The Girl Who Ate Everything

Here's an awesome idea: Be Rachel Ray for A Day by making a $40/day fooding itinerary for your hometown. $40 is more than I'd want to spend in a day; maybe I could do a "student budget" version. Or a bakery edition (ooh...$40 of baked goods in one day would not go well with my digestive system). I don't think I'll actually try this but I can do a hypothetical version, involving chocolate, cake, bread, some other pastry, and Chinese food. :)

Tonight my mum, brother and I went to Van Dyk's Ice Cream after going to Chef Central (well, that's where I wanted to go since my brother wanted to check out the adjoining Circuit City). I've only passed Van Dyk's once (it's not in the central part of Ridgewood but a little bit into the residential area) and never been there. My brother told me their scoops are ridiculously large and that I had to go. Spur-of-the-moment decisions can be the best ones.

coconut ice cream

Instead of going with something new, I went with something I knew I'd like: COCONUT! And like it, I did. It helped that the $2.50 scoop was ginormous. If you're like my mum and like ice cream cones but no ice cream (I guess those people exist, but...um), they sell them for $0.50. My mum dropped her first one, resulting in a sad shattering of cone upon the floor (my response: "Good job, Mom"...yeah, I'm not very nice), but they gave her another one. I think my brother got cookies and cream and he had no intention of sharing. I shared some of my ice cream with my mum.

Van Dyk's Ice Cream

As I said, Van Dyk's is in a residential area, resulting in much foot-traffic. Loads. People just kept coming out of the darkness and shadows of the trees, creating a scene that could've come out of a horror film where zombies stumble out of nowhere in search of human flesh, except in this case they were mainly teenagers in search for ice cream. The parking lot isn't large but it seemed substantial...until it was full. At 9:30 PM on a Monday night, the place was doing very well with people walking from their homes and cars steadily driving through. The shop itself is no-frills and there isn't a display case with the ice cream. A green board in the back with plastic letters displays the flavors with specials and other announcements written on paper plates in colorful magic marker. All the people working there seemed to be teenage girls. Hey, I wouldn't mind working there...uh, except that I might eat a lot of ice cream. Bad idea.

Going back in time (because going out of sequence = fun!), at Chef Central I saw these nifty Mesu bowls:

Mesu bowls

Simply designed bowls that show how much food you're eating? Damn, why didn't I think of that. At some point in my life I considered eating out of a measuring cup so I'd always know how much food I was eating, but I never did that. These bowls are much prettier than Pyrex, eh? Even if they didn't have measurements, I like em because they're PRETTY! OOH. COLORS. I'm so easily amused. $50 isn't so bad, but I have a $10 coupon so that's actually $40. I could "save" $40 (Calvin Trillin's idea of saving money is my favorite, in that if you were deciding to buy something and then changed your mind, you've saved that much money and can spend it on something else) by eating...much less. Or a bit less.

For dinner I had rice and sauteed vegetables (onion and swiss chard). Simple, eh? BECAUSE THAT'S ALL I KNOW HOW TO MAKE! And not really! I sauteed them in butter and threw in a bit of whatever else was in front of me: salt, ground coriander, and garlic powder. I couldn't taste anything except for the butter and a bit of salt, so that didn't do much. Next time I'll just use butter; that's all I really want anyway. I really like veggies and rice (my brother seriously asked me, "Who just eats veggies and rice?"...um, have you heard of vegetarians?) but last night's dinner of waffliciousness was tastier (or tasty in a different way).

fruit waffle

Yes, it was back to the Ridgewood Country Pancake House for the semi-weekly meal with CJ and whoever else wanted to come along. This time, CJ brought one of his friends and her sister and I brought my brother. We ate at dinner time for the first time (I had eaten way too much the day before) and it wasn't crowded at all. Sunday night dinner is a good time to go, I guess (it closes at 9PM).

I'm sure I ate 500000 calories today (yesterday, more like), but at no time did I feel stuffed. Good, yes? Unless my fullness sensors just don't work, which is a possibility. I've decided that ice cream will never make you full. Sick, maybe, but not full. It all goes into some magical ...ice cream sac. It's a happy sac.

LASTLY, if you're on flickr, join my pancakes and waffles group! Can you believe that there wasn't already one? THE HORROR! Well. That problem's solved.