Last Updated on August 25, 2008
I am such a putz. But now, by incessant demand, I shall resume my quest to exhaustively chronicle my eats, from the inane to the insane.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Caloric intake for the day started with a Jeno's frozen pizza, which I had heated up the night before, eaten three bites out of, and then wrapped up in a ziploc sandwich bag. I had every intention of reheating it in our office's toaster oven, but when the time came to start feeding the genius machine, I just couldn't hold out for the toaster oven's slow-loving touch. I had that gibbus moon of sausage, pepperoni, "cheese," sauce and starch cold, soggy and folded in half. It was a terrible thing I did in the name of food, and I loved every bite of it.
Then came an amazingly decadent surprise. A co-worker brought in some indulgently decadent baked goods to share with the office. They were mini-loaves of ginger cake with a honey and cream cheese icing and sliced candied ginger on top. She'd gone for apple sauce instead of oil for the ginger cake which made them very dense and moist. Even for my butter-mad palate, the icing more than made up for any oil that might have been missing from the cake and the candied ginger was surpirsingly moist as well, making for a warm, creamy hug of a breakfast-ender.
Lunch time was time for leftovers, although with soup, really, the left-overs can be the main event. The soup du jour was actually the soup du last Thursday, an Italian wedding soup I made in the burgeoning throes of romance. Emotional context infused the layers of this eclectic take on the traditional Italian layers. The soup started with an onion, celery and green and red pepper "trinity" that soon folded around garlic, chantrelles, zucchini, and red, white and blue potatoes. The whole mess stewed in a blend of beef and chicken stock and then we finished the soup with green beans, frozen meat balls and whole wheat rotini. A little cheating in the name of expediency here and there, but the results were grandly satisfying, even days later.
I also snuck a piece or two of WholeFoods' brown rice salmon roll and a few bites of barley soup from my lunch partner, because, honestly, why else do you eat with other people if not to steal their food?
Then, as so often happens at my office, just when you get back from lunch, you are informed of a room full of leftovers from some faculty luncheon or another, and you make your way dutifully down to bond with your fellow scavengers. I had a grilled chicken wrap with roasted vegetables inside. The veggies were mushy, the chicken was, bite to bite, possibly very dry and uninviting, and yet somehow I ate all of it. I also availed myself of some tortelini antipasta and some macaroni salad, not to mention a handful of cookies, of course. The antipasta was good, but already very picked over when I got there so there wasn't much actual tortelini left in the bowl. The macaroni salad was tolerable, though cloying. Mayonaise dressings with a lot of sugar in them can be downright unsettling. The caterer would have done a lot better to cut back on the goop and add more fresh veggies to compete with the syrupy oversaturation of eggs, oil and geuh.
Free samples! In the ridiculously long line at Trader Joe's, thankfully accompanied by the most pleasant company I could think of, we threw back some jerk chicken. Mine was gone in two bites, seconds after we picked up our little pleated paper cups, prompting my companion to comment on the disparity between our portions. Not one to take credit for chivalry unintended, I didn't so much pass on the lion's share as I wolfed down the sizable portion I took for myself. As much as I can remember tasting it, it was pretty darn good.
Dinner, when it finally came, was an old stand-by come back to visit: Pork Gyoza, fried, then steamed, then fried again. I prepared a dipping bowl of ponzu (soy sauce and vinegar flavored with yuzu, a citrus similar to grapefruit) and chili oil, that about a dozen of the wrinkly little bags of awesome, fried a crispy brown on one side, slid through on their way into my welcoming gob. What iconic perfection. I managed to hold myself off at a dozen by suplementing the dinner with a large crisp corn tortilla as I was cooking and then a flour tortilla, fried and then smeared with goat cheese and wildflower honey as a desert. As awesome as you might think that desert might be, I have to admit that I did not have actual butter on hand in my kitchen (oh, the horror) and had to instead fry the tortilla smeared in SmartBalance. Geuh. Still, it wasn't a bad finish and there was no mistake in my stomach that caloric intake had reached a fitting end for the day.
