What I eat, apparently

Seriously, it is. I never have leftovers last as long as Mexican food.

Example #1: Chipotle. Mind you, it’s rather Americanized as Mexican food goes (*pretty* sure of this, at least), but it does not change the fact that it is delicious.

This past Halloween, there was a glorious promotion whereupon if you wore tin foil somewhere on your body, you got a free burrito. Drew and I, being pioneers of delicious, of course went to 2 Chipotles. Which resulted in 4 burritos.

Now, once upon a time, back in the old days when Chipotle was new, I’d try to eat an entire burrito. I’d generally get about 3/4 of the way through and realise that eating any more would result in projectile vomiting, which is a very rude thing to have to subject your friends to. At some point, around the time I acquired a boyfriend named Drew who also had the same problem, I began to eat only half of the burrito, with him generally being the one that got to eat the other half. This also leaves a bit of room for the ever-important dessert. So, instead of a gut-bursting attempt to eat all 1100 calories of that baby, it was a gentle 550 (still pretty filling, actually).

By the way, this site is really great for calculating the caloric content of your Chipotle burrito, I just discovered it about 5 minutes ago!

In any case, upon actually having 4 of these things to kill off, you start realising how much starch and protein are in them, and how heavy even a half a burrito is when you’re eating them days in a row. So we’ve started padding them out with lettuce, tomato, and avocado for bonus nutrients, and eating them in thirds instead. So, they’re going away a bit slower the expected. Who knows, I might actually get sick of them at some point.

I have no photographic documentation of the burritos. This is because I am Lazy. However, a similar incident occurred with is about a month ago, when eating out at a little restaurant lodged in the back of a Mexican grocery store. The empanadas and quesadillas were ginormous, and we ended up taking home our leftovers, along with some of the leftovers of our eating companions. Things lasted forever!

Here is a poorly-taken photograph of them lasting forever:

Mind you, we helped them last forever by, along with the lettuce and tomato, also padding them out with rice. This is because these things were about 80% cheese (probably less, but it sure seemed like it at the time). Not that this is a bad thing, as cheese is delicious and I try to eat it as often as I can. Still, my arteries get really pissed at me when I try to overcheese them.

The conclusion to all of this is: I apparently don’t get sick of Mexican food, ever.

I love eel so bad (unagi for those of you in the know). It is filled with the sort of moistness and deliciousness that only eels can possess. Eels are the sort of fishes that like to squirm their way into your mouth and slide down your throat right into your warm belly, and you’re gonna like it, dang it! For when Delicious forces itself upon you, there is no choice but to reply with thrilled hunger.

There was some fake crab involved in the shenanigans as well. Fake crab, however, is more of a staple then a rare treat (for those of us who are too cheap to go in for better meats on a regular basis, at least).

In any case, the amount of sushi I made was copious and grand. The amount of photos I took was copious and horrid. Poor lighting, so fuzzy! I cropped out about 80% of the sushi in order to capture the 20% that actually looked good in this picture:

I almost wished I’d made some extra sauce to go with the eel, as eel slides down one’s throat much more deliciously when accompanied by gratuitous amounts of eel sauce! In any case, all was quite tasty. Here is one of the better ones of the crappy pictures, simply because I hate to put in so much effort taking bunches of pictures only to have to ditch them. In any case, I figure posting bad photography will make the good photography that I post look so much better….right?

As it turns out, curry chicken salad is not an efficient way of using up apples at all. It only used one apple, in fact. Still, that’s one less apple that needs to get used up, so I suppose it’s apple-using-up goal was still met.

In any case, I used this recipe. And by ‘used’, I mean ‘vaguely followed’. There’s no chicken in this recipe at all. Not a drop! I had turkey instead, shredded little pieces of turkey that were just dying to roll around in a salad. I suppose chicken might have tasted better, but the turkey worked quite well tastewise, as well as saving me the trouble of making my wallet vomit up more dollars at the grocery store. Left out the grapes, as I figure raisins are grapes enough. No onions either, as celery is crispy enough for my needs without getting any sheisty onions involved. Walnuts instead of pecans, because, well, walnuts are awesome. That, and I happened to already have them on hand. I at least doubled the curry powder amount, and added chili powder, as sometimes you just need a little kick.

And oh yes, the mayonnaise.

See, at first in my head was the decision to use mayonnaise or miracle whip. I possessed both, and while I generally use miracle whip for mayo-related purposes, as I find it more flavorful, this could have been a good excuse to get rid of some mayo. As it was, the fridge contained two containers of mayo and one of miracle whip (the result of my and Drew’s condiments joining forces not too long ago). So, out of sheer curiosity, I checked the dates of the bottles. I used mayo, and sent the other two containers immediately into the trash. Sad thing was, the mayo that I used was about 6 months expired as it was. Still, I used it. It was one of the last ingredients, I was desperate, and I figured that since I’d been eating out of these containers for awhile now, if I was going to get sick off of them I would have done so already. In fact, there’s probably some poor starving child in Somalia or Helsinki or wherever that would love to have expired mayo. In any case, at least it was still good until *some* time in 2008, unlike the other two containers. Nonetheless, methinks I need to invest in some new mayo and miracle whip.

It’s such a habit to get ginormous bottles too. I mean, stuff is so much cheaper in bulk. However, mayonnaise isn’t exactly the sort of thing that gets used up real fast, I suppose, so I might just have to suck it up and buy small in the future.

In other news, curry chicken turkey salad makes a super sandwich!

So here’s a super fantastic way of making a delicious cheese sandwich:

First, you must procure for yourself a nice skinny loaf of french bread. Luckily, these are not too expensive, especially if you get them half off when they’re a day old. That way, you can either save that money for something else, or buy two discount loaves and use one as a light saber!

Next, you need a chunk of cheese. Mozzarella is always a good choice, though I believe that any of the milder sorts of cheeses would work quite well. I happened to have a large slab of Mexican queso lying about, so I used that.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut off a healthy slab of bread, and slice that baby in half. On one half, lay a decently-sized slice of cheese. You can never have too much cheese, you know. Upon this cheese, you must then sprinkle garlic powder, oregano, and whatever other seasonings make you happy in that special way. Stack the other half on top, stick in the oven, and bake for about 10 minutes.

The next step is what makes all of this glorious. Get a jar of marinara sauce, pour a decent dollop into a small bowl, and microwave until hot. Dip the sandwich into the cheese, and enjoy the delicious.

Mind you, this is the part where you realise that the sandwich is entirely too big to fit in your mouth. And thus, you (like me) will be forced to repeat this a second time, making two open-face cheese sandwiches rather then a bohemoth sandwich like this baby:

Either way is pretty tasty, though.

I heart quesadillas. I have a bad habit of trying to be healthy, so generally when I make quesadillas, I bake them. I was feeling saucy this time, and decided to fry this baby up.

Having since eaten the above item, I think that in the future, the small amount of oil used is totally worth it, as that was quite the delicious item. Having conveniently gotten food from Jason’s Deli the day before, I even had Bonus Salsa left over to eat with the quesadilla! Score for me!