Obsessions y Compulsions

As I've said before, I am a ruminator. I think about the same things over and over and over again. In some instances this is really unhealthy and causes me to freak out and defeat myself with repetitive negative thought patterns. In less serious instances, my single-mindedness just leads me to become obsessed with things that entertain me. If I don't have at least one thing--the same thing--to think about constantly...I'm just not myself, and it's better for me if it's the entertaining kind of obsessive thinking rather than the self-defeating kind. I've written about past obsessions here, here, and here, and I thought it would be fun to write about some of my current obsessions and compulsions.

1. Nachos: For the past several weeks, I've been on what I refer to as Nacho Rampage 2009: I've eaten nachos at restaurants 7 times in 14 days. I've already posted some restaurant reviews at #15 here. I've always been pretty indifferent to nachos before, and I have no idea what's caused me to lust after them so (probably has something to do with cheese; also I think nacho is a funny word). I don't know if Nacho Rampage '09 is over or not, all I know is that some days when lunch rolls around I develop a fever, and the only cure is nachos. I suspect the nacho fever will rear it's greasy, gooey head again in the near future. That said, I realize the nacho thing is more of a compulsion than an obsession, because I don't really think about nachos much, I just feel compelled to cram them into my face on a regular basis. Though to be honest I spend a lot of time thinking about my next meal.

2. Twitter: You know how sometimes you get into a conversation via text messaging that is totally inane and hilarious? There's a website that pretty much gives you the chance to have inane conversations with people all day long and witness other inane conversations. I complained about Twitter before, but now I can't live without it. It's like a whole website of just Facebook status updates. Alot of people use it as a business networking tool, and I think it's really good for those who want to get their blogs read by more people. Here is an article that explains better than I can what Twitter is and why people like it.

I've had a Twitter account since last summer, but I'd never really payed much attention to the site until Inauguration Day (two whole weeks ago). I couldn't watch any of the live inauguration footage in my office because our internet filter blocks streaming media, so I watched Twitter instead for photos and updates of the proceedings. I've been hooked ever since. So hooked that I check it compulsively all day at work, after work, on weekends, etc. It keeps me from going to bed on time. I'm going to have to get a Blackberry just so I can be on the internet all the time.

I can't really explain what's so addictive about Twitter; you talk to people all day long and you may not even know them, but it's fun and everyone is very positive.

3. Firefly: Sometimes my obsessions begin with a dream. Like last Sunday morning, I woke from a dream where I was a character in Firefly. I watched that series about a month ago and fell completely under its spell. The show was so well-made and brilliant that it still has a huge following, even six years after it was on the air. To find proof of this, all one has to do is look up Firefly's Wikipedia pages (there are many more websites devoted to Firefly, but Wikipedia is about as geeky as I like to get). They're some of the most articulate and thoughtful Wikipedia entries I've ever seen. In a strange coincidence, after reading all about Firefly on Wikipedia the other day, I went to the breakroom and found my coworker reading a book full of scholarly-type articles about the show. Glad to know I'm not the nerdiest nerd in nerdville. And he told me that Joss Whedon has a new show called Dollhouse (I think this link contains spoilers) debuting Feb 13 on Fox. I hardly ever watch TV and I don't ever watch Fox, so I'm glad I found out about this, yay synchronicity!

And, typical to my obsessive nature, part of my fascination with Firefly comes in the form of a crush. Surprisingly, I haven't fixated on any of the more intellectual or sensitive characters. Nope, I like the big meathead guy with all the guns, Jayne Cobb.

He's tall. He's funny. He's a total badass. He also wears a hilarious hat with earflaps in one episode. I love earflap hats, partly because one of my other pet obsessions, the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, has written about "ridiculous hat[s] with earflaps" in several of his stories. (Boy is that hat popular. A Google image search for "Jayne Cobb" yields 10 times as many photos of the hat than of Adam Baldwin, the actor who played Jayne Cobb. You can buy hats like it or patterns to knit your own. There are songs about it. I love how crazy people are!).

