subway 12/10/09

before subway had their walking weight loss story, jarod/jarrod/jared/whatever, i knew them by their jingle "subway, eat fresh!"

well i've thought about it and i think they should change their jingle to something along the lines of "subway, eat stale!"

i know it's not nearly as catchy, but the $5 bill i paid with was probably made more recently than most of the sandwich it bought.

let's review the bread. freshly baked? please define freshly, good sir. i know you think you're fooling me by pulling it out of an oven, but know how i can tell you're full of shit? because oven-fresh bread isn't colder than a cadaver.

oh the cheese is fresh, perhaps? not according to the sticker that says "miercoles" on it. i might be white, but i know that miercoles is spanish for "that shit went bad yesterday." and my taste buds confirmed it.

tomatoes? no, not fresh. tomatoes aren't pink, but nice try.

olives? too delicious to be fresh. from a can.

pickles are, by definition, not fresh.

mayonnaise? LOL.

salt and pepper? i don't think so. it tasted like a cupboard. i think the salt was held over from when it used to be a currency.

i mean, i really can't complain too much because i had one foot of food for $5 and it probably was more fiber than i've had in the past week. i just wish that they weren't trying to trick me into thinking i'm eating anything fresh.

chocolate pizza?

i've always rolled my eyes at novelty pizzas. when dairy queen offered that frozen ice cream pizza thing in the 90s, i was disgusted.

"pizza's already junk, who wants it to be even junkier?"

fifteen years later, apparently i do.

i thought we were joking: "haha, let's get a chocolate pizza." sort of like, "haha, let's go to vegas, get drunk and then get married." it seems like such a trashy, vulgar idea that no one would ever want to draw it into reality. but we did.

i'm not quite sure how the pizza guys did this. the crust was an 18" sheet (there were two of us, after all) that had been split and the bottom piece, slathered with nutella. (pause: i know, i know, if you've ever traveled to europe, you probably discovered nutella on the same trip that you discovered manu chao and you think it's a godsend, you may have even just moaned, europe is so much better than america, blah, blah, blah.) the crusts were then sealed back together, covered with powdered sugar, strawberries and some other chocolate sauce, that may have been nutella but i'm not really sure on account of i lost all sensation in my mouth from the sugar burn.

this was maybe the first time i didn't finish a pizza.

i don't really know what to say. delicious, overwhelming, america's coq au vin...

non-sequitor: i once had a french friend offer me "american champagne." it was coca-cola.

the most interesting thing about this pizza is that it shows, in one quick glance, everything that is wrong and everything that is right with america.

cheesecake 11/25/09

i don't really know what to say about cheesecake that hasn't been said already. nature's perfect food? proof that god exists? heart disease with blueberries on top?

i'm currently playing guido son, meaning i eat leftovers from my mom's fridge every time i go over, regardless of how recently, or how much, i may have eaten before arriving.

like a good italian mother, mine just happened to have an extra cheesecake laying around in her fridge. and i'll be damned if she didn't also have some blueberry topping.

if i were woppier, i'd have eaten it with a spoon out of the pan, but since i wasn't born on a stoop in new jersey, i ate it on a plate that looks like the the 19th century had sex with the 70s.

i bet i'd find meat balls (pronounced bowls) and gravy waiting for me if i ate them. but it's probably for the best that i don't- it seems like vegetarianism is the only thing standing between me and gold chains and a tracksuit.

chest discomfort, discomfort in the jaw, shortness of breath and lightheadedness are all symptoms of either a heart attack or eating dinner the way i do.

this was a bed of rice, covered in black beans, corn salsa, pico de gallo, sauteed peppers and onions, sour cream, cheese and guacamole. it was eventually amended with a downpour of tobasco.

the line to get this was about eight minutes long, but the time it took them to assemble the ingredients throw a giant mess of crap in a bowl was less than 20 seconds. it was really impressive. i think we ought to consider letting chipotle run our state. if california were as efficient as my meal, we'd have a surplus.

the only bad thing was that i got a bay leaf in my mouth, but as far as fast food experiences go, that's not bad at all. i'll take an authentic bay leaf to an authetic e. coli any day.

breakfast of champions 11/17/09

i don't care what wheaties think of themselves; frosting and cookies is clearly the breakfast of champions. of course, by champions, i mean people who wake up at the crack of 11 AM and eat sugar and cottonseed oil with their fingers.

i could have picked something more nutritious for breakfast, but if you are what you eat, consider me preserved until 2094.

and people think cold showers are the key to longevity.

that's something that really pisses me off: the obsession with things that will allegedly prolong and improve your life- superfoods. green tea is a superfood, açaí berries are a superfood, blueberries are superfoods. know what else is a superfood? the fukk-yu berry from the amazon rainforest.

really? i'm supposed to believe that my quality of life will be infinitely improved by chewing on rainforest fruit? and if you really believe that green tea is going to fix what ails you, i have a car i'd like to sell you.

the people who rave about superfoods are the same smug people who find chocolate mousse "too rich" and push it away after one bite. the next time someone tells me about the health virtues of a rare berry from a poor country with a lot of kidnapping and gun violence, i'm going to strap them into their ergonomic chair and force feed them bread pudding.

another demographic that pisses me off is people who talk about how "red wine is so good for you." oh, shut up. just because you saw that shit on msn after you logged out of hotmail doesn't mean i want to hear you talk about it. do you like the taste of red wine? fine, drink it and enjoy it. do you want to improve your health? take a fucking multivitamin, it burns less.

excuse me while i go finish my can of superfrosting.

wtf? 11/14/09

i woke up hungrier than usual this morning, so i did what most people do and looked for leftover pizza in the back of the fridge. luckily, i didn't have to reach too far back, because my dad bought some recently.

everyone knows that microwaving pizza is gross. it makes the crust soft and rubbery and the cheese melts unevenly, leaving a molten lava bed that scorches your mouth just below some still-cold cheese. but i did it anyway.

