bacon blanket!

My boyfriend Christo made this for a libertarian tax protest and gave it to me as a present afterwards. It's pretty fucking amazing.

caviar inari

So it's been way too long since I've updated (despite the fact that I was functionally unemployed through February). In recent news, I've started boning dating a corporate chef, which is great because he doesn't work restaurant hours but he has access to great ingredients and cares about food as much as I do.

We had a living room Japanese food picnic last night- I made miso soup, hiya yakko (chilled tofu w. ginger, green onions and lemon soy sauce), rappini w. sesame sauce, natto (fermented soybeans) with kimchee which my bf tried and hated (most people find it unpalatable but I like it cos I'm weird), pickles, gyoza and two kinds of inari:



(I have a new digital camera that makes everything blue. I'll figure it out eventually).

He seasoned the rice on the red inari with a sauce he crafted from red lumpfish caviar (he brought me a full jar and it was too salty for me to enjoy straight), lemon juice, egg yolk, olive oil and garlic, and although I was initially dubious, it was really fucking good.



Of course he got all hardcore and garnished it too. I heart food industry people.

Accidentally got a box full of these included in an order of cookies from Alliance. I can only wonder about the group of people who were disappointed to get a box full of normal ones.

Wash your mouth with Chocolate

I'm addicted to chocolate. And I'm very picky about the chocolate I eat. I rarely eat anything below 70% cacao, and I'm frustrated by how hard it is to find dark chocolate with nuts or other flavors mixed in. I got excited when I discovered that Jade Chocolates has a cinnamon ylang ylang coconut flavored bar. So I bought it, and I tasted it. Oddly sweet and mild, and then suddenly I feel like I've eaten a bar of soap. I never really registered what the ylang ylang smell was in fancy soaps, but now I know. It's exactly like how this chocolate tastes. Uuughh! Some weird flavor combinations should be avoided.

Nutritional stupidity

Shit that people have tried to convince me is "healthy" that is total bullshit...

-Splenda, and other artifically sweeteners- Sugar and HFCS are not good for you, but this crap, while less caloric, is far worse. Anything that is derived synthetically in a laboratory is NOT good for you, because it makes your body go WTF.

-Fat free dairy products. Seriously guys- if you want to reduce calories in your diet, just eat more vegetables in proportion to other stuff. But ferchrissakes don't get the "fat free" version that your body can't digest. Worst culprits are shit like fat free 1/2 and 1/2 which is loaded with creepy corn syrup solids. (fat free froyo is actually kind of a guilty pleasure for me because I would prefer that it were NOT fat free).

-Vegan cupcakes. It's still a fucking cupcake. Using margarine instead of butter does not magically make this health food.

-Seitan. Celiac's and gluten intolerances are so friggin' common that eating concentrated wheat gluten seems hardly an improvement on real meat if you're omnivorously inclined.

-Soy. Hard to digest (unless it's fermented like miso and natto) and chock full of phytoestrogens- that block of tofu is the same as a dose of premarin. Yum!

That said, I love bacon, cupcakes, coffee and cheese. But at least I'm educated about the actual nutritional pros and cons of the stuff I eat.

Weirdly delicious things I cook on a whim

I love making pancakes with stuff in them. I usually make them with rice flour since I dont keep wheat flour around (I would be tempted to make cookies all the time if I did).

Today I made pancakes with chopped 72% chocolate, cloves cinnamon and nutmeg, and I put raw sugar on the wet part to caramelize because I was craving belgian waffles with pearl sugar.

It was so fucking good. Like gingerbread, except no ginger.

6 of 10

Stopped in McDonald's last night before class because I wanted McNuggets (hush) and lo and behold....the 6 piece McNugget is no longer featured on the regular menu, you have to look to the kid's menu and order a 6 piece (a "Mighty Kids" meal option in lieu of the 4 piece) and hope the cashier will just let you get the nuggets and not the whole Happy Meal. The regular menu now features a 10 piece McNugget option. That's right-TEN of them. When I worked at McD's 6 piece was the standard, 9 piece was if one was raging hungry and 20 piece was family size. Now 10 is the norm. Yet, my McNugget box featured the nutritional information, calories, fat, sodium, etc.

So in a nutshell, the portions of unhealthy food are now larger but come with proof of how unhealthy they are. Discuss.