The Girl Who Ate Everything

I don't have any cool photos for you, so check out the above commercial for Mister Donut. Although Mister Donut started as an American company, its strongest presence today is in Asia, centered around Japan. The bubbly pastel cuteness of the commercial that almost looks like a program for toddlers (a program that teaches them what scientists have been pushing all along: animals made of donuts like to eat each other) makes me want to raid a Mister Donut shop and ingest all its donut-y critter friends right now.

...Um, that's not just me, I hope.

Remember that essay about cute Japanese snacks that I wrote a long time ago? As in last year? A bunch of people responded to my survey and I never gave you the end result. So...here it is:

Not Just Tasty: Cute Japanese Snacks as a Reflection of Japan's Rebellion Against Adulthood, Westernization, and Consumerism [evil PDF format, yup]

Yeah, long title. I wouldn't be surprised if many of my assumptions are faulty, as I didn't grow up in Japan, but my professor felt that I backed up my information well enough to deserve a good grade. [wipes sweat off forehead] (I didn't correct the errors after my teacher graded it, so...those are probably strewn throughout the paper.) I was really surprised, but glad to see that writing about a topic I was actually interested in paid off.

So about the heart-meltingly cute Mister Donut commercial, I'm going to lamely quote from my own essay (because I wouldn't suddenly pull this half-a-year-old stuff out of my brain):

Even though cuteness didn't originate from commercial endeavors, it became highly commercial through the plethora of cuteness-incorporated goods Japanese companies churned out. Kinsella believes that the idea of cute is mainly accessible through the continual "consumption" of cute goods because "Cute culture had to be entered and left in a matter of minutes or moments, which lent it to construction by ephemeral products and places of consumption of goods and leisure services" (245). Eating cute snacks is a perfect way to introduce cuteness (perhaps in a bite-sized piece) into one's life for a short period of time without making cuteness one's entire lifestyle. People know that they can't be cute all the time, so eating snacks is an acceptable way for people to retain cuteness, or something that is oppositional to adulthood, whether the eater is actually an adult or is a young person faced with the prospects of adulthood.

If you're Japanese/well versed in Japanese-ness and find that I'm way, waaay off (or a little off), please accept my apologies.

Although this came out weeks ago, I just read Bill Buford's New Yorker essay about working with Will Goldfarb. Even though snack says it took the article down, as of right now you can still download it from the link on Eater's site. Oops. It's a good read, so...um, read it.

Surprisingly, I've never been to Room 4 Dessert, Goldfarb's dessert bar. I've gotten as far as looking through the glass doors and then passing it due to not feeling desserty enough to try it. After reading Buford's article, a part of me really wants to go try a bouncy puree of coconut cream and dried coconut milk, while the other part kinda wants a towering, plebeian hot fudge sundae smothered in whipped cream. Hohum. I guess eating the latter would make me feel guiltier about myself and the horrors I forced into my blood stream. Room 4 Dessert would satisfy my curiosity, not gluttony or search for comfort. Hmm. Mmm. Mmmh. I'll try it at some point.

On a totally different, but still food-related matter, read "Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal" (pdf) by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. Ooh, someone didn't cliiiick. Don't be that person. :]

...Well, if you're not interested in farming or how the American food supply is processed and regulated, I guess you can skip it. I heard of Polyface from The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. If you're an American and care about where your food comes from and what it's made of, the book is full of important stuff you should know about (or if you're not American, you can learn about our messed up food system, weee!!!).

On that note, I finished my recommendations page where I've listened most of the food-related books I've read. If you buy anything, I made a smidgen of moolah! BUY SOMETHING! :]

I haven't updated in a while due to the lack of anything interesting to report about what I've been ingesting lately. "The Girl Who Ate Everything" is now "The Girl Who Drank A Lot Of Juice and Ate A Lot of Fruit and Subsequently Had To Pee A Lot". That title is way too long.

things to be juiced

I was planning to eat lunch with Deb last Friday, but by Wednesday night my asthma had gotten so bad that I cancelled the lunch (sniffle!) and started a juice fast. From Thursday to Sunday I drank three glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice a day (diluted with water because even I find that stuff really sweet otherwise) until going insane on Sunday night and eating an unsmashed orange. Yesterday I drank two juice concoctions from Life Thyme's juice bar (I don't know what the guy at the counter must've thought upon seeing the same person within a 5 hour period) and ate some fruit for dinner. Today on day six, I'm still just eating fruit. I gave up the liquid fruit part of the diet because it was making me sad.

