bad habits die hard

breakfast: coffee with milk


mid-morning meal: honey nut cheerios


lunch at 3 pm: about four tablespoons of black beans, a rice bowl of honey nut cheerios


dinner: hopefully a proper meal




being busy for the past two weeks has meant that our pantry (also known as the single shelf in our miserably small kitchen) has dwindled down to opened snack food packages that i refuse to throw away, 1.5 bags of dried pearl barley, some old rice noodles and a can of tomato soup i'm saving for a real food emergency. alright, alright, we also have a small tetra-pak of coconut cream, granulated honey, a package of japanese-style curry sauce, and about a teaspoon of oatmeal in a re-sealable that i also refuse to throw away. not sure why.


i even went grocery shopping yesterday, expanding our vittles by a 2.5-kilo bag of brown rice, a can each of sardines and anchovies, dried black beans, a bottle of sesame oil and some vegetables. oh, and a small foil pack of cheddar-cheese flavored snyder's pretzel pieces that i ate out of my bike basket while waiting for a light to change on my way home. (they were out of honey mustard.) oh, and obviously, a box of cheerios.


when grocery shopping consists of me and my two feet or my two bike pedals approaching either a local chinese supermarket whose inventory strangely appears to be composed of 35 percent snack food items, OR an extremely overpriced expat imported food market that may or may not have certain staples you saw there last time, you tend to shop light. there's also a wet market two blocks away, where i can find pretty much any chinese vegetable or fungi and an assortment of live fowl in addition to nosefuls of extreme stink and filthy puddles all dimly lit in some weird, dark concrete compound. some days i just give up and eat a fried egg over rice. sometimes i get really ambitious and hit up no less than FIVE fucking markets to find a chicken breast. it all depends on how much i want a damn chicken breast (not that much, but chicken thighs are mysteriously absent in the chinese local food economy) and what my blood sugar levels are like and how much cash i stole from t's wallet that morning. so if i find some sort of employment soon, it'll be interesting to see what kind of meals we end up eating on a daily basis. 


we americans (soapbox alert) have no friggin idea how much our country is a goddamned BOUNTY of food. we have food inventory until the sun comes down. remember the last time you had to visit TWO safeways to find what you wanted? or safeway and trader joe's? remember how irritating that was? remember climbing into your car to pursue that food item?


[sidenote: if i could import one american business to china, it would be trader joe's faster than you can down a small paper cup's-worth of their latest frozen roasted-vegetable-over-quinoa entree. i miss quinoa. i miss frozen green chile and cheese tamales. i miss peanut butter without hydrogenated oil.]


ok, so i inadvertently turned this into a bitchfest, but what i really thought, initially, as i looked down at my rice bowl half-full of chinese "cheerios" that are so sugary they appear to be shellacked, was, damn. i'm so glad i bought these cheerios yesterday. i've had two servings! i feel rich!

go giants!

watching game 6 of the NLCS championships (GO GIANTS!) for those of you living under a rock during the past week or so.

also, eating cookies that i just baked, reading back issues of the Times that i missed this week (i stack them up if i don't get through them and read them later. do you do that?), blogging and researching a paper due monday.

an actual paper, not a story.

i find that when i have lots of time to myself, i like to do about 47 things at the same time, each pleasurable in their own way, or mandatory by way of school.

i had a four-hour lunch today with two friends from school. an inadvertent occasion. we went by a place i'd seen on check, please! chicago, which looked good. picked up jesse and spence at their place (a 25-minute endeavor because i live in the sticks), then we went over to this restaurant.