i was one bite in when i figured that maybe i should douse it in hot sauce, because that's how i roll at 7:30 am. between the magma cheese and the tapatio, i'll be lucky to taste again in 2010.

i don't know what barrio i think i'm from, smothering my breakfast in hot sauce, but i guess it's par for the course for someone who starts shaking after 12 hours without a burrito.

i'll take pizza scorch over pancakes any morning of the week. sweet breakfast items gross me out. they make my stomach hurt and give me a sugar coma before i've even brushed my teeth. however, since the pizza with hot sauce made me think it was dinner, i did eat a reese's peanut butter cup right after.

welcome to planet fat, ladies and gentlemen, where even breakfast comes with dessert. fuck.

mount nacho 11/13/09

i'd missed my friends and went to "taco tuesday" with them last night (i know, i know, last night was thursday, but that's just what they call it). for the record, i fucking hate theme nights. i hate drink specials, i hate dinner specials, in fact, i hate specials. who are you to tell me something is special, anyway?

specials are almost as bad as "champagne thursdays" which is something i heard about from a jowled coworker at a law firm who looked like an angry bulldog. as it turns out, a lot of people are into this. they buy some korbel (and sometimes strawberries, which sounds like another bad suggestion from marie claire or cosmo) and get sloshed on thursday nights, because nothing's better than going into work on friday with a hangover.

anyway, i'd bet that 80% of the people at taco tuesday (alliterative, by the way, how clever) also celebrate champagne thursday. what i really should have done was photograph the number of faded tattoos on upper arm fat as a warning for people who think that taco tuesdays and champagne thursdays won't catch up with them.

i was happy to spend time with my friends, but i could have done without the crowd that looked like the USS Asshole had just docked outside. we got tacos (duh), guacamole, chips, salsa and drinks. we lasted about thirty minutes before we got the check and split.

maybe i'll go again next tuesday and have enough $6 taco-and-margarita combos to think it's a good idea to get an upper arm tattoo. if my friends will drive me home after, i'll be forever grateful. i'll even have them over next thursday night for some korbel and strawberries.

back in america 11/11/09

i know that halitosis is real and that some people have really bad breath through no fault of their own, but i also know that chewing gum and binaca aren't exactly in short supply, particularly in airports, which is why i was furious at the people i was sitting next to on the plane.

maribel and luis, both spaniards, had been lisping at each other for about an hour after takeoff when i first noticed their awful breath. it smelled like rotting trash. i tried to tune it out, but it was like trying to tune out a gunshot wound. i might not notice it for a minute, but then they'd use a sentence with a lot of aspiration and all of a sudden, the smell would be unbearable and i would get heartburn.

i'm pretty good with manners, so how i could offer two people next to me chewing gum without looking like an asshole? the answer: impossible, so i didn't even try.

i made it a point to get up and do laps through the cabin regularly. as a result, i probably clocked about four miles of walking between paris and san francisco, at 39,000 feet above earth's surface. i kept wandering past the self-service cart and had about two liters of water during my walk.

anyway, since my flight left paris around 11 am and landed in san francisco at about 2 pm, i lived in perpetual lunch time- it was awful, i hate lunch. lunch #1 was some pasty rice glop that north korea probably feeds political prisoners. lunch #2 was vegetables and couscous. it looked cold, so i already wasn't very interested, but then maribel and luis started talking. fast. hard. extra lispily. and i almost threw up in my lap.

i immediately got up and walked away as quickly as possible. i walked down the aisle to the back of the plane, i rounded the weird space shuttle kitchen and then walked up the other aisle. i had to do three laps before my stomach was settled.

"excuse me, but your breath makes me want to vomit" is not something that i know how to say in spanish, so i settled for "can i use your pen?"

i filled out my landing card and flagged down the flight attendants to take my untouched lunch away.

more time passed and all i wanted to do was get away from these people. unluckily, the spaniards on my right had friends on the flight, who gathered in the aisle to my left and they lisped, breathed and laughed at each other across me. it was like being caught in the middle of a stinky squirt gun fight.

eventually, we landed and i got out to the curb, not having eaten a lunch in eight hours and having done a four-mile marathon in the air.

i needed to eat fast, so i went to a taqueria, ordered my burrito and when it arrived, i swallowed it like a python.

i'll miss the french and moroccan food of my trip, but at this point, i'd eat packing peanuts as long as it's not in a plane with maribel and luis.

eating again 11/9/09

i like eating at home because i don't like maneuvering through crowded restaurants like a lewd tightrope walker, inadvertently shoving my ass in people's faces as i try to avoid shoving something else in the faces of the neighboring table.

for me, dining out reduces the pleasurable act of eating to a stressful social dance where there are protocols to follow. i particularly dislike the waiter system- it seems formal and sophisticated because someone else serves me food, but only after i first get his or her attention by waving wildly like an infant incapable of feeding himself. then the waiter comes over, ask why i'm crying, then i effectively point to my gaping maw and say "feed me." it's all really humiliating. and then i'm supposed to pay for this? and leave a tip? no, thanks.

anyway, i cooked at home the other night. it turns out that my baby analogy is a good lead-in to discussing this meal, because that's exactly how i felt eating it. that orange-ish mound is some purée of something mediterranean-y that was probably supposed to taste like Provence or Italy, but really tasted like a shoe. being that it was a puree, i had to usher it into my mouth in spoonfuls. i feel like i should have worn a bib. the spinach was better, because i adulterated it with a generous slab of butter and a splash of puddle of cream.

since french grocery store clerks are about as useful as VCRs in 2009, they scan your groceries and then hurl them down a metal slope, where you're supposed to bag them yourself. since i come from a place where someone would blow my nose for me if i asked nicely enough, i'm not used to this. as a result, i just get disoriented and confused when my groceries come flying at me. i guess in between the can of chick peas that hit me in the gut and the box of cookies that nearly hit my nose, i missed the salt that was rolled down the metal slope. my meal, thus, contained no added sodium.

anyway, the pesto tortellini was/were really good, since the sauce on them is cream, butter and shredded comté cheese.

