Food – Page 5 – Oh Honestly, Erin

All the Things (Henry Wouldn’t Buy), Plus Some Food

Amusement Parks, Fairs, & Carnivals, Food, music

Sep 162015

While I’m trying to sort through my cluttered, unsophisticated 15-year-old’s diary full of thoughts on all the bands I saw this past weekend, let’s talk instead about the VENDORS.

Music festivals are RUDE. You’ve already spent Heaven’s rent on a ticket (and if it’s more than a one-day festival, plan on eating lots of pb&j for the next month since you just sacrificed your grocery money) and now there’s all these food vendors and merch tents lining up to take your car payment too.

I mean, unless you do a better job at planning for these things than I do. Which, thankfully, Henry does. He had been saving for months! What a novel idea that I didn’t even consider.

The downside to this is that he had been hoarding actual cash money so that we wouldn’t have to use our debit cards at all that weekend. I say “downside” because that money was in HIS wallet so I had to constantly ask him if I could buy things and I felt like Chooch, begging for every shiny thing.

What a strong, independent woman I am!

I’m so used to going to Warped Tour, where we’re at the mercy of the venue-provided food options. And it’s overpriced bullshit food too, like chicken tenders and nachos that cost $10. A vegetarian’s nightmare. But Riot Fest is a foodtruck Valhalla, and almost every food vendor has vegetarian fare for all of us plant gourmands. I was really sad last year because I felt like I didn’t have time to take advantage of this bevy of meatless options lining the perimeter of Humboldt Park. This year, I vowed to eat a shit ton of foods!

Aaaaand….I failed to eat a shit ton of foods. I’m sorry, but food < music. All three days, we grabbed something quickly for lunch before hitting the stages, and if there was enough downtime in between bands at some point, I would declare that a second feeding was allowed.

Henry didn’t like this rigid feeding schedule that I put us on, but shit gets real out there in the field, OK? Those food lines get so long after a certain point in the day and that’s time that I just don’t have to waste.

Day One:

As soon as I saw the Dark Matter tent, I was ON IT. I have been smitten with this coffee ever since last year’s Riot Fest, and I occasionally order bags of their coffee online—they’re the reason I drop-kicked my Keurig to the curb and bought a French press. God love them.

Henry handed me some cash and took off for a porta-potty, leaving me to approach the Dark Matter tent with way too much enthusiasm. There is something about Henry’s presence that keeps my exuberance dialed back (I think this is also known as STIFLING), so anytime he leaves me alone, I can get kind of over-the-top.

Like a dog off its leash.

“I LOVE YOUR COFFEE,” I yelled at the guy in lieu of saying of hello. I don’t even know if he is the Dark Matter guy. I don’t think he was expecting to be yelled at in such a positive matter that soon after the gates opened. “I’M FROM PITTSBURGH AND SOMETIMES I FIND MYSELF SITTING AT WORK, DREAMING OF DARK MATTER.”

“Oh wow, that’s really cool!” he said after I finally shut the fuck up. “Here, take some stickers and a pin,” he insisted, pointing to the free shit along the counter. And then, after filling up a cup for me, he said, “Wait right here,” before walking to the back of the tent.

Henry had returned by then and asked me why I was still standing there.

“I don’t know, he told me to wait here,” I shrugged, dreamily sipping my cup of wet happy. And then the Dark Matter guy came back and handed me a free t-shirt!

God, I love Dark Matter.

And I love Riot Fest.

AND I LOVE YOU.

(I didn’t bother giving my nails a fresh painting for Riot Fest. They barely hold up during a regular show, let alone a three day fest.)

Quickly scarfed down a vegan taco from Tica’s Tacos. It was OK. It had a plantain on it and plantains are good. But all I cared about was chewing that shit up quick-like and running to the next stage. Henry ate ribs or something. I’m not sure.

I made a mess of my taco.

I was really excited about Puffs of Doom after Googling them when the Riot Fest food vendors were announced.I was going to get some banana Nutella concoction but at the last minute decided that my mouth was feeling particularly contrary to bananas that evening (I have flip-flopping taste buds) so I yelled “NO GET THE PEACH ONE” to Henry who has to do all of my food ordering because I get anxiety. (I hate decisions!)

I’m OK in actual restaurants though. I just get nervous when there is a line of hungry people behind me waiting to order their food and here I am, being in the way as usual, god forbid.

And there’s another tangent no one cares about.

The peach thing was just OK. I split it with Henry and usually I want to eat all of things for myself. He ended up getting some delicious white chocolate dessert egg roll thing and split that with me and it was much more delightful than my peach puff.

Henry had fries for dinner because it was the shortest line and Faith No More was about to start; I had nothing because in case you missed it, Faith No More was about to start! Food was the last thing on my feeble mind at that point.

I had a late vending machine feast at the “hotel” – generic chex mix and half of a Snickers. Concert lyfe, y’all.

Day 2:

Older than Henry!

We got some Connie’s deep dish as soon as we arrived at Douglas Park. I know, I know, it’s no Giordano’s or whatever, but it got the job done.

Later I had Guinness ice cream because I love beer-flavored food but not beer-flavored beer. It was really good. That’s my Yelp review.

Dinner was another hectic scramble because we had a very small window of time and everything was crowded except for that idiotic Puffs of Doom place and some Billy Goat burger stand next door. So I had a savory artichoke puff which I ate so fast because I was in such a hurry to get to Billy Idol’s stage that I don’t even remember what it tasted like. Spinach artichoke dip inside of a puff pastry, I’m going to wager.

Day 3:

Again, we got there before any of the bands started, so we hit up the Fat Shallot, where Henry got some type of weener and I got a grilled cheese. It wasn’t too fancy, but it got the job done. I don’t know why I was so excited about the food vendors being announced, because I knew that this was going to be a weekend of eating out of necessity and nothing more. To be honest, I probably could have gotten by on protein bars. Goddamn Henry, throwing wrenches in my festival schedule with his annoying habit always having to eat.

We spent a good portion of Sunday afternoon at the two smaller stages because the lineup over there was tight as fuck. Dinky Donuts was in the vicinity, so Henry bought a bag of chili cinnamon ones and they were so moist. MOIST MOIST MOIST.

Warm and moist.

I loved them.

We split curry fries later that night while waiting for Snoop Dogg.

I know, we really lived it up.

As far as merch goes, there was so much I wanted! One of my favorite Etsy sellers, Martha Rotten, had a booth there. (Not to burst your bubble, but her name is FRANCENE not Martha.) I was excited to meet her in real life, and we had the most awkward exchange of all time, because ETSY PEOPLE ARE AWKWARD. I should know. I’m one of them.

Anyway, I own one lone Martha Rotten piece:

I was really trying hard to add to my strange jewelry collection (she has a pewter Last Supper cuff that I had my eyes on) and I think that Henry was actually going to cave and give me money (Weak, Dependent Woman Almost Gets Permission From Big Man, story on page 6) but you know what happened next? I suddenly turned selfless and decided that I would just buy something from her shop at a later date, and instead just bought my KID things because I missed him so much and like my mom before me, I know all about buying a child’s love.

We bought him this cat shirt from Harebrained Designs (they’re partners with Period Panties, lol):

And one of my favorite t-shirt companies of all time, Choonimals, was there again! I’ve been following these guys for years, ever since they first started popping up at Warped Tour. This past summer, they actually partnered with Warped Tour and not only sponsored the two main stages, but also designed the 3D commemorative ticket for 2015. I love their animal designs so much and as usual, it was tough to choose one, and I started to get real gushy at this booth too, like the t-shirt version of Dark Matter coffee. “I GO TO WARPED TOUR EVERY YEAR AND JUST LOVE CHOONIMALS AHHHHHHH” as I shoved my bulging eyeballs back into their sockets. Henry was like, “OK PICK A SHIRT SO WE CAN LEAVE BEFORE THIS MAN CALLS THE COPS.” We ultimately settled on this one for Chooch, which he’s excited to wear for picture day:

It was cute — he was like Choonimals!! as soon as I pulled it out of my Epitaph bag.

Last year, this artist–-ChuckU—was there and I was drooling over his prints but Henry was like POOR PEOPLE DON’T BUY ART, MOVE ALONG. This year, I finally talked him into buying one of the cat designs for Chooch, who already has the best cat art collection in his room.

Some of my other favorite vendors were there again too, like Then Now Always (I bought one of their necklaces at Riot Fest last year and every time I wear it, I feel happy) and KoalaCore (the best t-shirts!) but Henry kept reminding me of his blue collar status and also the fact that we’re going to Philly this weekend and we don’t want to sleep in the car, do we? I hate having his gruff voice of reason in my ear CONSTANTLY.

(Don’t even make me calculate all the money he spent on beer, though! But, I guess he had to numb the pain somehow.)

Stheart was there again too and I was straight casing their tent; I think I was alarming them. I just really wanted Henry to buy himself one of their slouch beanies because I like him in beanies but I like him best in SLOUCH beanies because then he looks slightly more my type. He was so close to picking one out but then was like “NOT RIGHT NOW” so I guess I’ll just get him seven of them for Christmas, along with a closetful of fitted flannels, gray jeans, TOMS, a neck tattoo, and The Artist In the Ambulance on vinyl.

***

Today at work, I low-key cried at my desk because my body is nothing more than a giant flesh-chalice of emo blood and I can’t even go to a club show without collapsing into a melodramatic lump of post-show depression, so how do you think I’m handling the first week after three entire days worth of music? NOT VERY GRACEFULLY. I will try not to be too ridiculous with my music recap posts. NO PROMISES.

Henry’s response to my “I JUST CRIED AT MY DESK, WAH RIOT FEST” text was “oh erin.” He must have been too tired to type out “honestly.”

I’m very fragile right now. Handle with care.

Feeding Time In Savannah

Food, Henrying, Southern Road Trip, travel

Aug 232015

After a few miles of listening to Chooch jaw off Octavia’s ear about video games and Henry suffering mild road rage, we found a place to park downtown. Octavia put her tour guide hat back on and we began our leisurely walking tour of Savannah. But first, Octavia needed to feed me because even though I had on my SWEET LITTLE ERIN facade, my hunger was quickly reaching Hulk levels.

Octavia suggested Kayak Kafe, knowing that there were vegetarian options. There were so many veg options, in fact, that it was difficult to choose! I eventually went for some sort of vegetable panini thing which came with LATIN SLAW!

On my birthday!

That whole cabbage challenge had me consumed for the entire month of July. There were times I ate coleslaw even when I didn’t even want to eat coleslaw just because it was endlessly funny to me. I feel like my dumb self-appointed cabbage challenge consumed more than should have. You know how they say that it takes x-number of days to make something a habit? Usually when referring to exercise? Well, after 31 days of forcing myself to reference cabbage in some way, I find myself automatically doing that still, almost at the end of August. So dumb. I’m pretty sure I won my challenge, because no one told me otherwise. Someone started to call me out on one of my posts and then realized that I dropped a Savoy bomb up in there. SAVOY IS A TYPE OF CABBAGE in case you’re a cabbage dodo. Now you know.

So step off.

