other people's food quirks

I am home sick for the first part of the day so I figure I can fill in some of my waking time with a blog. I will be returning to bed to hibernate until I have to work at 6 o'clock. Hopefully the extra rest will have whatever it is that I have to pass over relatively quickly.

To go along with my previous post about my food quirks, I've decided to blog about the food quirks I've noticed in some of my beloved friends and families. Instead of naming names, I will just number the quirks and you can guess who the quirk belongs to.

1) Tomatoes in various forms
I have a friend who does not eat raw tomatoes, but eats bruschetta, salsa, tomato sauce, and ketchup. I understand that raw tomatoes are very different from tomato sauce and ketchup, but the tomatoes in bruschetta are raw too.

2) Stop touching!!
Another friend habitually separates her food so the items on her plate are not touching. I believe this is due to her having a mild case of OCD. Ideally, she would like her food served on separate plates thus ensuring that nothing would touch. She pushes the meat, the starch, and the veg away from each other so there's a small defined space between all the items on her plate.

3) Why aren't you touching?!?!
The same friend also wants ALL of her food touching, if it's meant to be touching i.e. pad thai. If a dish should be mixed thoroughly and it's not, she will take a minute to stir all of her food together.

4) Smaller pieces, please!
Another friend has the compulsion to cut up her food into little pieces all at once, much like a parent would do for a small child at the beginning of a meal. She does thing when dining in the company of people who know her well and have come to expect this. She has told me that she does not do this when she is out eating with people she doesn't know very well and when she's out at a fancier restaurant.

5) Guinness and girly drinks
I have a male friend that used to drink pints upon pints of Guinness. To give you an idea of this man's physical size, he could probably kill me with two or three good swings. I actually started drinking Guinness because this friend insisted that it was so delicious and I eventually forced myself to like it. While he would be drinking a pint of Guinness, I would sometimes order a girly cocktail. He would then take a sip of it and steal it from me claiming it as his own. He would never order himself a girly drink, but would happily rip them out of my girly hands.

6) Starch, veg, then meat
I have a friend that would eat all of the starch, then all of the veg, and then start working on the meat. I always found it odd because he is the only person I know that eats that way. Most people I know, regardless of their other food quirks, would eat things somewhat evenly. I don't know if he still eats his meals like this, but I always thought it was weird.

These are all of the quirks I can think of right now. Time to head back to bed.

my food quirks

Since Toronto is under a tornado warning and we're all being advised to stay in, I figured blog before I head to bed to read. A note titled "25 Random Things About Me" was going around on Facebook and as I was writing my 25 random things, I noticed that nearly half of them were food things. I then decided to scrap the random food things from that list and make one that's only random food things about me. This is the list and I have no idea now many points there will be. Let us being...

1) I detest wasabi
Contrary to what my dining companions believe, it's not the spice that I don't enjoy. It's easy enough to adjust the heat level by how much wasabi you put in your soy. It's the mustard flavour that I don't like. Horseradish, Dijon and grainy mustards are also a no go. I do like plain old yellow hot dog mustard.

2) I like my cereal soggy
I will pour milk over my cereal and wait until it softens before taking the first bite. Sometimes I'll pour milk over cereal as soon as I get out of the shower and then go get dressed. I also prefer to have fruit in my cereal. Usually a sliced banana.

3) I have a massive sweet tooth
Wheel that dessert cart my way! I will eat almost anything that is considered a dessert.

4) I peel red grapes
I will sit in front of the T.V. with a bunch of red grapes and peel each and every one of them before eating. I don't do this with green grapes. Only the red ones because I don't like how the skins make your mouth pucker.

5) I forced myself to like olives
I used to despise olives. One day I decided that I was going to like olives and proceeded to eat half a jar of them. I did this because I was told that you have to eat seven olives in a row in order to acquire a taste for them. I now very much enjoy olives.

6) I also forced myself to like Guinness
I did this because I was told that Guinness has less calories in it than beer. Yes, that is a very superficial reason, but considering that I'm not a huge beer drinker, I figure it wouldn't hurt. I now also very much enjoy Guinness.

7) I love beets
I love beet salad, roasted beets, pickled beets, beet juice, beet soup. I love beets.

8) I think smelly cheese is delicious
Stinky, smelly, creamy cheeses are the best. I was reading a book and the author referred to this type of cheese as "death cheese." To him, this type of cheese is what the inside of a corpse's mouth would smell like after weeks of decay. I also like cheeses with mould in them. Bring on the blue!