dessert was something called a gâteau au fromage blanc. if i make this in america, i will call it a meh cake, since that's pretty much the sentiment it inspired for me. i might also call it the american psycho cake, because it looks like christian bale had a swing at this with his chainsaw.

i enjoyed this meal, even if my gallbladder didn't. the flavors were mostly good, but the best part was that i got to eat it at home. i had to do the dishes, of course, which wouldn't have happened in a restaurant, but if scrubbing a pot is all i have to do to avoid asking a waiter to perform the basic function of feeding me, pass me my t-shirt and fancy dinner boxers, daddy's done eating out.

ooops 11/03/09

i haven't eaten for a few days, but i did write this thing.

also, here's a fruit stand in morocco:

there were flies all over their goods and i'm sure everything came out of a warehouse anyway, but it was kitschy.

low-carb breakfast 10/31/09

because i'm disadvantaged, i don't get to be in america during halloween. this means that i miss a whole lot of tacky decorations and battery-powered toys that emit a cheesy, tinny cackle when i walk by. i'll also miss watching america use enough dry ice to reseal the northwest passage. but what i'm really bummed about missing is the nighttime diabetic coma that follows after eating three pounds of candy bars, one ounce at a time.

since i won't wake up tomorrow in a halo of mini-butterfinger wrappers, i thought i should do my best to eat as much high-glycemic index stuff as possible in moroccan terms, thus my brilliant breakfast. you'll notice the croissant and the chocolate croissant and from there you'll find what's best described as tiny moroccan pancakes, toast and my favorite, a fried, flaky square bread that's the lovechild of a tortilla and a croissant. i covered these in butter and jam and washed it all down with coffee. i made sure to use only a half cube of sugar in my coffee, since my teeth were already about to leap from my mouth.

i'm actually trying to set a record for most weight gained while visiting a developing nation and if i may be so brazen as to say so, i think i'm doing a fine job.

oh shit 10/28/09

should you decide to visit morocco, there are a few things that you should know before your arrival. the first thing is that morocco runs on moroccan time. this has nothing to do with time zones. what this means is that time does not exist here and all estimated time frames are savagely wild guesses and should be doubled. if your taxi is arriving in 15 minutes, sit down and watch an episode of Friends, because you have at least 30 minutes to kill.

inaccurate time frames don't really bother me since i was raised on jewish standard time, but knowing that everything takes twice as long as it's estimated caused a collective sigh of "oh shit" when we were told to follow a donkey up a mountain for "30 minutes" to eat lunch.

we all marched forward, not really knowing when we might arrive. we passed children playing in trees, majestic mountains and orchards of fruit trees, in awe of the beauty, but also in awe of how blissfully unaware our guide was of how long 30 minutes is, exactly.

as we diverged from the main road to a dirt path that wound along a hillside, we knew that walking into a michelin-rated restaurant was now pretty unlikely. we came to a staircase that led up to a berber village and we lined up behind our guide for the ascent. as we rounded a corner, the staircase came to an end- right in front of a cow chewing her cud.

moooooooooooooooooooooo, bessie said, shocked to see a group of white people at her home.

moooooooooooooooooooooo, i wanted to reply, shocked to see a cow at our restaurant.

unfazed, our guide walked up to bessie and slapped her upside the head. jolted, or maybe just depressed and with broken spirit, she moved a few inches to the right, allowing us passage. we walked past the bovine baker and her stack of pies, toward another staircase that cut straight up the mountain side. we certainly weren't in oz anymore.

we were led up the stairs into a concrete room with a table at its center. we took our seats on pillows and waited to see what would happen.

first came a tray of nuts and biscuits, followed by a tray of tea. we were then served salads of chopped tomatoes, onions and peppers, followed by skewers of meat and a tajine of onions, potato and chunks of some kind of meat. our hosts accommodated my vegetarianism by bringing me a plate of the onion and potato from the tajine with a side of sauteed peppers and onions and a mound of lightly seasoned grated carrots. we were also given a basket of dense bread that i loved.

dessert was a bowl of glassy-skinned grapes with tangerines and apples.

since i was too busy absorbing the experience, i forgot to document it except for one photo.

the deal was that our guide had taken us to the home of some of the village people -heh heh- who cook for tourists who make the trek to their village.

village children ran upstairs as we ate to get a glimpse of us, only to run away the second we noticed them.

the master of the house came in at the end and told us about his family and to get a handle on the new people in his home. he was nice and after we communicated for several minutes in shattered french and non-existent english, we all rose from the table to head out.

since no one was eager to trek back down the mountain, we asked that a car pick us up where the dirt path met the main road. once we were back in the car, we observed several minutes of silence.

it was decided that this was what we refer to in whitespeak as an experience. it's imperative to inhale deeply and then exhale while articulating the syllables in descending cadence.

the funny thing is that the food was actually very good, we just didn't expect a mountain trek and a trip through old macdonald's farm before having it. none of us was bitter, though. the beauty of the trip was breathtaking:

anyway, if you'll excuse me, i have to get ready for lunch now. we're going to eat at 1 o'clock and since it's 12:30 now, i only have two and a half hours to get ready.

random 10/26/09

i hate having to match names to people in pictures, but i figured that food isn't as bad. starting with the tomatoes and moving clockwise: mushrooms with cream, sautéed eggplant and peppers, lentils, avocado and spaghetti with tomato sauce.

it was all excellent, save for the tomatoes, which weren't dry farmed or heirloom and tasted like a swimming pool.

most of these dishes can be made in your kitchen, but they taste a lot better when they're served to you in morocco. i can't actually vouch for that, however, since i've never made them in my kitchen.

more to come soon.

socialized meal 10/24/09

in america, where we're petrified of fat, and ironically, are fat, the marriage of cream, potatoes, butter, salt and cheese is called "disgusting." in france, it's called dinner.

france is famous for a lot of things; the eiffel tower, the mona lisa, the arc de triomphe, giving up, wine, but not heart disease and obesity, which, given what i had for dinner, is kind of shocking.