Ok, now back to my quest to determine whether Joss Whedon has a Twitter account.

Ugh. I just went to lunch and saw a guy I totally hate wearing an earflap hat. He is definitely not worthy. >:[

Hey girl, wanna make some pizza?

Ever since I read the Orangette post where Molly spoke of her husband's obsession with pizza, I've been itching to make pizza myself. I found a recipe on Epicurious for pizza margherita, with a dough recipe from Pizzeria Bianco, which was mentioned in the Orangette post. I always pay attention to COINCIDENCES, so I knew this would be a good recipe to try for my first pizza-making venture.

I made a pizza date with Tyler so we could incorporate some time playing with his dog-sitting charge, Otto Skinner.


Stir together yeast, 1 tablespoon flour, and 1/4 cup warm water in a large bowl and let stand until surface appears creamy, about 5 minutes.

Add 1 1/4 cups flour, remaining 1/2 cup water, salt, and oil and stir until smooth.

Stir in enough flour (1/4 to 1/3 cup) for dough to begin to pull away from side of bowl. (Dough will be slightly wet.)

Pulse tomatoes with juice in a blender briefly to make a chunky purée.

Cook garlic in oil in a small heavy saucepan over medium-low heat until fragrant and pale golden, about 2 minutes. Add tomato purée, basil, sugar, and 1/8 teaspoon salt and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until thickened and reduced to about 3/4 cup, about 40 minutes. Season with salt and cool.

Knead on a floured surface, lightly reflouring when dough becomes too sticky, until smooth, soft, and elastic, about 8 minutes. Note: This is really fun! I couldn't take any photos of me kneading because the dough was so sticky I didn't dare touch the camera.

Form into a ball, put in a bowl, and dust with flour. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel (not terry cloth) and let rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled, about 1 1/4 hours. Dough pre-rise.

Meanwhile, snack on Cheetos and a kalimotxo, then move the whole circus over to Otto Skinner's house.

Marvel at cuteness of Otto. Aww.

It has risen!

Do not punch down. Dust dough with flour, then transfer to a parchment-lined pizza peel or large baking sheet. Pat out dough evenly with your fingers and stretch into a 14-inch round, reflouring fingers if necessary. Thanks Tyler!

Spread sauce over dough, leaving a 1-inch border. Arrange cheese on top, leaving a 2- to 3-inch border. Again, thanks Tyler!

Play with Otto while pizza is baking. Notice that he smells kinda like tortillas. (This guy freaking loves me. He kept climbing into my lap, then wouldn't let me put him down for anything--he fought and fought and broke my necklace when I tried to put him down! I love him, though. He's adorable and sweeter than any other schnauzer I've ever met).

Slide pizza on parchment onto pizza stone. Bake until dough is crisp and browned and cheese is golden and bubbling in spots, 13 to 16 minutes. Using peel or baking sheet, transfer pizza to a cutting board. Cool 5 minutes. Sprinkle with some basil leaves before slicing.

Enjoy pizza with yummy Asian salad provided by Tyler. Continue snacking on pizza as you fart around on the internet looking at things like this, until pizza is completely gone!

Come and get your soma

They're remodeling the Albertsons near my house, turning it from the poshest Albies in town to an even posher version of itself. All the signs have been rendered in a subdued light green and the ugly tile floors have been replaced by poured concrete. So basically, they're trying to make it look like a Whole Foods on the inside.

It's fine with me if they want to compete with Whole Foods, because it means their produce section will totally rock come summer and I will hopefully never have the problem I've had a few times in the past where they have no fresh Italian parsley on their shelves and instead have stocked a literal ton of curly parsley. Curly parsley is a garnish, not an ingredient in delicious soups, pasta, French potato salad, etc. (Do you hear that, Broadway and Beacon glorified-convienience-store pseudo-Albertsons?)