It was time to wash it all down with several tall glasses of water and start thinking about breakfast...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
A Sunday for Fatasses
Well, it wasn't so fattening, but it wasn't so unfattening either, kna'mean?
First things first: a frozen Nutty Buddy a la Little Debbie. These things are just so great frozen. They take on an extra crispiness and the peanut butter makes this odd extra cold sensation on your tongue. It's not so much breakfast as the thing you eat to give you the energy you need to really make a decent Sunday brunch.
Scrambled eggs with green peppers and monterray jack cheese, black beans, chorizo gravy and a cilantro, onion, lime and tomato salsa fresca. Wrap it all in a tortilla, eat it after noon with a beer on the side, and you have a pretty mean brunch. I was afraid the gravy and the salsa fresca would fight, but they got along wonderfully, aside from the salsa fresca having a ton of water to it and causing unsightly green trails to creep out the back of the tortilla and down my arm. The two tortillas worth of awesome I put down had me pretty well set for the rest of the day, really. The rest of the day is just a blur of snacking on things I probably shouldn't have bothered to eat, since I never actually felt hungry.
The closest I came to lunch was a cold egg roll from the fridge. When my roommate ordered Chinese Saturday evening, I had him tack on a few egg rolls specifically with the intent of eating them later, cold. Alternately smudging on a little karashi (Japanese mustard) and La Yu chili oil, they just go down so easy on a hot afternoon.
From there I moved on to a seemingly endless parade of snacks: Generic brand "Golden Grahams" that I like better than actual Golden Grahams; Chips-a-Hoy white fudge super-chunk cookies; a few choice selections from Pepperidge Farms' Distinctive Cookie Sampler, I believe a chessmen cookie and a raspberry lace thing were involved; some twists of crunchy puffed and fried corn starch glazed with cinnamon and sugar, mostly sugar, that were intended to be something like Taco Bell's cinnamon twists; and, rice crispy treats that I made from scratch with a little cinnamon, almond extract and sesame oil mixed into the marshmallows before adding rice crispies and some of the genero-graham cereal. The sesame makes much more aroma than taste, and all my trickery made for an interesting deviation from the rice crispy treat norm, but I think a batch of the regular, no frills, traditional variety will have to happen shortly.
Marginally Related Side-Note:
Do you remember rice crispy treats cereal? It was just chunks of rice crispies glopped together by marshmallow, and then you eat them with milk and pretend your breakfast won't speed the onset of diabetes. I loved that stuff when I was a kid, sometime around being 22 or 23. Nowadays we have even worse cereal. As extra insult to the Crystal Skull injury levied against the Indiana Jones series of films, there is now an "Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Crystal Skull: the cereal" available for your tooth-rotting pleasure. This obnoxious mix of cocoa puffs with malformed marshmallows similar to lucky charms marshmallows (but these all in just yellow and white representations of crystal skulls and other ancient loot) does for breakfast cereal what the movie does for George Lucas' reputation as a cinematic auteur.
First things first: a frozen Nutty Buddy a la Little Debbie. These things are just so great frozen. They take on an extra crispiness and the peanut butter makes this odd extra cold sensation on your tongue. It's not so much breakfast as the thing you eat to give you the energy you need to really make a decent Sunday brunch.
Scrambled eggs with green peppers and monterray jack cheese, black beans, chorizo gravy and a cilantro, onion, lime and tomato salsa fresca. Wrap it all in a tortilla, eat it after noon with a beer on the side, and you have a pretty mean brunch. I was afraid the gravy and the salsa fresca would fight, but they got along wonderfully, aside from the salsa fresca having a ton of water to it and causing unsightly green trails to creep out the back of the tortilla and down my arm. The two tortillas worth of awesome I put down had me pretty well set for the rest of the day, really. The rest of the day is just a blur of snacking on things I probably shouldn't have bothered to eat, since I never actually felt hungry.
