What I eat, apparently

I generally enjoy ‘fusion food’. This is because of the theory that a restaurant generally does not attempt to serve fusion food unless it has a firm grasp on all of the different types of food it is attempting to merge together. While I don’t really have a firm grasp of anything, much less the cuisines of multiple cultures, it’s still fun to make jabs at it. And it is under this guise that I present my accidental blending of American and Japanese cuisines, hearty miso soup:

See, in theory at least, proper miso soup should be light and brothy. However, being an American, I apparently want my soup to be as filling as possible. Thus, my recent tendency to make miso soup that’s really more like miso stew, with vast quantities of tofu and seaweed floating about. It may quite possibly be the best breakfast ever.

So at some point recently, a legion of lazy carrots invaded my fridge. They refuse to leave. So, inevitably, I’ve been attempting to figure out things to do with said carrots. I find raw carrots by themselves bland and boring, and cooked carrots by themselves are mildly repulsive. Nonetheless, the part of me that is descended from rabbits recognizes the value in eating carrots, as also does the part of me that wants to put off having to get glasses for as long as possible. Thus, I find ways to eat the carrots.

One excellent means of sneakily getting carrots into my stomach is the Vietnamese garden roll. These also serve as a vehicle for peanut sauce, one of the top nominees for the Best Sauce of All Time.

Anyhow, I boiled up some delightfully wormy (like, resembling worms, except incredibly appetizing!) noodles, shredded some lettuce, sliced up some tofu, and attempted to slice carrots without hurting myself. I failed at the latter task. Sure enough, that knife decided to get awful friendly with my left index finger. So it goes. Nothing bad at least, kudos to me for being lazy about sharpening cutlery!

Anyhow, after a sloppy assemblage, my dinner looked like this:

I had a bunch left. I set them down for one brief moment, and suddenly these strange beasts emerged from the ether, as if by Garden Roll Magic. They approached timidly, with that tiny glimmer of hope that these strange tubes might be a disguise for a chipmunk, or possibly a sparrow, or the rare wild sighting of small brown digestible pellets. But alas, disappointment was met by all but my tummy.

Anyhow, the peanut sauce is awesome, you should make it and dip things in it. It’s easy!

-1/4 cup peanut butter (chunky is always fun)
-1/4 cup hoisin sauce
3/4 to 1 cup water

Boil until saucy. Add crushed peanuts if you are also saucy.

P.S. The recipe calls for a dash of sesame oil, but I always forget to add it. Tastes good either way!

Potatoes are a beautiful thing. Spudtastic, even. Spudilicious. Spudariffic. And a whole slew of other words I could totally make up if I felt like it.

I made these babies. Sliced them up, fried them in a pan with oil, sprinkled them with various seasonings, and dipped them lovingly in ketchup right before they got to hop right on into my giant gaping maw and slide on down my throat. An adventure for all!

Now here’s a question: Is it just America that’s so wealthy and so religious so as to think people should feel actual guilt for eating not so healthy foods?

I don’t like buying into the sort of thought process that makes a chocolate cake ’sinfully good’, or that eating something delicious yet low-calorie means that you can do it ‘guilt-free’. When did food stop being a fuel and start becoming a furtive hidden pleasure? I blame puritans and supermodels, it’s all their fault!

Admittedly, I’m an American here too, and the pull of wanting to eat more crap then I technically need is often greater then I can resist. But it seems smarter to just be mathematical about the matter. Your body needs x amount of food to fuel the y amount of energy you expend. To maintain your body weight, increase and decrease both at equal levels. To lose weight, decrease x slightly and increase y slightly. If you eat that extra cookie, you can justify it mathematically via doing an extra lap around the track, and so on.

When you start assigning moral values to the food you eat, all of the sudden you’re a better person if you eat no cookies, despite the fact that, after doing a gazillion laps, you body might very well have a legitimate need for that cookie. And then, the inevitable. The snake in the garden lures Eve on in. You’ll take that box of Swiss Cake Rolls from the tree of the knowledge of binging and purging, and before you know it you’re signing over entire paychecks to Little Debbie as you gorge upon the creamy soft meats of a thousand wrapped treats, praying to the Jesus that in his day never knew such temptations like you face, aisles of boxes full of mouthwatering sinful Death.

‘Cake is Death’ is the 1984 of our gastronomical nightmares, and it must be fought at all costs! I will stand, agnostic and true, and speak “Cake, please”.

So there I was, deep in the Amazon. And by ‘Amazon’, I mean ‘My apartment’. Anyhow, a vision of light appeared in my head…a vision of biscuits. A vision so luminescent that white flour alone would not cut it. No, I needed wheat flour as well for this job. A blending of two flours, to form the ultimate biscuit-seeking power, that the Biscuit Gods might bestow unto me their fluffy buttery benevolence. That my soul should be at peace, cushioned in the soft tender carbohydrates of the heavens.

I sought long, and I sought hard. My seeking was not to be in vain. Soon, the alchemy was complete. Crouched, prone upon a desolate pan in the stove-like wilds, were my muses.

Wild, these biscuits were. No biscuit cutter could tame them. Timidly, they approached me. Seeing I meant no harm, they soon gathered ’round. Overwhelmed I was by these gentle yet delicious beasts, I couldn’t help but delight in their doughy frolicking. Seemingly inspired by the gods themselves, one chose itself out of the fray to come forth, and be a willing sacrifice down my throat. It was then that the jam made itself known, sacrificial jam to quell the soul of any bread product.

The biscuits then silenced themselves, and I took a savory bite into the virgin dough. The rest were awed into submission, overwhelmed by a catharsis of hope, that someday soon they too might meet this good and noble fate. Eagerly, they crawled into my tupperware container, and nuzzled up against one another.

Sleepily, they dozed as I covered the container and savored the spoils of my hunt. The gods were good to me that day.

So at some point in the vaguely recent past, I happened to acquire a small collection of goobers. I’m not quite sure I’ve had goobers before this point but, sad to say, they’re just not all that good. I need them to at least be doused in caramel or some other substance, at least they’d be approaching Snickers-like tastiness at that point. However, apparently I need a minimum of Whitman’s Sampler quality chocolate and peanuts to satiate me.

Not that this has stopped me from eating them, however. Which is precisely what I was doing when I decided they needed to be documented in pixel-form. I knew they couldn’t just be in little ball glob form, it’s simply not festive enough. So I made a swirlie:

Think of them as hippie goobers?

Actually, as I was doing this, I just kept thinking of rabbit poop. I mean, I’m pretty sure they taste better, but visually they do bear a strong resemblance. All of which inevitably led to this horrid accident:

I mean, c’mon, if you were decapitated, I’m sure that holding it all in would be the last thing on your (lack of) mind.

This did nothing to improve the taste, by the way.