Couch Cubicle

I was recently contacted by a lovely woman at Yummr.  Never heard of it? I hadn’t either, but according to the website, it’s a “community of folks who are passionate about good food and drink and enjoy sharing their obsession and connecting with others.”

Being that I’m passionate about food - and most certainly drink - I thought the site was pretty cool.  Kind of like a MySpace, but about food.  Or a Facebook, I guess.  You get the idea.

Anyway, the point is, they, along with Houghton-Mifflin Books, offered to give me a cookbook for a reader as part of their Hot July Foodie Reads Giveaway.

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty much down with any and all free things.  So, I’m going to give one of you a cookbook!  There were a couple choices, but I decided on Fish Without a Doubt because:

1) I like fish

2) A lot of people are intimidated by cooking fish

3) It was the only one I recognized

Lucky for you guys, they’re sending it to the winner directly.  Otherwise it may have gotten lost in the mail.  As in, I would have kept it for myself.

So here’s the deal - I am going to West Virginia for the weekend, where I will be getting all dolled up in this absolutely fab David’s Bridal dress, eating lots of cake, and doing the electric slide.  While I’m gone, I would like you to leave me a comment on this post telling me about you and food.  That’s it.  It can be about the time you got sick from bad shrimp, or when you shot corn out of your nose in the school cafeteria, or the the first time you made something awesome without following a recipe.  You can even just tell me your favorite food although you won’t win with crap like that.  Then I’ll pick a winner.

Get to it!

No, I did not zest these vegetables.  But I might try.  I am obsessed with zest.  Do you understand what lemon zest does to pasta?  It’s remarkable, really.  I’ve had this little zester for a few years, but never used it until recently.  I kind of thought it was broken. But check out the product of my newly-found zesting skills:

Put lemon zest on your pasta.  I’m serious.  You will come back and thank me.  Unless you do it while simultaneously using tomato sauce.  I just don’t know about that.

Anyway, we had spinach and ricotta ravioli from Trader Joe’s, and a ton of vegetables to use up, so I put them together with the zest and a little olive oil, garlic and parmesan cheese:

The only problem is that the pack of ravioli, which supposedly serves two and a half people, is weak as hell.  There are like nine pieces in there and since I’m a generous girlfriend and because I don’t like to listen to Chris moan about how hungry he is less than an hour after I slaved over a hot stove for thirty whole minutes, I always give him six.  Which leaves me with three.  Which leaves me hungry.  Which leads to this:

Not always, but tonight it did.  We shared.  I mostly had the ice cream sandwich, but if you ever see one of these Reese’s ice cream bars, I suggest you buy it.  It is amazing.  It is also full of high fructose corn syrup, but everything in moderation, right?

However, you’ll note that this is not a complete chip.  It is a mere fragment.  Everyone knows that chip, cookie, and cracker fragments do not count as food, nor do they have calories.  It’s totally some kind of weird rule of science or something, and it is one of the reasons why, whenever I reach into a bag of chips, I always - always - go for the broken pieces.

The other reason is that Chris is less apt to notice that I’ve been swiping his snacks if I stick to the crumbly bits.

I also had to eat all of these strawberries because they were dangerously close to going bad:

I saved them.  I’m nice like that.

Sorry for the late post, I was really busy this afternoon and then had to rush out the door to get $2 tacos.

Priorities.

Anyway, this afternoon I ate some cucumber slices:

And then I had a Z bar while I was waiting for the train:

Then I met my friend in SoHo and we went to Rewind on the Lower East Side. They had plates of chips and salsa set out on the tables when we got there, so we scored a spot:

That’s my ticket for two veggie tacos.  I ate them.  I did not photograph them.  I forgot.  I’m sorry.  They were good.

I also had two margaritas, because the proceeds from the night when to a cancer research foundation and I am a-okay with drinking margaritas for a cause.

…except it took me about 45 minutes to make.  I’m slow.  I also get flustered easily and tend to lose potholders and then find them ten minutes later on the bed or in the oven.

But the point here is chickpea cutlets with baked french fries:

I didn’t eat the bun, which was really a whole wheat English muffin, but I did have another half of a cutlet.  I made the fries based on a recipe I found in this lovely magazine, which turned out to be not so random after all.  Apparently my brother got it for me for my birthday.

I am a bad sister.

