FoodNerd!

oh noooooooo! RIP Bright Food Shop

One of my favorite foods is no longer available to me. The green posole at Bright Food Shop is no more, because Bright Food Shop is no more.

This is VERY BAD.

Every time I would go down to New York to visit friends, I would try to finagle an excuse to head over and get posole. Sometimes I would just get takeout and schlep it home on the bus. One friend lived just a few blocks away and I could walk there. I have a photo of me and the tallasiandude, early in our dating, standing outside the Bright Food Shop just after lunch, and I am grinning like a fool, doped up on love and delicious soup.

Some of their Mexican-Asian fusion seemed a little weird. But everything Mexican on the menu and in the little grocery/takeout shop next door was terrific, not that i ventured much past the posole myself -- that posole was my first introduction to the soup, and I've never seen the verde style with greens and turkey anywhere else, despite an ongoing addiction to posole in general ever since that first bite.

The place was jammed every time I went. Now, if a tiny little joint like this that packs 'em in and also offers takeout can't make enough money -- in CHELSEA -- to pay their rent... then the rent is TOO FUCKING HIGH, assholes. Stupid greedy jerk landlords.

I am sad.

o'coco's: stupid name, great chocolate taste

I was at the mall with my mother, and was overcome by hunger at one point -- and of course my mother has random bargain-store snacks with her at almost all times. So i got a taste of a packet of "O'Coco's" chocolate crisps, which really should be awful, but in fact are deeply chocolaty, shatteringly crunchy, and quite good indeed.

And they're organic and low in calories. Wacky.

Apparently the secret is that they use cocoa powder, which makes the chocolate flavor dark and intense. And I am a pushover for anything crunchy and crispy. And if i can jack up two pleasure centers at once for 90 calories, all the better.

sprouted brown rice from Trader Joe's

Last time I was at Trader Joe's, I saw they had several products made with sprouted brown rice. I'd recently been reading that sprouted grains are much more nutritious than unsprouted, which I guess makes botanical sense. And one of these products was just too preposterous to pass up:

shelf-stable prepared ready-to-eat sprouted brown rice in a plastic bowl with sesame-seaweed sprinkles.

I mean really. That is possibly the yuppiest, health-nut-on-the-go, 21st century food you could ever dream up. So I bought it, for the sheer entertainment value.

And I'll be damned if it wasn't absolutely delicious. Nutty and chewy, with that distinctly japanese taste of nori and sesame and salt.

I'm unlikely to buy this much, because of all the packaging it entails, but I will certainly be much more likely to buy some regular uncooked sprouted brown rice, cook it, and whip up some seaweed-sesame-salt furikake of my own to mix into it. Yums.

wild willy's burgers

Tonight i was feeling a vague, unformed craving for sushi, but tallasiandude wasn't feeling that, but he was feeling like we should go to Target, and I agreed, so we cast about for someplace in Watertown to go eat dinner. I was tired of everything in the fridge, and it's been a long week at work, and i wanted some yummy happy food-joy. Molana is where we usually go in that neighborhood, but for some reason i didn't feel like it tonight. Dithering ensued. And then I remembered the weird random burger place just outside the square that has always seemed like i should check it out, if only to know that it is horrible for certain.

And the more i thought "burger" the more i didn't want to go anywhere else.

So we found ourselves at Wild Willy's Burgers. I gave us the option of ditching if it turned out to be wretched theme-mediocrity, like a burgery version of Bugaboo Creek, but the moment we walked in, there was a huge sign advertising the fact that you can have a grass-fed local-beef patty on any burger they offer.

SOLD.

Big soft tasty burgers with various toppings, nothing too wacky or foofy, cooked as requested. Mine had smoked vermont cheddar, lettuce, tomato (red!) and lots of mayo. Tallasiandude's had entirely-respectable chili and american cheese (you can take the boy out of LA...). The fries are a little soggy, but very delicious even when cloaked in melty cheez-whiz. The onion rings are fine, with very tasty onions but that fine, floury style of breading that neither of us cares for much. Draft root beer and hand-squeezed lemonade. It made short work of my savory-fat-salty happy-food craving, and I am totally going back to this place.

These are not my preferred super-skinny burger, but they are the way I like my hand-formed burgers to be: not too thick, good soft texture, moist and juicy (even when cooked well-done), well-balanced with their toppings and bun. The burgers actually remind me a lot of the burgers at Jubilee Juice in Chicago, big and flat and soft and fresh and all kinds of yummy. And if I can have a good gooey drippy cheeseburger that also happens to be locally-sourced, grass-fed, and cooked to order, I am very much in favor of that.

Do not be put off by the random franchise-y exterior or the chuck-wagon kitsch or the clumps of college kids. These people are hewing closely to the principles of In-N-Out Burger and provide a well-sourced, well-cooked, good quality product. Yums.

my life

and i do still love my cat, despite the time he clawed his way up my face then threw up on my hair at 7am.

stove ownership

Truer words were never spoke than in this xkcd comic.

Though honestly, I consume so much of my bacon at greasy spoon diners, I don't usually bother cooking it at home unless i have houseguests. In which case, big fat bacony breakfast for everyone!!