However, look at the photo above. Yes, the sign does say $7.59 per pound for those pretty yellow tomatoes. They were practically glowing; my cell phone photo doesn't do them justice. I was tempted to buy some until I saw that price. I'm not the biggest tomato fan, but I love yellow tomatoes--especially the small teardrop-shaped ones. Best caprese salad ever! I did not buy any of those expensive little buggers, and it's probably a good thing, because as my friend Tony said, "They never taste good when they're that pretty." True dat!

The thing I find kind of disturbing about this grocery store is the prolific number of televisions they have. They used to have flat-screen monitors in the produce section with short infomercials about various kinds of produce. It was kind of cool, because I thought maybe it would encourage people to be more adventurous about the fruits and veggies they eat, but the food segments were interspersed with crappy alarmist news stories about the flagging economy. The TVs were removed during the remodel, and I wonder if they'll bring them back at all; I doubt stories about economic decline will help to sell $7.59 / lb tomatoes.

This Albertsons and several others in town have installed TV screens at the checkout stands. They show clips of comedy shows to placate customers who are waiting in line. Wow. I did't realize how poor peoples' attention spans had become, that they can't handle waiting in line for a few minutes without television to entertain them. How very dystopian. Maybe if I'm lucky I can get soma while I wait in line, as well.

On a tangential note, I read on Wikipedia that Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio are working on a big-screen version of Brave New World. I don't think I like this idea.

Food Tragedies I Have Known

2008 was a stellar year in many ways--Obama's election to President being the most obviously stellar occurrence of '08. It was a not-so-stellar year in other ways--can you say "economy?"

Restaurants in Boise usually have a tough time of it, since there are too many restaurants to do well--especially in downtown. This bad economic year has been especially bad for restaurants, so I would like to say a fond farewell to some of my favorites.

Tapas Estrella - My memory is foggy as to whether or not Tapas Estrella closed in 2007 or 2008, but I know it happened last year when I was busy with school. I've been craving bouillabaisse ever since I read The Debt to Pleasure last spring--the book has a 30-page detailed description on the making of bouillabaisse--and Tapas Estrella had an especially tasty bouillabaisse, which is kind of hard to come by in Boise. I may have to make a trip to the coast sometime soon just to satisfy my craving, because I'm not sure I'm up to the task of making bouillabaisse (or that I can afford it)! Estrella was also home to a sublime salad containing French lentils, golden beets, and frisee. And their garlic prawns were to die for. Adios!

Zutto - My first sushi experience was with Tyler at Zutto's old basement location, but I don't think I was adventurous enough to actually try anything other than a veggie roll at the time (I ate tempura prawns and gyoza with yummy sauce). Zutto was the home of many yummy avocado-centric sushi rolls, the plum blossom drink, tart sesame vinaigrette salad dressing (of which Cardini's makes a fair copy), and the much-mourned cajun roll with plum sauce. Zutto was also the home of unhelpful hipster servers, but I have to say in hindsight that its virtues (cajun roll) outweighed the iffy service.

City Grill - I didn't get to know City Grill very well during its short life, but I remember a few things very well, such as $2.00 macaroni and cheese appetizers. And I don't mean fried macaroni and cheese balls like they serve at Cheesecake Factory or Jack in the Box; during the City Grill happy hour, one could get a small bowl of homemade, baked mac & cheese with breadcrumb topping for frickin' $2! As if that weren't the best thing EVER, their hash browns or O'Brien breakfast potatoes (I can't remember which) were more like potatoes au gratin or hash brown casserole, with a million layers of potatoes, cream, and cheese. Oh God were they good. I think we all saw that City Grill was doomed, however, due to its being located in the old bank building at the corner of 8th and Idaho: the space where nothing survives.