CLOSED for catering, re-opening in 2 hours. we walked down the street (not the best neighborhood, therefore the most promising for good eats), and found a korean hole-in-the-wall that serves only soups of various kinds. spleen, tendon, tripe-filled soups. we had lunch there, but soup with veggies and a bowl of rice is not filling, so we went BACK to the original place, which was packed because of the airing on the show, and waited nearly 90 minutes for food. we were originally just going to order a shitload of lumpia to go, but a table opened up so we decided to order more stuff to try. fortunately, we weren't hungry like some of the other restaurant patrons, who got downright angry at the owner/manager.

you can't really feel bad for the hungry people; if everyone got seated at the same time, you're bound to wait for an hour to eat. the kitchen staff was busting they asses to get food for these people. it was BYOB, so after the first hour, the boys got the bright idea to go next door and get some oversized bottles of sierra nevada. we got our plates eventually, and they were pretty yum.

one of my theories in life is that islanders aren't that good at running businesses. i don't think this applies to all, of course, but if i had a dollar for every hawaiian restaurant owned and run by hawaiians that folded in under two years... i'd probably have a lot of dollars. i'm kind of extending this observation to all islanders, because i'm lazy in the brain and judgmental. i observed this owner guy today, and while the food was good and they surely hustled... who closes their restaurant for 4 hours on the weekend that their restaurant is featured very prominently on a local restaurant review show?! they had a catering event that morning, which i get, but perhaps separating the catering and the restaurant kitchen would be worth its while. or limiting the catering menu only to shit you can slam out in the wee hours of the morning before the restaurant opens for lunch. no?

detox days 3, 4, 4.5

eating to feel full. that's what just germinated in my gerbil brain as i sat down and tucked into a bowl of not un-delicious but somehow un-soul satisfying vegan lentil soup (lentils, onion, olive oil, tomatoes, vegetable broth).

that's what detox does for me. it unhooks my need for taste and karmic satisfaction from eating. when detoxing, i eat to fulfill bodily demands, not because i want to eat it or it's particularly interesting or tantalizing. i stop when i am full, which is a feat the unscaleability of which i cannot accurately express.

today, which is day 5, i woke up feeling alert for the first time since saturday. alert and with greatly reduced back pain. days 3 and 4 were defined by what i can only describe as crippling back pain. i spent over an hour last night stretching and downward-dogging and forward-bending in an attempt to ease the tension, which seemed to draw from the base of my spine and spider around my hips into my belly. leaning into the pain made it so acute i became nauseous. trev insisted that i stop this detox foolery and spend tomorrow in pursuit of a hamburger, and see the doctor. i insisted back that's i'd made a big pot of uninspiring lentils and was not about to waste it.

i'm glad i was able to name what it does, these seven days of torture.

detox day 2

photo by Su-Lin

i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee.


that said, i'm feeling a bit better now than i was for most of the day. might have to do with the 90-minute nap that randomly took hold of me this evening. i closed my eyes due to the caffeine-withdrawal headache, and suddenly it was almost 7 and i had nothing in the hopper for dinner.

this afternoon, i went to the school and spoke to the new students coming in this semester along with fellow students, and on my way back i kept forgetting that i was detoxing and considering dinner options:

"maybe i'll get a gyro."

doh!

"hmm, maybe i'll get sandwich."

doh!

"damn. i guess it's $*#%)^& quinoa again."

tonight i mixed it up and made this recipe, again from the best veg blog ever. brown rice instead of quinoa, yay. lots of garbanzos for protein, and i swapped in kale and artichoke hearts instead of asparagus. i also skipped the dressing and squeezed lemon over everything instead, which turned out quite yummy.

my dessert, if you can call it that, is a small glass of soy milk. and half a peach. i'm actually craving chocolate, which is rare. i'm not really a chocolate person.

from past experience and reading, it seems that day 2 is the toughest. last time i did this, day 2 was headachy and it just got worse from there. i'm hoping this time i'll be energetic starting day 3, like a lot of people say.

the thing that is striking to me is that i'm not eating stuff that i wouldn't ordinarily eat. i actually do eat quinoa with some regularity, and i eat brown rice exclusively, if i'm cooking at home. it's just that between those meals i have nice options like... noodles, eggs, a pork chop once in a while.

detox day 1

photo by Heather Ingram

so, it's that time again. no meat, dairy, caffeine, eggs, refined anything-time. this is partially tipped off by my three weeks at home, spent mostly eating and enjoying myself and my family and friends. i was actually pretty active during the three weeks, managing to hike, run, swim and even lift weights. i also just started to feel the need for a change, maybe because of the change in seasons? i'm not sure. i know i have been craving sweet potatoes and kale, which has got to be the weirdest craving i've ever had.

