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New York, Days 1-3
I arrived on a red-eye and basically collapsed into bed for the next few hours. After that, my sister and I went out for lunch and some random shopping, except I was very grumpy because the sky was grey and it started raining on and off halfway through.
I think I'm officially Californian now; I was so baffled by the concept of rain in summer. I feel I shouldn't be, as I grew up with summer typhoons and the warm, wet rainy season, but I glared at the grey skies like they were a personal insult. It's summer! Skies should be vast and blue and sunny, the weather should be hot and dry, and the nights should be cool and refreshing. This hot, wet, muggy thing doesn't work quite so well.
On the first day, the food was good but not particularly spectacular, though I did get to sample cheddar grits, which are very interesting. My sister and I both agreed vehemently with each other that sweet, porridge-like substances (oatmeal, cream of wheat, etc.) are extremely strange, and that we prefer savory porridges (polenta, congee, etc.) intsead. Of course, this is because we grew up with congee. I remember being particularly startled when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rachelmanija once told me that she couldn't eat congee because it weirded her out, as she has grown up with cream of wheat. On the other hand, I can actually eat oatmeal, but only with fruit or jam. Adding brown sugar makes my brain freak out a little.
I feel I should stop being shocked and eminently amused by small things like this, but it's like the first time I saw a non-Chinese kitchen and realized that... they had no rice cooker!
You may all laugh at me now! I am a bit obsessed with things like junk food and Twinkies and meat loaf and street food because I find different people's concepts of "normal" food extremely interesting. For example, I find tuna, ketchup, mayo and cucumbers on waffles tasty and normal but was completely surprised to see people eating waffles with fried chicken and maple syrup (I suspect that would be tasty, though I haven't tried it).
Ratatouille and Korean food
My sister, her roommate and I went to see Ratatouille the night of the fourth. After several mishaps involving getting into the wrong line and not bringing an umbrella out, we finally made it into the theater. Except, given the whole wrong line thing, we just got in for previews, which meant every seat except a scattered few in the first three rows were taken.
I really loved the movie! Of course, I was pre-disposed to, given that it's on rats and food. But a critic somewhere commented that it was a very old-fashioned movie, one that didn't have the snazzy pop culture references that so many animated films do these days, and I think she's right. There's a bit of a timeless quality to the film that I like.
Also... drooool! Oh man! I was dying for French food after that!
Also also, I will just note here that rats have five toes on their hind feet, not three, and that their tummies should have a little vee-line of fur down them. But that is just because I am a total dork who counts my rats' toes.
Mostly I had to prevent myself from squeeing out loud from the cute ratness of it all.
Alas, we did not go for French food afterward, given the whole reservation thing, but we did have Korean. And afterward, we went to Pinkberry in Koreatown, which has frozen yogurt with toppings. Except Pinkberry's frozen yogurt actually tastes like yogurt! As in, it is creamy, but also a bit tangy and sour, and not like soft serve (I'm generally not a soft serve fan). Also, you can pick three toppings, many of which are fruit. So my sister and I split one with raspberries, blueberries and mangoes on top. It was absolutely wonderful, and now I want more, except I don't think we have it here. Grrr.
I blogged about Max Brenner and the Union Square farmer's market previously, so I'll leave that off. And I'll write up all my book loot when I get home.
Park Avenue Cafe
I whined to my sister about French food, and we both decided to have dinner the next night at Park Avenue Cafe, which is French and pricey, except they have this "pay your age" thing that we took advantage of last year. Unfortunately, when we got there, we realized that the place had been entirely redecorated and there was no mention of the pay your age thing. Thankfully, my sister was very nice and treated me as an early birthday present.
We had a soft-shell crab appetizer, which came out with two whole soft-shell crabs on top of a little salad composed of avocado, jicama, and strawberries. I really liked the pairing of the deep-fried, hot, salty crab with the sweeter fruits and vegetables, particularly the contrasting textures: creamy avocado, crisp jicama, soft strawberries and deep-fried crab. We also got seared scallops on top of a mix of tapioca pearls, peaches and a little granola, which sounds incredibly odd, but actually went very well with the scallops.
Before this, I never would have thought that fruit and seafood went well together, but there you have it!