The closest I came to lunch was a cold egg roll from the fridge. When my roommate ordered Chinese Saturday evening, I had him tack on a few egg rolls specifically with the intent of eating them later, cold. Alternately smudging on a little karashi (Japanese mustard) and La Yu chili oil, they just go down so easy on a hot afternoon.
From there I moved on to a seemingly endless parade of snacks: Generic brand "Golden Grahams" that I like better than actual Golden Grahams; Chips-a-Hoy white fudge super-chunk cookies; a few choice selections from Pepperidge Farms' Distinctive Cookie Sampler, I believe a chessmen cookie and a raspberry lace thing were involved; some twists of crunchy puffed and fried corn starch glazed with cinnamon and sugar, mostly sugar, that were intended to be something like Taco Bell's cinnamon twists; and, rice crispy treats that I made from scratch with a little cinnamon, almond extract and sesame oil mixed into the marshmallows before adding rice crispies and some of the genero-graham cereal. The sesame makes much more aroma than taste, and all my trickery made for an interesting deviation from the rice crispy treat norm, but I think a batch of the regular, no frills, traditional variety will have to happen shortly.
Marginally Related Side-Note:
Do you remember rice crispy treats cereal? It was just chunks of rice crispies glopped together by marshmallow, and then you eat them with milk and pretend your breakfast won't speed the onset of diabetes. I loved that stuff when I was a kid, sometime around being 22 or 23. Nowadays we have even worse cereal. As extra insult to the Crystal Skull injury levied against the Indiana Jones series of films, there is now an "Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Crystal Skull: the cereal" available for your tooth-rotting pleasure. This obnoxious mix of cocoa puffs with malformed marshmallows similar to lucky charms marshmallows (but these all in just yellow and white representations of crystal skulls and other ancient loot) does for breakfast cereal what the movie does for George Lucas' reputation as a cinematic auteur.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
wednesday? really? what happened to tuesday? oh, that's right, i ate it.
This will not be one of those entries wherein I go into detail about some great restaurant or meal I made at home. Yesterday was, to frame it properly, the day before payday, and my life and pay schedule conspired to put me in a position where my food budget for yesterday was $0.
In the morning I had spring rolls made from left-over mu shu pork wrapped in Vietnamese cold rice wrappers, the ones you use for fresh spring rolls. The mu shu was actually very good cold, but there was only enough left to make three rolls, each about 3 1/2 " long and about an inch wide.
This left me pretty hungry still, and so, when co-workers were headed to the re-opening of the Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner building after their summer vacation (the bakery was on vacation, not my co-workers) I decided I should dip into my laundry budget in the interest of bolstering my caloric intake for the day. Who needs clean underwear when you have Gold Bond, anyway? I suppose $2.75 for an almond croissant filled with raspberry jam is reasonable for Manhattan, especially on the corner of Central Park in the same building as a Whole Foods, Godiva Chocolate and numerous offices of various executives in assorted Time Warner fiefdoms. The croissant was quite good, although I don't know if I was in the right frame of mind to really enjoy splurging on decadent pastries. Though I didn't develop any unsightly chaffing or rashes as a result of delaying my laundry washing, the creeping fear of such consequences may have unfairly colored my experience. Also, as a fan of excellent coffee and the beneficiary of quite a bit of mediocre free coffee, spending any amount of money on their bland latte was a big mistake.
Somehow, after the croissant, I forgot to stop and eat lunch. It wasn't that I didn't have food for lunch, there was black bean and chorizo pasta in my fridge at work, but I was so hypnotised by the repetitive act of folding letters and stuffing them into envelopes that the afternoon just sort of faded away. The next thing I knew it was time for a co-worker's reception in honor of his years of service as he left our school to work somewheres else. This means that my lunch was not only late, but also comprised mostly of crackers, cheese and fruit. I know this isn't the most filling fare and wasn't really enough food to be lunch for a kindergarten student, but I did get my vegetables, carrots, red peppers, brocoli and cucumbers, all dipped in some kind of french onion/ranch hybrid. There was american cheese, brie, some kind of marbled brown-and-gouda-looking cheese, and a havarti dill. I also availed myself of the pineapple and blueberries, the latter of which cleaned my palate and complimented the complimentary Heineken very well. I guess if you gave a kindergarten student a Heineken his lunch would be pretty effectively over, so ok, it was a full enough lunch. It was too bad I had to clock another two hours of overtime after the party, because my liver steadily put an end to the free booze as I clicked away at my computer and my co-workers took the party to a nearby bar. By the time I was done I wasn't so much drunk or sober as just wiped out. Sorry, Dwayne. Raincheck!