(I actually didn’t know this until July, when I spent entirely too much time Googling “cabbage” and now I know everything in the world there is to know about cabbage, including a recipe for Transylvanian cabbage pie and home remedies for hemorrhoids using raw cabbage leaves. Facts.)

Now that I have you thinking about inflamed anal buttons, here’s a picture of my food!

I ate way too fast, as usual. And Chooch was fancy and ordered lemonade with strawberry pulp in it, which I didn’t see on the menu, so I was jealous. He was so smug about it, too.

During lunch, Octavia brought up THE SERVICE, because she too was in the Air Force! This is important to note because it was the first time Henry smiled in Savannah, when she asked him earnest (as opposed to Erin-style, a/k/a dickheadish) questions about what he did there. He was a crew chief!

“Did I know that!?” I squealed through my laughter.

“Yes,” Henry mumbled.

“No I didn’t! You never told me that!” I was almost choking on this.

“No, I did. A long time ago. You just didn’t care,” he mumbled.

I wonder if Henry ever feels bullied by me.

And then Octavia said, “So your name was on the plane then!” and Henry modestly nodded and I was practically flipping tables at this point.

HIS NAME WAS ON THE PLANE, HAHAHA! Oh my god. I just asked him if it was his full name, middle initial and all, and HE SAID YES. A plane with “Henry. J. Robbins” plastered on it! Oh god, thank you, Octavia, for uncovering this gem buried in Henry’s past!

After lunch, we went to a toy store that looked like my parent’s basement in the 80s. So much nostalgia, and so many “NO!”s to Chooch’s incessant toy-begging.

Finally, it was time for ice cream at Leopold’s, which was why it didn’t matter to me where we at lunch; I have been too fixated on Leopold’s even since Octavia first told me about Savannah’s ice cream parlor.

Here is a picture Octavia took of me not listening to Henry. <3

Octavia got lemon sorbet (or custard?); Henry got rum bisque because Octavia said that was her husband Dustin’s favorite and Henry is a follower; Chooch got something dumb probably; and since lavender wasn’t available, I felt an obligation to tutti frutti, since Leopold’s famously claims to have invented it. I’m not sure I’ve ever had tutti frutti before, and it’s not something I would typically order, but I really liked it! It was like a (good) fruit cake in ice cream form.

I liked Henry’s better though. :( DON’T I ALWAYS.

Here’s a picture of Chooch stealing another friend from me. Ugh. Anyway, Octavia is adorable!

One of the things I really appreciated about Octavia (and believe me, there are many!) was that she patiently listened to Chooch and I fight over who was going to tell the story of DONNA on the ghost tour, and then endured us racing to finish sentences before the other one tried to hijacked the story, because this is what happens when there is a story to tell and both of us want to be the one to tell it. And not only that, but she was totally on our side about it and started berated Donna along with us, so then “don’t be a Donna” became a thing and now I want to make t-shirts and Henry is like, “No, you mean, now you want ME to make t-shirts” and he hates the ghost tour even more now.

Chooch found a new Frederick. And also never shut up. OMG.

Meanwhile, I know that Henry must have been having an OK time because he was updating his Facebook and he never does that. He checked into Bonaventure and Leopold’s, you guys! I’m a Henry expert, so I know that these were good signs. Plus, we didn’t exchange any clandestine “I hope you fucking die” looks with each other at any point during the day, which is what we normally do when he’s having an awful time and I’m catching his bad vibes.

I guess Henry likes being in the south!

One of the last things we did during our afternoon stroll around Savannah was stop at the Coffee Fox for iced coffee, and Chooch excitedly borrowed my phone so he could take a picture of “boobs”:

I think it’s important to note that both Octavia and I like foxes (her photography business is named Two Fox!) so this somehow managed to make my iced horchata latte taste even better. Foxes are special. This whole day was special. I want to go back!

I took a bunch of pictures with my “real camera,” so I’ll post those separately. Don’t be a Donna.

Riot Feast: Let’s Talk About the Food

Amusement Parks, Fairs, & Carnivals, Food, Food Fun, music, reviews, travel

Sep 192014

The aptly-named “Riot Feast” food vendor list.

When we go to Warped Tour, I usually smuggle in some granola bars because:

1. Food there is exorbitantly-priced

2. There are basically no options for vegetarians. It’s burgers and chicken strips or GTFO.

I was pretty worried about the food sitch at Riot Fest, since we’ve never gone to it before. But apparently, this year’s Riot Fest was the biggest one yet, so I don’t think a lot of people really knew what they were in for it. Which was: food trucks for daaaaays. It was the best of the county fair and local staples all lined up on one street and even the options for vegetarians and vegans were downright staggering. There was so much for even me to eat that I was sad I ran out of time!

We honestly had no time at all to do any tourist-y things in Chicago (it was literally: get up, stand in line, watch amazing bands for 10 hours, go back to the hotel and crash), so it was really awesome to still get to eat like we were vacationing in the city. And we could see the city skyline from Humboldt Park, so there was that, too.

Riot Fest didn’t start until 2pm on Friday, so we only ate once that day. Henry had some sickening duck sausage contraption and I had a fucking fat Thai-tofu wrap. This bitch was goddamn rotund, all distended from the gluttonous amounts of tofu and vegetables rammed into that sturdy wrap. It was cold and raining when I got it, and I ate it like a hobo in a snowstorm: double-fisted, jacket sleeves half-covering my hands, hood pulled up over my face, like I hadn’t eaten since that day 6 weeks ago when someone threw a can of anchovies at my forehead. I kept talking about how good it was, but really I’m not sure if I was even able to recognize tastes and flavors at that point of the day, because the weather was so miserable and we were exhausted and overwhelmed by hordes of people. But I sure as fuck felt 1000% better after that was able to quickly go back to dictating which stage we needed to slip-and-slide to through the mud.

The thought of drinking coffee at Warped Tour makes my belly ache. But last weekend at Riot Fest, the temperature fluctuated between 40-65 degrees. Coffee was welcome. Especially on Friday when it was so cold and wet that I’m not sure it wasn’t actually snowing at one point, but the line for Dark Matter was Cedar Point-levels of long. We actually couldn’t even find where it ended because there were so many people everywhere, that food lines just kind of snaked around in no real order and then disappeared into the masses. So I did my standard JUST FORGET IT!!! foot-stamp and went back to shivering beneath my flimsy, lightly-lined windbreaker. It was OK though, because I hit it up the next day before a line formed and it was delicious. Coffee is such an efficient attitude-adjuster. Henry can attest to that.

The only gripe I have is that Dark Matter apparently teamed up with the band Mastodon to make a limited edition blend that’s aged in bourbon whiskey barrels. Mastodon was playing Friday night, so I feel like this would have been an obvious thing to have available. But I know that I will be ordering a bag online, at least!

THIS CHEESE, YOU GUYS. THIS CHEESE WAS EVERYTHING. The menu:

Queijio de Coalho Brazilian-style Grilled Cheese on a Stick:
Original w/ black rum maple syrup
Hatch Chile w/ hot pepper jelly
Garlic w/ mojo de ajo
Smoked Bacon w/ pineapple chipotle

The Hatch Chile was my favorite. Also, I liked it better when I thought their name was Drunkow.

Over the course of the weekend, we had each of the top three. Surprisingly, Henry didn’t get the smoked bacon one for himself, unless that’s what he was doing one of the 8298374892759093245 times he slipped away to “pee.”

Ugh, I wish I was eating this damn stick-cheese right now. I CAN STILL TASTE IT IF I SQUEEZE MY EYES SHUT TIGHT ENOUGH.

I also buried my face into an arepa on Saturday, which is like a savory corn cake and mozzarella, cooked on a griddle. I miss arepas. I want more arepas. Fuck the pie party, let’s have an arepas affair. (Thank god Pittsburgh’s Conflict Kitchen is focused on Venezuela right now because I’m going to eat the ever-loving shit out of some arepas this weekend.)

At some point on Saturday, I also inhaled a bowl of sweet coconut rice loaded with fresh blueberries, strawberries and raspberries, so I was in a pretty mild mood. (Henry thanks you, food trucks.)

(And this is not to mention all the STRONGBOW I chugged all weekend too. Strongbow is my favorite cider in the whole entire world, and pretty much nothing was going to bring me down with that shit in my system. Not even the $7 Henry had to continually hand over for beverage tickets.)

On Sunday, I finally grabbed a grilled cheese from the Cheesie’s truck I had my eye on all weekend. I got the only one that didn’t have MEAT on it, the Caprese. A grilled cheese is no longer a grilled cheese once you start desecrating it with meat, I’m sorry. Those sandwiches need to have another name. (No offense to my carnivore bros out there.) It didn’t matter though because my Caprese was wonderful and it came with a small tub of pesto mayo, of which I made sure to scrape clean and I didn’t give a fuck who was looking. Pesto is the shit.

I also had more stick-cheese, and also a roasted red pepper and goat cheese tamale from Dia De Los Tamales, which was so good that I wish I had ordered more than one. I’m such a food-ordering fuck-up. At some point, we also ordered some baos from Wow Bao (mine was vegetable wheat, Henry’s was who cares) and they too, like everything else lined up in that park, were a mini riot fest for the mouth.

I think Henry ordered something from Big Pork, but I was way too involved in my own masticating to give his stuffed maw even a glance. I wanted him to get a Chubby Wiener just so I could tell Facebook that Henry was eating a chubby wiener but he “wasn’t in the mood for a hot dog” and I was like “Who said anything about a hot dog?”

Oh and we split a peach and bourbon hand pie from Blue Sky Bakery! I liked it but Henry wasn’t impressed, probably because it cost $4 and was really small. Every time we walked past their cart that weekend, I swear their menu kept growing and I wanted to eat it all. But….bands > food.

Oh, but we didn’t gain a single pound*. I estimated that we probably only sat down for a total of 30 minutes a day (and by “day,” I mean a Riot Fest day, which was approx. 10:30am-10:00pm; Friday was only about 12:30-9:00, though). The rest of the time was all walking, standing, running (for me), bouncing (for me). I found out afterward that it was about a mile’s distance from the Rise Stage to the Rock Stage. Contrary to the map below, there was no way to cut across the park other than following the road along the perimeter.

Which, by the way, didn’t connect into a full circle. All the water was fenced off and the road going through the middle wasn’t accessible. It was also nearly impossible to cut through the grassy areas to get to each stage, because there were ridiculously-placed VIP sections blocked off and as the days on, the population around each stage had become so dense that the only way to cut through was to put your head down and charge. It’s a miracle that Henry and I never became separated. Can you imagine? I would probably still be in Humboldt Park, laying behind a porta-potty in the fetal position.

I wish I had worn my pedometer, because it would have been interesting to see how many miles we walked each day. Saturday especially had us going from the Rise Stage to the Rock Stage more times than I would have preferred. (And one of those times, I ran most of the way because during Television’s set on the Rise Stage, I realized we were cutting it close for Saosin on the Rock Stage and I needed to BE UP FRONT FOR THAT SHIT.

So, I ran.

Henry did not run. But I was wearing a bright orange Epitaph backpack so he said he knew where I was at all times. Like I’m his child.

Thank god for accidental exercise.