and... a couple of things happened in a row, namely: #1, i have eyes in my head and clearly i am not at my most svelte, and #2, those eyes in my head saw what the numbers said when i got on the scale in my mom's bathroom (i'm too broke and gypsy-like to have a scale).

so, off i go.

today was the first day back in the chi, so i went on an extensive grocery trip that involved the asian market and trader joe's. i managed to buy about 5 bags of groceries (mostly produce) from the asian market for $40. i managed to spend $65 on two bags at TJs. typical.

breakfast: oatmeal, peppermint tea
lunch: tofu, spinach, broth (lazy girl's soup)
dinner: quinoa, kale, tofu, roasted tomatoes, a recipe from one of my favorite food blogs

my fridge is stuffed full of chard, kale, spinach, tofu, grapes, peaches, cabbage, carrots and various non-dairy milks. i'm giving almond milk a shot. i also bought beans and quinoa up the ying yang for its protein.

i also bought the chicago groupon for this place. i'm curious to see if raw food is as nasty as it sounds.

A is for asparagus, P is for pizza!

photo credit

i had my most defining californian-in-chicago moment last week after the cubs game. my friend amy, who grew up in a northwest chicago suburb, was kind enough to invite me to a cubs game with a couple of her family members and friends. we go, and i manage to impress at least amy and the girl next to her with my double hot-dog and fries chowdown. and then after the game we go to a pizza place.

not any pizza place, mind you. this is a walk-in joint just a few steps from wrigley field, meaning it sees dozens if not hundreds of drunk cubs fans a few times a week (and, let me tell you, no one does drunk like cubs fans. maybe white sox fans). its specialty is pasta pizza, by which i mean pizzas that are topped with pasta dishes: tortellini, mac 'n cheese, chicken alfredo penne. after my hot dog duo, i thought i'd go light with a slice of the asparagus and potato pizza. after a couple of bites, i gave up. my stomach couldn't take it. i tried mightily to give my pizza away, but no one, not even amy's trash-compactor of a brother-in-law, would even touch my slice.


shit. in california, a pizza covered in asparagus and thin slices of yukon gold tater would sound like a spectacular idea, especially for the drunk baseball fan who wants to squeeze some veggies into her ballpark diet. in chicago, i became the pizza leper. i got "eewwwwwwws" in surround sound. it was brutal.

a new year's lobster for every pot

simmering lobster shells with some savories for stock. we are having lobster risotto for our new year eve dinner. the idea struck when i got my ass down to dominick's and the rack of lamb i was looking for cost more than a couple of frozen lobster tails - and was basically the same size. frozen lobster... i've never had it before but how bad could it be in some creamy rice?

i made lobster stock the last time we had everyone over for lobster at my mom's. was it a birthday? can't recall. it came out beautifully - the key is to brown the shells nicely for the flavor before simmering. my parents froze the stock and parceled it out over a couple of different gumbo batches. my, the depth of flavor. and to think we would always trash our shells without a second thought.

so here we are, lobster shells a'simmerin, lobster meat cooked and cut up, bubbly in the fridge. trevor is furiously studying for the bar (and furious at last check in) so i'm keeping to myself, chopping and humming and cooking and probably stanking up my entire floor.

happy new year!

overheard.... coming out of my mouth

photo courtesy of nola cuisine because my camera sucks




"my sister's heading to new orleans for 5 days."

"bitch! damn, that's nice."

"yeah. and she's bringing me back a muffaletta!"

"what'd you just call me?"


go to central grocery, 923 decatur street, for the real deal holyfield.

still truckin'

so, i'm on day 2 of Project Eat All the Old Shit in My Fridge. i had an egg last night that expired in july, which i figured was just fine because i accidentally ate an egg at sherry's apartment that was three months old, plus it was in china and somehow chinese eggs seem more ominous. it was ok, if a little rubbery. the egg i ate last night was just fine, too. just going to show you that the expiration date on food is really angled towards mass consumption and doesn't mean you have to throw everything away.