Dinner was equally as unimpressive, left over thai curry with brown rice, that wasn't even my leftovers, but was the leftovers of a friend who left them in our fridge before leaving the country. Under British Naval Statutes, that makes the food fair plunder, so down below decks it went, a utilitarian end to a make-do day.
In the morning I had spring rolls made from left-over mu shu pork wrapped in Vietnamese cold rice wrappers, the ones you use for fresh spring rolls. The mu shu was actually very good cold, but there was only enough left to make three rolls, each about 3 1/2 " long and about an inch wide.
This left me pretty hungry still, and so, when co-workers were headed to the re-opening of the Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner building after their summer vacation (the bakery was on vacation, not my co-workers) I decided I should dip into my laundry budget in the interest of bolstering my caloric intake for the day. Who needs clean underwear when you have Gold Bond, anyway? I suppose $2.75 for an almond croissant filled with raspberry jam is reasonable for Manhattan, especially on the corner of Central Park in the same building as a Whole Foods, Godiva Chocolate and numerous offices of various executives in assorted Time Warner fiefdoms. The croissant was quite good, although I don't know if I was in the right frame of mind to really enjoy splurging on decadent pastries. Though I didn't develop any unsightly chaffing or rashes as a result of delaying my laundry washing, the creeping fear of such consequences may have unfairly colored my experience. Also, as a fan of excellent coffee and the beneficiary of quite a bit of mediocre free coffee, spending any amount of money on their bland latte was a big mistake.
Somehow, after the croissant, I forgot to stop and eat lunch. It wasn't that I didn't have food for lunch, there was black bean and chorizo pasta in my fridge at work, but I was so hypnotised by the repetitive act of folding letters and stuffing them into envelopes that the afternoon just sort of faded away. The next thing I knew it was time for a co-worker's reception in honor of his years of service as he left our school to work somewheres else. This means that my lunch was not only late, but also comprised mostly of crackers, cheese and fruit. I know this isn't the most filling fare and wasn't really enough food to be lunch for a kindergarten student, but I did get my vegetables, carrots, red peppers, brocoli and cucumbers, all dipped in some kind of french onion/ranch hybrid. There was american cheese, brie, some kind of marbled brown-and-gouda-looking cheese, and a havarti dill. I also availed myself of the pineapple and blueberries, the latter of which cleaned my palate and complimented the complimentary Heineken very well. I guess if you gave a kindergarten student a Heineken his lunch would be pretty effectively over, so ok, it was a full enough lunch. It was too bad I had to clock another two hours of overtime after the party, because my liver steadily put an end to the free booze as I clicked away at my computer and my co-workers took the party to a nearby bar. By the time I was done I wasn't so much drunk or sober as just wiped out. Sorry, Dwayne. Raincheck!
Dinner was equally as unimpressive, left over thai curry with brown rice, that wasn't even my leftovers, but was the leftovers of a friend who left them in our fridge before leaving the country. Under British Naval Statutes, that makes the food fair plunder, so down below decks it went, a utilitarian end to a make-do day.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Sunday, so many days left behind
Brunch with a friend leaving the country for a few weeks was a nice excuse to do something a little above the usual breakfast burrito and frozen pizza fare I subsist on. Instead, I tried to plate something a little more daring, an omelet. This was not your average bacon and cheese, no, not even a western omelet. This was green peppers and garlic with a blue cheese and blackberry ricotta filling. The textures were perfect. I timed the omelets just right so that they had just barely set and you could cut through them with a fork without displacing all the filling. The ricotta filling could have used a little salt, but otherwise the recipe was sound. I served them with a salad of mixed baby greens and Munster cheese in an apple cider vinegar and horseradish dressing an couscous drizzled with chili oil and honey.
