Life has really gone downhill since M’s pizzas on Tuesday. There has been absolutely zero free food at work this entire week. It has been so depressing. Today we finally got some free “food” but it was FRUIT. I mean I heart fruit and it’s a lot healthier than my usual diet, but 3 apples and 1 non-ripe pear do not breakfast-lunch-dinner make. What I really want and need right now is this:
Man V. Food
Tonight, soon-to-be roommate M made us the most incredible pizzas I’ve had since this salmon pizza I had in Italy back in 1998 (and that was one of the most dericious pizzas I’ve ever had with a dericious pool of grease — mmmm pools of greaseeee — swimming in the middle of the pizza with incred pieces of smoked salmon and capers). M is roommate L’s twin brother, and apparently amazing cooking skills run in this Italian Jewish family. Momma and Poppa T’s recipes for homemade pizza are to die for — M made the first pizza with creme fraiche and mozzarella, caramelized onions, bacon, sundried tomatoes, garlic and shredded mozzarella, and the second pizza with creme fraiche and mozzarella, fresh sliced mozzarella, tomato slices and basil. They were so dericious they were SMOKINNNNNNN and literally made the smoke alarm go off while we were trying to watch last night’s episode of Gossip Girl.
PIZZA PIZZA
On a related note, I am watching 90201 right now and Silver totally made her ramen wrong. I don’t know what she was doing, but she totally poured the hot water into the ramen and then didn’t close the lid and didn’t let it sit for 3 minutes. She just stuck her fork right in there and started eating it. Now THAT IS TERRIBLE ACTING. Let it sit for 3 minutes and get it right.
I had a nightmare two nights ago that I was at J’s wedding and there was no dinner at the wedding and I was incredibly upset. My recent obsession with ABC’s FlashForward has caused me to start believing that all my blackout dreams are visions of the future, which deeply worried me even more and propelled me to email J to see if her vision matched up. J’s response was comforting:
lol- there will be plenty of food!! you will be fed for about two days straight… lunch on friday, dinner friday, lunch on saturday, and dinner on saturday. no worries there!! the food at the rehersal dinner is going to soo yummy….you will be getting a choice of salmon or a cornbread stuffed quail and filet plate… the quail was probably my fav. it’s making me hungry thinking about it!
OMG DERICIOUS. AND THANK GOD.
I just got back from the worst work conference in the history of mankind in Syracuse. It was a conference full of haters and back-to-back lectures for 12 straight hours on Friday and 10 straight hours on Saturday. I can’t even believe I had to spend my weekend doing this. And I didn’t even get good food, which was the only thing I had been looking forward to — I just ate a shitload of food to make up for the lack of quality I was expecting, and I literally gained 5 pounds in the 2.5 days that I was at the conference.
On Thursday night I was headed to Syracuse and with the traffic, literally got to the airport 20 minutes before takeoff. I was freaking out but starving and was ready to risk missing my flight in order to get a free bite to eat. I was in such a rush, though, that all I could find was a thing of chicken salad (where were all the friggen sandwiches?!?!?!) that of course ends up costing like $12. I mean at least I didn’t have to pay for it, but I was at least hoping for a good sandwich to take on the plane with me. So that was a disappointment.
On Friday I woke up at 7am for a day full of hater lectures and got myself a bagel with herbed cream cheese, a bowl of yogurt, granola and berries, 4 cups of coffee with cream, and a glass of tomato juice from the breakfast table. I was so upset by the fact I had to be at this conference by myself that I decided I would make the most of the $10 lunch buffet by running over to the lunch first so I wouldn’t have to interact with anyone and pile my plate as high as I could. The lunch was actually pretty good — greek salad, grilled vegetables, roasted potatoes, pita with tzatziki, onions and diced tomatoes, and grilled chicken and steak strips. Apparently my plate was piled so high that it attracted some unwanted attention. Some older lady comes over to me and comments, “Oh my! Quite the appetite you’ve got there, young lady!” I just smiled at her as she chuckled. Yeah yeah shut the fuck up lady and leave me and my plate alone.
That lunch was pretty good and actually filled me up quite well to the point where I was genuinely not hungry for dinner. But I was so drained from this conference and really felt I deserved a nice dinner on my client, so I decided to get takeout from one of the places that roommate K (who went to Syracuse) recommended — chicken enchilada with mole sauce from Alto Cinco. The $7 enchilada was … okay … but not as high caliber of a dinner as I would have gotten knowing I wasn’t paying for this. I should have gotten a steak with wine.
Saturday was even worse — breakfast was more skimpy than Friday’s and I didn’t want to go back to the conference lunch buffet again, so I decided to order from the nice-looking restaurant next door. I had been eating a lot of crap throughout the conference so I wanted to go healthy and ordered the roast beef sandwich. Turns out I read the menu wrong and it was actually a roasted bbq beef sandwich with fries. Oh well, I tried.