today for lunch (at 4 pm, i got distracted) i had some old beets with old garbanzo beans and somewhat flaccid persian cucumbers on top of (new) baby spinach. i am concluding that beans have the life span of about 100 years. i also threw in an underripe avocado, but that barely warrants mentioning.

why the experiment, you ask? well, i think most of us do this sort of thing when we've been busy/out of town and there ain't shit in the fridge but old food. i'm not just trying to be weird or cheap, although i know i can be both (cut to my friends and family cheering). i do hate wasting food and dumping nearly whole packages of english muffins from june into the trash (even i have standards... they were nasty to begin with or you know i'd be eating one right now, toasted) and two bunches of gross stank chard from about eight months ago. i never thought to question sell-by or expiration dates until several years ago when i happened upon a miracle half-gallon of milk that just never went bad. it was fine way beyond the sell-by date; i think i hit two months. yes, i know. only i would keep drinking milk two months past its date and proclaim it to still be good. but it was! and actually, i'm sure my dad would do the same.

that apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it.

well, my grand experiment is over. two whole days (meals, actually) and my lazy cheap ass has already gone to the store to re-stock. my sister-slash-roommate is getting back into town on friday and in anticipation of her eye-cutting, loud sighs, and straight-up lectures, i decided to toss all this nasty shit and buy some new stuff. (not like it ain't her chard that went all disgusting, but you know how people get.) can't wait to see how long salt pork lasts! i'm betting over a year. i'm making a big batch of meatballs tonight to eat and freeze (i made a mess for trevor over the weekend and got jealous they weren't in my freezer) and at some point this month or next i'm going to make ants climbing a hill with my newly purchased bean thread noodles, and some sort of creamy pasta with that salt pork. yum.

currently enjoying...

i'm one of those idiot friends that, on vacation, will order coconut juice at touristy restaurants and then will carry the coconut around with us as we walk the streets, ensuring us as targets for pick pockets. but it's just so refreshing, i can't resist. looking like an idiot means nothing next to a delicious coconut!

i always thought of coconuts as bad for you, but apparently it's now a darling of the health foodies. something about it containing lots of electrolytes, and its saturated fat content identified as zero trans fats. does that make it healthy? either way, it means i can now find coconut juice in cans at my hippie dippy market. how convenient.

driving home tonight, i had my face jammed so far into the can to shake all of the pieces of pulp down into my mouth that i could barely see where i was going. so maybe opt for the pulp-free version while driving if you're anything like me.

spectacularly... exhausted

my friend dana convinced another friend and i two years ago to head down to the post street williams-sonoma for the mario batali book signing. so we dutifully purchased our new molto italiano copies, stood in line, and met the famous chef batali ever so briefly. he was very nice.

since then, i've cracked the cookbook dozens of times, thumbing through the recipes and dreaming about a day when i'd have guanciale at my disposal, or if i'd ever head to a specialty butcher and fearlessly request those special lamb shank cuts. i've braved one or two of the simpler recipes - pasta, always - and today i decided to put the snowy, freezing day to use and make some food.

i decided on the turkey meatballs and basic tomato sauce. easy enough, right? cut to five hours later - i'm dead on my damn feet. his recipes are awesome, but i feel like i need to go into retirement for a bit just to get some energy back. damn. down an emergen-C just to replenish my electrolytes and shit.

i informed trevor that we are eating sandwiches or whatever the hell tomorrow that doesn't require cooking or dishes. call it the post-batali effect.

mixed pancakes, mixed news

sunday mornings are good when you have pancakes and coffee. trevor this morning asked how i felt about making pancakes or omelettes, which i indulge because i love the hell out of some breakfast and getting him to skip his uber-healthy kitchen sink breakfasts (yogurt, banana, grape nuts, whatever nuts he finds in the cupboards, possibly more fruit, chocolate chips on occasion) for a leisurely sunday eye-opener is just fine with me. i found the image online because we killed the entire batch, leaving not a one to photograph. yes, the recipe was supposed to yield about 12 pancakes, and we ate all of them. don't say i didn't warn you. i dug some random recipe for lemon pancakes out of the Joy of Cooking. I love my dad's half-wheat buttermilk blueberry pancakes, but i don't have blueberries or buttermilk or a hand mixer to beat the shit out of egg whites. once in china out of desperation i beat egg whites into soft peaks by hand with a whisk, and that was not fun. shall not repeat. i'm old school about things, but not commuting by horse-drawn wagon old-school.

