Saturday can has pikshurburger

So, I'm sorry, but Sunday just plum tuckered me out and I didn't write this till Monday. I think I remember all the things I ate, though, and I do have photographs so you have decided to forgive me. You are very kind.

The first thing I had was a piece of tofu in what I believe was a tomatillo sauce that my roommate had made with a lady friend the day before. It was pretty good and I was fixing to warm the rest up when I got a call from a friend who was in town for a conference. We were supposed to meet up for dinner but her plans had changed and I had to rush downtown to meet her for lunch instead.

I got to her hotel a little after t 2PM and she was trying to catch a bus at 3pm. I'd wanted to take her to the hamburger stand in Le Parker Meridien, but we didn't have time so I settled on Yip's, a little Chinese take-out buffet on 53rd St. between 5th Ave and the Avenue of the Americas. about $5 will get you your choice of two items and white or brown rice or lo mein. It's not authentic Chinese; it's authentic Chinese-American swill. For fast cheap lunch you can't do better in the neighborhood, especially considering relative quality and volume. Your $5 will fill you up.

We were in a hurry and they didn't have their spicy tofu, which is my favorite, so I just pointed at the two most appealing things in the limited weekend menu. These both happened to be "barbecue" items, a chicken and a shrimp, which would be more accurately described as "fried and smothered in annato candy sauce." I guess they drew my attention because they were red and shiny. They ended up being quite good for candied meat. I also had a Formula50 Vitamin Water and some of my friend's lo mein since she didn't think she could finish it all. I'm not a fatass, I just like to make other people happy.

We ate quick and dashed over to 7th Ave to catch her a downtown cab to the Port Authority bus terminal. For those of you that don't know the city, that's about ten blocks straigh south and one block to the west of where we were, 0.6 mi. by google.maps' reckoning. It would take too long for her to walk in time for the bus, but a taxi would take all of 4 minutes, if that. That is why what happened next is so infuriating.

We hailed a cab fairly quickly, and as my friend climbed in the back with all her luggage, I told the cab driver that she was going to the Port Authority bus terminal. I said goodbye and dove into the back for a quick hug and as I was about to turn to walk away, my friend started climbing back out of the cab with all of her stuff, saying that the cabby had said he "didn't have enough gas."

Enough gas to what? Let her off half a block from the 2nd closest gas station? He was already heading south anyway, and getting to the "closest" station would have taken enough looping around blocks that the net difference in distance was 3 blocks. If he couldnt drive more than 5 blocks without stopping, why did he pull over in the first place? I wish I spoke his native language so I could really let him know how I feel. My friend did not make her bus and had to wait another 2 hours. I also regret not taking down his plate numbers so that I could call dispatch and share with them what a knob this guy was.

But I'm getting off topic. You want to know what I ate next, right?

Well, I went home and made dinner for my girlfriend and myslef. We had bacon cheeseburgers with garlic-parmesean pasta and steamed asparagus and carrots.

My girlfriend wondered why I bothered to make pasta to go with a burger. Well, because I'd made way too much spaghetti for the tuna pasta and I had it in the fridge. It was easy enough to saute some diced garlic in olive oil and a little butter till it started to brown, then throw in some of the spaghetti and some black pepper, then turn off the heat and stir in enough parm to bind it together a little bit.

The burger was just the general ground beef available at my local grocer. I mixed in some Adobo, a little oregano, a sprinkling of brown sugar and a kiss of sesame oil. The burgers were cooked on a George Foreman grill and then I melted a little munster cheese over the top and served them on Kaiser rolls with slices of bacon. I also put some mushrooms and onions sauteed in the bacon fat to mine, although my girlfriend opted to forego that little touch of swillossimness.

The asparagus and carrots had marinated in a little Balsamic vinegar, olive oil, white vinegar and honey for about 2 hours. Then I steamed them breifly with a little water and the juice they had marinated in.

the end result looked a little something like this.

I did have a sip or two of the Power C VitaminWater, but it's not really my thing, so I stuck mainly to water with dinner.

Later that evening I had a shot of espresso over ice with half and half and a sprinkling of "sugar in the raw" and a few bites of an MnM cookie, sadly from a chain coffee shop, since a more mom'n'pop establishment was not visible from the streets near where I'd gone to see friends of my girlfriend perform at a Columbia frat house.

Not quite as obnoxious as some frat houses I've been to, and really not the same when one isn't drinking or trying to pick up 18-20 year-olds, but I hadn't been to a party that was broken up by campus police in a while, so that was mildly novel.

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