Day 11 - Officially Over 50% Done

I probably shouldn't count down to the end of this experiment with such gusto, but I think my strong aversion to Mandatory Writing is rearing its head right about now. With any luck, I shall push through and keep writing even after the 21st day. So far, this is Day 11.

The duration of 30 Rock episodes. They last just long enough to keep my attention but are over quickly enough that I don't feel like I wasted my entire night watching television. Until I watch 3 more episodes.

Getting the last seat in the PATH train at 6:30 in the morning. The ride itself might cost $2, but the value of of those extra few minutes where you can shut your eyes and try not to . . . fall . . . asleep. . . . Priceless.

Bona fide, delicious Chinese food served less than four blocks from my apartment. My current favorite dish: sauteed pea shoots.

Warm Fuzzies #10 : Carrot Cake

Today's warm fuzzies are brought to you by the carrot cake I made for my colleague, T__'s XLIVth birthday. Reviews are as follows:

That was just the moist...the most moistest.... I don't know if that's a word, but that cake was it. Can I have the recipe?

You should start your own business. Seriously.

Your cake is amazing! No like really, it's amazing. If there's any left at 4 o'clock, I'm coming back up. This time I have a bowl. You know, for my train ride home.

And my personal favorite...

OMG! Damn you can bake! Cake tastes professionally done. And carrot cake is not easy to make.

Creative Shots

By the title of this blog, one might think these shots will be pictures, but no! These are shots of liquor that I recently heard about in passing. Although I may not necessarily be inclined to sample all of them, they sounded rather interesting, if only because of their name and/or ingredients, and I felt inclined to share them.

Migrant Worker

• tequila
  
• apple cider
  
• squeeze of lime

Nighty Night

• Vodka
  
• Nyquill

Oatmeal Cookie

• Goldschlager
  
• Butterscotch schnapps
  
• Bailey's irish cream

Chicken-Chili Taco Soup

An excellent recipe for using up leftover cooked chicken or turkey after the holidays. You can add any number of taco-esque condiments such as rice, kidney beans, fresh cilantro, etc. Below, however, is the basic starter recipe. I usually add extra chili powder and salt to taste.

Ingredients

• 1 tsp olive oil
  
• 1/2c onion, chopped (scallions are ideal)
  
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 14.5oz can petite diced tomatoes
  
• 1-2c chopped cooked chicken breast
  
• 1/4c salsa sauce (I like to use spicy)
  
• 1 tsp oregano (ground in mortar and pestle)
  
• 1/2+ tsp black pepper
  
• 2 16oz cans chicken broth
  
• 15.5oz can chick peas
  
• 14.5 (or larger) can corn

Heat oil at med/high temperature. Add onion and garlic; saute 3 minutes. Add tomatoes and cook 5 minutes on low heat. Mix in spices. Stir in all remaining ingredients except for corn and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in corn and cook until warm.

Spoon into bowls, top with shredded cheese/sour cream/guacamole/whatever you please and ENJOY!

Not-so-Dutch Apple Pie

Ingredients

• 8 c peeled, pared, sliced tart baking apples (slightly < 3 pounds apples; Granny Smith are best)
  
• 1 c golden raisins
  
• 1 c sugar
  
• 2 T all purpose flour
  
• 1 t cinnamon
  
• 1/2 t nutmeg
  
• 1/4 t salt
  
• generous 1/2 t grated lemon rind
  
• 3 t fresh lemon juice
  
• 2 T butter
  
• Pastry dough for a double pie crust
  
• 1 egg yolk
  
• 1 T water
  
• 1/2 c heavy or whipping cream

Roll out half of pastry dough and place in a 9-inch pie pan.

Combine apple slices, raisins, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Mix sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and lemon rind separately, and then add to fruit mixture. Turn into pie plate. Dot with butter.

Preheat oven to 425° F. Roll out remaining pastry dough. Cut into strips and layer lattice-style on top of apples. Crimp with bottom crust edge to seal. Mix egg yolk with water and brush over top crust. Pour whipping cream through various slits in the top.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on rack. Serve warm or room temperature.

