Grad school dorm food: omelette and lemon poppy seed banana bran muffins

Both of these look kind of disgusting, but they taste phenomenal.

It's been a long summer, and now it's coming to quite an abrupt halt. It truly felt like it lasted ages. I worked most of the summer in a library on campus, with a couple of fantastic two-week vacations here and there. You've seen some of the food from Spain, but I'm afraid I've been behind in my posts from Tennessee. Here I'll include an insert about how much I miss having an Android phone, from which I could make posts on the go. Now I have to dedicate sit-down time to this, and everyone knows how little of that I'll have at my disposal when the semester starts back up!

In any case, this pathetic meal marks the beginning of a year which will be spent as the Director of the Casa hispánica here at BC (in lieu of teaching). I'll hopefully be making a blog for it, boosting the virtual presence of the Casa - which right now is approximately zero. This school may be ancient but its students are of course rolling in technology and I think it will be a great idea to get the Casa a facebook page and all of that. So be on the lookout! I'll certainly be making lots of food for my residents (watch out for the Andean festival in the fall and the Spanish festival in the spring - those are going to have some KICK ASS food).

The beautiful thing about this narsty looking omelette (Shitake mushroom, broccoli, cajun seasoning) and the ominous lemon poppy seed banana bran muffin (have you ever seen juxtaposed the words "ominous" and "lemon"?) is that they were both made in a HUGE, well equipped kitchen with a brand new stove/oven, refrigerator and dishwasher. You can't believe how discouraging it was living in that tiny cave apartment with my tiny 1/2 kitchen. Now I will be able to properly entertain guests! In fact, it is one of my duties here in the Casa.

So, come one and all to sample my weird looking but excellent tasting food. Or just read the blog :p

You're going to love Spanish fast food

Why am I posting pictures of McDonald's and Starbucks? Take a closer look, and you'll see that my quarter pounder is actually a cuarto de libra, and that's because I got it in Spain. I chose this post for tonight for a few reasons: it will be useful in the future (teaching about food in Spanish), I love sharing this goofy stuff and because it will actually be an easy fast post, which I need :) Busy nights now a days - sometimes in a fun way, most of the time in a read-poetry-off-of-the-reading-list kind of way. So while the summer bugs fly around my cave apartment and my thoughts drift lazily to my ukelele instead of García Lorca, I'll just take a little break to write about something I'm not so sure he would have cared for.

As you can see, and as I'm sure most people are aware, huge chains like McDonald's, Burger King and even the less expected KFC can be found in many cities in Spain. In bigger cities like Madrid and Barcelona, this came as little surprise to me. However, to find a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut in much smaller Pamplona was a bit of a shock. In any case, it makes for an easy comfort food when one is feeling far from home. After all, McDonald's in Idaho is the same is McDonald's in Spain, right? Not exactly. You will find your quarter pounder and (my beloved) nuggets with more sauce than anyone needs, but the best (and maybe only redeemable?) thing about eating this food elsewhere is seeing how they change the menu in each place! My favorite is the coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream that you can get for somewhere around 1 euro. It's certainly worth exploring.

As for the potatoes with ketchup and mayonnaise on top, those are a 100% Spanish fast food item. In Pans (and in many other establishments), one can order this weirdly satisfying fast version of patatas bravas, which really look something like this: http://whereintheworldisbrynn.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/patatas-bravas.jpg. You know, it's like grilling a burger or getting a nice one out vs. the quarter pounder at MacDo. Somewhere in that recipe, it's similar to the original dish. How it got to be what it is, you don't know and you don't want to know, but it has to do with paying very little and eating very fast. Or at least being served very fast.

As for the Starbucks, the least I can say in my defense is that this flavor, the CHAI frappuccino, I have not seen in the U.S. (although I asked for it during frappy hour once and it came out fine). It was delicious. It was beastly hot that day in Madrid, and I found myself in a Starbucks where I knew I could get something cold and use a bathroom. I was beyond pleased as I sucked it down and people-watched, then planned my day of walking around the city. You'll notice the name on the cup says "Andy." Food blog is not the place to tell that story.