Jalapeno's Grill #2 - Jalapeno's was a tiny little hole-in-the-wall down the street from my house where I used to eat almost weekly--usually to enjoy the Chile Relleno burrito, aka the best burrito in the universe. Jalapeno's closed their hole-in-the-wall, however their truck (Jalapeno's Grill #1) can be found in the parking lot of Dowdy's on Federal Way. I still go there to get delicious burritos and tacos, but the Chile Relleno burrito is either too complicated or too expensive to make in the truck. It just isn't the same without you, Chile Relleno burrito, love of my heart!

In addition to restaurants, some of my favorite foods have been discontinued from local grocery shelves.

Nissin Creamy Chicken Flavor Ramen Noodles - I know it sounds gross, but it was my favorite breakfast food of all time. It's what I ate for breakfast every other day during school, alternating with scrambled eggs and toast. I can simulate the flavor by mixing an egg into regular chicken flavor ramen (which I tried for the first time today), but it's not quite the same.

Reser's Organic Macaroni & Cheese - According to the Reser's website, this hasn't been discontinued by the manufacturer like the creamy chicken ramen. However, my local Fred Meyer has stopped carrying it, and I can't seem to find it anywhere else in town. This stuff is fresh, like homemade mac & cheese that you bake in the oven. It kicks the ass of any boxed or frozen mac & cheese by far. I think I was the only person who ever bought it at the local Freddy's, but that's probably because they placed it in an out-of-the way spot, surrounded by vegan dairy substitutes, and any non-vegans who might have eaten it would have mistaken it for vegan mac & cheese. Idiots! Now my only solace is Kraft Thick & Creamy Cheese & Macaroni (which is often sold out) made with butter and half and half, for I cannot always afford the ghastly expensive white cheddar and asiago neccessary to make a good batch of homemade mac & cheese.

Vina Izadi Crianza - This hasn't been discontinued either, but Gernika hasn't been able to get it from the distributor for awhile, hopefully just for the season. Luckily there are many other tasty tempranillo wines from the Rioja region, such as Ramon Bilbao--mmm, peppery!

Hopefully 2009 will be a better year for food, or else I'm a-gonna riot!

Random Bits

If someone told you that your office Christmas party would take place at the Nampa, Idaho Olive Garden, would you think it was just a bad joke? Like from one of those really lame wanna-be mockumentary sitcoms on TBS? Or a comedy sketch written by high school sophomores? Well, it's no joke; my office Christmas party is literally going to be held at the Olive Garden in Nampa, Idaho. This is so amazingly lame that I'll not comment further, except to say that I may have to get a part-time job elsewhere just so I may attend a cool Christmas party. (Though I am grateful to have a job and therefore an office Christmas party to attend.) I did an image search for "Nampa Olive Garden" and here is one photo that I found, by Shawn Records, titled Lena's House, Nampa (I can't post it here because that would be stealing). I don't know what it has to do with the Olive Garden, but it accurately sums up my attitude toward the Nampa Olive Garden. Check out the rad photography website where I found it, called Hey, Hot Shot!.

Have you ever worked with someone who was well-meaning but annoying? Today in the break room, I had a sandwich to heat up. As I went to place it in the toaster oven, a coworker who was heating something in the microwave grabbed a plate out of the cupboard and insisted, "Maybe you should put this under it!" "I don't mind if the bread gets burned," I told her, but she insisted, "I'm just worried the cheese will melt all over and make a big mess!" It's true that the sandwich contained Havarti cheese, which is the meltiest cheese on the planet (mmm, melty cheese), and it's also true that when anything falls into the toaster oven and burns it smells up our entire building. So maybe I was being a bit cavalier about my sandwich-heating, but I am an adult, goshdarnit. My coworker expressed her intention to place a sign in the break room reading "Your mother does not work here." I found this a bit ironic.

I found a cool website called The Daily Aphorism, which publishes a bold-font aphorism each day. You can print them off or subscribe to have an aphorism emailed to you daily. Today's aphorism is "the mundane is to be cherished," a quote by conceptual artist Jenny Holzer. This is a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with, which is why I printed it off and used it as the decoration for my decorate-your-own coffee mug. I purchased this mug about 6 months ago but couldn't find anything I really wanted to display on it until now.