And then dinner was the worst — I ran out of the conference as soon as it was over to catch my flight back to civilization and didn’t have time to grab dinner before I left so I figured I would just have a nice sit-down dinner at Syracuse airport. Except it turns out there were NO RESTAURANTS AT SYRACUSE AIRPORT IN THE TERMINAL I WAS AT. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ABOUT. It wasn’t even like I was flying some obscure airline, I WAS FLYING UNITED, and it wasn’t even like I was leaving at an odd time, MY FLIGHT WAS AT 7:30PM RIGHT AT NORMAL DINNER TIME. I was completely appalled that there was no food except for a vending machine available at this airport. This is why I dislike (read: hate) small towns, and any other place that doesn’t have nice restaurants at their international airports, and the convenience of a Duane Reade, grocery store, liquor store and a Chinese food restaurant within a two-block radius from wherever you are — i.e., any place except for Manhattan, San Francisco and Harvard Square.
I was so angry by this point that I was determined to buy myself a nice steak dinner at Washington Dulles (don’t ask me why my flight went from Syracuse to Dulles to LGA). Of course at this terminal the only decent “restaurant” was Five Guys, where I actually got an incredible $5 bacon burger with fries, but it wasn’t the steak I had been determined to treat myself to this entire weekend.
In conclusion, this entire weekend should have been full of steaks and wines and incred meals when really I ended up just eating a shitload of shitty hotel food and takeout food and airport food. I guess I can’t really complain since I gained 5 lbs worth of food on my body in 2.5 days on my client’s money. While miserable, this weekend was still a very good win for poverexia.
Today we had an office celebration at noon so I had a glass of champagne and half an Artie Lange cupcake and half a red velvet cupcake from Crumbs for lunch, and I guess also for dinner. I couldn’t concentrate the rest of the day at work and I was starving. But at least it was all free and delicious.
Crumbs
I was so hungry all day today. This is what happens when someone who isn’t used to eating a lot suddenly eats a shitload over an extended period of time. When my poverexic stomach is teased with enormous amounts of food, especially sushi, it just wants more. Today for lunch I had one of my Annie Chun just-add-hot-water noodle bowls, and I was still starving.
When I got home, I immediately ordered a chicken and broccoli with white rice and was so hungry that I was deliriously yelling at the Tasty King delivery boy over the phone to get me a “chicken and beef.” CHICKEN AND BEEF WAH, they yelled. CHICKEN-AND-BEEF, I yelled back. YAH BUT CHICKEN AND BEEF WAH. CHIICCKKEENNN ANDDDD BEEEFFFFFF. It took me like 10 minutes to realize that what I had meant to say was “chicken and broccoli” and I just kept yelling “chicken and beef” into the poor boy’s ear and probably confused the hell out of him. I was so hungry I was craving two types of meat.
When the chicken and broccoli came, I literally scarfed it down in like 10 minutes. I was still hungry, so I ate the rest of roommate K’s teriyaki chicken. I was still hungry, so I went to the fridge to eat my last remaining Magnolia cupcake from my birthday one month ago when GASP WHAT! I discovered it was gone. I let out a distress yelp and roommate L comes out of his room and asks what’s wrong. CUPCAKE GONE! I cry. “Oh, I threw it out today because there was gray mold on one half of the cupcake and green mold on the other half. Should I not have thrown it out?” I shook my head and pouted.
Saddened, roommate K and I decided instead to defrost a huge king size Reese’s piece and eat it for dessert. Notice it is nearly the size of K’s iPhone.
King Size Reese's
I still hungry. 😦
Well I’ve had quite the anti-poverexic 72 hours.
On Saturday I got an $80 haircut that looks exactly the way it looked before I walked into the salon. Yesterday, instead of ordering one $5.50 Tasty King lunch special and eating half for lunch and the other half for dinner as usual, I ordered two regular Tasty meals at $6.75 each. I wasn’t that hungry for dinner, but I forced myself to buy a second Tasty King meal because I needed to prepare my belly for New Ashiya all-you-can-eat sushi for $25 with my puta J and D today. Clearly I usually do not pay $25 for meals, but clearly I made an exception today for my puta J who just got engaged to Mr. Patata Head. So as her engagement gift, I gifted her a nauseating amount of special rolls and hand rolls, which will serve also as her wedding gift, Hanukkah gifts and birthday gifts through 2012.
We started out ordering 8 special rolls, and then followed up with 4 additional rolls, which I guess means we each ate 4 special rolls and a hand roll. The special rolls at New Ashiya at the non-buffet price are $6-8 (?!?!???!?! SO CHEAP RIGHT) so since we ate 4 plus a hand roll, we calculated it just right so that we were slightly more economical by ordering the all-you-can-eat vs. a la carte. Here’s the first plate that came to us — 3 more plates followed.