Reviews from the workplace:

• Thanks for the pie, it was delicious and it hit the spot!
  
• Amazingly delicious! I would never have thought to put raisins in, and I really enjoyed the flavor and texture they added.
  
• 5 start awesomeness,,,loved the raisins
  
• OMG, it is awesome. I could eat the whole thing myself!
  

Adapted from Dutch Apple Pie Recipe at Terri’s Kitchen

Sweet Turnips w/Carrot Shavings & Caramelized Onions

Ingredients:

• 1-2 turnips
• 1 large onion
• 1 large carrot
• sugar
• salt and pepper
• honey
• allspice
• cayenne pepper
• vegetable stock (~1/4 cup)

Cut turnip into finger-sized pieces. Steam for ~3 min.

Cut onion into rings. Caramelize in pan with salt/sugar/pepper to taste.

Make sauce: veggie stock, cornstarch (to thicken), honey, allspice, cayenne pepper, salt

Heat sauce on stove over low heat. Using a peeler, shave in carrot and boil sauce until thickened. Add turnip and onion and heat until warm.

ENJOY!

A vegetarian, a vegan, and a Jew

I’ve been asked many times, but no, I’m not vegetarian; I just happen to like vegetarian food. I would happily eat fish more often if I could afford it, but I can’t, and since I don’t feel especially strongly about chicken, I simply don’t happen to eat much meat.

I have considered going full-on vegetarian several times, because I already don’t like red meat, eggs, or cheese; however, I have never been able to justify making the commitment. Basically, I cannot find a compelling enough reason. I’m not sympathetic enough toward farm animals (yes, I think their living conditions are despicable, but only when I read books and articles about the issue; it doesn’t bother me enough to warrant a lifestyle change). I am not lactose intolerant or possess any other unusual food allergies. I like ice cream, I love fish, and I see no reason to deprive myself of these things. Plus, I don’t consider the inconvenience to other people—particularly when it comes to eating in their homes—worth the payoff. Therefore, I have remained a vegetable lover who is not opposed to a bit of fish or chicken and eats a lot of ice cream.

This being said, when I am asked “Are you vegetarian?” I always feel complimented because I interpret the question as a way of saying, “You seem like someone who has the willpower and dedication to become a vegetarian.” And that association—with qualities of loyalty, self-control, and commitment—appeals to me. However, committing to vegetarianism is nothing compared to committing to veganism. Or Judaism.

After a night of rock'n roll in the rain, firecrackers on the roof, and Jameson's, I ended up at the Jersey Shore with my friend D___, his girlfriend Karen, and two of his other friends, Larry and Joe. Before we even left, I already knew that Karen was vegan (because D__ sometimes brings me leftovers from his vegan dinner experiments), and I found out the night we drove to the shore that Joe was Jewish and, consequently, kept kosher. (Although I realize that one eating practice is linked to a religin and one is not, I still find it odd that we say Jews keep kosher but that people who don't eat animal products are vegans.) When we arrived at the beach and convened to eat lunch the next day, I discovered that even Larry was vegetarian. Oddly enough, that made me and D__ the "odd men out." However, even D__ was being vegan for the weekend (he does this to support Karen), so it seemed that I was the only one without who wasn't making a moral/political statement with my mealtime choices.

With three such differently inspired eaters dining together, meals generated the kind of conversation I like best: debates. Joe had just returned from a few months in Isreal, and was filled with awe and respect for the lifestyle and culture he experienced there. I never did find out his personal reason for keeping kosher, but I am positive he had one, because he interrogated D___ and Karen about their food choices the way I only wish I had the courage to do.

One evening, Joe and I went to the local Wawa (a 7-Eleven-type grocery mart that, when mentioned, never fails to make me think of Hellen Keller) to pick up ice cream for dessert. Thinking of Karen, I suggested we get sorbet, too. I scrupulously examined the list of ingredients on the container, wondering aloud over "pectin" until Joe assured me that that ingredient was fine. We ended up getting 2 pints of Edy's ice cream and a pint of Hagaan Daas rasberry sorbet and walked back to the beach house, satisfied with our purchase, only to have Karen take one look at the sorbet container and inform us that she couldn't eat it. Why? It "contained traces of milk product."

