The Girl Who Ate Everything

I've been eating so much yet today I am wearing my "fat gauging pants" because THEY FIT even though I am fat. So I guess they don't work that well. BUT THEY FIT. ALRIGHT. Anyhoo, I'm going to describe what I've been eating over the past few days starting with today.

Mama's food!

Today I met up with my fooding friend (I have ONE fooding friend, thank the lord) and we went to Mama's Food Shop on East 3rd St for lunch. I kept hearing that the portions were gargantuan and while they werwe large, they weren't nearly as large as the hype (hype being that they would pile your plate a mile high). HYPE IS BAD! But one order is definitely enough for two. We got a little more than that and still finished everything. Why? BECAUSE IT WAS SO GOOD! We got roasted chicken with sides of macaroni and cheese, string beans, and glazed sweet potatoes. Since we got there right when it opened, everything was pretty fresh. They serve most items at room temperature or colder but that didn't bother me (the string beans were cold like a salad and the potatoes were room temp). The macaroni and cheese, something I haven't had in years, was really good! String beans tasted fresh and crisp and the chicken was moist and pretty flavorful. Oh, and sweet potatoes are so yummy, I could eat loads. Overall we liked the sides better (I'm not sure about Mimi but I'm not a huge meat person) so if we went back we'd just go for a bunch of sides. It was about $15 which is a good deal splitting it up. It's home-style food except better (at least better than what I could make). And when I say home-style, I really mean it; you clean off your dishes and put them in the sink when you're done!

cake close up

After that we went to the Strawberry Festival at NYU since free stuff is always nice when you're paying a gazillion dollars for school. The main attraction was the huge-ass strawberry shortcake. It was very very large and mmm MMM MMM I like strawbery shortcake. To be honest, I like all cake but this was pretty good. I think I'll eat more strawberry shortcake from now on (instead of other cakes...actually, even though I like all cakes I don't eat them very much). Of course, with a name like the Strawberry Festival you could expect strawberries, of which there were craploads in huge clean bins. HUGE. You could fit humans in there. Not very large humans, but still. Unfortunately, the strawberries looked better than they tasted, but it was still great to eat some mediocre strawberries. There should be more festivals surrounded around fruit. Other free food being given away were popcorn, snow cones, and cotton candy, none of which I tried because it was so crowded.

I went to the student lounge in Kimmel to do some homework, at some point eating the chocolate chip cookie I got from the Gourmet Garage on Broome Street. They're having a sale where you get two cookies for the price of one. I TRIED TO GIVE AWAY MY OTHER COOKIE! Alas, I failed; forgot to give it to my first friend and Mimi didn't want the oatmeal cookie. I ate the chocolate chip and it was good, something worth getting again. But not the best. It was soft but not necessarily chewy and while it wasn't really crumbly it broke apart a little more easily than I'd prefer (if that makes any sense). Another problem with it was that it felt like more fat than cookie. Just about all chocolate chip cookies ooze fat but this had a dense, packed crumb that looked quite fat-loaded. Of course, that contributed to its tastiness.

I went to the green market to buy a loaf of bread. Yeah, I know, haven't I eaten enough? Yes. Yet somehow after everything I ate, I still felt okay. I mean, not even full! Satisfied? Yeah, but I can't believe i didn't feel full after Mama's. My friend's stomach was bloated and she said she was in a food coma while I walked about saying, "Wait, why do I feel absolutely FINE?" My stomach didn't even feel much larger after eating. It's impossible for it to not have grown because a lot of food must've been floating around in there unless my stomach got zapped and the contents were transported to a faraway galaxy. I swear, I'm an anomaly.