Lunch and dinner were much more humble. I snuck one of my frozen bean burritos into the show at McCarren Park Pool and ate it during the Aesop Rock set once it had finally thawed. I was apprehensive about eating them without reheating them, since I imagined frozen baked beans would not be very appealing. This burrito was just refrigerator cold with no frozen bits left. It was quite good that way and I will probably eat the rest of them cold. The microwave just slows me down.
Dinner was just one single sweet plantain and pork pastry from the cuchifritos joint near my house. I am addicted to them now, but there are worse addictions, really. At least with this addiction I'm only spending $1.50 to be pretty thoroughly satisfied.
Lunch and dinner were much more humble. I snuck one of my frozen bean burritos into the show at McCarren Park Pool and ate it during the Aesop Rock set once it had finally thawed. I was apprehensive about eating them without reheating them, since I imagined frozen baked beans would not be very appealing. This burrito was just refrigerator cold with no frozen bits left. It was quite good that way and I will probably eat the rest of them cold. The microwave just slows me down.
Dinner was just one single sweet plantain and pork pastry from the cuchifritos joint near my house. I am addicted to them now, but there are worse addictions, really. At least with this addiction I'm only spending $1.50 to be pretty thoroughly satisfied.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
tuesday takes another chance at life
A lot of old favorites took pretty hard swings at my colon yesterday. I'm happy to report I'm still processing food more or less normally, although I'm going to stay away from spicy food for a while, I think, well, outside of the small army of bean burritos I made Monday night and froze for easy eating at work the next few days. I two of those burritos for lunch, but I've gotten ahead of myself, haven't I. Save the burrito talk for later.
For breakfast I had burritos, breakfast burritos. This time round it was hot dog, green pepper and a cheddar and monterray jack chese blend. I wrapped them in a paper towel before wrapping them in saran wrap in an attempt to control the moisture of freshly cooked foods wrapped immediately in plastic. Instead of nice, moderately moist burritos, however, I discovered that paper towel and flour tortilla will begin to bond into a single, homogeneous given enough time and moisture. They seemed almost organically fused with each other, and it was more like peeling garlic or an onion than removing two previously separate surfaces from one another. It made me wonder if we couldn't grow burrito trees that produce bean burritos like fruit. They were such a pain to finally peel apart, though, that I abandoned the idea, thinking it was too much of a pain in the ass to really become popular in the modern food market.
Throughout the afternoon there was some peanut brittle, a Pepperidge Farm Soft Baked oatmeal cookie, and two very naughty looking Drakes cakes. It was a particularly weak day for snacking.
Then there were the bean burritos, refried beans, rice, green peppers, the monterray/cheddar blend from breakfast and some Kick Ass hot sauce, a very fiery habanero-based version of liquid pain that I find quite pleasant in moderate doses. Having premade the burritos while on the phone with my parents, some burritos are more moderate than others, and it's a bit of a crapshoot just how much eating one is going to hurt. One of the ones I had for lunch was spicier than most people find appealing.
The one I had with dinner was pretty tame, but maybe I was just getting used to them by then.
Along with my fifth burrito for the day, I had tomato coconut soup. This is a great idea that I stole from Honey's in Philadelphia. The basic recipe is a can of tomato soup, a can of coconut milk, and half a can of water, heated. I like to step it up a little, though. This time I heated about 2 Tbsp of my ginger/garlic paste in olive oil, then added a quarter cup of the spicy tomato soup from my uncle's greenhouse and about a quarter cup of brown rice. After letting them get to know each other for a bit, I added the coconut milk, and then, after about 5 min, I added the can of tomato soup and a can and a half of water. I covered this and cooked it on a very low boil until the rice was tender. Then I finished the top with a little dried basil and cumin powder.