"You can eat it," Joe told her, "You're just choosing not to."

Karen looked shocked that this man, Dan's friend, had the nerve to talk to her this way. And a man who kept kosher, no less! The same thing that flashed through my mind must have run through hers: If it weren't kosher, would you eat it?

As if reading our minds, Joe replied, "Even Judaism has a degree of allowances. They say, 'You tried? Okay, that's what matters.'"

I wanted to hug this man. As silly and outdated as I think keeping kosher is (from what I know of it), this response to veganism is exactly how I feel about it. The militance, to me, seems oppressive, not liberating. You can fight your battles, but why nitpick the tiniest details of one battle when there are larger issues at hand?

My second moment of appreciation for Joe's brilliance came on the beach, when he told D___ he would be grilling steaks for dinner. D__ told him he wasn't going to have any, and Joe demanded to know why.

"Because I decided that when I'm with Karen, I'm going to respect her choices," D___ told him.

"So respect them," Joe said. "She doesn't have to eat the steak."

"I'll eat meat when I'm with the boys," D__ replied, ,"but when I'm with her, I don't want her to be the only vegan in the room."

Joe looked disguested. "Oh come on. Stand up, be your own man and make your own decisions. You don't see her eating meat just to make you feel better do you?"

Finally, D__ acquiesced. At this point, I couldn't keep quiet; I pointed at Joe and exclained, "I like you!" D___ wasn't very happy with me after that. I think I was supposed to be his ally.

At the risk of sounding as though I idolize Joe, however, I understand keeping kosher even less, I think, than I understand "keeping vegan". Vegans at least have their animal-loving argument. At the risk of seeming anti-semitic (which would be ridiculous, because my father is Jewish), keeping kosher seems like one more way for Jews to be “special.” Yes, Jews have been discriminated against in the past and almost certainly still are today, but the more things people do to separate themselves from society and the mainstream (e.g. needing their own exclusive restaurants and own specially prepared food), the more they force others to see--and treat--them as separate. It is like a form of self-discrimination: wanting to be be viewed as a separate, privileged group to which only a select few have access and deserve to be members. What better way to do this than to make what should be a communal event, such as a meal, into an idealogical battleground?

Ironically enough, the person whose eating habits I least understood but most appreciated were Larry's. He has been a vegeterian for 20 years, and although I never asked what promted him to give up meat, I found his approach to food the most sensible of the group. He didn't fuss over whether or not steak had touched the grill when he went to grill his vegetable burgers, and he did not scrutinize the ingredient list on the package of Oreos when one was offered to him. Ultimately, were I to become a vegetarian (or as I would prefer to say, to "keep vegetarian," since I wouldn't really become anything I'm not already!), I would most likely follow these sort of self-guided dietary "morals."

For now, though, I am satisfied to eat what tastes good, avoid what doesn't, try to limit my intake of things I know are unhealthy, and marvel at the impressive dedication of vegetarians, vegans, and Jews.

The Secret of Jollibee

This past spring, a certain fast-food franchise called Jollibee opened up about five blocks from my apartment in Woodside. In spite of its seemingly misfit status amidst mom-and-pop convenience stores and privately owned bakeries, this restaurant became instantly and wildly popular: for its first month, the line extended out the door and wrapped around the block almost daily. Family members took turns snapping each other's pictures with a giant bee statue that stood in front of the store as though it were a Disneyland mascot. And all this for a place that looked like nothing more than a KFC knockoff.

