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.