*(There was a funnel cake truck there that probably would have made this statement untrue had I caved and indulged in one. Each one basically had the contents of an entire dessert cart balancing on a bed of funnel cake. AND I SAW BRADLEY SCOTT WALDEN FROM EMAROSA IN LINE FOR ONE ON SATURDAY AND ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK!!!!!)

Cleveland: Pre-Show Hang-Outs

Food, reviews, travel

May 212014

Plans to go to Cleveland on May 19th had been in the works for several months; basically, as soon as Chiodos announced the dates of their Devils Dance Tour. You guys know that I love Chiodos A LOT but when I saw there was no Pittsburgh date, I likely would have held off and waited for another tour. (Maybe.) BUT! When I saw that not only Hands Like Houses but also Emarosa were supporting them, I was all in. I mean, Emarosa. I’ve waited years for them to rise from the ginger ashes that Jonny Craig left them buried under. But this is blubbering that’s better left for a different blog post. And you know there will be one!

Henry’s oldest son Robbie is also a big Chiodos fan, and we had been fanboying over the new album together on Facebook. So it was no-brainer to bring him along with us. We left early enough on Monday to murder our stomachs at Melt, which is basically a grilled cheese porn shop. You will see grilled cheeses in such greasy, compromising positions at this joint that you’ll be leaving a puddle in your wake.

God, of DROOL! A puddle of drool. What did you sick fucks think I meant?

On the way there, I tried to tag Henry in a post about Jonny Craig’s new band on Facebook, but I forgot that I had unfriended him the night before,.

I love playing games on Facebook. And not the dumb ones like Candy Crush, but the ones that hurt people in real life! Psychological games FTW!

Gratuitous bathroom photo for Alyson Hell, Queen of Loo Shots.

Meanwhile, Henry had been stalking our friend Jason to see if he wanted to meet up. First, he was sending him direct messages on Twitter, but when that didn’t garner him a response, he started texting him, too.

“Oh my god, stop being so embarrassing!” I cried as we walked into Melt. Jason is super fucking busy and I figured that since all of these bands were in town, he probably had a lot of obligations and interviews to knock out at the Magazine Office. Which is why I wasn’t bugging him. But Henry is just so excited to have a friend in his own age bracket, that he gets a little aggressive. Plus, Jason likes bottled beverages so sometimes they talk about that, which is weird, but that’s what I get for being in a domestic partnership with a Faygo warehouse manager. People talk to him about beverage.

Wondering why Jason doesn’t love him as much as he loves Jason. My friend Kate referred to Henry as the Patron Saint of Frowning the other day and now I want to make screen prints of it.

Puppy Kisses, party of 3.

There was a short wait for a table since it was prime lunch time hours, and I busied myself by ogling one of the waitresses who only had a stump of a left arm and still managed to bustle with the best of them. I was thoroughly impressed. But then I was afraid she was going to think I was being rude so I tried to not ever look at her again. Awkward.

I was excited though because for some reason I recently referenced the Jesus Lizard and Henry didn’t get my joke because he had never heard of them, and there happened to be a framed Jesus Lizard poster on the wall. I jabbed Henry in the gut and said, “LOOK!” but he was like, “Ok?” and acted like he didn’t care which is what he always does when I know more than he does.

We were seated in one of those tables where one side has a chair and the other side is one long wooden bench, but the way our corner table was set up, the bench curved at the end so a third person could squeeze into a two-person table. I sat down first so Henry was stuck sitting in the awkward bench-corner and proceeded to whine about it because that’s what bitches do.

“It’s like, sharp sitting here. No really, it’s sharp and it hurts my leg!” Henry cried when I told him to pipe down, we’re in public. “I don’t know how I’m going to be able to eat once the food gets here. Where are they going to put my food?” I patted the corner of the table in front of him. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. “Move down some,” he pleaded with me. So I did but then I immediately moved right back because I only care about myself.

For the last several weeks, I had my eyes on the May special, The Sanchez, which is basically an enchilada inside a grilled cheese. This sounds like it would have a horrific impact on my already thunderous thighs, but WHEN IN CLEVELAND, am I right?

Ugh, but then the Ghosts of Upset Stomachs Past held a summit and encouraged me to go a different route so that I wouldn’t spend most of the show in the bathroom.

So I ordered the Big Popper, which is literally a jalapeno popper between fat-assed slices of Texas toast, DEEP FRIED, covered with powdered sugar and served with a mixed berry dipping sauce. Yeah, that makes sense, Erin. Your stomach thanks you.

All the best parts of the county fair stuffed into one XXXXXL carb-pocket. Only thing missing was a ride on the Zipper. Although, the zipper on my jeans was probably in danger of going on a ride once I was done eating.

I actually missed the shout out on the menu about it being deep fried. Maybe that would have deterred me, because I was trying to be gentle on my stomach, but that’s a ridiculous statement to even make if you’re dining at Melt in the first place. I mean, go drink some chicken noodle soup if you’re trying to knit yourself a gastrointestinal Snuggie. Because I guarantee you won’t be feeling digestively sound ten minutes into a Melt meal.

Henry and Robbie ordered something with meat in it.

I managed to eat a third of my Big Popper. ONE THIRD and my waistline was already engorged. Belly, distended. Forehead, sweaty. The fact that they even serve this shit with fries is hilarious. Oh, you want to know how it tasted? Fucking divine, you guys. All those flavors somehow beat the odds, celebrated their diversity and united to form one cohesive taste unit on a plate. It was like a sweet and savory Pride Parade in my mouth.

Meanwhile, Henry begged the waiter for sugar and also for permission to move the now-empty table next to us over so that he could move out from the corner.

“I have to check and make sure this table isn’t on the waiting list,” he said with hesitation.

“Well, we do have another person joining us, so we’re going to need the extra seat anyway,” Henry said haughtily and I was SO EMBARRASSED because our waiter was cool and now he was going to think Henry had an imaginary friend, because who waits until they’re halfway through eating to be all, “Oh yeah, and we’re actually going to have FOUR in our party”?

Ugh, Henry is the worst when we’re in restaurants. I said that out loud and he huffed, “Oh really? Me asking for more room is worse than all of the times we’ve had to LEAVE RESTAURANTS after sitting down because of YOU?”

I’m sorry, but sometimes I just get sinking feelings and need to leave immediately!

Anyway, Henry got his stupid second table and was able to free his ass from his woefully tight bench compartment. At least we got to quit hearing him bitch about it.

And then miraculously, Jason showed up for a quick visit so the fourth seat wasn’t all for naught after all, and believe me, Henry made sure to be all INYERFACE about it too. And he wonders why I unfriended him!

We hadn’t seen Jason since the Never Shout Never show last December (the one in which he made all of Chooch’s dreams come true!) so it was good to catch up and get some scene chatter in. Music is my favorite topic of all time, so Jason makes a pretty good (OK, fucking fantastic) conversational team mate. OF COURSE Jonny Craig came up, which made Jason (and Henry) groan, but that makes it even more fun for me!

Jason had to get back to work and we desperately needed to walk off our lunch, so after puking a little bit when the waiter asked us if we wanted dessert, Henry paid the bill and then took us on an accidental tour of the ghetto, which was actually pretty exciting.

With nothing else to do (this is what happens when I leave shit up to Henry; he wanted to leave sooooo early to get there but then had nothing besides Melt lined up for us to do! What a cock!), we headed downtown and killed time by walking through some of the arcades near the House of Blues. Really, all I wanted to do was go to Collossal Cupcakes, but Henry was all, “No, we must walk through the entire arcade and look at all of the closed shops and gag on the stench of curry and feet.” So that is what we did and the only good thing is that when we were on our way into another arcade, ONE OF THE GUYS FROM HANDS LIKE HOUSES WAS WALKING OUT AND HELD THE DOOR OPEN FOR US! So then I was like OMG OMG OMG OMG and Henry was like, “Who cares” and Robbie was like, “Ok.” And then every two minutes I was like, “Remember when…!!!”

Collossal Cupcakes ended up being a collossal waste, but at least Robbie got to bond with cupcake dispenser about their shared dislike of sweets.

It was worth it at least to make them sit in princess-y seats.

Henry and I shared a snickerdoodle cupcake and while he complained about it being that type of frosting he hates, motherfucker still ended up eating three fourths of it himself. Fuck him.

Remember when one of the guys from Hands Like Houses held the door open for us? THAT WAS SO NICE OF HIM.

And then some douchebag came in to get a cupcake milkshake for his girlfriend, who for some refused to come in and waited outside on the sidewalk, while TOTALLY flirting with the cupcake worker girl who clearly had already imprinted with Robbie over their mutual adversity to dessert.

Now I want a fucking cupcake milkshake.

Inde-Tenpenny-dency

Food, reviews, where i try to act social

May 202014

What a clunker of a title. Let me explain: I had dinner plans at Ten Penny last Saturday night with Wendy, Kaitlin, Barb and Mary. Ten Penny is downtown, and since I accidentally walked past it one day last week, I was pretty excited at the prospect of taking the trolley downtown of my own volition and walking to the restaurant like a big girl. I think Henry was bracing himself for me to change my mind, but really, taking the trolley downtown at this point in the game makes me way less anxious than the thought of driving down there and finding somewhere to park, OMG no.

I walked past Wiener World and knew I was going the right direction, yay landmarks!

Of course I was early, so I wandered around (making sure I stayed close so that I wouldn’t get lost!). When I was on my way back to Ten Penny, I saw two women across the street, waving.

“I don’t recognize these women, but surely it’s some combination of Wendy, Barb*, Kaitlin and Mary,” I thought to myself. So I waved back.

They waved more exuberantly and then began jumping too. So I waved back more exuberantly and did a little awkward jump, because YAY FRIENDS!

They were waving to the bitch next to me. Also, they were strangers. I really need to get my eyes rechecked.

*(Barb ended up not being able to make it. Probably because she didn’t want to see me, ugh!!)

Luckily, I crossed the street and ran into Wendy, so I felt like less of a lost sheep. Thank you, Shepherd Wendy.

We went inside to claim our table and wait for Kaitlin and Mary, and I told Wendy of my newfound independence and bravery.

“I even took a DIFFERENT EXIT when I got off the trolley,” I confided. What a weird little phase I’m going through.

Here is where Wendy nearly choked on her water from laughing so hard. “I’m sorry, but you just sounded so earnest, you fool!” And then she wanted me to say it again so she could record it.

WHATEVER, WENDY. We were soon joined by the rest of our party and commenced the ordering of cocktails, which was hands down the best part of the night for me because I love fancy cocktails so much. Too bad that bartending “degree” didn’t get me very far.

I already knew that I wanted a Stormy Morning, because I always have to look at menus online before going somewhere, whether I’ve been there before or not, because I like to know what I’m walking into. This is how I knew that Ten Penny is a vegetarian’s nightmare. Almost everything was meat, and even the things that were just vegetables or potatoes had gratuitous bacon incorporated in an assortment of creative ways, like the brussels sprouts were capped with candied bacon and the truffle fries came with bacon aioli. (I love aioli so I almost cried about that.)

ANYWAY! Back to the cocktails. I knew before I even left the house that I would be glugging on a glass of the Stormy Morning, which consisted of St. Germaine (yes, please), Creme de Violette (oh shit) and a blanc de blanc. I would have been fine with a barrel of that heavenly secretion and a bread basket. I can never get enough bread.

