Food Addiction: Coffee

I love La Colombe Corsica blend coffee.  Food and Friends (where you can buy food stuffs while dancing to the best indie music) sells it for ten dollars a bag.  That's a great deal on delicious coffee.  Said ("Sayid") at La Citadelle brews La Colombe, but I am not sure what blend.

For coffee-on-the-go, I really love the medium roast from Good Karma on 22nd.  It's just a nice flavor of coffee to help me actually enjoy drinking it during my morning commute.

As for corporate coffee options, I go to Starbucks or Dunkin's, depending on a number of factors: (1) proximity; (2) shortest line; (3) whether I am getting a medium iced coffee (Dunkin's is a little cheaper, or at least my brain is trained to think so based on the shape of the cup); (4) whether I have my coffee cup with me (Starbucks will knock off ten or fifteen cents I think); (5) time (Dunkin's is a little faster); and (6) whatever justice or fairness requires at the time.  Nothing precludes me from balancing additional factors, should they manifest.

Now that I have been in NYC for a week, I have been having corporate coffee in the morning once I get off the subway and along the walk to work.  Yesterday, since I wasn't going to work, I walked around the corner and bought a $1.50 travel-mug-sized cup of coffee plus milk from Cafe Reggio.  It was delicious, with really frothy milk.  But, I can't buy coffee every day, can I?

I am trying to live reasonably within my cheddar this summer, so I bought Folgers instant coffee.  I am trying it out this morning.  I just don't think I can do this every day.  It's not good.  Sorry, Folgers, you were not the best part of waking up for me today.

If you have any advice for how to make it taste better, please share your tips.  Should I try Starbucks Via?

Food Foto Friday

Super Snack!

The Darker Side of Bon Appetreat: Exam Season Eating

Exams have been over for just a week, and I am still recovering from exam season eating.  When exam season hits any reasonable eating regime goes out the window in exchange for eating like a latch key kid left home alone on a Saturday with a cupboard full of treats, snacks, odds, and ends.  This means eat whatever you can find, and when you are not eating, watch copious amounts of television and/or sleep the entire day.

Usual regime = morning cereal and coffee, mid-morning Stonyfield yogurt, lunch from the "s" family: sandwich, soup, salad, or sushi, afternoon Naked Juice Blue Machine or Green Machine, dinner from the "s" family.

When exams come around, I wake up, eat cereal, watch terrible tv online (too embarrassed to say which terrible tv), eat pita chips and hummus, sleep, eat more pita chips and hummus, more tv, more sleep. I spent entire days sleeping, hulu-ing, and pita-chip-and-hummussing my way through days gorgeous and mundane alike.

To make amends (and because all of my pita chips and hummus was gone), I tried Bacchus Market at 23rd and Pine.  Even though I got two thin slices of seared tuna, really delicious - blackened only on the edges, and a Greek salad. . . an iced coffee later I was back to watching missed episodes of 30 Rock.  Nightcap road to recovery = framboise, mango sorbet, and chocolate quadratinis.

Post exam menus might include: A later-to-be-regretted cheeseburger.  An entire box of chocolate donuts with a side of two antacid tablets.  Roasted chicken overstuffed with cornbread-meat stuffing (this is from a student who's a chef savant).  Cinnamon-raisin toast and eggs for breakfast  and leftover Indian for dinner.

Exam season is now well over, and I think I gained 5-7 pounds.  No joke.  The next couple of weeks before  New York will require a reexamination of my eating habits.

Visit from Long Lost Friend Reveals Food Snobbery

I wasn't feeling well today, and so I thought that having mac and cheese might make me feel better.  Maybe?  Annie's boxed Mac and Cheese, with the perky rabbit smiling (smirking?) from his perch, was something I had been waiting for.  I bought the box a couple months ago, and it was waiting for today to be consumed.  What started out as an American experience - the innocuous making of a box of mac and cheese - became something that made me slightly ashamed of what I have become.  A food snob.  My boxed mac and cheese needed a lot more cheese.

Here's what happened.  I sauteed some onions and medallions of chicken sausage, boiled my pasta, made my cheese sauce (from the box), and once I put together the cheese and the pasta . . . I tasted . . . and nothing.  No creamy, cheesy, pizazzy comfort.  Not at all.  Had my mac and cheese experiences from Stephen Starr restaurants and BLSA food sales really upped my expectations of mac and cheese?   Apparently.  I have sadly become a mac and cheese snob.  I guess this was inevitable.   But to turn my nose at boxed mac and cheese?  I might have my citizenship revoked.  My mother will be so ashamed to read this post.

So, I mixed in the onions and sausage, put it all on top of a bed of spinach, and added a final super hefty dose of grated gruyere.  And it was good.

Problem solved.

And yes, the rabbit is directing me to the complaints department.

Ode to the Champagne-O-Rama

The weather was gorgeous, and we were out on the rooftop bar at the Continental.  It was my birthday, so I decided I wanted my favorite over-priced drink - - - the Continental's Champagne-O-Rama.  The Champagne-O-Rama is raspberry vodka with champagne (or maybe champagne with a shot of raspberry vodka), and the glass is grenadine-sugar-rimmed.  I planned on just having one, but I went home having had three.  I think I'll start making my own at home, though, so I can save a little money while enjoying a favorite treat.  But, if I had my own champagne and vodka sitting around at home, I might never leave the house.

Food Addiction: Bread

I ate more than a reasonable share of bread today.  Helping feed my inner bread monster was the Fitler Square farmer's market, open Saturdays from 9-2, rain, snow, sleet, or shine.  Today the bread guy offered three dollar ginormous loaves.  Since it was such a bargain, I got an apricot-raisin-pecan loaf and an olive-garlic loaf.  I made sure to try two slices from both loaves, and both are pretty great tasting.  The apricot-raisin-pecan bread I toasted and spread butter on the slices.  Two slices of the olive-garlic loaf accompanied some left over pad thai.

I love good bread.  Almost as much as I love cheese.  The bread guy has a type of bread for everyone. Go see him next Saturday to find what he has in store for you.