there have been books written about why the french don't get fat, but it always involves red wine or walking or blah, blah, who cares. don't waste your money. it's because the french aren't afraid of fat. in america, we'll have cottonseed oil in our bread, but won't put butter on it. we eat those awful baked potato chips that taste like a closet, but we drink fake orange juice with canola oil. (seriously, check the bottle of sunny d, ingredient #9.)

while america is busy running from fat and fucking drinking it at breakfast, the french will take a piece of bread and smother it with cheese. it's called honesty and given america's obsession with a perfect facade and clandestine indiscretions (mark foley, ted haggard, larry "foot tapper" craig, bob "blow you for a $20" allen), it's no wonder that we're more comfortable drinking fat juice than just having a piece of cheese and calling it a day.

anyway, here's that cheese-cream-potato thing i had for dinner:



that would be a cheese crust on top.







i'm glad i'm in a country with socialized health care, because my cholesterol is higher than coolio at lax and i'm probably going to need it.

frants 10/23/09

well, i'm here. i ate homemade dal, some rice and salad shortly after arriving. it was all delicious and it put me at four indian meals in one week and my burrito count at 0. (like i said, obsessive eating patters.)

i didn't take a picture of the meal because i forgot. i was basically a walking corpse, so that i even remembered where to put the food was kind of a miracle.

at some point during the trip, i hadn't eaten in a few hours, but pretended that the nine hour time difference also counted as not eating, so i had two or three packages of reese's peanut butter cups.

it's almost 5 PM here and i've had a piece of tortilla for the day, which means my blood sugar is lower than america's morale.

in other news, i threw my back out while crapping, so that's good.

here's a picture of what i look like when i'm sad, i was recently informed:

airplane food 10/21/09

I love being in different places, but I hate traveling. There’s not a bone in my body that lives for the thrill of getting ass tingle from sitting in a cramped airplane cabin for 10 hours.

I could tell you how pissed I am that the wench in front of me has pushed her seat back to a 180 degree angle, thereby forcing me to position my computer like a clam with a poor range of motion so that I can’t see the screen. I could also tell you about the number of ass cheeks (none of them desirable) that have grazed my elbow since I took off. But I won’t.

What I will tell you about is the airplane “food” I was served.

The most annoying question I ever get is, “Hey, can you do me a favor?” but the second most annoying is “What do vegetarians eat besides vegetables?” Since people have evidently decided to classify fruit, grains, dairy, nuts and soy as “meat,” my response is usually, “Nothing. Just vegetables.”

Well, ha-fucking-ha Air France, the joke’s on me. Look at this:

That was my entrée, my main attraction. Potatoes. Carrots. Squash.

Obviously, Air France has undertaken the task of slapping me in the face for being vegetarian. I know that cheese ravioli is an endangered species and so I would never ask for something that outrageous, but vegetable boil was the best they could do?

Since I only eat vegetables, they probably figured I just couldn’t get enough of their Grade-F produce, so they also gave me this:

There’s more nutritional value in the plastic wrap than that dumb tomato.

And then there was this guy:

Pour it on, you say?

Fat chance, asshole.

I don’t like being told what to do, particularly by Lysol dressing.

And besides, even if I wanted to cooperate, where would I put you? On the rigor mortis lettuce? No.

I had planned to sleep on the plane, but since that hasn’t happened, I’ll just think of ways to get even with Air France. Maybe I’ll sneak some ketchup through next time and douse everyone else’s food with it.

Vegetarians don’t mess around, ask my friends at PETA.

indian redux 10/20/09

like most other white, middle-class, liberal californians, i like indian food. it's been cooler than sushi since at least the mid-nineties and as civilized cuisines should be, it's not raw.

because i grew up with parents from major american cities in a town with a double-digit population, i used to love people who loved indian food because i thought it meant they weren't bovine-humping rednecks. the first conversation i had about indian food was with a friend in fourth grade:

friend: what's that weird crap you're eating?
me: leftover indian food.
friend: i LOVE indian food.
me: really, wanna try some?
friend: no, i like chicken tikka masala.

here's a conversation i had years later in high school:

friend: whoa, that burp really stank.
me: sorry, indian food for lunch.
friend: i LOVE indian food.
me: oh, i have some at home, i'll bring you some tomorrow.
friend: no, it's cool. i just like chicken tikka masala.

this has happened dozens of times, so the next time i have this conversation, here's how it's going:

me: hey, wanna try my saag paneer?
other person: no, i only like chicken tikka masala.
me: oh, okay. go play in traffic.

you don't "LOVE the beatles" just because you love hey jude. you're just a schmuck who likes a song. the same goes for chicken tikka masala. if you like india's greatest hit, fine, just don't get my hopes up that you might be cultured.

(update: wikipedia says chicken tikka masala was actually invented in the UK, which would explain everything.)

anyway, i got indian food today. that pancake looking thing is called an uthappam (oo-tuh-pum). it's made of a fermented batter, composed of dal and rice. you pick what you want in it, i opted for onions and peas. (unfortunately, there were no chickens or tikkas or masalas to put in it, so it's probably not for most people.)

it's delicious. if king tut had been indian, they would have buried him with a mountain of uthappam and probably some virgins or whatever.

that yellow stuff is some potato thing that's delicious, but i can't remember the name of it.

that soup-looking thing is sambar, also delicious. you could try to eat it with a spoon and look like a moron, or you could douse your uthappam with it. of course, i shouldn't talk about being authentic since i actually ate my meal with a knife and fork, much to the horror of the OGs in the restaurant, who were all eating with their hands.

this meal was decidedly south indian, which is a really nice change from the easily-accessed indian fare of california's major cities.