For the main course, we split caprese ravioli, which had a mozzarella filling topped with diced tomatoes (not heirloom, woe), with a yellow tomato sauce that wasn't like pizza sauce with a swirl of balsalmic vinegar. OMG. Am newly in love with balsalmic vinegar, especially very reduced vinegar that is thick and sweet and tangy and goes absolutely perfectly with pureed yellow summer tomatoes.
Oh! Also, they served us watermelon on sticks as the amuse bouche! And the sticks were stuck into this little carton of fake grass! We were both very amused and felt rather stupid when we picked up the sticks and had the watermelon drop off simultaneously.
Soup, peas, and Shoujo Manga Dark Angel (spoilers for DA 2x11)
Aftercoffeeandink and I got back from the farmer's market, laden with vegetables (HEIRLOOM TOMATOES OMG YAY!), we headed over to her place. We both shelled peas while watching the first three eps. of Honey and Clover, which I think Mely liked yay! I cooked peas with salt and pepper and a ton of lemon; the peas in NY are younger and smaller and sweeter than the ones here. We ate and watched vids and cagefighting with Alec and Max on Dark Angel, and then Mely went to cook her summer soup while leaving me with ...
Shoujo manga Dark Angel!
I had been reduced to giggles by the cagefighting, as I had completely not realized that Alec is Dean! Ok, Jensen Ackles, but you know. Somehow, I have read all the SPN and Dark Angel posts on my flist and figured that Jensen Ackles plays a minor character in DA and not the angsty yet troublesome and devilish mutant that he does!
Anyway, shoujo manga Dark Angel is an episode about Alec's dark and tragic past in which the show tries to win us over to Alec's side by showing how secretly sad and tragic and torn he is on the inside. However, much like Yuki Kaori's attempts to humanize Jezebel Disraeli with a sad zombie puppy story, the result was more hilarious than sympathetic (though I am sure Sasuke fans would eat it up with a spoon). In Alec's defense, he is more your standard womanizing jerk and not a homicidal maniac who keeps organs in a jar and lovingly talks to them or someone who has sworn to kill his brother at the cost of all his humanity.
Alec gets many tragic and dramatic flashbacks to his tragic and dramatic past, involving a silver heart locket which he still keeps to this very day and piano music. We are introduced to the piano music during a dinner party with Alec, Max, Original Cindy, and a dog-man (literally a dog-man; I am not sure how else to describe him). Max mocks Alec's womanizing ways, which somehow trigger Alec's Sekrit Pain (I, for one, side thoroughly with Max and found Alec's hurt at the mocking rather... mockable). Alec then runs off. Please note that the dinner party is being hosted by the dog-man in his house.
Alec somehow manages to stumble across an old piano (!) in the basement (!!) of the dog-man's house (!!!) and begins darkly and tragically playing classical music.
I think at this point I was laughing so loudly that you could hear me from outside the apartment.
As his tragic flashback took place, involving, of course, the True Love of a Beautiful Teenager and the sight of Jensen Ackles in spectacles and a suit as a strict piano instructor, the same dark and tragic music would keep playing in the background and send me into fits of hysterics.
When the episode finished, I rushed over to the kitchen to have hysterics with Mely.
"OMG! He thinks she is dead except she ends up in a coma! And dies tragically after he sees her one last time! Coma! The only way it could be better is if she woke up with amnesia!" I flailed at Mely.
"But the best part is, in the episode commentary, they say that they were originally going to make her wake up with amnesia!" Mely said.
"Noooo! Awesome!"
"Yes! And the episode is so deep that the dog-man makes an abstract painting of Alec's tortured soul to show Max how tortured and angsty Alec is!"
(I kid you not. It was something like, "Alec hides from Alec. Dark swirls like Alec's pain. Hard to see at first, but there.")
I think I'm officially Californian now; I was so baffled by the concept of rain in summer. I feel I shouldn't be, as I grew up with summer typhoons and the warm, wet rainy season, but I glared at the grey skies like they were a personal insult. It's summer! Skies should be vast and blue and sunny, the weather should be hot and dry, and the nights should be cool and refreshing. This hot, wet, muggy thing doesn't work quite so well.