Speaking of coffee, I've gone without coffee for the past several days and I find I am much less cranky and irritable. I usually drink coffee from the time I wake up until my lunch break at 12:30, but I've discovered that coffee really amps up my anxious, aggressive, and grumpy tendencies. It also seems to rev up my appetite, and some days by midmorning my stomach growls and churns like it's trying to digest my internal organs. I've backed off from coffee, at least for now, but I still drink caffeinated tea and soda, (tea is what I'm drinking out of that mug) . Cutting out coffee definitely takes the edge off, since, as some of you know, I can be a bit irascible at times. ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've been so busy the past few days and I'm not going to do anything for the rest of the day except watch TV. Yay! Here are some things to look at:
These whole fried shrimp came with my sushi roll the other day at Happy Fish. April told me I'm supposed to eat them, but I'm a little squeamish when there are eyes still on my food. Tyler poked one with a chopstick and became very alarmed because it was squishy.

I just got the album Youth Novels by adorable Swedish Singer Lykke Li. Everyone should listen to it, it's sooooo good. Here is a photo Tyler took of her at the Doug Fir in September or October. According to her website she's coming back to America for another tour in February. Yay!
I had breakfast with Baby Squirrel on Monday:
Here are some outfits:
Dress: Anthropologie (It was marked down to $50 from $100 because it had a broken button, but there was a replacement button sewn into the lining. Score!); hat: Urban Outfitters; boots: Urban Outfitters.
Dress: vintage; tights: Urban Outfitters; boots: Frye; belt: Target.
Dress: J. Crew; tights: Urban Outfitters; shoes: Frye.

I finally figured out how to style this crazy short haircut:
Happy Thanksgiving!

Fried eggs and demonic furniture

I know, I know, I'm going to have to change the name of my blog to "I like to take pictures of my food." But yesterday I made hash browns with the leftover potatoes from Friday's potato salad. The hashbrowns turned out more like a giant latke,

(no, not that Latka), and today I ate the leftover latke with a fried egg on top:

which was insanely delicious. I doused it with Tapatio, but I'll spare you that image, because Tapatio-sprinkled food looks kinda gross.

On Saturday I had lunch with the wonderful A. Wolfe at Cafe Ole, which has surprisingly good fish tacos. After lunch, I wandered down to Renewal, where I beheld an amazing sight:

This may seem like a very mundane chair--and it is, except that it's upholstered in the same fabric as a couch my very old roommate Gloria brought into my apartment with Kelly in the year 2000. Several years ago, I met someone who had a love seat from this same furniture set. I'm pretty sure this was once all a single room set and the separate pieces are trying to find their way back to each other through me. I mean, seriously, it looks pretty demonic if you ask me, like the chair in the book version of The Amityville Horror that comes alive and tries to bite George Lutz, (I think it's a chair, though it may be some other piece of furniture). Real or no, that is the scariest fucking book I've ever read.

Renewal also had this gorgeous pumpkin-colored mid-century couch for a mere $229:

That's a steal! Oh, if only I weren't so broke!

After Renewal, I went to Hastings to rent Smart People and The Lives of Others. Netflix be damned! On my way out, I saw the following book, which I just had to share because it looks pretty amazing:

Yes, that's right; it's called "God's Concubine." Amazingly, according to Amazon, it is not about any strange religious sects, but rather, "In the long, complex second installment of her Troy Game quartet (after 2003's Hades' Daughter), Australian author Douglass moves her teeming cast of mythic heroes from ancient Greece to 11th-century England (aka Albion)." Okay, then.

I watched Smart People yesterday, and I really liked it. Thomas Hayden Church and Ellen Page were wonderful as always, and Sarah Jessica Parker didn't annoy me in the least since she wasn't playing that grating Carrie Bradshaw character. I have yet to watch The Lives of Others, of which I'm apprehensive because I'm afraid it'll have a heartbreaking ending and color my moods for days like Children of Men.