so i'm heading back to see the fams next week, with trevor in tow. we have happy plans to see the redwoods, see the wineries, and gulp some oysters at one of the farms. i can't wait. i called and talked to my grandma yesterday, who, not surprisingly, didn't realize i was gone and where i was calling from. her senility is charming in small doses, and i'm anticipating in a somewhat evil manner how she'll take to trevor. i'm assuming she'll keep mini-forgetting who he is, and hoping that she'll be rude enough to ask, "who YOU?" preferably while we're eating. grandmas are fun that way.

in other non-pancake news, i received from cyn the very sad news that our favorite girl has cancer.



she is our love, and shy of her ninth birthday. her funny knee knob turned out to be a sort of fast moving cancer - we're guessing bone cancer, but mining info from vets in podunk, china is retarded. one of our friends from college lost his rottie to a rare cancer when she was quite young, so neither of us is surprised, but it's so sad. she's the best girl ever, and the smartest dog i've ever known. cyn's going to spend xmas hanging in podunk with kodi odi odi and her dad. i'm trying to dig out the corn cob-eating vid, but no luck as of yet.

just a general discussion

it's been snowing lightly all day, the temperature in the teens and dropping now that the sun has gone down. after today, the weather on the weekend will be back up in the 50s and 60s. it was in the 60s two days ago and i wore a t-shirt in the park. all of this yo yo-ing can probably account for my current outfit of long johns, cutoff shorts, wool socks, and flip flops. i can't decide if i'm hot or cold, and my sinuses got pissed trying to figure it out and went on strike again. so i've had the blinds pulled up and have been watching the snow blow by with what feels like cement setting in the little cavities situated around my head. i'm already prone to being spaced-out, but having more or less a constant sinus infection can really push me into the alternate universe.

i did manage to fashion the trough of leftover canned pumpkin and the large bowl of leftover cranberry sauce into some damn good pumpkin cranberry bread. this is one of my questionable talents: when totally spaced out and left to my own devices, i tend to decide that random-ass shit is a good idea, like baking double batches of holiday treats. at least i execute the task well. trevor came home from his admin law final, crashed out for a couple of hours, and is now happily plowing through the loaf.

fatted and happy

oh brined thanksgiving turkey malurkey! how do i love thee? let me count the ways:

1. thy white meat dragged through pools of cranberry sauce and eaten with fingers
2. thy leftover scraps piled onto toasted wheat with mayo and black pepper
3. thy carcass the base of our post-thanksgiving jook
4. thy tail, cold and congealed and salty and delicious, excavated from the scrap pile at midnight and devoured in secret
   
5. other flesh of thine, mixed with stuffing and doused in gravy from thy bones, reheated for the next two days and eaten with flourish

we just started our leftover pillaging for the day and it has indeed been a most pleasurable exercise.

vroom vroom turkey

finding a brining container for a turkey is a bitch. i hit up three places before finding a stockpot big enough. i had an easier time doing this in china. i was hoping to find a version of the old school granite ware pot my dad uses, but apparently modern peoples who shop at target don't cook anything bigger than a chicken. i finally ended up driving to this weird restaurant supply office-slash-store-slash-warehouse and buying an industrial stockpot from this soft-spoken, dumbo-eared salesman. he's the type that acts polite to your face then probably makes really nasty female jokes behind your back. creepy.

i made the cornbread and pie crusts yesterday, and bought all the herbs and shit the day before at this joint called vitamin cottage natural grocers. wtf?! why does everything here have to have some sort of folksy reference in order to exist? that shit wasn't no cottage - it was a damn store. get over it.

anyway. i found nice chestnuts at the korean superstore (KOREAN CHESTNUTS on the sign in big letters. i guess they're better?) and they're roasted and ready to be peeled. drat. this sort of stuff is much more fun with my sister and my grandma at the breakfast table. here i have trevor cramming for finals, singing 'she's crafty' at the top of his lungs.