9) I gravitate towards braised meats if they're on a menu
Lamb shanks, osso bucco, braised short ribs...mmm....I think it's because I don't braise things at home so I always order them when I'm out.

10) I eat the green stuff and the yellow stuff too
The green stuff inside lobster heads, also known as lobster tomalley. I gross out many co-workers when I tell them that I eat the green stuff. They chalk it up to me being Chinese. The yellow stuff is inside the crab heads, also know as crab mustard. If it's a big crab with a big shell, I like to put a scoop of rice into the shell and mix it all together with the mustard. So good....*drool*...

11) I'm only dependant on coffee when I'm in school
Before September of 2008, I drank coffee every now and then. I didn't NEED one every morning, or every day for that matter. Upon returning to school, I found that I NEEDED coffee to get through the day. There were some early classes that required a morning pick me up, but in most cases, I was just so bored by the content of classes that I relied on coffee to keep me awake through classes.

12) I love rice
I had to stop making rice at home because I can't eat just one cup of cooked rice. If there is a pot of rice around at home, I will eat no less than three cups of it and there is really no point in make just one cup of rice. I get my "rice fix" when I'm at family meals and when I'm eating out.

13) I like liver
Pâté and foie grais are amazing. But I limited the amounts I eat because "too much of a good thing" definitely applies to this delicacy.

14) Paula Dean grosses me out
Seriously? This woman's cooking is the nasty shit ever. Yes, I know butter added flavour, but on top of the copious amounts of butter she adds to everything, does she really need to cook all green vegetables until they're GREY?!?! Barf.

15) I am incapable of making just one serving of fruit salad
Whenever I make a fruit salad, I always end up with a massive bowl full. This is mostly due to the fact that I believe a fruit salad should have lots of different fruits in it. Fruit salad that is almost completely comprised of melon is lame. I am now eating my way through a big bowl of fruit salad I made yesterday that has blueberries, strawberries, peaches, kiwi, and oranges. I was going to add green grapes, but that would have been too much green in the salad and I also believe fruit salad should be well balanced in regards to colour.

16) I add fresh produce to canned foods
I add more mushrooms to cream of mushroom soup and frozen peas to canned beef stew. One of the grosses things that I love eating is probably canned beef stew (with frozen peas tossed in, of course) over instant noodles. This is something that my family and members of my extended family did (and still do) when I was a child. When there's nothing in the house and I have no idea what to have for dinner, it's not uncommon for me to run out to the corner store to pick up a can of stew and a pack of noodles. I purposely don't keep those two things in my apartment because I'd eat it WAAAAYYYY too often if I did.

17) Root beer is my favourite soft drink
Does Hires still make root beer? I never see it anywhere anymore so I now drink A&W root beer, but Hires was better. Barq's doesn't quite hit the spot.

I may add to this list later, but that's all for now. Over and out!

mushroom & asparagus risotto with side of out of shape legs and confusion

I figured that since Ontario asparagus is in season, I should get my fill of it while it's fresh, local and cheap. I jumped on my bike for the first time this year and pedaled to the grocery store and got the necessities and started cooking as soon as I got home and unloaded my groceries. Things I did not have for this risotto: dry white wine, fresh cracked black pepper, and butter. I still have to get a pepper mill and I'm still deciding if I really want that gorgeous pepper mill at Canadian Tire that costs $60. I don't know if I'm willing to pay that much when one can get perfectly good pepper mills for less than $30. I need to find the perfect spot in my apartment with good lighting for better food porn shots. The middle of my living/dining room floor seems alright, but the food is a bit lost with all the white. I am not willing to buy more dishes for the sake of better food pics.

mushroom & asparagus risotto

buttom mushrooms, Ontario asparagus, arborio rice, extra virgin olive oil, Campbell's low sodium chicken broth, fresh grated Parmesan

Biking to the grocery store was harder than I remember it. My thighs were burning when I got home and it felt like my legs were going to give out. I suppose it's not too bad considering it's the first I've cycled about 9 months. It was great last year biking to work, but now that I live only two blocks north of work, it's a little pointless to be biking. It'll be good on nights/days when I'm scheduled for shorter shifts and I can go meet up with people around the city. I now have it locked up outside of my front door. The other bikes in my row of houses are just locked to street signs so I'm guessing that means that the occasional weirdos that roam this area at night are not interested in bikes.

