Poverexic in NYC

Yesterday was a rancid fried rice experience.  Today was a good rice experience.  Last night E (who likes to be called “Mr. Girth”) was over at our apt hanging out with G and sketchily called me over being like “yo I have a present for you, it rhymes with stick.”  Great, I thought, what do you want.  I was half expecting him to pull out a used condom or something when what he actually pulled out was A TAKEOUT BOX OF DERICIOUS CHINESE FOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMGOMOGMOGMOMG it was literally a only-half-eaten thing of general gao’s with white rice.

FOR ME!??!??!??!?!??!  I asked.  Yeah you can have it.  Mr. Girth was leaving for Vancouver in the morning and wasn’t going to be able to eat it for lunch the next day anyway, so he gave me all his leftovers.  I was so excited — this was my chance to symbolically redeem the rancid fried rice that had gone to waste the day before.  I decided to ask Mr. Girth for his advice and told him my rancid fried rice experience and asked him how I could remedy this situation moving forward.

He stared at me for a few minutes as if I was retarded and said, why don’t you just put it in the fridge tonight and write yourself a post-it note as a reminder to take it to work in the morning.  I stared at him back as if he was retarded and said, CLEARLY I don’t own any post-it notes, do I look like an office.  Why don’t you just write yourself a note on any piece of paper.  I don’t own any pieces of paper.  Why don’t you email yourself.  I don’t check my email in the morning.

After about 15 minutes of this I finally gave in and agreed to refridgerate the food overnight, email myself a reminder and check email in the morning so that Mr. Girth’s general gao’s with white rice would not go to waste.  Lo and behold, this morning I woke up, remembered to check email, saw note to self to take food from kitchen fridge to work, and had the dericious general gao’s with white rice for lunch today.  SUCCESS!

Well today was odd.

All morning today I was looking forward to dericious leftover beef fried rice that S gifted me last night while catching up on all my missed episodes of Weeds and True Blood (OHHHHHH SOOOKIEEEEEE).  I came home circa 11pm after watching 5 straight episodes with a huge box of fried rice and a huge smile on my face.  I left the fried rice in my room overnight because whenever I put stuff in the fridge I always forget to bring it to work the next morning, then I have to remind myself the next day to remember to bring my leftovers to work the next day, then the next day I forget to bring my leftovers to work again, and before I know it the food’s gone bad and I want to shoot myself in the foot.  So to prevent that, lately I’ve just been keeping leftovers in my purse overnight so there’s no chance of forgetting to bring it to work the next morning.

That’s what I did with the fried rice last night, and I immediately put it in my office fridge as soon as I got to work this morning at 8am.  (That’s really not that bad I don’t think — 9 hours sitting out in an air conditioned room.  In poor countries they don’t even own fridges and they’re all fine.)

So I fridged my food all morning, and at 2pm I was so excited to open my takeout box of dericious runch.  Except when I opened it, something was off.  The rice was REALLY sticky.  Like you know when you make rice krispie treats and you melt the butter and the marshmallows then you add in the rice krispies and you mix it all together and the melted marshmallows are all gooey and the rice becomes all gooey?  That’s what it looked and felt like when I ran my fork through the rice.

That’s strange, I thought.  But I just shrugged it off.  I decided that if I microwaved it on high for three minutes everything would be fine and any potential bacteria would get killed off.

But after I microwaved it, it was worse.  It was literally a plate of goo.  Hmmm, I thought.  and took a bite.  It tastes fine………….. kinda gooey.  But the beef tasted fine and so did everythinng else except for the rice.  But I started to get a little sketched out and started IMing all my coworkers to come take a look and provide an opinion.

Opinion was not so positive.  Coworker B threw up a little in her mouth, coworker K called me disgusting, coworker A told me I was going to get food poisoning, my SVP E told me I should have a post-it note on my forehead saying ‘ATE RANCID FRIED RICE’ in case I was found passed out somewhere in the hallway so the medics would know what to do, and coworker P came over to my desk, grabbed my plate, and threw the rice away in the kitchen trashcan as I desperately ran after her and screamed NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was a sad moment.

Luckily, I still have another half a box of the leftover rice left in the office fridge for tomorrow.

TODAY WAS THE MOST INCRED FOOD DAY EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I am absolutely STUFFED!!!!!!!!!  Clients came to our office today so all day today was food after food after food.  For our breakfast meeting we had sausage and egg and ham and egg breakfast burritos, so I had 4 (2 of each).  Then I had 2 cups of yogurt with fruit and granola, 1 cornbread muffin and a cup of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Then for lunch I didn’t go to the meeting itself but I came back for the leftover food, which consisted of grilled veggies, mixed rice, baked ziti, salad, MOZZARELLA STUFFED CHICKEN, and cookies!!!!!!!

THEN!!!  Later in the afternoon we had an all staff meeting and had tri-colored tortilla chips with the best guac, mango salsa and pico de gallo ever PLUS cheese and crackers and fresh fruit!!!!!!!!!!!!

I probably won’t eat for the rest of the weekend.

On a related note, BACON LUBBBBEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://gizmodo.com/photogallery/breakfastgadgets/1009060174

Bacon Lube

GASPGAPSGASPGPASGPASPGAPSGPASGPASGPASPGAPGPASGPAS

Yesterday was a great day to stay late at work, and a great day to have a cubicle right next to the CFO’s assistant.  At 5:15pm, I spotted a food tray packed full of dinner food, apparently for a dinner meeting, at the CFO’s assistant’s desk.  He immediately caught me staring and shook his finger at me, “Not for youuuuuuu!”