this afternoon i'll slide our 11-pound birdie into a vat of chez panisse brine and call it a day. TURKEY DAY!!!!!!!! the best holiday ever. i miss being at home, but since i haven't been home for 2 years on thanksgiving and my sister and cousin are in asia on vacay, i guess having a football-playing, kegger-craving bf who enjoys my food a lot but can't cook or chop to save his life is an ok replacement. he's a good cheerleader and is willing to accept that i don't want to attend a thanksgiving day kegger with some of his peripheral friends. the description of the meal as it was pitched to me went like this: "you should go to john's house for thanksgiving. they're getting a keg and a ton of red wine." no mention of food, and so i mentally vetoed our attendance right then and there. thanksgiving is a huge ordeal (in a good way) as i was raised, and it's all about the food. as a concession, we are going over afterwards with a pumpkin pecan pie to placate trev's beer cravings. i bet he just wants to do a keg stand or a beer bong.

i also don't like eating early. this other dinner will be at 4 pm, which i find bizarre. we always eat thanksgiving, christmas, and easter dinners at dinnertime, when it's dark outside and you're extra hungry. it's weird chowing down on piles of meat and grease-soaked carbs when the sun is still out. call me crazy, but that's my take.

anyway, off to peel these $)#%&^ chestnuts. at least they smell good.

clean meat

a resource for you burgeoning beyond-organic / beyond-grassfed eaters out there, the best resource i have found thus far:

http://eatwild.com/

my dilemma

so i am reading this book, one that will likely assume the title of most influential book of the decade. for me, anyway. i stole it from my dad, with promises to bring it back at christmas since he's only about a tenth of the way through.

it essentially details the progression of the industrialized american food chain from inception (roosevelt-era legislation in reaction to the depression and WWII) to today, and details some of today's more radical beyond-organic farmers. it also takes a close look at USDA guidelines for organic foods and the business of organic industrial food raising. it isn't preachy, it's more of a long, leisurely inspection - i suppose a nod to pollan's extensive journalism background.

yesterday trev and i went to safeway for weekly food shopping and to poke around at the turkeys that safeway was offering for the unlikely price of $4.99 or $7.99. in the back of my head, i am constantly re-positioning my food purchase decisions based both on what i am reading in this book and what i have learned from being a bay area-ite and having friends who are deeply immersed in beyond-organic, sustainable farming and food philosophies, and what is realistic for a household consisting of one unemployed person and one student. is whole foods any better than safeway, really? yes, likely, but whole foods is still a warehoused chain with national distribution, meaning that the organically-raised greens or free-range chickens are still trucked an average of 1500 miles to reach me. i agree wholeheartedly that i need to stop expecting food to be cheap and start thinking critically about where it comes from. i went so far as to google CSAs in colorado in an effort to buy locally. but then i think critically at my checking account, and think about the possibility of being jobless for another 3-4 months, and head to safeway or king sooper and whip out my preferred shopper card.

i am eating beef that feeds on corn instead of biologically-appropriate grass, stuffed with antibiotics to minimize infections caused by wallowing in its own manure. i am eating chickens who have never seen the light of day and are slaughtered at 7 weeks old, and are fed scraps of its own kind mixed in with antibiotics . i am eating produce slathered in pesticides and herbicides, picked by vastly underpaid migrant workers who live in deplorable conditions. i am paralyzed in the snack aisle, trying to decide between kettle chips made in boulder (locally produced!) but more expensive per ounce, or kettle chips distributed out of oregon which i can find even in china, on sale 2 bags for $6. i take so long deciding which are less evil that the elderly woman waiting for me to get the @(%*$ out of the way sighs and moves on to the next item on her list. i mumble constantly to myself, and analyze the ingredient list on every package, picking out as many corn-based ingredients as i can in an effort to disqualify each product. i select the tabasco brand bloody mary mix because it doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup. (there's thinkin!) i buy yellow squash that's grown locally instead of the california-grown artichokes that cost nearly $2 a pop. i sigh when trevor comes home with those same artichokes because he knows i love them.