Dumb Wendy ordered the Stormy Morning before me but only after she found out I was going to order it, so I made sure the waitress knew it was my idea first.

“She’s one of those,” Wendy sighed to the waitress, in a time that made it sound like she was referring to a mangy disease.

But as it were, we were there for dinner, so I had to order actual food. The only veg entree option was a pasta primavera and I can’t tell you how far away from the pasta tip I was that night. So I wound up getting the wild mushroom flatbread, which was fine but not anything that Henry couldn’t have made me. But whatever, I was happy with my dranks, y’all.

For dessert, we all split the S’mores, only because we wanted to fuck around with the novelty of melting shit over a mini-stove thing. That was pretty fun for a second, but the S’mores themselves were only so-so.

Marshmallow poops.

Then Wendy made us have our picture taken.

Overall, I would go back to Ten Penny the next time I want to more than I would at a dive bar to drink myself stupid. But unless I was going for lunch (GRILLED CHEESE & TOMATO BISQUE: ’nuff said), or suddenly start masticating flesh again, I probably won’t give their dinner menu another shot. Unless Wendy tells me to. Because she basically plans my weekends for me now.

Mediocre food or not, the whole point was to spend time with three of my favorite broads, and that part of the night was five stars, you guys. Go tell Yelp.

And then it was around 11:30 by the time we left and sorry, but ain’t no way, no how this bitch is riding the trolley home at 11:30 in the PM, so I texted my chariot. An irritated Henry arrived about 10 minutes later.

So much for independence.

Fruit Fan-Girling

Food, Food Fun, Obsessions, reviews, Uncategorized

Apr 032014

I briefly mentioned last week that my friends Kevin and Lizzy sent me a box of fruit from Miami and I went into fruitiac arrest right there at my dining room table. It was actually the first time I used #blessed without an iota of facetiousness.

Literally every single fruit in that box was something that had never once graced my filthy lips. And I knew this because I didn’t recognize anything. Thank god they packed along a brochure from the fruit stand Robert Is Here, which is now my favorite place ever and I can’t wait to go to Florida.

Of course, Henry was in a “rush” to get back to work (I just like to put random words in quotes, OK? It makes my finger tattoos tingle) so he claimed he didn’t have time to cut anything for me. Luckily, one of those small beige balls was slightly ajar, so I swept it away into the kitchen and started ripping it open with my bare hands, until Henry finally sighed and confiscated it. He cut the rest with a knife and packed it away into one of my plastic fruitainers (a container for fruit, duh) like a good father getting his child’s school lunch ready.

According to my brochure, what I had so savagely opened in the style of caveperson was a sapodilla and I rejoiced because Kevin is always BRAGGING on Facebook about how he’s sucking back sapodilla MILKSHAKES, no big deal, and I get all jealous because what is a sapodilla, I have no idea but I want it.

The description in the brochure says that a sapodilla tastes like a pear with brown sugar. I am here to confirm that it tastes like a pear with brown sugar, how is that possible?! It was also a little bit reminiscent of root beer candy, HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE!? The texture itself is a little bit grainy, definitely pear-like. I wish I had some in my mouth right now. (I wouldn’t share this with anyone, FYI.)

In my haste to devour all of the sapodillas, I never got around to ramming my phone up into their grills, so please enjoy a stock photo that I procured from the Internet. I can’t wait until Henry plants sapodilla seeds in our tropical climate backyard biodome that he doesn’t know I’ve enrolled him in college to learn to build. And then he can peruse his beloved Pinterest for candied sapodilla and Kevin & Lizzy’s sapodilla milk shakes and sapodilla-on-the-cob and sapodilla lampshades. Sapodilla moustache rides?

Sapodilla chevron mason jars suspended from sapodilla pallets! Don’t forget to put a motherfucking bird on it.

Get on that, Henry.

When I came home from work that night, I made Henry cut another fruit for me, the lone yellow guy up there. At first, I was confusing it for the mamey sapote because I am apparently dumb at matching. (Never mind the other day when I bragged about being excelsior at it; just call me Mary.)

(Because I’m contrary. God, go read a fucking nursery rhyme once in awhile.)

OK, so how can I describe this fruit to you without grossing you out….it’s like sticking a spoon in a yeasty vagi—OK WRONG, WRONG. Let me try again. The texture is custard-like and squash-y, not your typical pulp-y fruit innards. Do not be afraid of it. There is no squirting of juices to ruin your clothes (I know I’m not the only one that winds up walking around with fruit-jizz splotches on my shirts after wrestling with an orange). It’s soft and velvety, and even though it stinks of raw pumpkin, once you move past that, it is the most gentle sensation upon your buds, and I liked to imagine that when Robert Smith wrote the line “the strangest twist upon your lips” it was while watching some broad slowly masticate the shit out of a canistel, which is what this fruit is, and not a mamey sapote. Now that I’ve made you read 18 sentences wondering WTF fruit this is. I write good, y’all.

The flavor of the canistel isn’t in-your-face sweet like fruits that you average Americans are accustomed to, but it’s more of an egg custard. So there were times that I was spooning it into my maw where I would get a little skeeved out, remembering that I wasn’t eating some kind of exotic cheesecake, but the actual entrails of a fruit right out of its skin. It kind of made me feel like a savage. AND I KIND OF LIKED IT.

It had a very interesting moist:dry ratio and made me think fondly of Thanksgiving because now I want this shit in a pie shell.

Texture Freaks: This one might just tickle your gag reflex.

Next up was the weird eggplant ball and the oblong cactus-thing. I determined these to be a star apple and guanabana, respectively. Coincidentally, my friend Eve had just recommended the guanabana to me a few weeks ago! I like having fruit friends. I mean, literal humans that also enjoy the sweet spoils of nature, not actually friends that are made of fruit.

(Although in 9th grade, I did have a friend that was an orange. His name was Marcus Aurelius and my asshole mom threw him away because he was starting to rot.)

Henry blew out a harried sigh when I shouted, “WAIT! I need to take a picture” right as he was about to start hacking away at the star apple with that big knife in the background. (Don’t tell Henry, but sometimes, even though I’m not supposed to be handling sharp objects, I carry that knife with me around the house because I watch way too much shows like The Following and read too many home invasion news reports and yeah, I’ll probably wind up accidentally slicing through my femoral artery and then Henry will come home to find Marcy lapping up the pooling blood around my dead body. And then she probably will live forever after that.)

(Don’t be a bitch, Marcy.)

I know, this inside of the guanabana is pretty gross; all glazed-over and white like the inside of an earthworm. (I think? It’s been awhile since that day I vomited in high school Biology.) It’s impossible to do anything with either of the above two fruit other than just spoon it into a bowl and go for it. Nicer boyfriends may have picked the seeds out first, but Henry told me to just spit them out. :(

He put both fruits together in a container, and by the time I was ready to eat it at work, they had kind of melded together into one gross lump of mash. Visually unappetizing (if I posted a photo of what it looks like right now on my desk at work, it would be the worst promotion ever), but each was delicious in its own right. Let’s talk about that.

The description of the guanabana says it tastes like pineapple cotton candy. How can this be possible, I do not know, but it’s pretty accurate. The pulp was firmer and wetter than the canistel, and reminded me of the cherimoya. Perhaps they are cousins. The guanabana had a mild tropical bite to it, not unlike that of the pineapple, but much less tangy and juicy. And it’s true: the lingering flavor at the back of my throat reminded me of cotton candy! (However, I can’t say that I would have naturally picked up on that on my own. Reading the description beforehand might have swayed my opinion—-like when Henry watches Fox News.)

I really expected this white piece of mangled flesh to be the winner here, but the star apple (or caimito, if you’re trying to be fancy) blew me away.

My favorite cake at Bethel Bakery is this almond majesty full of the softest raspberry buttercream frosting that I have ever suckled. It’s so regal-tasting that I always upgrade regular old birthday cakes so that they’re inseminated with raspberry splendor. The star apple—somehow, someway—reminds me of that fucking buttercream. The texture is thick and mostly smooth with a slightly grainy consistency that mocks sugar granules. It has subtle raspberry notes and a gentle saccharine tongue-hug that makes you remember that nature has its own sweetener. And I’m not talking about God’s ejaculate. (OR AM I.)

However, eating either of these fruits probably looks hideous to innocent bystanders. Especially when I’m orally chucking seeds into a spitoon. Today, I mixed in blueberries in an attempt to offset the general visage of eyeball paste and mashed-up road kill kidney. It didn’t work.

Babe. <3

Aaaaand, typing that while I’m still sitting here eating it was really dumb. This would have been fine a month ago when I was a casual bulimic for a few days.

Yesterday, I attempted to wield my knife-guardian and began hacking into the remaining beige ball in the box. I thought it was another sapodilla, which are soft and Erin-friendly as far as cutting goes. But instead, I made it less than an inch before the knife encountered the hugest pit I’ve ever seen in a fruit. So I had to wait for Henry to come home and finish the job.

In the meantime, I was unable to locate this big-pitted bastard on the brochure so I had the genius idea to EMAIL ROBERT IS HERE. I attached the below picture and made sure to also tell them that sapodillas are the best fruit in the whole universe.

Within a few minutes, Employee Tracey emailed me back!!

OMG ME AND ROBERT ARE FRUIT BROS!!! I started screaming and fanning myself, totally fruit fan-girling, while Henry sat there and glared at me in his typical Henry fashion. Sorry you find joy in nothing, old man.

Anyway, the mamey apple tasted like an apricot, indeed. Just more exotic, and more like a dried apricot, even though it didn’t have a dehydrated texture. I let Wendy try a piece and now she’s mad at me for making her like fruit that she won’t be able to get at the grocery store here. Welcome to my world, Wendy. :(

There was one last fruit that Henry cut for me yesterday, and he RUINED IT because it wasn’t ready. (It’s that football-looking thing in the first picture.) The insides were really tough and it kind of looked like a cantolope, and it had the most amazing stench. I kept shoving a piece up Henry’s nose.

“I KNOW! OK! IT SMELLS GOOD!” he kept screaming at me while swatting away my hand. I’m just trying to make moments with him, you know? Memories to include in our never-to-be-written vows.

But he was supposed to wait until the fruit was much softer and the skin was wrinkled, and after that it was supposed to taste like STRAWBERRY PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE because it’s a mamey sapote you guys! It’s what I originally thought the canistel was! Henry’s lucky I didn’t take the knife from him and [withheld so it cannot be used as future evidence].

But don’t worry. I’m now a registered user over at the Robert Was Here website, so: one mamey sapote coming right up!

[A million thank yous to Kevin & Lizzy for broadening my fruit horizons. When we visit—and we will!—, please take me to Robert Is Here so I can get him to autograph my brochure!)

Vegetarian Table: 4/15/13

Food, Food Fun, Obsessions, reviews, Uncategorized

Feb 272014

This is kind of a weird Throwback Thursday for me because I’m not actually reposting anything, but finally posting something for the first time that has been mildewing in my drafts folder for almost a year.