FIN.

nasty noodles 10/19/09

warning: this is what happens when you cook while having a conversation that's much more interesting than what you're making.

i was cooking the pasta with the intent to bullshit a sauce when it was al dente, when one of my best friends called. in the three seconds that is my attention span, i lost interest in my pasta and walked away from it like a toy fit for a salvation army run on april 14.

a few minutes later, i remembered and walked back to the stove. as i talked about things that weren't semolina flour, i haphazardly tossed some parmesan, salt, pepper and cream into a pan, but i actually didn't have cream, so i used the last of my half & half, which, by the way, is really going to piss me off tomorrow morning.

i eventually hung up and turned to my pasta with the feeling of dread that one encounters when mending burnt bridges. i stabbed at it with a fork and moved it into my mouth, chewing not because there it was delicious, but because it expedited the movement of the mush into my stomach.

even though it looks like i splattered a bottle of white-out on my meal, it really didn't taste that bad. it was a kitchen case of "it's not you, it's me" and my pasta was the poor, photogenic sap who just never lived up to the expectations of his match.com profile picture. oh, well, still plenty of fish in the sea chocolate in my dad's secret candy drawer.

messican 10/18/09

i've always been simultaneously delighted and appalled when other white people pronounced "mexican" messican. i can't decide if it's a loving but sardonic embrace of the most dominant culture in california or just old-fashioned racism. (for the record, when i say messican, i'm trying to accomplish the latter.)

i eat more burritos than a flea market porta-potty and it goes without being said that mexican is one of my favorite cuisines. as long as they're vegetarian, i'll eat quesadillas, enchiladas, tacos, burritos and los crunch wraps until i see stars.

i got a plate of chiles rellenos today, not because i'm sick of burritos, but because i'm sick of taking pictures of burritos.

chile relleno is a spanish term that means "best thing ever." it's a mild chile stuffed with cheese, battered and fried, then covered in tomato sauce. (i actually just made that up- i don't remember what's in the sauce.)

i would venture to say that they're the perfect food, but i'm pretty sure that distinction goes to the burrito, whose addictive properties rival percocet's.

i love everything about mexican food; the freshness, the gentle burning, the bean coma...the only thing i'm really not down with is their heating methods. i was at a mexican friend's house when his mom tossed two tamales into a plastic ralphs bag and microwaved it- that fucking freaked me out. as a kid, i wasn't even allowed to refill plastic water bottles or get near a microwave and here was my friend's mom filling a plastic shopping bag with food and then microwaving it.

anyway, my food was delicious. i didn't bother touching that lettuce because it's gross, but everything else was top notch. whether you call it mexican food or messican food, it's proof that colonizing the americas was a good idea. i just wish that cortez had advocated heating food in pots instead of microwaves and shopping bags, jew know?

michelin meal 10/17/09

this. was. awful. i deserve a medal for this one. i'm pretty sure that even if satan woke up on the wrong side of the bed with a hangover, he wouldn't want to serve this in the hell cafeteria.

it's entirely my fault. the first thing i did wrong was use brussels sprouts. i really, really don't like them, but i re-try things periodically to make sure my disdain is still warranted. (it is.)

when i was little, i used to moan about having to wash rice. "just wash it," my dad would say, "they dry rice on the road in india, you never know if cow dung gets in there."

that kept playing over and over in my head as i poured the rice directly into the pot. "fuck that," i thought, "that's why i'm using boiling water."

it turns out that even if boiling water can sterilize, it can't kill the taste of armpit. at least i salted the water, which sounds even worse, but it actually made it bearable. i'm like a cow; give me a salt lick and i'll shut up.

i decided that the best thing to accompany unseasoned brussels sprouts and salt rice is canned refried beans.

i should tell you that by the time i made that decision, i felt crazy. not "had a long day at the office" crazy, but nursing home crazy. i had effectively already tossed my pills and spit at the nurse, why not just crap my pants, too?

so i measured out one glop of beans from the can and slapped them atop the pile. because the rice and sprouts were already 500 degrees, i couldn't bear the thought of heating the food anymore, so i ate the beans at room temperature.

i laughed as i was eating, alternating between my nuclear rice and the tepid beans, because really, what else can you do in that case?

because my meal was so delicious, i ate slowly. really, really slowly. but then the air caught up with me, gave my beans a crust, made the sprouts cold and made the rice tough.

at least it was healthy and really fiber-y. i could have used brown rice or millet to be healthier, but since i'm not a goat, i'll stick to white rice.

i think i'm gonna let the good folks at my local dining establishments do the work for me tomorrow.

that's how they get ya 10/16/09

saying i'm a little impatient is like saying mao zedong was a little bit communist, and when it comes to food, i'm even worse. tonight, i thought it was time to stop eating prepared food, so i decided i would make something quick, like rice. i rummaged though the cabinet and found this:

perfect. i love brown rice pilaf. pilaf is a weird word that sounds less like a food item and more like a special cough to clear your throat, but i was happy to make it. i scanned the back of the package, gathered a saucepan, butter, salt and turned on the burner.

i was just about to tear open the box when i read a little bit further: Simmer for 32 to 37 minutes, the box said.

i don't know who the people at brown rice pilaf inc. think they're dealing with, but i'm not interested in things that take more than 10 minutes to prepare.






that would be a no.






i mean, i'm sure there's something that takes more than 10 minutes that i could make without being resentful, but we're talking about STARCH, not even a substantial part of the meal. 37 minutes is almost two full episodes of Family Guy on hulu. no, not for rice, sorry.

i was pissed. i had been deceived. it's a steadfast rule of american cooking that if something comes in a box, it needs to be cooked in seven minutes flat. the macaroni & cheese people get it, why not pee-loff?

anyway, i'm still pissed. if i were a senior citizen, i'd talk about this at my next game of bridge. as this isn't the case, i'll probably forget about this by tomorrow morning.

excuse me while i go spend 40 minutes looking for something that will cook in seven.

culinary orgasm 10/15/09

roasted garlic cloves, thickly-sliced rustic bread saturated with olive oil, provençal tomatoes and goat cheese coated with nuts and lightly fried. forget about food porn; i just had food caligula.

there are a lot of memorable firsts in my life; first kiss, first car, first forged doctor's note, first time i got arrested, but none of that holds a candle to the thrill of my first bite of this.