it takes me over an hour to buy 10 items because i am constantly debating pros and cons in my head. mostly, the expense concern wins out. i tell myself i will buy locally when i have a job. when trevor's school loans are paid down. when we're middle aged and i'm writing books and he's negotiating mergers.

dilemma indeed.

cold snap

oops. i guess my last post seemed pretty bummed and i may have mildly alarmed some folks out there. compounded by my jokingly sulky pics on facebook. not to worry, i'm doing just fine. one day of boredom and loneliness (a couple of hours, really) is bound to happen when moving to a brand-new city, no?

my sister called yesterday to check in and was sad to learn that i am living without cable, even. that's right, we have rabbit ears on top of a vcr that sits on the floor next to our tv. i've been spending my days on the internet (countless hours), emailing and reading celebrity trash blogs and the ny times. i'm three days and two classes into my free week of yoga at a great studio nearby, which has made me feel immensely better about things. trev and i are looking into bikes for me before the weather gets too cold. i test rode a couple of treks last week and although i should afford this one, i really want to afford this other one. of course i test rode both and why test drive the bmw when you can only afford a pinata? don't ask. i just had to know how it felt.

i've also been cooking a lot. doing quite well considering the lack of affordable produce compared to california. stuffed yellow zucchini? check. roast chicken with garlic and lemon and thyme? check. vegetable soup and baked butternut squash? check and check. tonight i'm enjoying the pedestrian delight known as a baked potato stuffed with broccoli and pecorino tuscano. it's yummy and simultaneously giving me lsd flashbacks. (long story.) trev and i had a huge vietnamese feast for lunch, which i topped off with a 5:30 tea time of jamon serrano and havarti on crackers. yes, i am not suffering for eats here.

anyway, talk soon. blogger has a scheduled outage in 2.

countdown week

my food schedule for the remaining time, sent out last sunday:


monday: yaki closet
tuesday: marc's cooking
wednesday: issimo or tian jia
thursday: dingtaifeng or hotpot
friday: my ayi's house (anyone who wants to come is welcome... she ruvs people, but her place is the size of a coffee table)
saturday: par-tay! we are thinking spicy sichuan
sunday: jean georges bar menu


optional swaps or lunch dates:
jia jia tang bao
yang's sheng jian bao
southern barbarian
pane e vino
azul brunch



marc made us an amazing meal last night. we limped home holding our swollen stomachs. it was too good! we weren't worthy. we even started off with an appetizer, which was in addition to the award-winning cheeses and cured meats smuggled from home. when have you actually had a true appetizer not in a restaurant? one that included a seared scallop?

tonight is issimo. my first time; i'm quite excited. all of the cooler kids have been to issimo multiple times, but i am uninitiated. seriously, tho, it was dumb to kick off this week of eating with yang's sheng jian bao. six of them. they are no joke, and sherry went and bought chicken wings to top that off. and then i went to southern barbarian with the boys after muay thai that night, to get down on some yunnan fried goat cheese and more chicken wings. yes, because i am unabashed. that's how i roll, as jason would say.

i told jill last night that maybe i'd just order salad tonight, and she was like, yeah right. and i had to agree.

my turn - VGT's the omnivore's 100

http://www.verygoodtaste.com/ is a food blog based in the UK, and co-author andrew wheeler created the 'omnivore's 100,' or a list of things that every omnivore should have tried at least once in his/her life. i am not only an omnivore, i am a foodie from the bay area, so i think my results are both decent and underwhelming for my creed. my friends will all score evenly or higher i would think. anyway, for those of you who want to participate, here are the instructions:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at http://www.verygoodtaste.co.uk/ linking to your results.


1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (i'm guessing alligator doesn't count?)
6. Black pudding (blood sausage and straight up blood count?)
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp (this one i am truly unsure about. chinese people eat everything.)
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (highly unlikely... but you never know)
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (i've had them separately... neither was too compelling)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (college and recent days, as well, sadly)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk (does goat milk yogurt count?)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer delicious
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (those belgians)
59. Poutine (nope, but sounds delicious)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (i'm pretty sure i have had some kaolin-based medications)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu (oh, china. thanks, steph!)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (for a future anniversary? trevor?)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (delicious. thanks, dinx)
100. Snake