On the first day, the food was good but not particularly spectacular, though I did get to sample cheddar grits, which are very interesting. My sister and I both agreed vehemently with each other that sweet, porridge-like substances (oatmeal, cream of wheat, etc.) are extremely strange, and that we prefer savory porridges (polenta, congee, etc.) intsead. Of course, this is because we grew up with congee. I remember being particularly startled when
rachelmanija once told me that she couldn't eat congee because it weirded her out, as she has grown up with cream of wheat. On the other hand, I can actually eat oatmeal, but only with fruit or jam. Adding brown sugar makes my brain freak out a little.I feel I should stop being shocked and eminently amused by small things like this, but it's like the first time I saw a non-Chinese kitchen and realized that... they had no rice cooker!
You may all laugh at me now! I am a bit obsessed with things like junk food and Twinkies and meat loaf and street food because I find different people's concepts of "normal" food extremely interesting. For example, I find tuna, ketchup, mayo and cucumbers on waffles tasty and normal but was completely surprised to see people eating waffles with fried chicken and maple syrup (I suspect that would be tasty, though I haven't tried it).
Ratatouille and Korean food
My sister, her roommate and I went to see Ratatouille the night of the fourth. After several mishaps involving getting into the wrong line and not bringing an umbrella out, we finally made it into the theater. Except, given the whole wrong line thing, we just got in for previews, which meant every seat except a scattered few in the first three rows were taken.
I really loved the movie! Of course, I was pre-disposed to, given that it's on rats and food. But a critic somewhere commented that it was a very old-fashioned movie, one that didn't have the snazzy pop culture references that so many animated films do these days, and I think she's right. There's a bit of a timeless quality to the film that I like.
Also... drooool! Oh man! I was dying for French food after that!
Also also, I will just note here that rats have five toes on their hind feet, not three, and that their tummies should have a little vee-line of fur down them. But that is just because I am a total dork who counts my rats' toes.
Mostly I had to prevent myself from squeeing out loud from the cute ratness of it all.
Alas, we did not go for French food afterward, given the whole reservation thing, but we did have Korean. And afterward, we went to Pinkberry in Koreatown, which has frozen yogurt with toppings. Except Pinkberry's frozen yogurt actually tastes like yogurt! As in, it is creamy, but also a bit tangy and sour, and not like soft serve (I'm generally not a soft serve fan). Also, you can pick three toppings, many of which are fruit. So my sister and I split one with raspberries, blueberries and mangoes on top. It was absolutely wonderful, and now I want more, except I don't think we have it here. Grrr.
I blogged about Max Brenner and the Union Square farmer's market previously, so I'll leave that off. And I'll write up all my book loot when I get home.
Park Avenue Cafe
I whined to my sister about French food, and we both decided to have dinner the next night at Park Avenue Cafe, which is French and pricey, except they have this "pay your age" thing that we took advantage of last year. Unfortunately, when we got there, we realized that the place had been entirely redecorated and there was no mention of the pay your age thing. Thankfully, my sister was very nice and treated me as an early birthday present.
We had a soft-shell crab appetizer, which came out with two whole soft-shell crabs on top of a little salad composed of avocado, jicama, and strawberries. I really liked the pairing of the deep-fried, hot, salty crab with the sweeter fruits and vegetables, particularly the contrasting textures: creamy avocado, crisp jicama, soft strawberries and deep-fried crab. We also got seared scallops on top of a mix of tapioca pearls, peaches and a little granola, which sounds incredibly odd, but actually went very well with the scallops.
Before this, I never would have thought that fruit and seafood went well together, but there you have it!
For the main course, we split caprese ravioli, which had a mozzarella filling topped with diced tomatoes (not heirloom, woe), with a yellow tomato sauce that wasn't like pizza sauce with a swirl of balsalmic vinegar. OMG. Am newly in love with balsalmic vinegar, especially very reduced vinegar that is thick and sweet and tangy and goes absolutely perfectly with pureed yellow summer tomatoes.
Oh! Also, they served us watermelon on sticks as the amuse bouche! And the sticks were stuck into this little carton of fake grass! We were both very amused and felt rather stupid when we picked up the sticks and had the watermelon drop off simultaneously.