New Ashiya
After our first 3 plates we were starting to get nauseatingly full but New Ashiya gets really pissed at customers who order more than they can eat. We really didn’t want to get on their bad side, so my puta J, D and I continued to shove one piece at a time slowly in our mouths. I was so frustrated with myself because my stomach actually wasn’t physically full, but I slightly threw up in my mouth as the mushy 36th piece of sushi hit my tongue. I wanted to eat more, but my gag reflex kicked in. But I FOUGHT IT, because I hate vomiting food that I’ve paid for. So we finished the last remaining 4 pieces over the remaining 45 minutes of our 2-hour time limit while planning my puta J’s wedding. My contributing ideas for the wedding were to have a full cocktail hour before the ceremony in the spirit of Judaism and then have a sushi buffet for the reception.
In conclusion, in the past 72 hours I have spent approximately the amount that I typically spend over one month. I hope there’s free food at the office tomorrow.
As the Tasty King clock continues to tick tock tick tock, today I decided I would branch out and try new things on the menu since I figured it was now or never.
I have always wanted to try their boneless spare ribs since that used to be my favorite thing at the Kong back at Harvard, but I had never ordered it from Tasty because for some reason it’s not on their lunch specials (and I don’t really like to order things that aren’t on the lunch special menu). I don’t see why it’s not, I don’t think it’s particularly expensive for them or anything. At the Kong, boneless spare ribs used to be a side option you could get with a combination meal, instead of an egg roll, spring roll or chicken wings, so I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just substitute in spare ribs for the wonton soup at Tasty.
Anyway, today I tried to bargain with them (since a normal order of boneless spare ribs there costs $6.75) and tried to get them to give me the spare ribs at the lunch special price of $5.75. I think it was a pretty legit argument and especially considering I am one of their most valued customers, I really thought they should have just done me this one tiny favor. But they didn’t! I mean what the fuck is that about.
So I paid $6.75 and was mad at them and vowed I would never give Tasty my money again. Until in the evening I got hungry again and yet again wanted to branch out and try something new and got the sesame chicken (which is exactly the same as General Gao’s but with a few sprinkles of sesame). I am so weak.
So, roommates K and L and I have been apartment hunting because our lease is up at the end of October. Here’s my main concern about leaving Stuy Town: Will Tasty King deliver to wherever we move to. I don’t know. Will they even recognize me if I am no longer associated with Apt 10B. I just don’t know. Will they continue to give me free fortune cookies if we no longer live across the street. I really don’t know. These are questions I do not have the answers to, and that scares me.
To be honest we aren’t looking more than a 10 block radius from where we currently live. We wouldn’t dare go above 18th St (too far from anywhere we would go out), we don’t even want to think about going to Ave C (people are poorer there than I am), I hate the LES (weird people with dark makeup and skinny jeans), and we would never go west of Union Square (I hate the West side). One would think chances of Tasty King delivering to anywhere within the East Village are pretty high, but they literally have one poor little guy who’s older than my grandpa riding around on a broken down bicycle delivering these lunch specials. So I just don’t know.
Today I sadly ordered my usual lunch special chicken and broccoli with white rice, knowing that this may be one of my last few moments with Tasty. I was pretty upset over this until I turned on the TV and saw the most incred burger on Man v. Food — it was a burger that – instead of using burger buns – they used KRISPY KREME DONUTS as the buns and put bacon and cheese on the burger sandwiched between melting glazed Krispy Kreme donuts.
Krispy Kreme Burger
Then I was happy again.
Well, less than 24 hours after K brought home a Costco-full of goodies, roommate L and I had already consumed 5 ramens, an entire order of sliced ham, and half a box of strawberries … oops, sorry K 😦 but it was rearry dericious. Yesterday I ate one ramen that I made by myself, and was still hungry (those tiny ramens), so roommate L made me another ramen that was 10 times better with spices, ham and bacon with its bacon fat.
Today was rucky too because we had a pizza and beer lunch, so I had 4 slices of pizza and a Corona. Later in the afternoon there was a goodby party for a coworker so there were plenty of doritos, cheetos, pringles, pretzels, and chips and salsa with beer. Our office enjoys beer.
I guess the chips didn’t really fill me up because I was starving after getting through my DVR-ed ‘Flash Forward’ (fav new show) and ‘The Office’ and getting really upset at the fact that my fucking DVR didn’t record ‘Parks and Recreation.’ Luckily I made an incred discovery that made me feel a lot better — two packs of nori (which is the seaweed that’s around sushi – or “sea vegetable,” as my mother calls it because she doesn’t like that the word “weed” is in there) that my mother had given me while I was home last Christmas. They’re pretty old, but not really because they were hidden in our freezer this entire time, and anything kept in the freezer becomes invincible. I ate one of the packs with the white rice that roommate K had left behind with soy sauce. Then it occurred to me that that’s what poor people eat in Japan — white rice with soy sauce and nori. I guess poor people in New York do too.
Poverexic in NYC 