Food Coma from Work Party

This will be a short post because I'm beat. Part of the reason that I'm so tired is that work today was full of action-packed fun, by which I mean we had a 55-minute party which offered more sweets than you can even imagine. Ice cream sandwiches, patriotic cupcakes, sherbet, sorbet, watermelon, grapes, snap peas?, yogurt covered raisins and sugar cookies. It seemed like a combination goodbye party for one of the staff in the library and the 4th of July. It was a really nice break from the tedious work that is the nature of graduate research assistant jobs, and I think the staff member who will be leaving us had a nice time, which is the most important part. When someone brought this cake out, I really regretted the little plate I had already prepared with a cupcake (frosting scraped off in the most socially awkward way possible, as you do). So I had a slice of this, which was pretty killer. I saved my cupcake for later. It's currently in my fridge, waiting to become the food adventure of tomorrow.

As for the title of this post... I think it speaks for itself. At the very least, I ended up at the gym tonight. Then the supermarket, of course.

Dutch Apple Pie from Starbucks

In June, I took a two-week trip to Spain to visit some dear friends/colleagues who were staying there for a month or so. It was one of the best (even if solitary) vacations I've ever had in my life. It's been four years since I got back from my semester abroad in Pamplona, and during all that time I dreamed of going back there, of seeing the people I had become close to and of course, of eating the food I grew to love so very much. While I will have some authentically Spanish food posts coming, this one is not quite so for two reasons. The apple pie featured in this post is from Holland, and it's from a Starbucks. In the airport! Not exactly the Dutch apple pie I was longing for, but after 8 hours on a plane with little sleep, I was ready for anything.

While in Spain in 2007, I had the opportunity to visit some friends of my family (TX family) who live in Holland. It was an amazing trip, and it was really something to reunite with a woman who had lived with my family as an exchange student... when I was three years old. While in Amsterdam and Kampen, I tried all sorts of delicious Dutch food. In fact, on a somewhat unrelated note, I think I can say I sampled the best whiskey sour I've ever had there in Kampen. Back to the pie. Somewhere in that weekend (it's all a blur to me now) full of Rembrandt's house, the Rijks and other tourist sites, I tried an apple pie that blew my mind. Served cold, it came with nuts and fruit on top. Not to mention that it was about the size of my face. I don't mean to put down hot apple pie, but having it cold has turned me forever. And I've been craving it, waiting for the chance to have it again.

Although my layover was something like four hours, I didn't want to go outside and adventure around Amsterdam because I was extremely tired and didn't want to mess around with security (the customs officers sure weren't friendly). So I settled for walking all over the airport in search of a worthy slice of apple pie. After a long while, I gave up and resigned to Starbucks for some drinks and food I knew would get me by, being all too familiar with its products. And while I was waiting in line watching people and listening to them speak in their respective languages, I saw it. The HUGE, cold apple pie. With an iced soy latte on the side, it made for a nice layover on my way to Madrid (I would eventually end up squished between gigantic Dutch rugby players on the plane).

From there, my food adventures were only about to get tastier.

Roast Beef Sandwich and BBQ Chips at Home

It is a quiet summer night here in Allston. As I've been eating out quite a lot lately, tonight felt like a stay-at-home simple meal night. There are lots of little parts to the story of this post, though. You'll notice that I haven't posted in AGES. So I'll explain the exciting meal first, then address the posting itself.

As a grad student, one becomes somehow much more aware of the presence of free food. Even if it's just roast beef and cheese hanging out in the break room at the library where you work, with little to no explanation of why it's there or where it's come from. Don't worry, the provenance of present beef and cheese is pretty innocuous. The Rare Books and Special Collections Library on campus (where I work as a graduate research assistant in University Archives and Manuscripts) is in the process of interviewing candidates for an open staff position, meaning lots of catered lunches. And they were thoughtful enough to bring all the deliciously free leftovers to the break room, and all of the students went to town wrapping up different food items. I myself chose roast beef and cheese, clearly. As for the sandwich you see in the photo, it's pretty fabulous. The chips are a Tangy Carolina BBQ flavor and I think the name speaks for itself. Trader Joe's Tuscan Pane complements the rest of the sandwich perfectly. I did heat the meat up in a frying pan with some olive oil, and let the cheese melt on top. Really added some flavor.