The spice was a little fast up front, but stuck around with a nice, long, caring burn that didn't overpower the interplay between the coconut and tomato. My dinner guest and I really enjoyed it, and both finished heaping bowls, but between the burritos and the heat from the spicy tomato soup, well, lets say my colon was still a bit mad at me when I woke up today.
For breakfast I had burritos, breakfast burritos. This time round it was hot dog, green pepper and a cheddar and monterray jack chese blend. I wrapped them in a paper towel before wrapping them in saran wrap in an attempt to control the moisture of freshly cooked foods wrapped immediately in plastic. Instead of nice, moderately moist burritos, however, I discovered that paper towel and flour tortilla will begin to bond into a single, homogeneous given enough time and moisture. They seemed almost organically fused with each other, and it was more like peeling garlic or an onion than removing two previously separate surfaces from one another. It made me wonder if we couldn't grow burrito trees that produce bean burritos like fruit. They were such a pain to finally peel apart, though, that I abandoned the idea, thinking it was too much of a pain in the ass to really become popular in the modern food market.
Throughout the afternoon there was some peanut brittle, a Pepperidge Farm Soft Baked oatmeal cookie, and two very naughty looking Drakes cakes. It was a particularly weak day for snacking.
Then there were the bean burritos, refried beans, rice, green peppers, the monterray/cheddar blend from breakfast and some Kick Ass hot sauce, a very fiery habanero-based version of liquid pain that I find quite pleasant in moderate doses. Having premade the burritos while on the phone with my parents, some burritos are more moderate than others, and it's a bit of a crapshoot just how much eating one is going to hurt. One of the ones I had for lunch was spicier than most people find appealing.
The one I had with dinner was pretty tame, but maybe I was just getting used to them by then.
Along with my fifth burrito for the day, I had tomato coconut soup. This is a great idea that I stole from Honey's in Philadelphia. The basic recipe is a can of tomato soup, a can of coconut milk, and half a can of water, heated. I like to step it up a little, though. This time I heated about 2 Tbsp of my ginger/garlic paste in olive oil, then added a quarter cup of the spicy tomato soup from my uncle's greenhouse and about a quarter cup of brown rice. After letting them get to know each other for a bit, I added the coconut milk, and then, after about 5 min, I added the can of tomato soup and a can and a half of water. I covered this and cooked it on a very low boil until the rice was tender. Then I finished the top with a little dried basil and cumin powder.
The spice was a little fast up front, but stuck around with a nice, long, caring burn that didn't overpower the interplay between the coconut and tomato. My dinner guest and I really enjoyed it, and both finished heaping bowls, but between the burritos and the heat from the spicy tomato soup, well, lets say my colon was still a bit mad at me when I woke up today.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
the turning tides of monday
bacon, leaving fat
mushrooms and spinach take it
eggs, bleu cheese, om'let
an embrace of lips
somehow describes this parcel
chocolate, foil, flag
a year past the date
Campbell's chicken and stars soup
Here's hoping I live
Stolen, well, kind of
from a dish of "free" choc'late
milky way dark, twix
ah, soft-baked oatmeal
too large to be just a snack
mini-meal of my heart
sandwich as present
half a cuban, left over
motainai
someone else's gift
sweet edible souvenir
peanuts and brittle
a bowl of white rice
meditative, simple, pure
pepper topped finish
tastes of future food
stolen fresh from the hearth's heat
nicked from cutting boards
bottles of water
bottles and bottles of water
cold, warm, tepid, chugged
mushrooms and spinach take it
eggs, bleu cheese, om'let
an embrace of lips
somehow describes this parcel
chocolate, foil, flag
a year past the date
Campbell's chicken and stars soup
Here's hoping I live
Stolen, well, kind of
from a dish of "free" choc'late
milky way dark, twix
ah, soft-baked oatmeal
too large to be just a snack
mini-meal of my heart
sandwich as present
half a cuban, left over
motainai
someone else's gift
sweet edible souvenir
peanuts and brittle
a bowl of white rice
meditative, simple, pure
pepper topped finish
tastes of future food
stolen fresh from the hearth's heat
nicked from cutting boards
bottles of water
bottles and bottles of water
cold, warm, tepid, chugged
Monday, August 11, 2008
sunday sticks it in
Sunday brunch, long part of the NYC mythos, has yet to appear in these blog pages. Well, here's my NYC brunch debut, which wasn't really anything to write home about.