Finally, here is the photo Polly's husband took of me with my giant beer. Look how good my eyebrows look!

Potatoes, Beer, and Six Degrees of Separation

Yesterday it snowed like crazy. Here is my attempt to photograph my snowy deck:

(Since it's only 33 degrees right now, that snow is all still there!) My friend Mikela came over and we made steaks and French potato salad. The French potato salad came from the Barefoot Contessa's recipe, which can be found here. It is one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted. Here is a photo:

I was first inspired to make French potato salad last winter when we read Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast in my senior seminar, where the theme was Food in Literature. Here's the passage that made me hanker for some vinegar and olive oil marinated potatoes:

Eating is wonderful too and do you know where you are going to eat right now?
Lipp's is where you are going to eat and drink too.
It was a quick walk to Lipp's and every place I passed that my stomach noticed as quickly as my eyes or my nose made the walk an added pleasure. There were few people in the brasserie and when I sat down on the bench against the wall with the mirror in back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer I asked for a distingue, the big glass mug that held a liter, and for potato salad.
The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly.

Mikela and I had wine with our steak and potatoes, but last week I went out with some friends for giant Oktoberfest liter beers at a great beer and pizza place called The Front Door. Here's Polly with her distingue, (though I didn't know the formal name for it until just now; we were calling them Hobbit beers because you look like a Hobbit when you're drinking one):

Polly told me about a book she'd read that proved the theory that there are only six degrees of separation between any 2 people on earth. Wikipedia has just informed me that much of this theory was developed by a Hungarian. Of course it was; we Hungarians are smart. The whole six degrees of separation thing is sort of how I approach a lot of things in life. For example, look how easily I connected two seemingly disparate events: drinking giant beers last Saturday, and cooking steaks and potato salad yesterday, with a random paragraph from Hemingway, (whom I have a sketchy relationship with). I didn't even think about any connections until I started writing this post. Awesome!

If only I could find a job utilizing this connecting skill...

Anyway, Mikela and I ate our steak and potatoes with some roasted broccoli, like this:

Mmmm, steak and French potato salad. Tyler joked that we are all old now, since we were all spending our Friday night doing wholesome kitchen activities (he was making cookies with another friend). Yup, being old is fun!

Cry Baby

For lunch today I went to Hugo's Deli and had a yummy Santana sandwich: pastrami, coleslaw, and thousand island dressing on light rye, yum! However, no pickle like in this random internet photo :(

The people at the next table had a really cute baby boy, who was perched looking over his dad's shoulder at me. I made faces at the baby as I ate and he smiled at me and watched me eat. When I got up to leave, he started to fuss. I went to throw away my napkin and return my tray and he let out an audible cry. I returned to the table to gather my purse and sweater, and he calmed down. When I left, he broke into all-out bawling.

Yup, that's me: still making the boys cry!

Squash Soup: A Pictorial Essay

On Friday, my coworker gave me the last of her summer squash:

It took me awhile to decide what to do with them, but recipe searches convinced me that the best thing to make would be soup since my only other option was casserole. I prefer soup infinitely over casserole. However, what I discovered in my search was that--just as with butternut squash--crazy people tend to make spicy-sweet soups out of summer squash. I will never be able to hang out with sweet soup, so I decided to make a bastardized version of an Epicurious recipe combined with Kelly S's very delicious butternut squash soup.

I chopped the squash into little pieces:

and roasted it with olive oil, salt, pepper, and cumin (cumin is the roasted vegetable's best friend). And about 4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped up and spread around.