Last April 15th, I went to a vegetarian dinner thingie with Janna, Kara and Chris. Usually, I would get around to writing about it within a week. But that happened to be the same day as the Boston Marathon bombing. And it just didn’t feel right to be all, “Yay, this is what I did several hours after a devastating situation rocked the nation!” I was so caught up in reading and watching everything I could about it for the next several weeks, obsessing over the whole boat situation (SERIOUSLY THAT WAS ALL SO FISHY TO ME) that I just quit caring about this dumb blog entry.

Does that make sense?

And then so much time passed that I started to forget a lot of what I wanted to say, and I lost the menu so then I was forgetting what I had even eaten. But I don’t like leaving things unfinished, so I went back and tried to fill in the blanks to the best of my ability.

It’s not that I’m some sort of epicurious, wannabe gourmand or even some pretentious food blogger who uses the words “epicurious” and “gourmand” (too many sex analogies), but ever since I attended one of Pittsburgh chef Kevin Sousa’s vegetarian dinners at Alchemy in 2007, that tattooed food whisperer has been on my radar.

Chef Kevin’s newest venture, Harvard and Highland, presents a vegetarian table once a month and seats only eight people.

At the same table.

JUST LIKE THE AMISH.

I really liked the intimacy of this, though I still chose a seat on the end, forcing Janna to sit next to a strange lady. However, I wasn’t interested in what the other two couples were talking about (running, running, running, marathons, running). That is, not until I overheard an older woman at the opposite end of the table talking about dragonfruit and it was all DUMBO EARS: ACTIVATE. Usually my skin burns at the mere idea of small talk, but I had to interject. I just had to, because that very day, do you know what I ate? FIRE DRAGON. You guys, it’s dragonfruit that is bright fuschia and utterly amazing. It’s like art fruit. So I had to tell the rest of the table this and they were like, “Ok” followed by a silent but implied “who cares?” and then the token Pan Asian at our table started bragging about all the exotic fruit he grew up on since his parents are from Thailand or somewhere else that I can’t locate on a map, and he went on to talk about durian while I quietly vomited in my mouth at the thought of that horrid fruit, and he was all, “But you can’t find that anywhere in the States” and I was like, “OMG you ignorant fruit fan, yes you can” and automatically counted off at least three places in Pittsburgh alone.

Except this part of the conversation happened inside my head because I hated that guy and didn’t want to waste my breath on him.

This was my least favorite. It was too salty. But it came with a flower, so I ate that.

To my delight, our plates were paired with craft cocktails instead of disgusting beer like the last vegetarian thing I went to. Every single cocktail was amazing and because of them, I forgot everything I wanted to write by the time I staggered back to Janna’s car. If I were a real food blogger, I’d have brought my dichtophone and notepad (and inflated sense of entitlement) with me.

Since Kara is pregnant, she only allowed herself petite sips of each cocktail and then Chris got to chug the rest of hers on top of his own. Lucky son of a bitch.

Men — find a way to make your semen taste like this creamy puddle of molten feta and you will have to knock people off your jocks all day long.

OMG I think this was the breakfast plate? It had fake egg things (nettle scramble, whatever the fuck) and some kind of French toast impersonator and more foam stuff because that must be really fun for Kevin to make so he just puts flavorful foam on everything. (Kind of like how I put wonky eyes on all of my paintings.) We all basically ate this in the fashion of having our wrists tied behind our backs.

Halfway through the night, I realized that the Durian Dick was friends (or maybe just in his own mind) with Chef Sousa and kept hinting around about wanting to go pick mushrooms with him or something and I wished I had a durian or two and the sock of a giant. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

(If you don’t, I mean that I wanted to fill the giant’s sock with the durians and beat the smugness out of him. But now you ruined it.)

And Kevin himself served every goddamn plate to Mrs. Durian Dick. Every single time! I kept hoping that the waitstaff would switch it up and maybe we would each get our turn with Kevin, but no. He catered specifically to her every time and that is how I know they’re having an affair.

A pond of molten Christ on wood, with mushrooms and stuff on top. It was such a religious experience that my tongue was involuntarily spelling out the rosary. Janna didn’t eat all of hers because it didn’t come with preservatives.

I was trying to get a photo of my chef crush but JANNA moved her stupid head. GOD, JANNA.

Ahhhhhh desssssert! It was stuff that tasted amazing in a truncated Mason jar! And there were more flowers to eat! It was paired with some creamy (the theme of the night, obvi) sarsparilla drink that I will be requesting by the jugfull if I ever go back.

The loud lady at the end of the table (next to Durian Dick) had a vegan version of the dessert and asked EVERYONE BUT ME AND CHRIS if they wanted a taste. Everyone said no and I actually really did want to taste it but I’m too proud to beg. (Sorry, TLC.)

Beverage aftermath.

After dinner, we all kind of sat around waiting for the go-ahead to leave and everyone seemed OK with continuing the strange act of Conversing with Strangers, but I wasn’t interested. I was becoming increasingly annoyed and anxious, because I lack the social wherewithal to successfully survive an evening of eating food and, as my friend Alyson would say, “expelling air” with people I do not know.

However, we didn’t eat until 9PM and I had gone there straight from dumb work, plus I’m on a diet and subsisting on leaves and carrots for the most part, so I was pretty irritable and ready to masticate the FU-HAHAHAHA-UCK out of some meatless spreads.

Or I’m just a people-hating asshole. Take your pick.

My favorite part of the night was how they filled us up with liquor and then made us walk down a dangerously steep staircase afterward. Surprisingly, there were no casualities.

What is an acceptable way to show a chef that you are in total appreciation and awe of the edible gifts he bestowed upon you that evening? Because I’m not above asking him to autograph my tongue.

Bob’s Diner

Food, Uncategorized

Dec 302013

The worst part about my work schedule is that I never get to eat a single meal with my family during the week. I absolutely hate it. And the worst part about eating healthy is that I never get to eat a fucking French fry.

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I absolutely FUCKING hate that. So sometimes a weekend diner trip is a must. Except when I decide that I want to go somewhere different and then we drive around aimlessly looking for something that’s not closed on a Sunday.

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Seriously, restaurants that are closed on Sundays can go suck God’s dick. Which is probably what they want to be doing anyway.

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Assholes.

But then Urban Spoon directed us to Bob’s Diner in Carnegie. And I know you must be thinking that it was either realllllly good or phenomenally abysmal if I’m devoting a whole blog post to it. But it was neither. Just decent, really. It’s just that I became obsessed with Bob.

Henry kept saying, “I doubt that’s Bob. I REALLY doubt that’s Bob. IT’S NOT BOB OK?!” Why was he so passionate about it not being Bob? WHAT DOES HE KNOW ABOUT BOB?!

OMG HE WAS CLEARLY IN THE SERVICE WITH HIM!!

That’s the only explanation.

Meanwhile, our waitress was obsessed with my coat.

“Oh I just love this. It reminds me of a sofa. What do they call that? BROCADE!” she cried while literally STROKING MY ARM UP AND DOWN like it was a golden tapestry-swaddled elephant penis.

She was really into us for about 90 seconds but as soon as I slipped out of my coat, she dropped us like a bunch of jizz-stained brocade sofa cushions.

The rest of the time there was OK. I mostly fixated on the whole Is It Bob? quandary.

“WHERE IS HE?” I would hoarsely hiss to Henry, who would mumble things like “I don’t know. In his office. Dead. THAT’S NOT BOB.”

“Mommy, is that Bob?”

And then this happened:

Waitress 1: “I just found out a good friend of mine died.”
Waitress 2: “Oh no! How?”
Waitress 1: “Herpes.”
Waitress 2: “Showoff.”

Sometimes I hear what I want to, but I swear to god this really seemed accurate.

Henry was irritated because I ordered cole slaw after he did. He hates it when we both enjoy the same sides.

Bob’s might not have been much to write home about (though I clearly did) but I must say: their fries are the GOOD KIND! I would go back just for the fries. And obviously to unlock the mystery of Bob and Henry and the porno they filmed in 1983.

Aggressive Good Samaritan

Food, travel, Uncategorized

Dec 122013

It turned out to be A Really Good Thing that Henry was able to go to Cleveland with us after all, otherwise you’d have to address our Christmas card to:

Erin & Chooch

A Snowdrift

Cleveland, OH

Whatever Zip Code

In other words, it started snowing almost as soon as we crossed the Ohio state line, but what else is new when we go to Ohio between the months of November and April? And then of course we hit rush hour, so by the time we made it Cleveland Heights, we didn’t have as much time as I had hoped before the Never Shout Never show started.

Henry had to deal with aquiring quarters for the parking garage meter and told us to just go on without him. Literally, all Chooch and I had to do was cross the street and walk straight into Big Fun. It seemed like for sure something we could without Henry’s supervision, and there was even a handy crosswalk right there too.

But for some reason, right as we stepped onto the curb after a victorious street-crossing session, Chooch was figeting with his coat and said, “Help me.” He didn’t cry it out, he wasn’t waving a white flag, he just simply said the words, “help me.” At that precise moment, a middle-aged woman was walking by and before I had a chance to ask Chooch what he needed help with, the woman stopped dead in her tracks and in a voice rife with concern, she asked Chooch if he was OK.

He just looked at her without saying anything, because, ew, stranger. So I answered for him and said he was fine.

“ARE YOU SURE?” she persisted, searching his face for some sign of an amber alert.

We both nervously mumbled “yes” and started to walk past her.

“Are you going in there?” she asked, gesturing toward the awesome Cleveland toy store, Big Fun.

I nodded and she said, “Here, let me get that” and cut us off so that she could open the door for us, which I guess was nice, but I was really paranoid at this point. And then she followed us inside far enough to make sure we safe, I guess, before retreating.

I still have no idea what Chooch needed help with, and he was too distracted by Simpsons memorabilia at that point to tell me. Then it occurred to me that Chooch and I probably look like lost, shivering foreigners when we’re out in the cold on our own, so props to that lady for her concern, I guess.

After buying some Secret Santa goods at Big Fun, we walked down the street to Tommy’s for dinner. I can’t believe how many times I’ve been on that street in Cleveland, killing time before shows at the Grog Shop, and have never once bothered to step inside this seemingly unassuming restaurant. But then one day awhile back, Henry was all, “Hey did you know that there’s a vegetarian place right by the Grog Shop?” They serve meat-things there too, but the vegetarian selections are staggering. There aren’t many places where I can eat a grilled tempeh sandwich while Chooch and Henry nosh on cow.

A few minutes after I ordered a sandwich named after my Catholic School Mom-Nemesis’s daughter and vowed to savor every last bite, I casually looked over to me left and saw the Concerned Passerby, sitting alone at a table against a wall, totally staring me down. I quickly whipped my head back around and tried to avoid ever looking that direction again for the rest of my life, but of course my eyes kept accidentally roaming, because that’s what they do, accidentally make creepy eye contact with strangers. And without fail, my roaming eyes were rewarded with reciprocal stares every fucking time, why was she staring at me-he-he-he!?!?!?!??!

But then my Catholic School Mom Nemesis’s Daughter was placed before me and my eyes were too busy staring at that loaded motherfucker each time it was rhythmically raised up to my gnashing maw, so I forgot about Concerned Passerby for awhile.

“This is definitely in the top 5 sandwiches I’ve ever eaten,” I moaned to Henry.