Soup, peas, and Shoujo Manga Dark Angel (spoilers for DA 2x11)
After
coffeeandink and I got back from the farmer's market, laden with vegetables (HEIRLOOM TOMATOES OMG YAY!), we headed over to her place. We both shelled peas while watching the first three eps. of Honey and Clover, which I think Mely liked yay! I cooked peas with salt and pepper and a ton of lemon; the peas in NY are younger and smaller and sweeter than the ones here. We ate and watched vids and cagefighting with Alec and Max on Dark Angel, and then Mely went to cook her summer soup while leaving me with ...Shoujo manga Dark Angel!
I had been reduced to giggles by the cagefighting, as I had completely not realized that Alec is Dean! Ok, Jensen Ackles, but you know. Somehow, I have read all the SPN and Dark Angel posts on my flist and figured that Jensen Ackles plays a minor character in DA and not the angsty yet troublesome and devilish mutant that he does!
Anyway, shoujo manga Dark Angel is an episode about Alec's dark and tragic past in which the show tries to win us over to Alec's side by showing how secretly sad and tragic and torn he is on the inside. However, much like Yuki Kaori's attempts to humanize Jezebel Disraeli with a sad zombie puppy story, the result was more hilarious than sympathetic (though I am sure Sasuke fans would eat it up with a spoon). In Alec's defense, he is more your standard womanizing jerk and not a homicidal maniac who keeps organs in a jar and lovingly talks to them or someone who has sworn to kill his brother at the cost of all his humanity.
Alec gets many tragic and dramatic flashbacks to his tragic and dramatic past, involving a silver heart locket which he still keeps to this very day and piano music. We are introduced to the piano music during a dinner party with Alec, Max, Original Cindy, and a dog-man (literally a dog-man; I am not sure how else to describe him). Max mocks Alec's womanizing ways, which somehow trigger Alec's Sekrit Pain (I, for one, side thoroughly with Max and found Alec's hurt at the mocking rather... mockable). Alec then runs off. Please note that the dinner party is being hosted by the dog-man in his house.
Alec somehow manages to stumble across an old piano (!) in the basement (!!) of the dog-man's house (!!!) and begins darkly and tragically playing classical music.
I think at this point I was laughing so loudly that you could hear me from outside the apartment.
As his tragic flashback took place, involving, of course, the True Love of a Beautiful Teenager and the sight of Jensen Ackles in spectacles and a suit as a strict piano instructor, the same dark and tragic music would keep playing in the background and send me into fits of hysterics.
When the episode finished, I rushed over to the kitchen to have hysterics with Mely.
"OMG! He thinks she is dead except she ends up in a coma! And dies tragically after he sees her one last time! Coma! The only way it could be better is if she woke up with amnesia!" I flailed at Mely.
"But the best part is, in the episode commentary, they say that they were originally going to make her wake up with amnesia!" Mely said.
"Noooo! Awesome!"
"Yes! And the episode is so deep that the dog-man makes an abstract painting of Alec's tortured soul to show Max how tortured and angsty Alec is!"
(I kid you not. It was something like, "Alec hides from Alec. Dark swirls like Alec's pain. Hard to see at first, but there.")
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Huh.
And oh, I've been meaning to tell you -- I have heirloom tomatoes growing in my GARDEN. Whee! (No peas, though -- that will have to wait until next year.)
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I think I can get myself to accept oatmeal by thinking of it as cereal, which explains why I am all right with having dried fruit in it (a la granola) vs. honey or maple syrup (not crunchy enough to get past the "Gah! Honey! In soup!" reaction).
You have heirlooms in your garden?! *JEALOUS*
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Re sweet and savory porridges, I have a theory that if you grow up with a sweet (or savory) food, eating basically the same thing but savory (or sweet) is about a million times weirder and more off-putting than eating something completely outside of your experience. For example, where I grew up, jelly and gelled substances were always sweet. To this day I detest and despise aspics, the gelled variety of gefilte fish, and all other forms of savory jellies. Corollary: my reaction to congee and yours to cream of wheat.
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But I remember when McDonald's first McGriddle ads came out, and I sort of mentally flipped out over syrup + sausage.
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Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, a famous LA joint, operates on the same principle.
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I thought of you while watching! And Michael from LFN playing the violin in the rain... in the dark!