In the meantime, I rendered the fat of 1 piece of bacon, removed and ate the bacon (yay!), melted 3 tbsp butter and sauteed a chopped onion for 8 minutes. After that, I added 4 cups of chicken broth and one russet potato, thinly sliced, and simmered for 15 minutes:

I added the roasted summer squash, which had actually been in the refrigerator overnight because I roasted it on Sunday before attending a movie called The Last Mistress--basically a costume drama-cum-soft core porn in which a woman literally turns a man into her fuck stick. Bet you didn't think you'd see that when you started reading this! But seriously, it had many unnecessarily graphic (yet hilarious) sex scenes that did little to further the plot. Anyway, here's how the squash looked after roasting:

and after being added to the soup:

(my kitchen has terrible lighting). I cooked that until the squash was heated and the potatoes were tender, about 10 more minutes. Then I added salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and the tiniest amount of turmeric--really, I did little more than show the bottle of turmeric to the pot of soup. Then I blended the shit out of it with a hand mixer and added about 1/3 cup of heavy whipping cream:

and ate it with a dollop of pesto (pesto makes everything better!) and garlic loaf:

Muy delicioso!

What I Eat for Breakfast Every Other Day...

nataliedee.com

I Love Cheese

I posted this a year ago on Myspace:

Every summer I become really obsessed with cheese. And not the kind of nice cheese you'd see featured in Wine Spectator magazine or anything. Gross cheese. Cheese that is the culinary equivalent of making out with Larry the Cable Guy. I'm talking the plastic-y yellow Velveeta cheese whose natural best friend is Spam. In fact, I think the first place I encountered the stuff was in cheese dogs (hot dogs filled with cheese) that my grandma used to serve me when I was about 10.

I'm not sure what the allure is or why it's mostly in summer. All I know is that I find myself thinking endlessly about Tostitos Queso dip and Tostitos Scoops chips and before I know what's happening, I'm at the Jackson's above my house spending $7 for both. Or at Fred Meyer buying Velveeta Shells & Cheese.

Then I get home and I just shovel the stuff into my mouth mindlessly and I'm not sure I even totally enjoy it. I just know that I have to have it and I will obsess about it for days and days and then go crazy and the Queso and Chips will be my entire dinner except for a few strawberries or a nectarine (the macaroni is usually reserved for special occasions). Last week I went to the Spaghetti Factory (I know, but the mizithra cheese is awesome) and had the insanely delicious mizithra cheese entree, but I was distracted the whole time by the macaroni & cheese my friend's 3-year-old daughter was eating.

After I go on a cheese binge I feel disgusted with myself and like I need to purge or at least take a shower. It's like having repeated one-night-stands with someone who you tell yourself is repugnant but they must not be or you wouldn't keep sleeping with them. So, then, trashy cheese is like the person I'm embarrassed to say I'm sleeping with.


This year, I've managed to stay away from the nasty Tostitos Queso. However, I am helpless against my cheese addiction. I have at my house Creamy Macaroni and Cheese, which I make with heavy cream and butter. Yum. Also, I found the recipe for the ever-so-delicious Browned Butter & Mizithra from Old Spaghetti Factory on this website. If you make it, make sure to use salted butter and DO eat the residue at the bottom of the pan. It's where all the flavor of the dish comes from.

Don't, however, buy Mizithra cheese from the Fred Meyer deli. I usually buy a Greek brand from the Albertsons on Park Center because they didn't carry Mizithra at Freddy's before--at least not the one on Federal Way. I was pretty excited to find it there the last time I went shopping. When I got it home, it was not as I expected. It's spongy and watery and utterly flavorless. It resembles the palm of my hand if I got it wet and tried to eat it. Actually my hand would be more flavorful.

Duck of the Sea

I just made this recipe for Tuna Puttanesca by Rachel Ray, and it is delicious.

It calls for Italian tuna, which is tuna in olive oil.
I've eaten a lot of canned tuna, but it's always been packed in water or bland oil. Olive oil changes tuna into something almost magical. No longer does it taste like that stuff you buy because it's cheap, (and it does cost about four-and-a-half times more than regular tuna). It is transformed into something much more exotic--something so wonderful that to mix it with mayonnaise would be a sin. It turns Chicken of the Sea into Duck of the Sea.

I don't think I can ever go back to chicken; it's duck for me from now on.