“What are the other 4?” he asked.

“Nothing you made,” I retorted.

And then Concerned Passerby slammed her hand down on the table and cried out urgently, “YOU DROPPED SOMETHING!” My heart began to race, thinking I was being set up for a mugging, but her heads-up was directed toward the family at the table next to us. I watched the dad jump up in panic and retrieve something from the floor, but it must have been something not very great because he didn’t seem very concerned at all when he plunked the mystery object back down on the table. I’m going to go out on a limb here and wager that it was a crayon.

But then it made sense. She was just an aggressive good samaritan who thought she was doing good things, not raising blood pressures. And she was also clearly a little mentally-challenged, so that explains why she was so drawn to me and Chooch.

I won’t lie though, I did check my coat pockets after that to make sure her outburst wasn’t a diversion to pickpocket the Icebreaker Sours in my pocket. They were still there.

My compact is missing though.

“Hanks”giving 2013: In Photos

Food, holidays, Uncategorized

Dec 032013

Let’s pretend for a moment that Henry goes by “Hank” so that I can call this year’s autumnal feast “Hanksgiving” without anyone asking me why.

There was only one reason I wanted to host Hanksgiving this year, and no, it wasn’t because I wanted to drive Henry to a stress-induced heart attack. I just wanted to put together a nice, memorable evening for Chooch, Corey, Janna, Laura and Mike because let’s face it: holidays just aren’t what they used to be. Especially if you don’t have any or much family in town. But that’s no reason to surrender to seasonal misery!

I have such a love/hate relationship with Thanksgiving. I loved it as a kid because hello: time off from school! Food! Parades! But what I didn’t like was suffering through whatever family feud was playing out at the moment, someone was always giving someone the silent treatment, my grandma was always taking passive aggressive jabs at me. And then some years we would go to my dad’s parents’ house and that was always uncomfortable. I wasn’t really close with any of them, and my dad was always losing his patience with his mom. It was just awkward.

But they did have that electric organ I loved to play…and Grandma Kelly’s homemade buckeyes….OK, maybe those Thanksgivings weren’t too bad.

And then as an adult, after my parents divorced, my mom would kind of try to put together nice Thanksgivings for us, but there was always that underlying bitterness and creepy facade of normalcy. Like you just expected the walls to crumble in. I would typically end up leaving in tears and then going home to drink Maniscevitz “wine” alone. That’s not what I want for Chooch! I want him to grow up with good feelings associated with holidays.

And even though I told everyone it would be a casual affair, I still wanted to make it pretty. We even used real plates as opposed to the paper fare we slopped food upon the last time we hosted Hanksgiving (back when we were still calling it THANKSgiving like the rest of you weirdos).

Corey was even surprised when he found out I used real flowers on the table, and not fake ones, haha.

REAL.

Chooch was clearly stoked! He gets really hyper and excited when he knows people are coming over, and he unfortunately got too crazy and ended up pissing off Laura immediately after she arrived. I’m still not sure what happened, but hey, what’s a holiday without tears? Made it seem that much more “down home.”

He just wants to entertain, you guys. That’s all.

We ran out of chairs so I conveniently used my wheelchair to sit at the head of the table. “Are you sitting in a wheelchair?!” Corey asked in disgust as he sat down to eat. “I hate you. In the best possible way.” My dream, in case you’re new here, is to buy a house and then have Henry build a dining room table out of pallets or old disgusting doors and then have all old wheelchairs as the seats.

REAL FLOWERS, OMG. This is what I did while Henry slaved away over various food-things in the kitchen: made things look nice to distract from the rest of our shitty shanty. Although, to be honest, we’ve been slowly sprucing things up as best as we can muster in a place we don’t own. And it’s been nearly a week and the house is still clean! At least the rooms that we can’t hide behind closed doors, anyway. My bedroom still looks like a dorm room.

I sliced that cheese!! And placed the deviled eggs accordingly! I was really excited for Hanksgiving, obviously. I used to love hosting parties when I was younger and the house was nicer and I WAS SINGLE. But you know, things change.

Henry made this cheese! I bought him a DIY cheese kit because I buy him things that I will benefit from. That cheese was some good shit, too. Even though Laura looked horrified when I told her it was homemade. :( Whatever, it made me feel like a legit hostess.

Speaking of Laura and homemade and cheese, Mike brought some sort of amazing creamed corn side dish that was loaded, and I mean LOADED, with cheese. I wanted to swim in it while “accidentally” forgetting to close my mouth.

This is normal at our house.

Here is Janna, probably scolding me for something. Speaking of Janna, she brought these sweet potatoes that were absolutely drunk off bourbon. Holy shit, were they good.

I wish I had some right now.

Mike’s first tofurky! He was already sliding some onto his plate before he found out what it was. You can see how excited he was! EAT IT! EAT IT!

Corey gives hanks for tofurky. Can I also just say that this is only the third time in my life I have been BLESSED enough to have tofurky on (T)hanksgiving?? Henry usually “forgets” to buy it, and one year he bought it but then “forgot” to cook it. One of the only Thanksgivings I had it was at my mom’s house. Henry made it at home and we brought it with us and I was ridiculed mercilessly by my aunts to the point that I almost didn’t eat it. It was traumatizing! My mom kept making puking noises everytime I cut into it.

Even from a non-vegetarian standpoint, I genuinely like tofurky! That shit they stuff it with is the bomb.

I think that might have been the first time I called something the bomb. Better than “all that and a bag of chips,” I guess.

Not pictured: persimmon pudding. Oh for Christ’s sake, who has four desserts for eight people? So ridiculous. Shout out to Sandy for the cake hook-up!

Chooch ate approximately nothing. Sadly, his older brothers were unable to make it, because they could have shown him how to eat a Hanksgiving dinner.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I would consider the first official Hanksgiving a success. THANK YOU, HENRY. Maybe next year he will finally let me invite some vagabonds. Perhaps by then we’ll have more wheelchairs.

Pee Wee’s ass wants to wish you all a Happy Hanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Morning Check In

Food, holidays

Nov 282013

This morning, Henry woke up and resumed all the cooking that he started last night. Meanwhile, I’m catching up on the X Factor (OMG those stupid dancers they insist on using have got to go!!

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) but it’s really hard to hear over Henry and his persistent mixing of foods in the kitchen. God.

I think only three people are coming over tonight but we have enough food for probably three dozen.

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WE EVEN MADE HOMEMADE CHEESE! (We=Henry. I got bored and took a bath instead.

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)

This used to be my least favorite holiday but I’m really starting to like it. Happy Tofurkey Day!!!

Thanksgiving Throwback

Fire in the Kitchen!, Food, Henrying, holidays, nostalgia, Uncategorized

Nov 252013

As Thanksgiving gets closer, I’ve been feeling a little less depressed and MAYBE even slightly excited. We spent most of the week getting some things together for our version of Thanksgiving (Hanksgiving) and keeping busy has been extremely helpful. We’ve only ever hosted one holiday dinner at our house (with the exception of the Xmas Eve soiree we did last year) and that was all the way back in 2008! I can’t believe we waited so long to try it again. I couldn’t remember if it was a success or not, so I went searching through my blog archives the other night and after reading it, I still can’t tell if it was a success. But Henry apparently burnt himself, so I’ll take that as a win.

It’s not Throwback Thursday or anything, but we can just pretend that Memory Monday is a thing so that I can repost this 2008 Thanksgiving tale. The format of the original post is all wonky and I can’t fix it. So sorry. Mayeb after you read it, you can leave a comment and tell me what your favorite Thanksgiving side dish is, because we haven’t finalized our menu yet and that’s just what Henry needs is MORE OPTIONS.

******

The night before Thanksgiving, Henry stayed up until 2:00am, rifling through his grandma’s recipes like a normal man rifles through porn. I don’t know what he was looking for, considering that I procured an entire feast worth of gourmet recipes from this little thing I just heard about recently called the Internet.

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Of course Henry found something wrong with every selection: Too-expensive-ingredients (“That will cost more than the turkey!”). Lack of industrial kitchen. Not enough education completed to comprehend recipe wording.

In the end, he settled on:

Smashed rutabaga with gingered pears

Turnips gratin (hello new edible husband)

Scalloped corn

Meatless stuffing

Mustard mashed potatoes (“OMG Tyler from the Food Network made them!”)

Sweet potato pie

Oh, and that over-hyped turkey bullshit that everyone is always buzzing about.

My contribution to the day was taking Chooch to my dad’s house so that Henry could cook in the highest, most divine level of tranquility. Now, you should know that I only see my dad on holidays. Shame on me, sure, I know. But it’s awkward because our relationship was once more strained than the ab muscles of a man attempting to suck his own dick. Technically my step-dad, he legally adopted me when I was in the fourth grade. We engaged in non-stop battles of wits and psychological warfare for the entire duration of my teenaged years. Then he and my mom divorced and ironically, we now get along famously; and in an incredible twist, he was the only family member who talked to me while I was pregnant.

Corey, who was staying there while home from college, failed to tell him that Chooch and I were coming over, so my dad was genuinely shocked when he saw us on his doorstep. It was probably 75% of an act, but he seemed happy to see us and proceeded to dole out peanuts, JuJu Bees and cans of pop. He even gave me some Bagelfuls to take home, complete with single-serving packets of cream cheese. A trip to his house is always like a mini-grocery trip.

While he cooked, I made sure Chooch didn’t fall down the basement steps, eat paint chips, or break any of my dad’s classic car memorabilia, while Corey acted disinterested in our presence and my other brother Ryan napped on the couch. I got roped into sitting down for dinner with them, wherein my dad immediately picked a fight with Ryan, who evidently didn’t load his plate with enough food. “I told you not to eat all day!” my dad steamed, to which Ryan grunted, “Jesus Christ, Dad, I only ate some cashews!” My dad countered with a surly, “I saw the cheese you opened up in the fridge!” at which point Ryan hunkered down lower over his plate which seemed plenty decorated to me.

In an effort to break the ice, I chirped, “These mashed potatoes are really good, daddy!” He muttered that they were too runny, but really, anything tastes delicious when the butter ratio is 50/50.

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Corey and Ryan didn’t speak at all throughout the painful meal, and I’m sure they were just thrilled at how kind our dad was being to me. He even noticed my hair and enthused about its aesthetic merits for just a note longer than natural.

I love my dad, but I was glad that I had a legitimate reason to shirk my way out the front door. Tension, it just doesn’t sit well with me.

Dinner at my house was supposed to be at 7, so that those who had other dinners to attend (Janna, Corey and Blake) would be newly starved by the time they came over for seconds. However, Henry’s tardy ass didn’t serve shit up until EIGHT O’CLOCK and everyone was bored, angry, hungry. Look at those mugs on Janna and Corey. You’d think they were watching a slide presentation of Henry’s mom dusting her ceramic kitten collection, that’s how glazed with ennui they are.

Sensing that a revolt was on the rise, Henry served up deviled eggs for us to stuff our mouths with while he frantically finished cooking.

For some reason, Henry was really impressed with himself. He kept boasting that the eggs were deviled with STONE GROUND MUSTARD. I’m not even sure what that means. They tasted regular to me, like he could have squirted in a quick fart of French’s for all I know. Something weird clearly went on in my house while Chooch and I were at my dad’s, because no one gets THAT excited over deviled eggs.