As it turns out, Jollibee is the McDonalds of the Philippines. Visually, Jollibee looks like a combination of Chuck-E-Cheese, McDonalds, and KFC. There are pictures of plump, olive-skinned children eating fried chicken legs on the walls inside, and the whole place is decorated in a red-white-and-yellow theme. Its menu is an odd conglomeration of fried chicken, French fries, hamburgers, spaghetti, and soft drinks. So, like America’s beloved McDonalds, the appeal of the franchise is not the its aesthetic or its menu. Branding has somehow trumped all else. Because with all of the other delicious, authentic, ethnic restaurants around—Indian, Thai, Mexican, Japanese, Irish, you name it!—all of these people were still spending their money on assembly-line fried chicken and overdone spaghetti.

However, the mystery has been solved. People are not as crazy—or stupid (because wanting to have your picture taken with a shiny oversized bee statue in front of a fast food restaurant just strikes me as stupid) —as they seem, and while I personally will never step foot in that place, I can at least now look upon those who do with less contempt. After all, if I went to live in Ghana or some other remote, foreign place and happened upon a Pinkberry store there, I would without-a-doubt drag my friends to it. Why? Because it’s Pinkberry! So what if it has horribly cheesy, overly modern-bordering-on-anime Japanese aesthetics and if the yogurt is overpriced? This is popular in America and I like it and my Ghanaian friends are going to like it too, darn it. And I might even take my picture with those nifty pig-shaped salt and pepper shakers—the neon orange ones.

Casa Bella

There are so many restaurants in NYC, some of them are bound to be bad. Therefore I typically try to eat out on recommendation only, thus saving myself wasted meals and, more importantly, wasted money. I have found a good number of eateries this way—Pinkberry and the Heights last summer on the Upper West Side, the Taquerilla in Jersey City, and Sri Pra Phai right around the corner from my apartment in Woodside. However, this method is sometimes unsuitable, as was the case when my friend T___, who was visiting from out of town, and I went to Little Italy to meet my cousins for dinner.

I have eaten in Little Italy before, one time last summer when my sister and my friend E___ came to visit me. We chose our restaurant by the walk-down-the-street-and-scan-menus method, and we enjoyed a fabulous meal, so performing this same blind search for a restaurant down Mulberry street a second time did not seem especially risky. This was Little Italy—everything had to be good.

Much to our surprise, the first place to accost us with a menu was also able to seat our party of six at its outdoor "patio" (i.e. sidewalk space), so we grabbed the available seating and settled down to look over the vast menu. Everything on it looked as good as every other place down the street....

My first clue that this restaurant wasn't as good as "every other place" should have been the seating itself: the chairs were plastic lawn chairs, the kind you can buy at Wal-Mart and that have to be thrown out at the end of every season because their white surfaces end up turning mysteriously and un-clean-ably gray. You get what you pay for with these chairs; they are very unsturdy and very uncomfortable. Consequently, no restaurant that values its customers' dining experience would put them through that kind of discomfort.

Unfortuantely, I missed sign #1 because we were all so eager to simply sit down. Sign #2 also went unnoticed, at least until any food was served: the napkins. I understand that cloth napkins are typically reserved for restaurants serving appetizers that cost as much as this place's entre dishes, but I have encountered a variety of paper versions, and some are much better than others. These napkins were thinner than the toilet paper we had in college! One speck of water or oil, and the whole thing would likely disintegrate uselessly right there on my lap. But, of course, nothing had been served yet, so I didn't notice this sign, either.

The growing realization of how poor this restaurant really was arrived along with the complimentary bread. Sign #3: it was bad. One of the two miniature loaves was as hard as a rock, and the loaves were served not with a saucer of fragrant dipping oil, but with small plastic packets of butter--the kind with the golden peel-back foil tops that you would find at a cheap diner.

And then we received our food. Or, actually, everyone at the table received their food except for me. I had ordered bruschetta and minstrone soup--two of my favorite Italian dishes--and when the waiter came out with our meals, he informed me that the restaurant had run out of minstrone soup. Now, I understand a restaurant running out of a popular food item; this phenomenon is not unheard-of. However, the fact that the waiter had waited until he served our meals to inform me there was no soup (when, if I had known earlier, I would have completely changed my order) was truly unacceptable. As a result, I had to settle for their house soup, Pasta Fagioli, which, while it certainly wasn't bad, was not what I had wanted at all.

