coffee, yes, but coffee nonetheless. 

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Bloodletting


It was probably crummy
It was a bright, unusually warm Tuesday morning when I went to the clinic to have them let my blood.  They required me to fast for 12 hours before they drained me, presumably because they couldn't get accurate sugar readings or some such unless I was completely starving and on the verge of collapse.

After the bloodletting, I really needed to eat something.  In all their infinite wisdom, the owners of the clinic included a Lettieri coffee stand on the ground floor.  I'm sure when these plans were drawn up someone grumbled about corporate something-something-evil, but I was so happy to see coffee and food that the place could have had a giant sign saying "Corporations Will One Day Own Your Soul" and I still would have bought food from them.

As it stood, it was a Lettieri, makers of rather tasty coffee.  I ordered a Sumatran coffee with a chocolate chip muffin.   The lady at the counter demanded that I drink the coffee before driving and I wondered why -- I felt remarkably OK.

Anyways,

I went to work (cuz I felt remarkably OK) and, as I stepped off the elevator, the world started to move.  The rest of the day was spent trying to get the office to stop spinning.  I drank the (very tasty) Sumatran coffee, ate the muffin and then got yelled at by coworkers for not drinking any water.  

HFCS and caffeine save the day!
So I had water, a rather disgusting meal of "Honey Garlic Chicken" from the lunch counter (not pictured because I rid myself of that vile goo as fast as possible), and then downed a Sprite and more coffee.  I used Desktop Espresso, natch.

Eventually the world stopped spinning and I was able to drive home.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Not a Pretty Coffee

Goddamned htc Whatever S Phone!  I took pictures today, uploaded them, and was all impressed at how easy it was (at the price of Google owning my mortal soul), only to find that the photos were awful.  AWFUL.  But, you know, no one reads this blog for the pictures anyways (or reads this blog, period), so I wrote up the whole, stupid post.

Bleuch.
Then I started wondering if I didn't actually know how to use the stupid phone's camera, so I tried to upload them again using a different image size and ta-da! it was all awesome!

Except for the fact that the phone's Blogger app overwrote my published post.  Fuckers. 

Anyways. Onward and upward.  Or something.  Whatever.  S.

To be different, I bought Starbuck VIA Veranda Bleuch in the hopes that the milder roast would not have the burnt ass taste of most Starbucks bleuchs.  But no.  Instead it tasted like watered-down burnt ass.  Lovely.  This shouldn't have surprised me given that the description of the coffee at the back of the pack was reminiscent of Tweeks coffee on South Park.

Fortunately, there was a lunch-and-learn today for the R&D team and they had leftover pizza, Doritos and Lays that they kindly left for us in the break room.  The Cheesy Doritos took care of aftertaste from the bleuch.
Doritos! Doritos! Doritos!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Food Kirsten Ate, But Which Shouldn't Have Been Eaten By Anyone

A Special Report on Fecaliscious Chocolate by Kirsten Koza, misadventure travel writer.
---
Snad, I hope you never see this on my dining table again – for many reasons. Normally I’d have sent you a photo of a wrapper. But the fact is, I can’t finish these bars of Maria Tepoztlan chocolate / xocolatl, made by Villa Vainilla.

You can taste the gritty reality of life in Mexico!
My parents were fooled into their purchase by the pretty boxes with Fair Trade stamped on the outside, while they did some last minute shopping as they left Guatemala - obviously without their reading glasses because the chocolate is apparently from Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. I say “apparently” because I’ve been virtually driving around the back streets of Merida for days, using Google Street View, looking for Villa Vainilla’s factory in Cuidad Industrial. I can’t find it.

This chocolate is grit held together by possibly some sort of industrial lube or peasant toe jam (not listed in the ingredients) that coagulates in your mouth and finally dissolves (but not fast enough) so you are left with just a mouthful of debris that honestly feels like something swept off a floor. I even can taste someone's banana peel, in the dark chocolate and cinnamon bar - overt banana peel. And the bars are boxed and then sealed in foil. So I'm thinking the banana peel is actually in the chocolate - not because my parents were smuggling bananas into Canada (which they weren't).

I wish wish I wasn't polite and didn't try so hard to appreciate the chocolate for my parents’ benefit - as if it was a taste that I was going to acquire or explore. After my folks left my place, I inspected the ghastly product and saw hacho en Mexico written on the box and immediately cracked a Montezuma joke. Six hours later, I was running from my bed to the toilet. I thought my two day bout of Montezuma’s Revenge that followed was most likely from the chocolate, but it could have been because I mocked the Aztec King.

Then, when I was feeling better, I did something really stupid. I thought I should have one more bite of the chocolate to see if it was as bad as I remembered it. It took three hours for Montezuma to pay another visit. I have no one to blame but me - but I wanted to make sure I was being fair. Villa Vainilla didn't deserve my quest for fairness. Even if their chocolate didn’t cause me to spend sleepness nights sitting on the toilet – it still tastes like shit.

I read in the Nutrition Advisor that Montezuma drank 50 cups of unsweetened cocoa a day. A mug of homemade hot chocolate today, made with a good brand of cocoa, has about 3.8 grams of fibre in it - so one can imagine how much more fibre would have been in Montezuma's (I always assumed that all that fibre was the truth behind Montezuma's Revenge). His cocoa was probably much like Maria Tepoztlan's debris filled chocolate - this is probably really authentic Aztec chocolate - but then Aztecs used to do things like genital blood-letting before leaving for work in the morning, enjoyed human sacrifice, and Aztec burglars used to carry around the severed arm from a female who died during childbirth because they believed that made them invisible (did I just make that last bit up - I don't think so) - anyway  - it stands to reason then, that their chocolate wasn't very good, either.

Less revoltingly stinky than the chocolate.
I'm still sick. It took all my will to open the boxes of chocolate and just take a picture. I'd rather have opened my box containing the shrunken head I bought last week - and he makes my entire house reek - I'd rather kiss my stinking little Amazon on the lips. 

From Kirsten Koza (www.kirstenkoza.com)