“WILL THERE BE LEFTOVERS?!?!??!???!”

“Only if you stay past 8pm…”

Easy enough!

So I had a delicious dinner of chicken with mushrooms, asparagus, potatoes, salad, pasta and black-and-white cookies, courtesy of the CFO.

I’M BACK BITCHES!!!  Best two weeks I’ve had in a while — just got back from Ecuador and Costa Rica with SS and B and had the most incredible food for very little moola.

Let me start with QUITO, ECUADOR —

Stayed with SS’s host fam where all food was free.  The greatest thing about Ecuador is that they put popcorn on everything — soup, ceviche, etc.  It’s really fun.  That’s probably also why they’re really fat given that the rest of their diet consists of aji – so I mean, it’s gotta be the popcorn.  To be perfectly honest, while I can’t complain about the lack of money I spent in Quito, the quality of food was not too superb except for their choclo, avocado and cheese dish, along with the world’s largest empanada that I had the pleasure of eating all by myself:

World's Largest Empanada

Another terrific dish was cuy, they are so cute:

Cuy

I am jk.  I don’t eat rodents.

Moving on to COSTA RICA —

Costa Rica was epic.  Beers are $2 and I ate steak literally every single day for ~$10.  Credomatic was having some 50% off promotions at Costa Rica’s most expensive restaurants, so B took SS and me to one every night (and by most expensive restaurants I mean <$20 steaks, which turn into <$10 steaks with the discount).  Let me walk you through my trip.

Day 1, San Jose – The day started out disastrous when migracion denied SS access into the country because she didn’t have her yellow fever immunization card with her, so they made her fly back to Quito, get her f-ing card, then come back the next day.  B and I were like, well fuck, so we went to Henry’s 2-for-1 happy hour at 5pm to drown ourselves in guaro, followed by La Cascada where we had baby beef steak with beans and maduros (plantains) with baked potato, accompanied by Bavaria beer, tortillas with chimichurri, tres leches dessert, all for $16:

La Cascada

Day 2, Monteverde – As soon as SS was actually let into the country, we were off to Monteverde in the B-mobile, where we ziplined and Tarzaned and then had steak with chimichurri with green rice and vegetables, accompanied by a bottle of wine and strawberry/papaya smoothie, all for $11:

Monteverde

Day 3, Tamarindo – Well, Tamarindo was quite the ugly beach compared to what I’m used to and I lost $20 in 10 minutes of blackjack, but the upside was that I got tan, saw a lot of legal hookers, and ate steak salad with potato chips, mangos, pineapples and corn on the cob, accompanied by two 2-for-1 strawberry caipirinhas and two 2-for-1 strawberry mojitos (best drinks I’ve had in a while), all for $13:

Steak Salad

Day 4, Liberia – Drove to J’s farm that is a huge sugar plane plantation, where there was nothing to do but drink copious amounts of wine, tell scary stories, and tan by the pool.  That night I ate sirloin steak with chimichurri, rice, beans and veggies, accompanied by chifrijo and a bottle of wine, all for $12.  Photo unavailable.  Lo siento.

Day 5, San Jose – Day 1 was so good that I had this exact same meal on Day 5 with the same group of people, but this time with more bottles of wine followed by a night at Cuartel, which I like to call a ‘mini Carnaval’:

La Cascada

Best two weeks I’ve had in a while.  In the words of B, Costa Rican food was all “very nice.”

LEAVING FOR ECUADOR IN 30 MINUTES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am really excited because I am flying TACA, possibly one of my fav airlines along with LAN.  I love how when you fly across South America, no matter how short the flight, they serve you a meal.  With a flight this long, they will definitely serve three meals, accompanied by a dulce de leche dessert and free flowing wine!  It’s a FEAST!!!  My only concern is that my flight is at 4:30am, so I got myself a Tasty King combination beef with broccoli with pork fried rice and shrimp egg roll to stock up in preparation for 9 hours of no eating.

Twitter founder Biz Stone came to twat with us today and discuss twitterbanging.  Very interesting discussion – I learned that the birds carrying whale image is from istockphoto, but most importantly, I scored a chicken sandwich, a corned beef sandwich, some salad, roasted veggies, Sun Chips and Baked Lays, along with blondie bars and brownies.

Speaking of brownies, brownie points to the first person who can say they’ve twitterbanged.

Brownie points also to people who come up with new questions for povertak: http://urtak.com/u/poverexia

Went to the Belmont yesterday with S and C.  I would say that while Friday was a poverexic-friendly day, Saturday was a completely anti-poverexic day.  No $5 lunch specials at the Belmont Stakes.  More like $8 drops of champagne, $8 sips of bourbon, $7 hot dogs.  The cheapest thing I could find was a $4 lemonade, so I had a glass of that in an effort to hydrate myself following a rough morning.  I had been drinking bourbon, bloody marys and champagne since 11am on the party bus (read: free booze), S had been drinking straight bourbon since 10am, and C’s alcohol tolerance had gone to shit and he now gets blackout off 2 glasses of bourbon, so all three of us literally passed out together through the majority of the races.  Luckily we woke up in time for the final race to people behind us yelling at S to “stop snoring and wake the fuck up,” just in time for S and C to place their pricey bets and 10 minutes later to lose it all.  I gambled vicariously through S and C and did not regret not placing my bet.

This has been a great day already and it’s only 12:30pm.