Why am I still just eating fruit? Because. I'm still wheezing. Although it's not as bad as before, I shouldn't be wheezing at all. I'm sure many people would like to chime in at this point about other things I could do to get better, or give me reasons as to why I'm all asthmatic, but you don't have to. Frankly, I'm just going to keep up with this diet until I get better or hate it. I'm figuring I'll get better before I hate it, not that it didn't give me some major grumpy periods over the weekend (grumpiness factors included more than food).

Obviously, I won't be eating out for a while, at least nothing interesting, so don't look forward to that. It's July 4th, which means I'm staying home and not doing anything celebratory. Hahaha, indeeeeed, I know how to have maximum fun. I was just outside helping my dad chop down a skinny tree that cracked halfway down. That was the maximum fun for the day. And of course, it made me wheeze. I hope most of you are having a more enjoyable holiday. A friend invited me to go to the hot dog eating contest at Coney Island, but I didn't feel up to traveling for a few hours on an empty stomach to see Kobayashi eat 53.75 hot dogs. Maybe next year. [sigh]

Thanks for all the comments on my previous (painfully long) entry! Unfortunately, I pooted out a while ago in attempt to reply to all the comments, but I read them all. It's funny to be missed by people who haven't met me. :) I'm touched that my readers care enough to give me health advice (the friendship advice was also helpful), but for the time being I'm only going to follow what my mum and I want to do. My sanity should stay intact as long as I focus on what I'm doing (you wouldn't go on an all-fruit diet unless you were determined to do it) and don't get distracted by other things. This update is just to tell you that...yeah, I'm alive with fairly normal brain functions.

Update (later in the day): Ah...I felt bad about not having anything interesting to say about NYC food, so I'll talk about a place I neglected to mention before.

on Sunday, the buffet disappears

Last Wednesday (before I realized that my death will probably be asthma-related) I went to Temple in the Village with Tony and Jan. They offer Asian (felt like a mix of Korean/Japanese/Chinese) vegetarian food in a narrow, no-frills environment that wouldn't be out of place in Chinatown. But it's not like you're gonna sit there for a long time anyway. Many people opt to take their food out.

no oil, wow!

All the selections in their buffet table are labeled according to dietary recommendations and what objectionable ingredients they may contain. In case you don't want something oil and soy sauce free...

foodstuffs

...this represents about 1/4th of their offerings. Or 1/5th. Ish. And that doesn't include their rice selection between white, brown, and sticky purple. They have lots of veggies, tofu-esque things, noodly things, and some fried stuff at the end in case you don't want to feel overly healthy.

condiments

Across from the fried stuff section, they have loads of condiments for you to dress up your food with in case you do want oil and soy sauce, among other things.

no, only one plate was mine

My plate at the top cost between $4-$5 for a sampling of boy choy, glass noodles (made of potato or bean starch, I'm not sure), sweet potato, cabbage, sticky purple rice, something that might be kale, and something else that might be...um...green and leafy. I like it when I can choose just how much I want to eat (not in the all-you-can-eat sense; that's when things get baaaaad) since it allows me to eat sensibly and not stuff myself with more than I should eat just because the restaurant decides to present me with a mountain of food. I think Jan and Tony also finished off their plates. I'd definitely go back to Temple in the Village due to the proximity to my workplace and numerous choices for someone avoiding wheat and dairy products.

Of course, right now I'm avoiding more than that and am already running into the problem I had as a raw foodist: I'm eating much more than I need to in order to compensate for the unsatiated feeling that comes with only eating food that's 80%+ water. (Or the unsatiated feeling that comes with being accustomed to a diet with heavier foods.) A bag of organic cherries (many of which were going bad, blech!) from Whole Foods lasted less than a day, and two oranges, a plum, and an apple met their deaths in my digestive fluids. Well, at least I'm getting a gazillion servings of fruit.