Unfortunately, no one else was pleased with the food they had ordered, either. W___'s lasagna tasted "weird." A___'s vegetable angel hair was bland. E___'s chicken was dry. And my bruschetta was nothing to get terriblyl excited over. All-in-all, it was definitely not a $25 experience.

Thus, the moral of the story is: if you plan to eat in Little Italy, bypass Casa Bella. And try to check out the chairs and the napkins before you sit down. It may save your dining experience.

Dim Sum Instructional Video

You'll need to turn your head on its side to watch this, but in my opinion, it's worth the neck cramp. You can watch me struggle to eat foreign food, and after watching, you'll know how to eat it, too!

Click the picture below to begin instruction. . . .

*NOTE: I'm really sorry, but you have to have a Facebook account to view the video. I couldn't get it to upload through Blogger, although I did try several times. If you don't have an account and still want to see it, either e-mail me or post a response here and I can send you the video directly by e-mail. Cheers!

I am NOT a picky eater

Ever since I can remember, I have been branded as the Picky Eater in my family. Granted, I suppose I have earned that title, considering that compared to the rest of my family members, I do tend to have the most selective palate.

My “selectivity” began as a child. (Or, at least, when I was younger—because when does the division between child and adult become apparent? When we go to school? When we graduate from school? When we get married? So perhaps I am still a child. Either way, I am about ten-to-fifteen years older than the age I am talking about.) I distinctly remember the dread that would appear on my grandmother’s face every summer when I would stay with her and my grandfather for one week by myself. This dread specifically when it came time to prepare a meal. She would ask me what I wanted, and I would tell her. Then, however, after she made it and set it out on the table, I would take one look at it (or, if she was lucky, one bite) and insist that this was not what I wanted. She didn’t make buttered noodles like mom did. I only liked Kraft macaroni and cheese (the boxed kind, not her homemade kind). The pork chops tasted weird. Even the orange juice she had was wrong: it had pulp.

Now, although I am not nearly so particular—I eat things prepared in a variety of ways other than how my mother cooks them, for instance, and I will choke down pulpy orange juice if I must—I am still branded as being the Picky Eater of the family. I am the only one who, for example, will not eat any sandwich with mayonnaise on it. I also do not care for 99% of cheese, eggs, or red meat products.

However, since I have been to Singapore, I have tried such a variety of foods that are obscure to us Americans—and have enjoyed them!—that I refuse to bear that title any longer! I believe that had I been raised in an Asian country, I would have thrived and perhaps grown quite corpulent eating all of the delicious foods here. They don’t load up their dishes with cheese here, nor do they tend to feature as much red meat on their entrée menus. Instead, it’s all fish, fish, fish! And noodles, and rice. And vegetables!

To illustrate, let me give a list—accompanied by a few photos, of course—of a number of foods I have tried and enjoyed during my stay here. I must credit Angela for making sure I tried each and every one of them, for without her direction and insistence, I would probably have not known where to begin in my culinary excursions, nor would I ever have been so adventurous.

August 6: kaya (sweet pan dan leaf paste) on toast; kai lan (leafy stir-fried vegetable); Hokkien mee (prawn noodle with lime and chili); sugar cane juice; ice kacang (like a sno cone mountain topped with red beans, grass jelly, corn, coconut milk)

August 7: cai xin (green leafy vegetable, served with chicken chop claypot); longan (fruit with tough shell and opaque white grape-like inside); rice burger una gi (eel served between two rice patties/“buns”)

August 8: eel; baby octopus; dragon fruit; *papaya milkshake* (the first thing I did not like)

August 9: char kway teow (cockles—a shellfish tasting a bit like oysters—with flat kway teow noodles and skinny mee noodles in a soy sauce with scallions); chendol (similar to ice kacang); *durian* (second thing I did not like—it’s a custardy fruit that you have to crack open)

August 10: black fungus (surprisingly good!); dried bean curd skin; glutanous ball in sweet wine (a dessert soup)

August 11: laksa (spicy soup with thin noodles and veggies/seafood); tomato prata (similar to naan); milo dinosaur (chocolate milk with powdered mix on top—very delicious and can/should be easily brought back to the states); rambutan (again with opaque white grape-like inside, but very deceiving hairy pink-and-green neon rind)

August 12: fish ball soup; kang kong (hollow stemmed green vegetable in spicey sambal sauce); ice cream sandwich (this is a square of ice cream in your choice of flavors served on a piece of white bread dyed green and pink; very unusual!)

