The Girl Who Ate Everything

Fruit. I really need fruit. An orange? An apple? Something that has phytonutrients? Knowing my laziness, I probably won't make that 10-15 minute trek to Chinatown for oranges tomorrow. But I should.

frites of the pommes

Especially after eating potato sticks cooked in a large, frothing vat of hot oil until golden, crispy, and heart clogging-ly delicious.

Pommes Frites

It wasn't planned, but after seeing the mind boggling Drawing Restraint 9 (if you have a vaseline fetish, this movie's fer yewww!) Nathan and I went to Pommes Frites, the legendary french fry hole-in-the-wall that I had been meaning to go to for ages, yet never found the right opportunity for. It's not a meal, and it's not a dessert (actually, if they had some kind of sweet whipped cream topping, it could be a dessert...a gross one). I wouldn't say it's much of a snack either. After passing the overly crowded Japan Town block of St. Mark's, I decided this was the time to disregard everything my mum told me about the death-filled properties of heated oil (once you cook it, the oil particles acquire little daggers and nunchucks and they kill you, ninja-style...oh yeah, I am not a nutritionist) and see what all the fuss was about.

vat of oil

Potato sticks from the ginormous bowl go right into that equally ginormous vat of frothy oil. It churns with anger and the anticipation of crispifying little helpless potato sticks. I wouldn't want to be near that thing. Hell, once I burned myself pan-frying eggplant with just a weeny bit of oil. Because kitchens do not like me.

sauce dispensers...and sauce

There was no question that we'd share the regular size (which is the smallest size, so make sure yo bring someone with you to share the calories with if you ever go here), but with what sauce? Uh. Crap. There are more than 25 choices, which is 24 more than I'm accustomed to. We ended up getting sundried tomato mayo and "War Sauce" (frites sauce, peanut satay sauce & onion). I think I liked the tomato mayo more, but they were both good. I mean, you can't go wrong with mayo, right? But to whoever invented mayo, what the hell were you thinking? "Boy oh boy, I bet this egg and this oil will go swimmingly together!" Ah well, hats off to you.

Nathan eats

For once you don't have to see an action shot of myself stuffing my face. Because I DO NOT ALWAYS STUFF MY FACE. Sometimes I just sit here and breathe air, unobstructed by food. At that second, Nathan's air passage was obstructed by ginormous golden crispy tasty fry. Mmm, breathe in the oil...[rubs belly]

The fries were large, crispy, and burst forth with the, "Oh man, I shouldn't be eating this since it's so unhealthy, but it's taste so good, and I'm probably going to get cancer someday anyway so why deny my fate?" idea, although disappointingly a large percentage of the fries were uber-short and not very conducive to being comfortably dipped in the sauces. The bottom of the cone of fries, at first looking like an explosion of fat potato sticks, left us with small, brown crispy potato nubs whose other purpose was "oil capsule". Hm. Well. The fries were definitely better than what I've had elsewhere with its uber-crispy-outtards-and-soft-innards thing going for it, so if you haven't tried it and you're not afraid of death-by-deep-fat-fryer, go to Pommes Frites.

Indian Bread Co

Due to Piccola's recommendation, I decided to try Indian Bread Co for lunch yesterday. As a sign of my devotion to this blog, I went despite not being hungry and having a funkily upset stomach overall. Which didn't get much better after the meal.

this photo is screaming to be photoshopped

This is NOT what I ate yesterday; this is what I ate when I first went to Indian Bread Co on January 15th, 2005. (You probably didn't notice this, but I have an uber old gallery of crappy photos, a relic of my non-flickr past. And then flickr came into my life and all was good! Rainbows and unicorns appeared! ...No, I wasn't under the influence.) I forgot what the exact name of this was, but it had lamb. What I do remember is thinking that it was alright, but kinda disappointing. It was really thin and didn't have enough of the bread or meat part for one to skew it in the direction of, "Hey, that meat was good," or "Hey, that bread was good". It was just "...Yeah, that was okay."

spicy lamb vindaloo naanini

The spicy lamb vindaloo naanini (like a panini, but Indian, GET IT?!) was a lot better than whatever I got before. The bread was like a cracker in that it was really crispy (you could snap it) and thus was able to support the weight of the meaty innards when other flatbread might flop over, but it still retained bready qualities, such as...having moisture. Being chewy. Not being a giant cracker, which wouldn't make for a very satisfying sandwich.

glistening meeaaat

There was plenty of spicy, chopped lamb meat (with a bit of potatoes and onions) in between the flat, crispy carb planks. I could only eat half of the sandwich since I wasn't very hungry, but I suspect that the spicyness also prevented me from eating too much. When something is labeled with the word "spicy", they mean it. It won't make you cry, but I think something in my burned away at the inner lining of my mouth. Yeah. It wasn't that bad (the inner lining of my mouth still exists!), but there is definitely some mouth-searing action to be suffered if you get the spicy lamb. Obviously, just get one of the non-spicy options, unless you like spicyness, which I do. Besides the mouth searing part.

And then...more suffering. My slightly weird feeling stomach continued to feel weird after eating the sandwich, possibly increasing my body temperature by a few degrees. I don't know what spices they used, but you might have a reaction to em. Your gastro-intestinal system will feel toasty. Keep in mind my stomach wasn't in great condition before then, so you might be find after eating this. I'm just a wuss.

panini press

For Thursday's lunch, I went back to Crosby Connection. Yes, this place requires multiple visits...so I can try every sandwich.. I decided to go for a hot sandwich instead of cold like I have the past two times. See their panini press? I liked the bricks. ;)

panini 56

The panini 56 contained smoked mozzerella, sundried tomatoes, sweet roasted peppers, fresh basil, and other stuff I can't remember. It was so good that despite not being very hungry I ate the whole damn sandwich. One half of a sandwich is already enough for a meal (last week I split one sandwich between lunch and dinner), but I ATE THE WHOLE DAMN THING. Yes, I did suffer the consequences; my stomach felt like a bloated whale...had exploded inside my stomach. That's worst than just feeling like a bloated whale, by the way. Besides that, I was really thirsty, thus drinking lots of water, thus adding liquid to whatever chewed up sandwich goo that was already in my stomach, thus giving my stomach something else to churn while trying to digest the sandwich goo. The result was the release of Italian-flavored vapors whose only method of escape was through excessive burping. (Okay, the burping was more the result of my inability to eat at a slow, reasonable pace. When I eat alone, I practically hoover my food.)

...Why am I telling you this? Well. As tasty as a sandwich may be, control yourself. Don't eat the whole thing unless you're really hungry (perhaps you should fast the day before). Don't add a layer of water to your stomach if it's already filled with sandwich goo. Or you may get Italian burps.

...Damn, that sandwich was good. Fresh basil is one of my favorite things, and those layers of soft, smoked mozzerella? [drool] It's a dangerously tasty combination.