Now to the confusion part. I now have a downstairs neighbour (who I will now refer to as DSN). It wouldn't be so confusing to me if downstairs was in good condition, but it's NOT. It's a long story as to why I'm in the place I'm living now so I won't get into, but the apartment I'm in is in much better shape than the one downstairs. There is so much stuff a.k.a. junk down there that I don't understand why anyone would move their stuff in there before getting rid of the junk. There is construction equipment, a bed with a stained mattress (*barf*) from the previous tenant as well as a ripped leather couch, a huge office photocopier and bags of garbage. There isn't a stove down there and the bath tub/shower are in a different room from the toilet. I am so confused.

Some of my stuff was (and still is) downstairs so the plan was for DSN to help me move some stuff up yesterday before he moved his stuff in. We spoke on the phone on Wednesday and from what I gathered, he was going to move stuff in the mid-afternoon. I waited around until 2:30 and finally texted him asking him when he was planning on moving stuff. The reply was between 5 and 6pm. I went out and ran some errands and was home until 6:30pm and then I left to meet Jen for dinner. When we got back to my place after dinner, my DSN was just sitting on the steps and I couldn't tell if he had gotten into the apartment. He called the landlord and he let him in so that kind of worked out. I don't know if he was expecting me to be home ALL DAY or not, but he didn't sound pleased when I told him I wasn't around to move stuff until next Sunday. As there are no curtains on his windows, I peaked in earlier today and saw shit loads of shoe boxes. I mean shit loads, upon shit loads of shoe boxes. I am so very confused.

On another note, I am volunteering at the Hope Volleyball Tournament on Centre Island this Saturday. I was a lot more excited about volunteering before I received an info sheet saying that volunteers should catch the 5:30am ferry. Are you kidding me? The tournament doesn't start until 9:00am!! Geez!

inDulge

Now I know that in my previous post, I was planning at getting a move on getting rid of the 10 pounds that I gained over the past few months, but sometimes a girl just has to give into her cravings. The Leslieville Cheese Market opened up around the corner from me about two or three weeks ago and it has been calling my name since. Upon leaving work, my plan was to eat steamed asparagus and a grilled cheese sandwich. No asparagus appeared on my walk home so I picked up some avocado and headed to the cheese shop in hopes of finding something I would want. Today's lunch consisted of:

1. Organic baguette
2. Camembert cheese
3. Hot sopresatta
4. Cherry tomato & avocado salad with Briannas Dijon Honey Mustard dressing

Gareth's mom introduced me to Briannas Dijon Honey Mustard dressing with avocado at the cottage over the Victoria Day weekend. I am now in love with this product line and will be sampling my way through the other varieties. It's a toss up between the blue cheese or the creamy French as to which I will try next.

Steps: 16,607 from 3:00pm to 2:00am. I put my pedometer down to put on my jacket in the morning and forgot to clip it on before heading out.

Mood: calm

Listening to: the humming of the refrigerator

eggs & laundry (not necessarily in that order)

As I no longer have en suite laundry, I now use the laundromat at Queen & Spadina. I don't really mind hauling my laundry two blocks considering that it is warm out and there is no snow on the ground. I plan on researching some wash'n'fold'deliver services come the winter time. Sure, going to the laundromat isn't as convenient as having en suite machines, but it sure cuts down on the actual time I spend doing laundry. After my first trip to the laundromat, I figured out my system.

1. Wash whites, brights, and darks that need to go into the dryer.
2. Once that load is done, load delicates and items that need to line dried into the wash.
3. Load first load(s) into the dryer.
4. Wait for first load(s) to dry, second load(s) to wash.
5. Fold dry clothing and remove second load(s) from washer to be hung to dry at home.

I got two loads of laundry done in about an hour and fifteen minutes and it cost $7.00. I love look of the vintage dryers there. Probably not good for the environment, but I can use two of these huge machines and have dry clothes in 12 minutes. Now if you weigh that against the time it takes a load to dry in a machine at home (at least 40 minutes) then it may all work out to be the same environment wise.

After laundry, I walked home and hung stuff up to dry, installed a closet rod and unpacked a lot more clothing, and then went to work. I wanted to close because I'm going to the cottage this weekend, but I lost the draw. As I did not plan on contending with co-workers on closing, I did not plan on dinner. Solution: white rice with two over medium eggs and soy and broccoli with oyster sauce. I'd take that over a T.V. dinner any day. I now want to eat the rest of the blackberry yogurt in the fridge, but I will save it for breakfast.