August 13: mangosteen (dark plum colored fruit with white tiny sectioned juicy insides); baluku (meaning “head lump”; similar to longan but with more seeds that taste bitter); coffee bun; red bean ice cream

August 14: watermelon juice; chicken floss bun

August 15: sashimi (sushi without the fixings, otherwise known as raw fish)

August 16: soba (cold gray noodles served with iced soya sauce and wasabi paste)

August 17: *pig intestine; pig stomach* (items 3 and 4 that I did not like); seaweed; sesame paste (a hot black dessert soup)

Thus, in conclusion, I would like to cast off my title of Picky Eater in lieu of a more apt description: Adventerous Eater!

Tea the English Way, Coffee the French Way

The English drink their tea with milk. Always. When I asked for mine specifically with no milk, I received a look similar to when I ask for tap water in a foreign café/restaurant/bar. “You want it black?” they replied skeptically.

While the English drink their tea milky, the French drink their coffee black. Angela could not find coffee with cream anywhere in Lille. The shop where she ordered coffee actually told her they had no cream.

Welcome to the American way, where you can have your tea and coffee however you please.

Dog Poop and Skinny Girls

As insulting as it may seem to cultures and countries, Angela and I have decided that once you travel to a few cities, they all begin to seem very much the same. Had someone dropped us into Paris, and had we had no knowledge of the difference between the French and Spanish languages, we may immediately have believed we were in the city centers of Madrid or Barcelona or, if we did not know English, even London. All of these cities have the obvious rows of colorful shops, lots of flower shops, cafes, basic public transportation, and much-too-similar tourist attractions: museums, cathedrals, historic monuments, and parks.

However, when we made this observation, both of us were tired, sore, grouchy, and annoyed at having been ditched by our French friend Melanie the previous night when there seems to be nothing to do in her tiny hometown, Lille. To be fair to Paris and even to France as a country, people, and culture, it does possess several striking features that differentiate it from other places.

Paris has much wider streets than either London or Madrid. It is probably more comparable to Barcelona, but with fewer alleyways. Of course, this is considering the fact that we did not stay in Paris; we stayed in Lille, and so we did not have the opportunity to become familiar with all the nooks and crannies of the city. However, even Lille seemed to have generally wider streets than the typical “alleyway”, and this is considering even the fact that we stayed in the dodgiest of areas. (For those of you from Pittsburgh, I would say we stayed in the “East Liberty” of Lille.)

France is really dirty. Not in the metaphorical sense, but literally. I have never had so much dirt blown into my eyes, anywhere. Not in New York City, not in Madrid, not even in Arizona, where there was all that dusty dirt everywhere. I think it comes from the fact that they do not clean up their sidewalks. They do not employ people to clean them—as they did in Spain, where you could find people in neon vests at every corner, wheeling trash buggies and spearing or sweeping rubbish off of the ground—nor do they clean the walks themselves—attested to by the fact that there are small crusty nodules of dog poop on the sidewalk every ten meters or so.

Girls in France are really skinny. It is not a stereotype; it is fact. Angela bought a jar of mussels, but she needed a utensil to eat them, so we went to McDonald’s and bought McFlurries. Then, we sat in the second floor dining room and watched people on the street below while we ate our “meal” (me: brioche, apple, tap water, McFlurry, her: croissant, preserved mussels, apple juice, McFlurry). Yes, we really were that bored with Lille and what there was to do there (i.e. nothing easily accessible by broke, foreign, English-speaking students), but it was also massively entertaining to analyze the crowds that passed below without worrying that we were offending anyone, since virtually no one in Lille spoke English. We discussed men, women, children, their clothing, their actions, and their body types at full volume with no regard for who might sit down at the tables beside us. And after two hours of this type of analysis, we came to one very miraculous yet definite conclusion: French women are skinny.

