Culinary Craziness, Compounded!
These past few days have been quite impressive, food-wise.
Saturday
angledge's birthday was Friday, so we all decided to meet up in the city and experience A Little Taste Of Chinatown. Insert inappropriate "Taste of China" joke here. We sure did.
With surprisingly minimal difficulty, angledge, her chica, vulgarbarbarian and Mrs. vulgarbarbarian, fizrep and I met up in the northern end of Chinatown. Oh woe to the parts of Manhattan that escape its perfectly ordered gridline... but that's a rant for another time. The point is, we met up, we got a street map of places that were participating, and off we went.
The gist of the festival was simple- various restaurants and eateries would have outdoor tables set up, at which they'd have samples of food which they sold for a dollar each. The crowds wandered from place to place sampling the various goods. And, for the most part, they were good. Mango Pudding was deemed a hit (I'm more of a fan of Mango Juice, but still), and the dollar Lo Mein had us leave a trail of noodles in our wake. Some place tried to trick us into having sesame chicken instead of General Tso's, but vulgarbarbarian and I would have none of that. Red Bean and Custard Buns were also a big hit, although la chica kept insisting that we find "Huggy Bear Rice Pudding". Huggy Bear? Her words made no sense until later.
fizrep might have eaten nearly everything we passed; his stomach is a bottomless pit that churns up foodstuffs without pause. He was slightly hesitant as he passed the Mongolian place to grab "House Special On A Stick", but even the faint ghostly meows nagging at his subconscious did not stop him from eating it. Ok, I ate some too, but I was less guilt-ridden. He also bought some sesame buns, which resembled nothing short of eyeballs. Human-sized eyeballs. This also slowed us down, but again, not by much. A curious order of foreshadowing that was, however. More on that in a second.
Finishing up with lemon cakes, some kind of cream puff, and a green tea jelly custard which only resembled the word "green", we headed north. We were first intercepted by a Zombie Flash Mob, who appeared to want to eat our brains, but then they saw a van giving out free stuff, and they mobbed the hell out of it. Crazy zombies. We continued north, and got intercepted by Rice To Riches, a store based solely on varieties of Rice Pudding. Here la chica explained her Huggy Bear love with Bear Hug Chocolate Rice Pudding. I'm still not clear where the bears were, but it was sweet and tasty. We continued north, hitting up the Strand bookstore, and then ventured back south to a pub to sit down and celebrate more fully. Terrence joined us, we drank beer, and we got stuck on the faux spiderwebs the pub had lined the walls with. Had there been giant spiders, I would have been the first to fall, ensnared as I was in the diabolical mesh that decorated the place. Cheeky.
Monday
Monday was mostly a routine crazy workday. Work is not that interesting. Dinner afterwards is more interesting.
drlaurac and hubby and baby were visiting town, and as I haven't seen them in seven years (or, in the case of the baby, ever), I said, woohoo, meetup! So barbarienne and Amy and I met up with the family for, surprise of surprises, Chinese food.
Evergreen is a nice restaurant (38th and 5th). They have good food. We sat and talked and dined and more. The baby attempted to eat an entire stuffed dinosaur. I ate a really hot pepper. Everything went well.
And then, dessert.
Most of our dessert orders occur without incident. It's hard to fuck up a sherbet, after all. Even my not-totally-thawed chocolate mousse cake was good. But Danny ordered sesame balls in syrup.
Recall the previous foreshadowing. I did not make the connection until this moment, far too late to warn anyone. They look like eyeballs.
But looks did not deter Danny. While he was expecting something more solid, perhaps little spheres of sesame seeds in sugary syrup with a sweet center, he was not entirely averse to the six eyeballs floating in syrup that were presented to him. So he ate one.
My writing skills are incapable of capturing the range of emotions that crossed his face at this time. Surprise is the weakest possible word to use.
"So how is it?"
"This is... an advanced food."
"???"
"It's not bad. It's good, once you get into it. But it's... challenging."
I accept the challenge, because, as I've mentioned many times before, I am an idiot. If someone says to me, "Eat this, it's weird", well, I'm done. So I ate an eyeball.
The eyeball I had had two days earlier, stolen from fizrep's plate, was solid, spongy and sweet inside, like a dumpling. This was not that.
Danny used the words "frictionless" and "slimy", which were not inappropriate. It moved in your mouth. It took new forms and positions. It resisted the cutting actions of your teeth and actively chose to avoid them. It morphed and moulded like a living thing until finally your incisors found a weak spot and sliced in, only to discover a semi-sweet pasty center that, while not bad, was no reward for the battle that had just been waged in your mouth.
It was like eating a Shmoo. And if you don't know what that is, then I'm about 20 years older than you.
barbarienne touched one with her tongue and then recoiled in horror.
drlaurac took that one and popped it in her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out, like a chipmunk that had suddenly realized that it had messed with the wrong nut. One could only imagine the wrestling match being played out in her mouth, although I was half convinced that we might shortly be seeing the contestants leaving the ring, as it were. But she downed the sesame ball finally, and things were well.
barbarienne finally approached the object scientifically, dissecting it with a chopstick and analyzing the remains before delicately consuming a half. Had we not all started laughing, the experiment might have gone without incident.