So why did I post about free meat? As I wait for my laundry to dry on a boring Tuesday night, I need some kind of activity to pass the time (we'll just pretend I don't have hundreds of texts to read for my PhD comps next year). But really the idea came to me because I remembered one of of my favorite dishes from this blog - the casado con pescado. I recently made a new friend from Costa Rica and I thought I'd go looking for the picture so I could prove I indeed made a casado. Then I got to reading through all my posts and I really enjoyed the memories that came with all of them. So I'm hoping to commit here and now to keeping up with the posts for the rest of the summer! This year has been weird and extremely difficult, but I've certainly continued eating interesting things in interesting places, so I might as well be documenting! Posts will come out of chronological order for a while, but it'll straighten itself out soon enough.

It's been a good day: Chocolate frog, Franziskaner and ham-and-cheese croissants

As most of my friends know, it has been quite a rough couple of months. Today, however, was full of pleasant food adventures, two of which were surprises! We've got ham-and-cheese croissants (one of which I just sampled), a German beer that is VERY hard to find and a chocolate frog. I will explain the last two in greater detail shortly.

While in Texas I had a very nasty ham-and-cheese kolache (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolache). This was an offense to me in two ways: 1) I love food so much that when I have dishes that taste awful due to poor quality, it rubs me quite the wrong way and 2) my grandmother makes some of the most delicious kolaches around so, this being somewhat of a family pastry, I was upset to have such a bad one tarnishing the trusty name of the kolache. I have very strong memories tied to ham-and-cheese kolaches. These were not my grandmother's, however. When my dad ran a print shop in El Campo, TX, there was a wonderful bakery called Riena's located nearby. They had incredible pastries of all kinds, but my absolute favorites were the ham-and-cheese kolaches, which they made with a sweet dough. These kolaches were somewhat of a delicacy as they could only be had on the days I went to work with my parents.

I have been thinking about those kolaches since I got back to Boston, and I decided to make something that doesn't come anywhere near them in taste or importance, but which is tasty nonetheless. I simply bought Pillsbury croissant dough and layered it with black forest ham and colby jack cheese. They turned out very well!

The real story of my good day comes in now: I caught up with Lisa, a friend of mine who happened to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter them park over the winter break. The kind young woman that she is, she got me a chocolate frog! It is mammoth. And, it comes with a collectible card of a famous witch or wizard from the series. For those of you who are at all familiar with this fictional universe, I got Helga Hufflepuff! I was really hoping for Dumbledore. Perhaps when the time comes for me to visit the park, I will get him.

After our lunch at Paris, the best creperie I know of (http://www.paris-creperie.com/), we went into Trader Joe's to do some grocery shopping. What I found was nothing short of amazing. While in Barcelona in 2007, I had a beer that did not make me want to gag. In fact, I actually liked it. It is called Franziskaner. I have asked about this beer for close to four years now and no one I know has ever heard of it, nor do any pubs around here have it. Well! Guess what they had at Trader Joe's! So I took a couple bottles over to the apartment of Leticia and Esteban, who have been incredibly kind and helpful in the past few days. It is just as good as I remember it! Although, I did spill a little on the floor telling a story, which was an indicator that it was all very exciting.

All in all, as my food will tell, I have had a really enjoyable day. I hope it keeps up as school is starting tomorrow. Manos a la obra!

Emergency food - honey wheat pecan bread

I'd like to take a break from all the Texas posts to focus on my storm prep food, which turned out fabulously! In my second attempt to bake a loaf of bread I used a tad bit more common sense than in the first, and it turned out in my favor.

What you see here is a loaf of whole wheat honey pecan bread! Made right in my kitchen, as I was sleeping. In fact, I am fairly certain that I got up and unplugged the machine (there is physical evidence of this) without really waking up. At least if I'm going to sleep for too many hours of the day, I know I might be taking care of chores while doing so!

My first loaf of bread, if one can call it a loaf, came out horribly. It was a hefty dense lump of cranberry flavored material with somewhere around a cup of flour stuck to the bottom of it. I have to say that I'm quite proud of the second go! It's very tasty, as well. I had a couple of slices for breakfast. It really is very hearty and filling. I put the rest of the slices in the freezer. I can't wait to make some serious sandwiches with this stuff!

It's a good thing I made survival food (which also consists of pasta salad) because it did snow like you wouldn't believe. Very fortunately, my power is ON! But I'll be enjoying the bread nonetheless :) I also picked up some new Spanish wine (another Rioja), so I will hopefully be enjoying that too with my next food adventure, which should be happening right about now.

