Flavors 518

So I am out here dogsitting , where the kitchen is mostly supplied for making things out of mixes . I've eaten a lot of salads from the salad bar at the local Stop & Shop (there should be more salad bars in the world - in offices, and schools), but I really miss my kitchen, I gotta say. I've eaten things this week I wouldn't normally buy or eat (my friend once told me that bad food doesn't count if you didn't actually buy it yourself). I don't think of myself as a snob . I'm also not crazy about calories or anything but I usually think you can have anything you want if you make it yourself. Like ice cream - it takes a while to make it yourself and you don't want to eat it all at once because it took a lot of effort to make. I do feel like some people my age wouldn't normally eat junk food or low brow foods, but if you change one thing like make the hot dogs out of Wagyu beef all of a sudden it is gourmet and acceptable to eat . One thing I th...

Just for fun I'd like to talk about some foods that sound gross to me. So I am out here dogsitting in Massachusetts, and my coworker cooks almost exclusively with mixes. As a person who cooks from scratch frequently with actual ingredients,  I didn't even know half of these mixes existed. Call me crazy - but I didn't know you could have a box of dry ingredients that makes a dish of scalloped potatoes if you just add water! How, exactly does that work? She has tons and tons of slow cooker mixes, but I am not going to judge those because they just seem like packets of seasonings. I shouldn't make fun. Her doctor is always telling her to eat healthier, and we are always trying to come up with healthy foods that she may like. But she really seems to be the type of person who judges whether foods are good or not based on what is not in them (spices, vinegar, anything mushy), than what they contain (healthy ingredients with actual nutrients). When I was over here on my...

 This weekend we saw the movie Young Adult . I enjoyed it much more and laughed much harder than I probably should have. I'm turning 30 next month, and to me this character really hit home in that she sounded like half of my friends (of course if you ignore the whole over-the-top-crazy thing). Some people come up with names for their future children when they are 8 years old, get married right out of college at age 22, and don't understand at all people who don't want kids. Some people, on the other hand, are well into their 30s, wear Hello Kitty shirts, gulp Maker's Mark, and refer to babies as "it". The first group of people think that the second group just need to meet the right person, have a couple of kids and settle down, but the truth is that if this character (as a member of the second group) had a kid she would probably treat it as negligently as she treats that poor little dog of hers. I thought that it was interesting the way food was treated i...

We finally made it to the Capital City Gastropub this past week. I think maybe my expectations were too high. I guess first I might say a word about the Wine Bar on Lark. I've previously written a really positive review of it , but I think my feelings have kind of changed since then. And it is not that they have done anything wrong, it is that I have realized maybe this whole "small plates" trend is not my favorite thing. I had friends over a few weeks ago, and they were saying how they thought it was meant for "people who eat like birds", which is fine since these people probably do exist. It reminds me when we lived in NYC, and frequently had drinks at a place called the Clover Club .  Of course the cocktails were fabulous, we felt very, very cool for going there, but if you wanted to eat it was sort of a rip off. They had amazing potato chips fried in duck fat with crème frâiche and chives for much more money than you would imagine, which is fine, and they w...

So my coworker walked in today and mention how her doctor was mad at her about her diet. She basically doesn't like seasonings, only likes ground beef and sugar, and eats whole bags of M&Ms and whole cartons of ice cream. I was sort of like "well what about oatmeal?" hates it. "chicken breast?" hates it. "seafood?" no way. I did agree to help her exercise at lunchtime. I watch her dogs for her and she has junk food in her house I didn't even know existed like Oreo sticks that come with a container of frosting to dip it in. In some way being at her house is very exciting to me since we don't have any of that stuff at our house. I usually get very sick to my stomach, and regret it all - Coldstone ice cream cakes, Pecan Pie flavored chocolates, frozen pepperoni pizzas and all the rest of it. I also watch about 12 hours of Bridezillas when I am there, so pretty much every aspect of it is totally unhealthy. So in my dear beloved coworker's h...