if it were possible to do sexytimes with a perfect 10 while simultaneously winning the lottery, that might come close to how happy i was eating this. i forget what it was called, "something chevre noix grillé tomates blah blah," but it was so good that my friend and i didn't bother with that "oh no, please, YOU have the last piece" bullshit. we bisected the bread, scraped off the garlic cloves, counted and divided them by two, split the remaining tomato and cheese in half and then retreated with our spoils to our respective corners. think gollum with his ring, that's how insanely into this shit we were.

i will not have a wedding cake, i will have a wedding chevre noix grillé tomates thing. of course, with my luck, my guests will be wheat and gluten allergic, tomatoes will be out of season and i'll have developed lactose intolerance and a nut allergy, but you get the point.

seriously, nasa's lucky i'm not an astronaut; i'd make them figure out how to freeze dry this.

anyway, this was a phenomenal meal and i'm sorry it's over. i'm going to step outside for a post-coital cigarette now.





me, getting all chupacabra and crazy-eyed as the food arrived.

penance 10/14/09

this was dinner.

even by my own barely there standards, last night's grazing was disgusting. i felt weird all day with a cloudy food headache. i knew that i'd be "good" today, but i didn't think i'd be "cottage cheese for dinner" good.

and i worked out. for the first time in at least six months, i broke a sweat voluntarily. for 30 minutes, i peddled furiously on a stationary bike, at the end of which my heart was beating so hard my stomach fat was gently rippling along with it as i stood still. i climbed into the shower a sweaty, feeble mess and experienced the simultaneous sensation of needing to vomit and wanting to collapse. i stared up at the light so that i could tell people i saw a white light, too.

i rushed through my soaping, pulled my clothes onto my still wet body and made it to the kitchen where i downed half a gallon of water. my mom always told me to have saltines and orange juice handy for diabetic friends, but i hate saltines and, to the best of my knowledge, am not diabetic, so i just drank the orange juice to stabilize myself.

i moseyed into the living room and collapsed on the couch, listening to my stomach slosh as i settled in.

i must have fallen asleep- or maybe it goes from afternoon to night in zero seconds around here.

anyway, i'm here now, eyefucking the chocolate bar on the counter about 10 feet from me, but i just can't bring myself to do it. i think i had the food equivalent of a brush with death last night and nothing tastes good enough for me to get back on the abu ghraib hell bike.

the great binge of 10/13/09

occasionally, there are times i eat because i'm hungry, but more often, it's because i have problems to ignore. i have dozens of excuses to eat: my cat died and i'm sad, i have a big project due and i'm stressed, the sky is blue and i'm 24, and while i usually have obvious motivations for eating, there are times when i'm eating with such unfathomable fervor that the only logical conclusion is that the wrath of god is passing through me in a storm of gluttony.

i can blow through a kitchen like a gale force hog tornado and devour everything with sugar in under 60 seconds. my dad found me passed out on the couch once with chocolate around my mouth, pizza on my shirt, a packet of sugar nestled between my cheek and gums and an empty can of sweetened condensed milk in my clenched fist. (i'm just kidding; i was actually awake when he caught me in the kitchen, panting.)

obviously, i know that my metabolism will eventually slow down and so i've enlisted the help of a graphic designer friend to generate an image of what i might look like in a few years without an intervention:



Age progression sponsored by Kraft.








today was one of those days when sugar entered my body indiscriminately. i ate a kit kat, a twix, three baby ice creams, cookies and even a fistful of chocolate calcium chews (even though i'm pretty sure the ones i ate were formulated for women). i was eating as though i'd just spent two years living in a place with nothing to eat, like england.

i managed to eat some real (read: salty) food today, but even that was restricted to pizza and macaroni cheese. i covered a few spinach leaves with some bleu cheese dressing and tried to force them down, but between the dressing's foot taste and the fiber in the spinach, my body rejected it and spit it back out on the plate.

i do think it's okay to eat like this once in a while; we all need a cheat day, after all. but i learned my lesson today and tomorrow, i'm waking up at the crack of noon, putting on my running shoes, walking to my car and heading for the taco bell drive-thru.

it definitely takes discipline not to eat a sac of cookies and three ice creams seven days a week, but this is health we're talking about and i take mine seriously.

chai knees 10/12/09

tonight was a big night for me. i expanded my culinary horizons for the first time in at least a few days by eating food that wasn't burritos or pizza. i had chinese food and documented the whole thing:

this is "intestine soup" because that's what i saw when i looked into the bowl and that's what i wanted to evacuate after eating it.

in some parts of the world, these are called potstickers. in my part of the world, these are called tongue-burning heart stoppers. never mind that the amount of oil used to fry these makes potsticking absolutely impossible, but the doughy crevices are perfect hiding places for small puddles of 200-degree oil.

this goes by the menu name "veggie hunan chicken," but i call it "sphincter scorcher." you'll notice that the visible chilies outnumber the chicken pieces and you will not notice the chili nest hiding below the chicken pieces.

this is a szechwan delicacy known as dump noodles.

they are named for the place where their ingredients come from and also the place where i intend on burying the body of the person who came up with this recipe.

this dish, with its thick, greasy nature is lovingly referred to as dago eggplant. it's the national dish of hell.

these are catfish, thusly named because some idiot thought these fish looked like garfield. i did not eat them.

i can't wait for my next culinary adventure.

woppy dinner 10/11/09

when it comes to school and business, i identify with my jewish side, but when the occasion calls for it, i'm happy to pull out other slivers of my family's ancestry and identify with those cultures, too. having recently watched scarface, i felt a surge of italian-american pride and decided to make pasta. (i know that al pacino's character is cuban, but al pacino himself is as italian as the louvre's greatest hits.)

i'm lucky enough to have access to dry-farmed tomatoes, which are the best tomatoes on the planet. their dense, flavorful flesh exposes those pink supermarket tomatoes for the mealy crap pellets they are. so i sauteed onions and garlic in olive oil, added the tomatoes and spices and immersion blended the hell out of it until it was a creamy orange sauce.