Chao!

Chicken fried steak and saltwater taffy

It has to be one of the unhealthiest things on the planet that one can eat, but chicken fried steak is also one of the tastiest! You'll also see my bag of saltwater taffy, which lasted me the ride back to Bay City (from Austin) and a few more days after that :) I got it from that same shop where I found the chocolate-covered bacon. Delicious! I could use some right about now. The taffy, not the bacon.

After spending an all too fast day with Kati, I hung out for a bit by myself at Mozart's, a really neat cafe on Lake Austin, and then met my cousin Anna and her daughter Jade for dinner. This was my last meal in Austin before heading out, and it was fantastic! I had, as you can see, a chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. Talk about comfort food!

For those of you who might not be aware, there are debates among southerners as to whether this dish is called chicken fried steak (as I call it) vs. country fried steak (as Josh calls it). According to this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_fried_steak, it turns out that it comes down to a difference in the batter's ingredients. Let it be known: they are NOT exactly the same thing! Though to be absolutely honest, I'm not sure I could tell them apart. This dish is extremely southern, and extremely good.

The best part of this meal, though, was actually catching up with my cousin whom I had not seen in years. We are two of the four red-headed grandchildren (out of 26 total, I believe) on my dad's side. It's a silly connection, but it's cool nonetheless. We had a really great visit and it was sad to see the dinner come to an end. But luckily we had a good photo taken so that we can remember it! And hopefully I'll see her again soon.

If I'm not mistaken, I had sweet tea or Dr. Pepper with that meal. Probably sweet tea! :D More TX cuisine to come soon.

Sushi in Austin, plus a weird treat

The food you see here is one of the meals I had on my mini trip to Austin while I was visiting in August. I had sushi with a dear friend from my very interesting childhood, who happens to share my name :D I also happened to find what you see in the glass dish: chocolate-covered BACON. Don't mess with Texas.

While I did not eat that particular mix of salty-sweet, I did enjoy a salted dark chocolate caramel! It quickly became a melty mess in my hands, but it was worth it. Very tasty indeed. If you ever need a quick fix for sea salt dark chocolate caramels, by the way, Trader Joe's makes a mean batch.

While in Bay City I got in touch with my friend Kati, who lives in Austin. Turns out there are many of my friends and family who live there! So this one-day trip turned into a nice little visit packed with catching up. Our sushi adventure took place before it was time to go, and it was delicious. The manager made us some interesting flavored tea mixes, of which I did not post a picture, but you can imagine how delicious fruity teas were in the hot HOT summertime.

After a lot of last-minute planning (surprise, surprise) and having gone through a little bit of an emotional roller coaster when I found out that the car I had reserved in order to go Austin was not available, I was saved by family. I ended up using my dad's car to head over, which although it doesn't sound like much, really meant a lot to me.

AND WE'RE BACK: Seafood In, Bay City TX

I have already been back to Texas since I ate the food you see here... which means I have been REALLY slacking on my posts! But it's been a really crazy semester, as most of you know, and we won't talk about that here. You'll see it unfold little by little as I catch up on the posts I've been neglecting. I've got just under two weeks until school starts again, which should be plenty of time to get in gear!

The funny thing about this is that these posts are supposed to serve as a kind of memory journal for me, and now I'll be reaching all the way back into August to attempt to remember what was going on when I ate these things! However, I have such a strong emotional connection to most of these meals that it should be no problem whatsoever :D

What you see here are: fried trout (which was incredibly delicious and really took me back), bacon-wrapped stuffed shrimp and fruit-topped pound cake with whipped cream.

This was actually what we call a fish fry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_fry). It was a gathering of family for the sole purpose of eating great food, which for those who know me really well is just my kind of gathering! My dad fried up the trout, with the help of little monsters known as nieces and nephews (actually though, they were precious) and I threw together the light dessert. Just chopped up berries, Cool Whip, and sliced pound cake. It was a great meal for the weather!

We ate this on my last day in Texas, an event that never ceases to be bittersweet. I was ready to be back in the northeast, but always miss my family. Luckily, this time around, it wasn't too long before I got back, as we'll see in the coming posts!

What you don't see here are the fried potatoes and plantains that I made (gobbled up by the little monsters), which I daresay were a fantastic success :)