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close up on omelette

Yesterday I ate breakfast. Damn. I wasn't sure if I wanted to but I headed towards 2nd Ave, which i have dubbed "the breakfast avenue". I've now eaten at three places there for breakfast, yesterday hitting Moonstruck. It's a nicely decorated diner-type restaurant that's spacious and cheap. Mm, cheap! I know I've been trying to pancake my way around 2nd Ave but I felt guilty loading on sugary carbs (which means carby carbs) so I got a broccoli omelette. It has broccoli! Can't be that bad, eh? It also came with a side of potatoes and two pieces of toast. It was a large omelette with lots of broccoli mixed in. I ATE EVERYTHING, save for the little packs of jam and butter (well, I had one pack of butter). Afterwards I realized that what I ate would've been the same for a 40-year old man, and maybe he wouldn't have finished it. I'm a 19 year old girl and I don't need the same amount of food as everyone else! Strangely, I didn't feel very full after that. I think I need to satisfy a sugar quotient and the omelette just didn't do it. I enjoyed the omelette though, a bit surprising since I've never ordered an omelette before in my life. Honestly, that's the first time. Another thing to note is that up until this past week, I've rarely eaten a typical breakfast in my life.

I ate a late lunch at Sullivan Street Bakery, getting a piece of pizza bianco for $1. Compared to their pizza slices, this thing is HUGE! Not only that, I can honestly say it was one of the most delicious piece of bread I've ever had. It was amazing. Sadly I don't recall what was so amazing about it but I remember a few flavors bursting out in between chews, like a dash of salt, oil, or something else. It was soft and chewy and oooh...that is the best. I like it more than the pizza but then again, I love most bread.

cream horn layers

After the bakery I went through Chinatown to buy oranges. I also stopped by a bakery on Mott Street to get a "cream horn". That's what I've been told they're called and it's an appropriate name as it's a horn-like flaky layered pastry filled (over the brim) with cream. When I got back to my dorm I stuffed myself with two navel oranges (oranges are always good) and that cream horn? Pretty amazing. I have mixed feelings about the cream horn yet the good outweighs the bad. The good: it's got cream, which is yummy, and it's an activity to eat if you enjoy taking apart layers (I do). The layers were delicious, crispy on the outside, softer on the side. The bad: after a while I couldn't tell what the pastry tasted like because it wasn't sweet or savory. IT WAS NEUTRAL. I swear. It may have had a bit of sugar but it honestly just tasted like a flaky, fat-soaked wheat ...thing. Fat is the other bad thing; you can really taste it but by the end it feels a bit unconfortable. The cream horn made me full so that's an indication of how this thing feels. It's not necessarily a large pastry but the pastry part really weighs you down (the cream ain't so light either). Despite all the bad points, I'd like to try this again...just from another bakery. This is a pastry that wins more on texture than flavor.

The day isn't over. As I walked back to NYU for the Decemberists concert, I went to Gourmet Garage for the 2-for-1 cookies. And I also got an onion bagel for 40 cents. Luckily I didn't eat the cookies in the same day but I did eat the bagel and ended up with onion burps all night. SWEET. So no more onion bagels.

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chocolate chip cookie

Wednesday was a no-breakfasting day. I had to sleep as the lack of sleep from waking up early has resulted in power-naps, which really mess me up. I got a delicious loaf of bread from the greenmarket: whole wheat pain levain. I also got a little ginger scone and a chocolate chip cookie for (continuing the chocolate chip cookie testing) from the Hawthorne Valley vendor for $1 each. The chocolate chip cookie was alright but not something I'd get again; it was more crunchy than chewy and I don't think the chocolate chips were very large. The ginger scone was better--you could SMELL the ginger. Strong stuff, that is. The problem with the scone was that I felt like it was too dry. Otherwise the taste was excellent and something I'd get again.

I also went to Wholesome Market for some salad bar greens since I didn't think I was getting enough veggies and for about $3 got 3/4th a pound of yummily prepared veggies. I guess I do like veggies, figuring they're prepared correctly. Wholesome Market seems ot be going out of business so their salad bar is cheap, plus I get a 10% off student discount. :)

By the end of the day I had almost finished the bread but just couldn't eat the last few bites. It was for the best as I obviously ate TOO MUCH. How not surprising.

So it's been a crazy past few days in the fooding world. Am I alarming any of you yet? :\