The Girl Who Ate Everything

poofy doodle

I drew that doodle one night after attempting to make waffles last week. It expresses my culinary prowess. Or lack of. Ha...ha. I think "OOGLY MOOG MUTHA!" should be the new catchphrase that everyone hates.

mm, stealing amazon's bandwidth is fun!

Last night I was reading Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson (one of my favorite authors), a book that I started reading a few years ago but haven't finished because I unintentionally entered a contest to see who could leave a book unfinished for the longest period of time. For instance, I bought A Short History of Nearly Everything a few years ago, but I only got through a few pages. Oogly moog mutha, I'm totally going to win this contest.

Err, anyway. Reading anything by Bill Bryson kinda pisses me off because everything he writes sounds so natural and easy, as though no intense thought is needed for humorous anecdotes to spew out. STOP IT! Jeez! If I want to feel inferior, I'll just look in the mirror.

But I continue to read, and maybe learn something. Like. Uh. Stuff. A Walk in the Woods is great if you want to know what not to do when attempting to walk the Appalachian Trail. Which is something I'd never do. Unless I were paid to write a funny book about it. Which is unlikely. Most of it would read, "I wheezed for a while and wanted to die."

I have a bit of a dilemma involving something expensive that I probably shouldn't keep, but I would like to keep despite the lack of cash flow, especially when you consider that I took off almost two weeks of work to do that "vacation" thing everyone's talking about. If any photographers would like to give me their two cents (or maybe ten cents, adjusted for inflation), that'd be great.

I bought a used Sigma 20mm f/1.8 lens at Adorama in search of a nice macro lens. Silly me didn't know how much these babies cost. The modern miracle that is the credit card made it easy for me to fork over $350 for the "as far as I can tell, it's brand new" lens. Uh huh. ...Hm.

A more compact option is the Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8, which I think could get for around the same price. I don't know how the lenses compare, it's just that...um, that was the lens the handy Canon catalog-y thing included with my camera suggested for macro shots. I guess the only way for me to see what I like better is to use the Canon lens. I bought the Sigma lens without much hesitation because I know I can return it within 7 business days. I might. Or not. I don't know.

Here's a nice photo I took with the new lens of Diana's ice cream at Spumoni Gardens yesterday afternoon under the sun that threatened to drown us in own own pools of sweat:

mm, creamy

Of course, the clarity of the photo depended a lot on nice lighting from the burning, gassy sun. And pretty sprinkles.

hire her!

That's another photo I took of Diana's custom fortune cookies that she gave to prospective employers in need of a talented graphic designer. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY WON'T SOMEONE HIRE HER?

Oh, after stopping by Adorama I went to City Bakery to pick up some goodies to bring home. As I was paying, Jennifer from Slices of Me recognized my sweaty face. WEE!!! My first instance of being recognized where the recognizer came up to me! :) We didn't get to talk for long, but maybe we'll go fooding in the future.

I guess while I'm writing this blog entry, I may as well actually write about...food! That I ate! When can I stop? WHEN?

Spumoni Gardents

Diana mentioned that she wanted to try Spumoni Gardens, an Italian restaurant primarily known for its pizza (and...spumoni, I guess). It's kind of rare that we both want to check out a restaurant since I'm easily the more food minded one and she tends to express distaste for wheaty blankets dripping in gooey cheese (crazy, I know!). We were still sad about the whole "leaving Norway" thing, wondering what to do with ourselves as we returned to the overly moist and polluted NYC area, and thus had to do something fun to fill the void. Also, I had to return some things that she left in my luggage since she didn't have enough room in hers.

SO! We got pizza.

cheeeese!

Diana, her brother David and I shared a pie with two slices leftover. While I would've prefered less cheese (a pile of melted mozzerella slid off the first first too-hot slice that I picked up like lava down a churning volcano), the pizza was pretty good. Crust was thin without being too floppy and I didn't find the pizza overly greasy. It's not something I'd go out of my way to eat, but Diana happens to live nearby and it was nice to sit outside surrounded by people who were equally melting from intense solar radiation.

spumoni

I got a small cup of rainbow (pistachio, vanilla and chocolate) spumoni to offset 0.0001% of the pain inflicted upon me by Mr. Sun. I have to admit that I'm not really sure what spumoni is. Whatever I ate doesn't seem to fit The Food Lover's Companion's definition. It was kind of like less creamy ice cream. The bright green pistachio part had pistachio bits in it and left me burping pistachio fumes for the rest of the day, but the vanilla and chocolate flavors were either not that strong or were masked by the pistachio. Overall, not bad, not great, kind of weird flavors. My god, you really want to try it now, I know it.

pizza with extra sauce

Did I ever talk about Dolly Dimple's pizza? I may as well do it as I'm on the topic of pizza. Dolly Dimple's is a major Norwegian pizza chain (the other huge one being Peppe's Pizza...we saw these ALL OVER THE PLACE) named after fat ladies at freak shows. Yeah, don't ask me how that name came about. We got a pizza the night of our fishing trip since corn and fish weren't really enough to satiate five adults. I don't remember what the toppings on the medium-crust pizza were (it was spicy and full of meats), but I slathered my slices with what I think was sour cream and salsa. Hell, why not? It was good! It was also around midnight, so god knows what that did for my digestion.

a block of norway

If anyone is in need of brown cheese, you can get it at Whole Foods! Or at least the one in Ridgewood, which is a rather small location.

If you want other Norwegian things and live around NYC, check out Nordic Delicacies in Brooklyn. I went there once without any idea what Nordic delicacies existed. After I left, I still wasn't sure. I guess if I went now the fish cakes and waffles would make more sense to me. Also, I could load up on Daim, which despite being like Heath and Skor bars I like more because it's called...DAIM.

Wow, I've done nothing useful today. If anyone's curious enough to know, I made an open faced sandwich of baby greens and smoked makerel for lunch and ate fruit and a home-made zong zi courtesy of Diana's Aunt for dinner. I need to eat more healthily from now on since my lungs have gone into full "I hate you" mode, resulting in the need to use my inhaler ever day since I got back from Norway. I hadn't used my inhaler since last fall until I went to Norway (if you care to do the math, thats more than 6 months), and even then it was at the end of my vacation when my lungs decided that I deserved restricted airflow.

Meh. I hope your day was more productive than mine.