Finally, the moment for feasting was upon us, and we all loaded our fancy paper plates with mounds of seasonal slop. Blake pretty much questioned everything aside from the turkey, which was easily recognizable (good job, Henry). I explained to him that I wanted to eschew the expected and serve new twists on tradition. “You mean, you wanted my dad to make things that even YOU can eat,” Blake corrected. And oh how we laughed. (As I silently wished for Blake to choke on a turkey bone.) (Just kidding, Blake.) (No really.)

As I tore into my plate, I realized Corey didn’t have a fork. “It’s OK,” he promised. “I don’t mind waiting. I’ll just have a roll.” He paused, considering that statement, before holding up his broken hand and adding with the slight hint of chagrin, “Though, even THAT is a challenge.” He should have been giving less lip and more thanks for the fact that he has a hand AT ALL.

It would sppear that Henry is in the middle of saying an intense delivery of grace, but really he’s just acclimating to his newfound seated position after standing in the kitchen all day long.

Later, he momentarily lost his appetite when he mistook the really expensive paper napkins to say “Joyous Fetus” instead of the much less interesting “Joyous Fetes.” We all laughed, but I don’t think Henry understood what was going on because he probably doesn’t even know what “fetes” means.

We’re so classy that we used our best plastic serving bowls. Not even TUPPERWEAR. Just generic, microwave-ravaged plastic. And there’s the gravy that burnt Henry’s hand and thank God it did because I really enjoyed hearing him cry about it all night long. I thought his mom was going to rush him to the Veteran’s hospital. I could almost see Henry’s mind churning: “Remember what they taught you in the SERVICE, big guy. You will pull through this! YOU WERE IN THE AIR FORCE, GODDAMMIT.”

And then Henry’s mom called Janna a myriad of other J-names (Janet, Janice, Joanne) but never Janna, and swore she hated sweet potato pie before admitting that she had never had it. Now she’s had it and likes it, though I maintain that Henry’s version (apparently it was EMERIL’S RECIPE, what a fucking carving knife to my heart) tasted unlike any sweet potato pie I’ve ever had. Ever. Like, no semblance at all.

Overall, I thought it was pretty good for our first time hosting a holiday in my ridiculously small dining room.

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I know I had fun, and Blake and Henry’s mom seemed content. Janna basically looked like she had just finished watching a double feature of “Benji” and “Old Yeller,” and Corey just looked bored as usual. The shit Henry made was good, and even the gravy was vegetarian. I learned later that my mother translated Corey’s spot at my table into meaning that –oh my god — he’s on MY SIDE. And this is exactly why I was happy to do my own thing this Thanksgiving.

Last night, I yelled, “I can’t wait to have Christmas here too!” but Henry remained curiously silent.

Weekend Sweets

Food, reviews

Nov 182013

I know I’m supposed to be on this stupid diet or whatever, and I swear to god that I’m mostly good about it, but sometimes my sweet tooth prevails. And it can get pretty scary when I try to fight it, so I just basically throw my arms up and concede.

It’s fine when it’s only one “bad” thing per weekend, but this past weekend I really went hog wild. I couldn’t help it. Sometimes you just have to have your fucking cake, you know?

It all started on Friday when I went to lunch with some of my bosses and co-workers. We went to a new-ish pizza place called Proper, except that by calling it a “pizza place” gives the impression that it’s some ordinary bullshit Domino’s. It’s not. They use all kinds of fancy, fresh ingredients and their seasonal menu stopped me dead.

First of all, they had a Harvest Pizza, which had a pumpkin puree sauce, squash, nutmeg, globs of some sort of wonderful homemade cheese that I forget, and sausage which I ordered without. But this is not the point of this post. The point is that also on the seasonal menu was a QUINCE AND PERSIMMON COBBLER, are you fucking kidding me. You guys know that persimmons are basically my favorite fruit other than apples, right? Well, now you know.

I didn’t order it for two reasons:

1. I didn’t want to be That Person who ordered dessert when no one else did, because I wasn’t with a group of people I was all that comfortable with, and I also wasn’t paying for myself. (That probably would have been most people’s go-ahead to order dessert, but I have a Guilt Complex, OK?)
2. One of our bosses ordered two flights of beer so we all could have one without getting too hammered, and I was fortuitous enough to choose an apricot wheat that didn’t activate my gag reflex! In other words, I was able to drink all of my beer and felt pretty full.

Alas, I went back to work with no persimmon cobbler stuffed inside myself. And I pretty much spent the rest of the day thinking about it. And also that night. And then the next day, too. I feared that this could be a repeat performance of the Waffle-copia Letdown. I just can’t go through that again. Not so soon.

And that is how Henry got suckered into driving downtown Saturday evening and grabbing thsi sacred and seasonal cobbler to go. And then he proceeded to get stuck in Pitt football traffic on his way home, which I would normally laugh about except that MY HOUSE MADE VANILLA BEAN ICE CREAM WAS MELTING.

GODDAMNIT.

It was still so fucking good though. I have only ever eaten persimmons fresh and on their own, never baked alongside quince and sweet crumbly things! Mother lord, I can’t wait for Henry to perfect this recipe. I don’t give a shit that this picture looks like a pile of dirty albino vomit. I just wanted to eat the fucking thing.

***

On Sunday, I had plans to go to the grand opening of French patisserie Gaby et Jules with Corey and Janna. This classy joint has technically been open since August, but they celebrated their grand opening all weekend long and the reason I really wanted to go was because I saw “free samples!” And I am a sucker for the free shit.

However, it was rainy and miserable all day on Sunday, and I was starting to feel those initial twinges of Sickness. I almost bailed on Corey and Janna, but goddamn am I glad I didn’t!

So excited for French shit!

I learned that “et” means “and” in French and that diets can GTFO when it comes to patisseries et macarons. It was a really cultural day on so many levels.

When we walked in, I was prepared to be treated like your basic Walmart Shopper looking for Twinkies and Ding Dongs. But instead, the people behind the counter were super friendly! God, I can’t believe Janna judged them on their accents. She was so sure they were going to be dicks!

(That’s how it happened, right Janna?)

HATS!! Gaby et Jules’ Instagram account really had me hyped for hats.

After a nice lady plied us with samples of their new Noel collection (so delicious and out of my pay grade), we proceeded to stand in everyone’s way and act like complete dessert dunces. It was so overwhelming! And that was before I even turned my attention toward the macarons.

Luckily, everyone was very helpful and jovially answered us when we jabbed our grubby fingers at things like mute hitchhikers. A very proper Frenchman even offered us more samples and when I said we had already been given some, he laughed and thrust the small paper cups toward us once more. “Bonjour! Have another! Oui Oui!”

I don’t know. It went something like that, anyway.

I ended up buying one patisserie each for myself and Chooch, plus a white chocolate basil macaron and a pumpkin macaron just for my own piggy mouth.

The woman who administered our first round of samples was the one who rang me up and she broke character long enough to tell me that she likes my purse. (Ha ha, Chooch! IN YOUR FACE!) It was like being in a haunted house and having Jason Voorhees lift up his hockey mask to tell you that he likes your Nickelback hoodie. Seemed weird.

I mean, she could have at least said “le purse.”

Once the three of us were sufficiently patisseried, we went to a coffee shop across the street so we could indulge like True French. This was actually Janna’s first good suggestion in approximately eight years, so I have to hand it to her. I was prepared to just eat my purchases with my hands in Janna’s backseat.

Corey’s lemon boob. It was delightful! I will probably get this the next time I’m there, because I love when things are lemon.

We each ordered a different holiday specialty latte. My soy pumpkin was great but I wish I had went with plain coffee to offset the sweetness of my French spread.

Corey Instagramming his glistening lemon boob, croissant and passion fruit macaron.

Janna got a rasberry cylinder and a caramel cylinder. She saved the caramel one for later but I can attest that the raspberry one was really great! Perhaps she can tell my two readers what the caramel thing was like in a comment. Go on, Janna.

I got the L’Orient, not to be confused with L’Oreal, which I had been salivating over since the first time I saw this glorious green creation on their website. I LOVE pistachio-flavored things and if that’s an option, I will usually pick it every time. Especially if it’s gelato. Sorry that these pictures are so banged up but do you really think I was about to sit in a coffee shop and food-style when this log of L’Orient could be in my mouth? No. It’s amazing I had the restraint to take a picture at all.

That chocolate thing up there was for Chooch. First he told me to bring him back a cupcake but when I was like, “French people don’t care about cupcakes” he said, “I don’t know. Chocolate, then.” Just chocolate. I took my task seriously and made sure that I chose the thing that had the most kinds of chocolate. Henry took Chooch to the zoo that morning so I needed to compete with that.

After Corey, Janna and I succeeded in putting ourselves in a sugar coma, we deemed the day a win and vowed to turn “Frenching up our palates” into a habit. Crepes are definitely on the agenda.

A door that has nothing to do with French foodstuffs.

Chooch and Henry were on the loose when I got home, so I took some time to get Chooch’s Le Royal Chocolat plated and ready to be presented to him on bended knee. And of course he turned his nose up at it.

“BUT THAT IS A REAL GOLD FLAKE ON TOP!” I cried, and that was enough to make him backtrack and give it a whirl.

This is his “I’ll tell you if it’s any good” face. He declared it delicious, or course. I mean, its entire consistency is chocolate, how bad can it really be? I strong-armed him for a taste and I can hereby attest that it was DIVINE. And not in a John Waters sense.

Then Henry was all, “Wah, let me have some too” and we shouldn’t have given him ANY since he acted like he’s better than a French bakery when I asked him if he wanted anything. What a l’douchebag.

To summarize: Gaby et Jules needs to open a second shop in my backyard. The landlord just sent some inbreds to weedwhack our mini-rainforest back there, so there’s plenty of room!

A Story About Disappointment: Coffee & Waffles

Food, reviews, Uncategorized

Nov 032013

One of the Caribou Coffee joints was recently turned into a Peet’s Coffee. This wasn’t anything that neither concerned nor enticed me, but I had the misfortune of finding out one day when I went to get coffee at Caribou and instead arrived at a gutted storefront.

“It’s going to be a Peet’s Coffee,” the cashier at the nearby TCBY told me when I went inside and started asking her semi-hostile questions about where in the fuck Caribou went. “It’s supposed to be really good.”

I didn’t give a fuck. I needed an iced latte super fucking bad that day and had to stay in the area so I wound up drinking WENDY’S COFFEE OH THE HORROR.

(“Wendy’s” as in the fast food chain, not my friend Wendy, although I’ve never had that Wendy’s coffee so maybe it sucks, too.)

Then a month passed and I forgot about it because there are tons of other coffee options near my house so what do I care about this Peet’s/Caribou drama. Until one day KAITLIN texted me and was all, “FYI there’s a new coffee place called Peet’s and they have MAPLE LATTES.”