Our second conclusion: males should not wear skinny-leg jeans. Skinny boys are not attractive, and skinny-leg jeans just make them look skinnier than they already are. Whoever started this trend should be removed from the fashion industry.

France seems intent upon being more chic than either Spain or England. I do not say this because I went expecting this stereotype to be true, either. The traditional architecture is more ornate and detailed than that which I saw in Spain or England. Compare cathedrals for instance: the Notre Dame blows any Spanish cathedral away ten times over for the intricacy of its carvings and statues, never mind any English churches. Spain certainly had its own style of ornament for buildings, but it was more “robust” and, for lack of a better description, less “hoity-toity.” English traditional architecture, by comparison, is just plain plain.

Another way in which France maintains its chic status is in its eateries. The cafes are ritzier, with wineglasses crisscrossed over the tables that are unoccupied and napkins folded quaintly at each place setting—and this is at nearly all of the outdoor cafes we passed, not just the occasional one or two. Obviously the French have fast food chains (how else would we have stayed within our budget and comfort zone without Subway or McDonald’s?), but what they do not seem to have is buffets, which both English and Spanish cities most certainly provided in some variety. Combined, these observations would imply that the French take their eating very seriously: they intend to appreciate every bite they eat. They had better, for what they pay.

And as for the differences in food, here are the most popular/originally “French” foods (by what I could gather from my time spent there): olives, cheese, wine, and mussles. They seriously had a café that appeared to serve meals of only steamed mussles and side dishes, and in the supermarkets, they had a cheese deli with a greater variety than Americans enjoy when buying sandwich lunchmeat. They also have more varieties of olives than I have seen in a long time, although I assume when I go to Greece I will see more; and as for wine, well, let us just say that their wine lists usually supersede their menus, and their supermarket dedicates more than two isles to the beverage.

Chickpea Queen

I made dinner on this particular evening for my Singaporean friends Michelle (who is taking the picture) and Angela. On our trip to Spain, Angela told me that she had never eaten chickpeas before. As my garbanzo obsession is well-realized within the first-floor kitchen (see title), who better to introduce her to this delicious food source than me? I cooked up an Indian recipe mailed to me by a dear old Indian woman friend of my father’s, Queenie. Add a cabbage salad creation of my own and hot pita bread—which, I will admit, I heated in the microwave oven rather than bake fresh—and wha-lah! Dinner is served.

And, might I add, I look mighty tan here. I must heartily thank the surprisingly ample supply of early April British sunshine we have had recently.

Sweets Uncovered

During my weekend in London, I experienced another first: Cadbury chocolate. Let me tell you, as a person who does not even like chocolate very much, this is one of the most delicious substances I have ever tasted. From now on, I’m boycotting Hershey’s; it would just be a disappointment. The best way to describe the “Cadbury difference” is that it is so much creamier. I never realized now much American chocolate tastes like wax until I ate this stuff. You just take a little square on your tongue and let it melt into velvety goodness inside the heat of your mouth. Mmmm. Chewing it would be like sacrilege.

This brings me to a Big Question. While the four of us—Flannery and Kate (the London flatmates) and Grace (the visitor from Nahant)—indulged ourselves in Cadbury decadence, we began to discuss other “British sweets.” Surprisingly, all of us agreed upon one we absolutely had to try: Turkish delight. Why? Because after reading/seeing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, all of us had a burning desire to taste the sweet that was so good that Edmund would betray all of his siblings for it.

C.S. Lewis may have written the novel to promote Christianity, but the four of us decided that he also must have also been paid off by a candy company. Because after reading that book, you know there was only one question on every child’s mind: “What is Turkish delight?”