I think you are totally right about the sweet/savory thing. At the Korean place, I ordered these chewy rice cakes that I love in Chinese food -- they're usually stir-fried with pork and vegetables and soy sauce. Except the Korean version was a little sweet, and I just could not wrap my brain around it.
Some sweet/savory things I've managed to get over (the peaches with the scallops, frex), but some still freak me out.
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::dies laughing::
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Then we watched the Crossroad Demon ep. of SPN and even though I'm not an SPN fan, I was much comforted to see Jensen Ackles as Dean, acting very much freaked out by anything vaguely resembling emo.
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http://www.vatanny.com/
It's price fixe, but like omg so much food, and they make it individually spicy how you ask, and it's all you can eat (but there's so much that you won't need seconds).
It's veggie Gujarati food. Mmm.
And for the record, I actually do like congee, except it has the problem of not being enough to get me through the day. It doesn't stick to my ribs.
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And for the record, I actually do like congee
Oh, interesting! Did you grow up eating sweet oatmeal or cream of wheat? (sorry, trying to unscientifically chart data points)
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Cream of wheat was for when I was sick, sometimes with sugar and sometimes without. I liked the lumps. :)
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Food is so odd.
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Except apples. Apples in my tuna grosses me out in a way that ketchup and mayo in tuna doesn't.
Food really is so odd.
Though in the restaurant's defense, it may not label itself as French... I can't remember, I think I just thought of it as French because it was fancy and expensive! The peach + tapioca + granola + scallop felt really weird at first, and yet, strangely tasty.
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BTW, I loved Ratatouille, particularly the synesthesia moments, but what made the film for me was when the critic takes his first bite. That's what foodieism is all about!
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Oh! I loved that moment so much! It was so perfect!
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Canned tuna? ::shudder::
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I'm way too much of a snob for the deep-fried twinkies. And Cool Whip! Don't get me started!
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Somehow, I get the feeling that you aren't surprised by this ;).
I feel my introduction to Cool Whip a few years ago was anthropologically significant or something, though of course nowhere near as significant as the first time I had meat loaf!
Ok, I do feel twinkies and whatnot are sort of gross (I tend to think most pre-packaged food with ingredients I can't pronounce are kind of gross), but they're just so culturally fascinating!
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My understanding of junk food revolves around my new knowledge about the US corn surplus (thank you, Michael Pollan) and the human biological drives toward sugar and fat. But that's pretty much it. I'd love to hear what's culturally different about American food habits.
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Oh, of course! I really need to read that book; I usually forget to think about the industrial-agricultural aspect of food beyond my local farmer's market.
Are they? Please, pontificate at length!
Hrm, I am going to have to think about this more! I realized I am not quite sure how and why I think of junk food and street food and etc. as cultural artifacts and thus as anthropologically interesting things, but I suspect it will be post-length instead of comment-length.
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And yay, a post on food and culture! I look forward to it. (:
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BuffyFirefly on the 21st. That is, unless we're having it at our place, in which case I'll just dig it out of the library and hand it to you. (:no subject
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Polenta is very good with sour cream and farmer's cheese ... I grew up eating it that way because my mom's family was from Romania (well, Bessarabia, to use the name they used) - only we called it mamaliga. And I like gefilte fish but I don't bother to eat the jelly stuff. When we were in London, we discovered that jellied eels have a gefilte-fish-like jelly on them, so I wasn't particularly upset with them ... I thought I was going to be horrified and grossed out.
We have a rice cooker ... which I have never used. I make rice in a heavy saucepan, once or twice a week. But I scorch about one batch in 50, so the Mr. bought me the rice cooker. And it's still in its box 6 months later ... .
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I, um, have to say... I didn't actually realize that you could make rice without a rice cooker until I graduated and started watching Food Network. It was rather surprising! I mean, I sort of knew, because people must have done something without rice cookers, but my brain just never really thought about it.
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Huh, I don't think I noticed any sexually suggestive lines at all. Or wait, maybe there was one or two in the kitchen? I don't recall =(.
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Race-wise, though, I squirmed a bit at the "Chop-socky" Chinese food Gusteau cut-out and when the black character in the kitchen made some random comment about bad juju.
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