You guys. Maple lattes. Motherfucking maple lattes you guys! The first time I had maple coffee was last June when we were visiting our friend Alyson in New Hampshire and it was fucking splendid. Just so goddamn wonderful! (If you hate coffee or maple or both then skip the rest of this post I guess? I know Henry probably will.) And then in Salem, MA I had an iced maple latte and strongly considered becoming a Masshole just so I could drink that shit everyday because it was like autumn’s elixir, I can’t even describe it. It’s like when you imprint with a werewolf and your mom wants to know what that’s like, and how do you explain it? It’s fucking fantastic, like some real life Adam & Eve bullshit. Totally a personal thing so people should just mind their own goddamn business.

What happens between a girl and her iced maple latte is not my story to tell.

The grand opening for Peet’s was last Monday, but they were actually already open. So I decided mid-morning last Sunday that I needed to go and get myself mapled before I exploded.

First I checked Peet’s website just to make sure this elusive beast really was available. It was, and it said “NEW!!” beneath it, so I took that as a Good Sign. And then the store itself was dripping in Maple Latte advertisements. But when I ordered it, I was told that they were DONE FOR THE SEASON. Is this a joke? Does the Alamo paper their walls with pictures of a basement? NO. (They don’t, right? I’ve never actually been to the Alamo.) Anyway, instead of blowing my top, I went with my second choice: pumpkin spice. BUT I WAS TOLD THEY WERE ALL OUT OF PUMPKIN SPICE.

Sorry guys, I lied to you. I didn’t actually go to Peet’s at all. I sent Henry on my behalf. I just wanted to see what it would feel like to write about actually doing something for myself.

I’ll tell you what I DID do though, I bitched about it on the Peet’s Facebook page and some Peet’s rep named DON apologized to me. He feels confident that I will enjoy their new holiday flavors, but that’s assuming I (Henry) will ever go back!

And then on Halloween morning, my brother Corey and I went to Waffles, INCaffeinated for some spooky breakfast haps. It was the first time eating there for both of us and we were really excited to go apeshit on some morning desserts. I spent all this time stressing over the menu until Corey pointed out the smaller menu of waffle add-ons, so then my head seriously was about to pop-off because I don’t handle multiple options very well.
It also had the Waffle of the Month at the bottom.

October’s waffle was the Waffle-copia. It was a sweet potato waffle (SWEET POTATO WAFFLE) with a fresh apple and fig compote (FIGS!!!!!! FUCKING FIGS!!!!!!!) and then I briefly also saw something about pumpkin, too but I didn’t need to read anymore. This was what I was going to smash my face into that morning, pie eating contest-style. Ask my brother how stoked I was. Seriously, ask him!!

Does this look like the Waffle-copia? No? BECAUSE IT’S NOT. It’s the Mega Berry, which is what I had to disgustedly order after ELI THE WORST WAITER began to write down my order, only to pause and laugh, “Oh wait, we’re all out of the monthly special.”

I waited for him to walk away before assassinating his character in ways that could probably land me with a lawsuit, but I WAS MAD. Corey was like, “Who gives a fuck, they had my Funky Monkey, and that’s all I care about.” But I couldn’t stop mouthing off about Eli every time he walked away from our table after refilling our coffee. We’d both say thanks but then I would tack on a “FOR NOTHING!!!” after he retreated. I have impeccable aim when it comes to shooting the messenger.

Yeah, my Mega Berry waffle was good, blah blah blah. And, as Corey kept marveling over, the prices were pretty good too. BUT THE FIGS! THE FIIIIIGS!!!!!

ELI THE LIFE RUINER kept coming over to ask us how our waffles were and I just kept mumbling, “It’s good” but then when he’d retreat, I’d growl “No thanks to you.”

Before we left, some Waffle Man approached our table to ask us about our experience. He had a slight accent, so I think he might have been the proprietor (I like to read about restaurants before I go, and I remembered that the Man Responsible for the Waffles had some weird name, so that must have been him because I’m a really good profiler). Corey and I both said it was great (and it really was, EXCEPT FOR ELI THE WORST WAITER EVER). I’m not a big complainer–no really, I’m not!–so I started to think of ways I could word my Waffle-Copia complaint without sounding like some entitled Yelp reviewer.

“So….was today the last day for the waffle of the month?” I carefully prefaced my cloaked complaint.

“Yes, I’m sorry. I was actually just drawing up some ideas for next month’s special,” he said, flashing his Waffle Blueprint Notebook at me. And then: “Oh my god, your face, it looks so sad!” he exclaimed with genuine concern.

Apparently, my face had fallen into an automatic Dog-Eyed Pout without me even realizing, THAT IS HOW SAD I WAS. “It’s OK,” I lied. “I just REALLY WANTED THE WAFFLE-COPIA.”

And so the Waffle Foreigner explained to me that due to certain logistics (like having to order 50-pound bags of figs), they try to run out the waffle of the month during the last week so that they’re not stuck with a bunch of product that can’t be used for the next month. And I pretended to be understanding of that, and assured him that the Mega Berry was a fine replacement (I mean, it was good, but it was no Waffle-Copia).

He mentioned my sad face again and even said it was the saddest face ever, but look — I can’t get my facial muscles to lie for me, OK? ELI RUINED MY LIFE!!!!! So, to make him feel better, I blurted out, “And the prices here are really good!” like I’m suddenly a senior citizen out for breakfast with the Pittsburgh chapter of the Regis Philbin Fan Club.

“We try to stay competitive,” Waffle Man responded to my awkward sentence.

On that note, Corey and I decided it was time to leave. ELI THE WORST WAITER IN THE WORLD was standing near the door.

“Have a great day, guys!” he cheerfully called out.

“You too!” Corey and I replied, but then as the door shut behind me, I added, “ASSHOLE.”

So, I guess the point to this story is that I don’t get over disappointment very easily. And if you’re a waiter, I WILL PROJECT MY DISAPPOINTMENT ONTO YOU. Fuck you, Eli.

[ED.NOTE: Waffles INC really was great and though it pains me to admit it, Eli was a good waiter. But if they don’t bring the Waffle-Copia back next October, they can all rot. APPLES! FIGS! SWEET POTATO! PUMPKIN! You might as well just call it the Erin’s Orgasm. I’m not so sure Peet’s will get a second chance, though. That asshole Don could have at least offered me a coupon!]

Baking Epiphany

Epic Fail, Fire in the Kitchen!, Food, really bad ideas

Sep 242013

Hey, Blog. Remember how two weekends ago I wrote on your skin about how I was going to do a pie pop-baking practice run? And you didn’t tell me I was being ridiculous?

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Well, fuck you.

In my head, it seemed like such a great idea! So smart and sensible. Henry will take on the regular-sized pies for the upcoming pie party, and I will undertake the legion of tiny pies on sticks that, also in my head, seemed like they would be so darling to bake. I even looked at a lot of pictures on various food blogs and every single one of them screamed ERIN PROOF! One blogger even said, “Hi, my 8-year-old niece made these, they are THAT EASY.”

And that’s what I needed to know. That idiot children could accomplish this feat and wind up with an edible disc on a tiny pie-rod. So two weekends ago, I mentally prepared myself for lots of flour inhalation and…other baking stuff.

But first, I needed to go to the asian market to see if they had persimmon, because I have been deadset on Henry baking me the most sumptuous pie out of that shit for months now. Persimmon is my jam. I’m sorry to all of the apples out there, but I have to say that persimmon is my favorite fruit of all time.

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Too bad it’s so elusive.

If anyplace would have it, it would be the asian market though. And of course, they didn’t. (They did have the best goddamn kiwis I’ve ever masticated this side of Fruit Mastication Street, though. I think they were Golden Kiwi? What a joy for my tongue.

I decided when we were checking out that Henry and I should inquire about persimmons, which turned out to be a huge mistake because the young Asian girl in her lens-less black frames and Abercrombie hoodie started laughing. I mean, this bitch had her head thrown back in laughter. This was legit laughter. This was the laughter reserved for stupid crackers, that’s exactly what kind of fucking laughter this was.

“Oh no, hahaha, no no no! There no persimmon in September! Hahahaha! That winter fruit! Hahahahaha!” And other shoppers were craning their necks to see what was going on up at check out (I’m sure they figured it involved a fat caucasion fruit-retard) and I pretty much wanted to fork my fingers and spear her eyeballs Labryinth-style through her stupid hipster glasses that she doesn’t even need!

Friends, don’t make the same mistake I made. There are no persimmon in September. Don’t even bother asking, unless you enjoy being laughed out of the Alamo, OK?

So, I guess no persimmon pie at the pie party, my persimmony pie party peeps.

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Totally defeated, we went and got ice cream, I got totally sick from spray paint fumes, and then finally I decided I better try that baking thing before the weekend was officially over. Except that there was a Penguins pre-season game on that evening.

“I’ll just do it during intermission,” I said to Henry. “Get everything ready for me.”

Henry had already gone to the regular people grocery store earlier that evening and bought all of the pie supplies, plus cookie cutters and lollipop sticks. Henry then cleared off the dining room table, rolled out the flour, washed the cookie cutters, prepared various pie fillings in some bowls, and made the egg wash. Then it was the first intermission and I had to actually do foody things which turned out to be so terrible, I can’t even find the words, it’s like my brain is literally sending death threats to my fingers to prevent them from typing out the brutal memory of last Sunday evening.

“Are you kidding me?” Henry sighed during one of his supervisional trips to the dining room table.

“This is so hard!” I wailed. “And booooring!”

“Did you actually read the recipe, or did you just look at the pictures?” And when I didn’t answer right away, he spat, “That’s what I thought.”

And then I tried to get all fancy, which is not something a baking invalid like myself should EVER TRY TO DO, by doing one of those crisscross crust thingies that disgusting grandmas do to their cherry pies so hobos will want to stick their dicks inside once they see how moist and pus-like the innards are. A little bit of a sultry, seductive pie peepshow never killed anyone. (Just maybe stained some already dirty weeners.)

Give me Sculptey and I will crosshatch the shit out of it. Construction paper? Sure, I got this. I was even pretty diligent back in the day at making potholders by criss-crossing stretchy things on a small metal loom.

But give me pie crust and I am all thumbs. And not just normal people thumbs, but medical malady thumbs. Maybe even some monkey thumbs are up in there, too, and everything I try to hold just collapses into me. I also apparently forget what “criss-cross” looks like and this is what happens:

And then something happened, a lightbulb went off, a burning pie pop sent smoke signals to my brain, something happened: I realized that I just really, truly, absolutely dislike baking. Like with my entire being. I hate it. It makes me feel tired, angry and pretty much like my whole world is ending. So why keep trying? Discovering I’m actually a baking phenom is pretty likely never to happen. I just honestly do not enjoy it! It’s actual mental pain for me and I get bored immediately after I start. And it wasn’t very fun (or tasty) eating uncooked pie crust, but I kept doing it just because Henry kept telling me to stop. It was just a real bad time, you guys, like taking a tour of Snooki’s gynecological history. Like being trapped in a car with someone you can’t stand, except the car is a table and the person you can’t stand is Henry amidst a pile of crappy ingredients.

(Looks like Henry’s To Do list for the pie party has just grown exponentially!)

Finally, after hearing enough of my bitching and moaning and general dramatics (so out of character), Henry released me from the confines of baking and things went back to normal: me leaning forward on the couch screaming at the TV while Henry calls out from the kitchen for the score of the hockey game.

Ah, normalcy.

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