i then cooked some fusilli al dente, reserved a bit of the water, added my sauce and a bit of cream until i got this bad boy:

i tore some basil, threw it on top, put on my eating pants and went to town.

i don't mean to toot my own horn, but i did real good. i've paid good money for pasta that was vastly inferior to this.

as i was eating it, i thought that it could use some cubed mozzarella, but i didn't have any, so i melted some provolone on top of what was left: jackpot.

this was a really nice effort, i'll probably do this again. the only problem was the amount of salt i used. if salt were still a currency, this dish would be the federal reserve.

i'll tone down my liberal salt usage and use a more republican approach next time; not only will my pasta have less salt, but it will also get a tax cut, wiretapped and no public option.

new york pizza, shmew york pizza 10/10/09

i've temporarily retired burritos from their position as my favorite thing and replaced them with pizza. (i'll figure out my obsessive behaviors with food later.)

i recently went on a trip to chicago, followed immediately by a trip to new york. because new york is famous for its pizza and chicago is famous for crooked politicians and organized crime pizza also, i had to compare the two back to back.

new york pizza is so famous that people who've never been there talk about how good it is. whilst in new york, i tried several pizza places. i went to the favorite places of everyone i asked (and everyone really does have their own favorite) and some that were just convenient. i blotted the grease on some slices, i left it on others. i tried it plain with cheese, i tried it with toppings. i folded it in half and held it in my hand, i ate it with a knife and fork. i tried everyone's suggestions and came to this conclusion about new york pizza: big fucking deal.

chicago-style, on the other hand, is the ashlee simpson of pizza. it might have come along later than its big sibling, but it's a marked improvement of its predecessor. where new york pizza gives you first-degree grease burns and goes limp in your hand, windy city pizza takes its place firmly and confidently on a plate. its buttery crust is a marvel all its own and the pizza actually tastes better the second day than the first.

there's also no mythology about chicago pizza. nobody goes around talking about chicago's tap water as some sort of magic potion that makes it phenomenal. it's just phenomenal all by itself with regular old crappy cook county water. so i had chicago-style pizza today, made with crappy california water.

this picture doesn't really convey that the slice weighed two pounds, so you'll just have to believe it. the crust was loaded with cheese and garlic before being topped with a chunky tomato sauce.

if i were one of those who used words like "zesty" to describe tomato sauce, this is where i'd use it. the garlic was fresh and this is starting to sound like a yelp review.

anyway, the only bad thing about this meal was the crappy dressing that was on this salad. the dressing gets an F-, but i ate the salad anyway because one needs fiber when eating two pounds of cheese.

i'd like to recap what i've eaten in the past few days: french fries, burgers, ice cream, pizza, pizza.

maybe i'll get my act together for dinner tonight and eat steamed asparagus with some lipitor, but i can't make any promises. unlike chicago politicians, i don't promise to change much of anything.

round table 10/9/09

when i was little, i loved pizza chains. my parents never let me play video games with action, blood or anything really fun, so the pizza restaurants, equipped with arcades, became a place not only to stuff my face, but to play the video games that i was always refused access to.

as an adult, i've eaten at chain pizza places maybe twice. tonight, i wanted to relive my childhood and decided to go to round table pizza.

i ordered a pizza with mushrooms, olives and onions, not because i love them but because i needed some obvious way to distinguish between the pizza i was eating and the cardboard box that it came in.

mocking pizza is everyone's favorite pastime. people will tell you that new york has the best pizza on the planet, "better than in italy," they say, and that everything else falls completely flat in comparison. but considering that 8 million people live in new york and 6+ billion live outside of it, i have to assume that there's some quality pizza for the rest of us somwhere. that said, the 14" dreck pie i had tonight was not it.

i'm okay with having crap pizza from chain restaurants and i'm even okay with paying way more for it here than in new york. what i'm not okay with is biting through three slices, never tasting a difference between the "crust" and the slop on top of it.

i felt betrayed. scorned by my dinner, i made plans to effectively sleep with someone else. as soon as i was done, i sped to an ice cream shop and ordered a two-scoop ice cream cup with cookie dough and chocolate-with-more-chocolatey-shit-in-it.

i can't say that it erased the pain of my crap pizza, but it did stifle my hurt. in a time when the economy is in the tank, when all seems lost and pizza isn't even comfort food, it's good to know that ice cream is still there to distract me from reality.

napa 10/9/09

napa has always annoyed me. it seems like a pretty useless place; yuppies running to and fro, buying locally produced cheeses named after cities and climatic conditions, smugly double parking their lexuses while wearing lacoste...so i was pretty surprised that i suggested having lunch there.

i was worried that i'd end up having to eat something stupid like a locally-sourced butter lettuce salad with some fresh, locally-made croutons, sprinkled with some dumb local olive oil. luckily for me, though, gardenburgers have infiltrated the bucolic yuppie colony. not that gardenburgers are particularly innovative, but at least i don't feel like a second-class citizen eating them, which is more than be said for most vegetarian menu options. this double-pattied burger was made with american cheese, which was good, because i hadn't eaten anything with the consistency of polymers in a while.

these fries were delicious. they're called garlic fries, but really, they were pesto fries. they were coated in garlic, olive oil and basil. they were served with ranch dressing because the waitress didn't give us a choice and called the pairing "the dynamic duo." i don't know that i'd call slathering french fries with ranch dressing "dynamic," so much as "artery-clogging," but it was an acceptable combo.

two burgers and fries came to over $40, which makes me feel like i should have been served a gardenburger that had been massaged by a farmer, but i'm in napa once every four years, so i'll get over it.

i went to get a fleur de sel cupcake afterward, but i was stuffed so i opted instead for a bottle of water whose label described its contents as "velvety and smooth." between my fabric water and brioche bun, i'm pretty set for the day. hopefully i'll be eating my next meal in reality.

in-d-in 10/8/09

indian food is remarkably consistent. no matter where you are on the planet, if you can find a strip mall, you can find an indian restaurant. flavors vary, of course, but there are a couple steadfast rules about indian food that every restaurant follows:

1. everything you eat will leave behind an oil slick
2. all salads will contain lettuce that is closer to yellow than green
3. the rice will always be adulterated with peas
4. a cardamom pod will always ruin at least one bite
5. you will never recognize more than a third of the menu items
6. there's no such thing as a free lunch at an indian restaurant, but there is such a thing as a buffet lunch, and that's the only kind you'll be offered
8. actually, there's no such thing as a free anything at an indian restaurant; not rice, not bread, and no supplement costs less than $3.50
7. when you want to order, you'll have to wait 20 minutes, but when you take even one sip of water, your waiter will show up immediately to refill your glass
8. all napkins in indian restaurants are over-starched and will scrape your face when you wipe your mouth
9. your dessert will be so sweet that your teeth will want to jump out of your mouth. you will suffer sugar burn
10. at least one of your fingernails will be stained yellow by the end of your meal

i love indian food, but i love eating in indian restaurants even more.

psycho vegetables 10/8/09

i was trying really hard to be regimented today and do the breakfast-lunch-dinner thing, but since i've perfected the art of waking up scattered, i managed to eat a square of swiss chocolate and a fig for breakfast. some licorice may have been involved, but like i said, i was scattered.

i decided that there's no such thing as too much fiber, so i ate this for lunch: it's a plate of roasted vegetables. broccoli, sweet potatoes, not sweet potatoes, broccoli, squash, garlic, onions and some veggie chicken thing.

have you ever eaten something and known that it was going to shock the shit out of your body? that's, quite literally, what happened to me.

i'll spare you the details because i've recruited some waspy friends as an audience and they're uncomfortable with doodie talk, but suffice it to say that amoebic dysentery doesn't hold a candle to this dish.

i'm not used to liking the taste of vegetables, but my mom did a great job on these. also, i think it's creepy when twentysomethings' mothers cook for them because it feels like a slippery slope, at the end of which we all move in with our mothers. the biggest problem with that is what when i think of grown men who live with their mothers, norman bates and leatherface are the first two names that come to mind.

anyway, i ravaged the first plate, went back for seconds and was all over them like europeans on techno. i felt full, but in that healthy, self-righteous way that anyone who's dieted could tell you all about.

so congrats to my mom for making a lunch that was healthy, colorful and incredibly delicious. i love her a lot, but we probably won't live together anytime soon, unless, of course, she's planning on buying a motel.

evening 10/7/09

this eating twice a day thing really isn't me. i'm going to get back on a routine tomorrow. i always thought routines were for suckers, but that's when i was in my early twenties last year and i've since seen the light.

i get hungry at noon and then at 5 PM and then feel like it's too early to eat, so i wait, get tired and grumpy or eat early and get hungry before bed.

this pile of fiber is what i ate for second meal. it was a brown rice and all kinds of delicious things. but not the green olives. the green olives were disgusting. they're vegetable kryptonite. the only food grosser than green olives is sourdough bread. once when i was a kid, my dad brought home sourdough with green olives and i almost moved.

also, why the hell does everything in california come with chips? even nachos come with side orders of chips. what would happen if i just ordered a side of chips? no wonder i hate them; chips are so plebeian. they're the toyota corolla of food.

i have to go to bed now.

afternoon 10/7/09

much to my dismay, i had to wake up early today. i was so tired that it felt like i hadn't slept and so i stumbled through the first five hours of the day like a zombie.

being totally out of it, i forgot to eat breakfast. i've always envied people who say, "when i'm busy, i forget to eat." for me, the only time i "forget" to eat is when my options are so repugnant that i'd rather chew off my arm than eat the bilge before me.

anyway, since it was noon and i was starting to get that kind of grumpy disposition that is only brought on by low blood sugar or senility, i knew it was time to eat. feeling exhausted and feeling hungover are the same sensation for me, so i went for fried potatoes. what you see on that plate is potatoes, whole wheat toast and pesto scrambled tofu. i could have done without the orange on top because a) i don't live in brazil and b) it made the tofu taste like bathroom cleaner.

i'm on my third cup of coffee for the day and it's not even 1 PM. i hope the sun sets soon.

dinner 10/6/09

before you get all judgmental and ready to ridicule me for eating a mango for dinner, let me tell you that i finished the sushi from last night first and that this was dessert.

...i think this makes me sound even more smug, somehow.

this was the best mango on the planet. it was mature, ripe, juicy and still firm. this was the "best friend's hot mom" of mangoes.

this is good, since day-old sushi tastes like salvation army. it's not a taste that should be allowed in developed nations.

anyway, i had to eat some chocolate afterward because it's what i really wanted in the first place. good mangoes really are delicious, but i'm about 30 years shy of believing that fruit tastes better than chocolate.

afternoon 10/6/09

there was no morning post today because i didn't get my ass into gear until almost noon. since breakfast is maybe the least interesting meal of the day to me, i didn't mind skipping it. not having eaten anything, i wanted to go easy on my stomach so i ate something simple: pickled jalapeños, salsa, radishes and chips. (beats the hell out of frosted flakes.)

it should be noted that i didn't finish the chips because i was leaving room for this next bit:


two veggie tacos. these aren't your hard shell, dump bean, taco bell glowing crunchies, these are the kind of tacos that make you want to put felipe calderón in charge of america. (just. fucking. joking.)

i would marry these tacos, but i'm afriad they'd just be in it for the green card. they're my favorite food. unfortunately for me, they're also massive. i ate the right one first because it looked the smarmiest and then i moved over to the left, but i couldn't do it. i ate the toppings off, but when it came time to eat the double-tortilla quesadilla platform, i had to throw in the towel.

i'm pretty sure i'm making progress. last night, i ate only 2/3 of my sushi; today, only 1.5 tacos (that's 1,5 tacos for the europeans). of course, when there was a sushi ocean and two taco volcanos, eating "only" 2/3 of them isn't that impressive.

i was going to photograph the remaining taco platform, but it looked like a crime scene. you're welcome.