We paid our bill and fled the scene. We might not be permitted back in the future.
Saturday
angledge's birthday was Friday, so we all decided to meet up in the city and experience A Little Taste Of Chinatown. Insert inappropriate "Taste of China" joke here. We sure did.
With surprisingly minimal difficulty, angledge, her chica, vulgarbarbarian and Mrs. vulgarbarbarian, fizrep and I met up in the northern end of Chinatown. Oh woe to the parts of Manhattan that escape its perfectly ordered gridline... but that's a rant for another time. The point is, we met up, we got a street map of places that were participating, and off we went.
The gist of the festival was simple- various restaurants and eateries would have outdoor tables set up, at which they'd have samples of food which they sold for a dollar each. The crowds wandered from place to place sampling the various goods. And, for the most part, they were good. Mango Pudding was deemed a hit (I'm more of a fan of Mango Juice, but still), and the dollar Lo Mein had us leave a trail of noodles in our wake. Some place tried to trick us into having sesame chicken instead of General Tso's, but vulgarbarbarian and I would have none of that. Red Bean and Custard Buns were also a big hit, although la chica kept insisting that we find "Huggy Bear Rice Pudding". Huggy Bear? Her words made no sense until later.
fizrep might have eaten nearly everything we passed; his stomach is a bottomless pit that churns up foodstuffs without pause. He was slightly hesitant as he passed the Mongolian place to grab "House Special On A Stick", but even the faint ghostly meows nagging at his subconscious did not stop him from eating it. Ok, I ate some too, but I was less guilt-ridden. He also bought some sesame buns, which resembled nothing short of eyeballs. Human-sized eyeballs. This also slowed us down, but again, not by much. A curious order of foreshadowing that was, however. More on that in a second.
Finishing up with lemon cakes, some kind of cream puff, and a green tea jelly custard which only resembled the word "green", we headed north. We were first intercepted by a Zombie Flash Mob, who appeared to want to eat our brains, but then they saw a van giving out free stuff, and they mobbed the hell out of it. Crazy zombies. We continued north, and got intercepted by Rice To Riches, a store based solely on varieties of Rice Pudding. Here la chica explained her Huggy Bear love with Bear Hug Chocolate Rice Pudding. I'm still not clear where the bears were, but it was sweet and tasty. We continued north, hitting up the Strand bookstore, and then ventured back south to a pub to sit down and celebrate more fully. Terrence joined us, we drank beer, and we got stuck on the faux spiderwebs the pub had lined the walls with. Had there been giant spiders, I would have been the first to fall, ensnared as I was in the diabolical mesh that decorated the place. Cheeky.
Monday
Monday was mostly a routine crazy workday. Work is not that interesting. Dinner afterwards is more interesting.
drlaurac and hubby and baby were visiting town, and as I haven't seen them in seven years (or, in the case of the baby, ever), I said, woohoo, meetup! So barbarienne and Amy and I met up with the family for, surprise of surprises, Chinese food.
Evergreen is a nice restaurant (38th and 5th). They have good food. We sat and talked and dined and more. The baby attempted to eat an entire stuffed dinosaur. I ate a really hot pepper. Everything went well.
And then, dessert.
Most of our dessert orders occur without incident. It's hard to fuck up a sherbet, after all. Even my not-totally-thawed chocolate mousse cake was good. But Danny ordered sesame balls in syrup.
Recall the previous foreshadowing. I did not make the connection until this moment, far too late to warn anyone. They look like eyeballs.
But looks did not deter Danny. While he was expecting something more solid, perhaps little spheres of sesame seeds in sugary syrup with a sweet center, he was not entirely averse to the six eyeballs floating in syrup that were presented to him. So he ate one.
My writing skills are incapable of capturing the range of emotions that crossed his face at this time. Surprise is the weakest possible word to use.
"So how is it?"
"This is... an advanced food."
"???"
"It's not bad. It's good, once you get into it. But it's... challenging."
I accept the challenge, because, as I've mentioned many times before, I am an idiot. If someone says to me, "Eat this, it's weird", well, I'm done. So I ate an eyeball.
The eyeball I had had two days earlier, stolen from fizrep's plate, was solid, spongy and sweet inside, like a dumpling. This was not that.
Danny used the words "frictionless" and "slimy", which were not inappropriate. It moved in your mouth. It took new forms and positions. It resisted the cutting actions of your teeth and actively chose to avoid them. It morphed and moulded like a living thing until finally your incisors found a weak spot and sliced in, only to discover a semi-sweet pasty center that, while not bad, was no reward for the battle that had just been waged in your mouth.
It was like eating a Shmoo. And if you don't know what that is, then I'm about 20 years older than you.
barbarienne touched one with her tongue and then recoiled in horror.
drlaurac took that one and popped it in her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out, like a chipmunk that had suddenly realized that it had messed with the wrong nut. One could only imagine the wrestling match being played out in her mouth, although I was half convinced that we might shortly be seeing the contestants leaving the ring, as it were. But she downed the sesame ball finally, and things were well.
barbarienne finally approached the object scientifically, dissecting it with a chopstick and analyzing the remains before delicately consuming a half. Had we not all started laughing, the experiment might have gone without incident.
We paid our bill and fled the scene. We might not be permitted back in the future.