We ate at Phoebe's in Brooklyn. The atmosphere was very relaxed, and I was immediately pleased to see cans of Genesee Cream Ale tucked into their refrigerated display case up front. The back yard sports a few tables that stayed mostly full our whole time there. All in all it seemed pretty popular, but I'm not exactly sure why.
The menu was fairly reasonable for brunch, but the food that came out was not worth my $8. We all had the steamed eggs, which are like scrambled eggs, but cooked via a cappuccino milk steamer. There were scallions, red peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes mixed in with the eggs, and while I'm sure some people appreciate the low-fat take on egg preparation, the technique did not live up to the culinary magic that eggs can and should be. What came out on two drooping leaves of lettuce, topped with some unoffensive white cheese with a salsa fresca on one side and roasted yams on the other, was a rubbery lump of 3 eggs worth of protein with under-prepared vegetables haplessly suspended, unable to make a break for more appetizing platings. Their 7-grain toast was quite good and the roasted yams were much better than I expected them to be, but for a signature dish they should really work on improving the technique of their appointed egg steamerists.
Later that day I had a lunch/dinner fusion meal, fusing more the time and function than any real menu differences. I mixed cucumbers, carrots, hot sausage, mushrooms fried in hot sausage grease, and bleu cheese into couscous drizzled with sesame and chili oils. It would have been a great power lunch or an easy, one-bowl dinner. I ate it late enough to be dinner, but considering I slept through most of the afternoon and I was up until after midnight, it felt more lunchy than anything.
That evening, in my friends' apartment in Red Hook I caught a few long tosses of Tostito's Hint of Lime tortilla chips. those things are seasoned perfectly for eating 4 or 5, so that's what I did. Any more and they become a bit overwhelming.
And that was it for the evening. Though I felt a little snacky, I decided a few big glasses of water before bed would be better than a raid on the crouton box.
We ate at Phoebe's in Brooklyn. The atmosphere was very relaxed, and I was immediately pleased to see cans of Genesee Cream Ale tucked into their refrigerated display case up front. The back yard sports a few tables that stayed mostly full our whole time there. All in all it seemed pretty popular, but I'm not exactly sure why.
The menu was fairly reasonable for brunch, but the food that came out was not worth my $8. We all had the steamed eggs, which are like scrambled eggs, but cooked via a cappuccino milk steamer. There were scallions, red peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes mixed in with the eggs, and while I'm sure some people appreciate the low-fat take on egg preparation, the technique did not live up to the culinary magic that eggs can and should be. What came out on two drooping leaves of lettuce, topped with some unoffensive white cheese with a salsa fresca on one side and roasted yams on the other, was a rubbery lump of 3 eggs worth of protein with under-prepared vegetables haplessly suspended, unable to make a break for more appetizing platings. Their 7-grain toast was quite good and the roasted yams were much better than I expected them to be, but for a signature dish they should really work on improving the technique of their appointed egg steamerists.
Later that day I had a lunch/dinner fusion meal, fusing more the time and function than any real menu differences. I mixed cucumbers, carrots, hot sausage, mushrooms fried in hot sausage grease, and bleu cheese into couscous drizzled with sesame and chili oils. It would have been a great power lunch or an easy, one-bowl dinner. I ate it late enough to be dinner, but considering I slept through most of the afternoon and I was up until after midnight, it felt more lunchy than anything.
That evening, in my friends' apartment in Red Hook I caught a few long tosses of Tostito's Hint of Lime tortilla chips. those things are seasoned perfectly for eating 4 or 5, so that's what I did. Any more and they become a bit overwhelming.
And that was it for the evening. Though I felt a little snacky, I decided a few big glasses of water before bed would be better than a raid on the crouton box.
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