Anyway.  They had olive oil, salt, paprika, garlic powder, parsley and parmesan cheese, which is the secret ingredient I think.  It made them all crispy and brown and just all around tasty.  I bet it would be good with sweet potatoes, too, but we have about 42 pounds of these white guys so you will be seeing them again in many different shapes and sizes.

This meal was so classy, I just had to have a glass of wine:

I have been working on this two pounder of strawberries for most of the day:

I could eat this whole thing, easy, but I am trying to use self-control because I’m not sure my stomach would enjoy two pounds of strawberries as much as my mouth would.  I probably had eight or nine though.  Maybe 15.  Who really knows?

And then a few minutes ago I had a Z Bar:

I am kind of full now, but it’s okay. I know that I will be hungry for dinner because my neighborhood smells like glazed donuts at 5:30pm and that is precisely the time that I walk Jack every afternoon.  Nothing strokes your appetite like a whiff of Krispy Kreme.

Okay, here we go.  Lots of pictures, but only snacks.  No meals, sorry.  I ate them, but they were basically uneventful.

On Saturday, we went to the beach.  Here is Chris and I looking very hot and grumpy:

We brought a bunch of snacks to have for lunch.  Some apple chips:

Chris didn’t really like them, but I thought they were amazing.  If you see them, you should buy them.  The brand is Good Health and I might be addicted now.

I also bought this Odwalla bar:

This was not smart because I don’t like almonds.  I have no idea why I thought I would like this, but I didn’t.  I took a bite and then threw it out.  Or gave it to Chris.  I forget.

And this, which is my new favorite thing ever:

Meatless jerky!  I’m not sure that I’ve ever had real jerky, like the kind they make from cows and god knows what else, but I am sad to say that I would probably love it because these things are awesome.  They have a bunch of different flavors.  Chris got Thai peanut, which was also really good.  They are sort of filling and less than 100 calories I think.

Then when we were leaving we got some ice cream:

Because you can’t go to the beach without getting ice cream.  It would be stupid.

Then we came home and I ate some pretzels and a yogurt before dinner, but I can’t find the picture I took.  Or maybe I didn’t take one.  I have no idea.

Sunday, we had a bunch of errands to run and while we were at Trader Joe’s I ate a Z Bar.  I took a picture but my phone erased it.  My phone is pretty much slowly erasing everything these days, including my contacts and text messages and also missed calls and calendar appointments.  Basically my life.  It is erasing my life.

Anyway.  Last night I had a cookies and cream bar after dinner:

And that’s all.  I wasn’t that hungry yesterday because we went out on Saturday night and there were a lot of margaritas and I guess you could say I felt a little under the weather.

Dry cereal:

We’re out of milk.  I could, of course, go buy some.  I’m sure Chris would appreciate that.  But I don’t like to put Jack through the trauma of getting in his puppy prison just so I can run to the bodega for two minutes.  And I can’t take him to the bodega with me because then I’d have to tie him up outside and apparently there is a dognapper on the loose in my neighborhood.

I think we can all agree that Jack and his cute little ears would be napped for sure.  This effectively gets me out of doing errands.

On another note, I think I am going to start doing a little weekend wrap-up instead of trying to post on Saturday and Sunday and then failing miserably.  So I will be back on Sunday with pictures.  I hope the majority of them will be of fruits and vegetables and not ice cream and beer, but we’ll see what happens.

OH!  One last thing - you should go watch Kristen bake because her daughter is the cutest little butterfly I’ve ever seen and the cookies don’t look so bad either.  Plus she’s funny and I like funny.

Sorry for the late post, I was out running around all day.  Uptown and downtown and uptown and downtown and Brooklyn and the nail salon and Whole Foods and Starbucks and it’s a tough life, okay?

And yes.  I did go to Starbucks again.  I’m actually quite glad I did because while I was there a completely sane man approached me with a very lucrative offer.  He wanted to know if I would like to wrestle with him on Wednesday night, and if I wasn’t up for that, perhaps we could just go on a date.

I swear.

And then, to continue my bizarro day, I was walking Jack this afternoon and a woman stopped to let her dog sniff him and then proceeded to tell me that her dog was having one of her “sexy days.”

I pulled Jack away.  He is just a puppy, for god’s sake.

Anyway, in the midst of all this I ate a Z Bar, but did not photograph it.  Things were just too hectic, I think you’ll understand.

But I did photograph dinner:

Did you know that if you mix pesto and plain yogurt, you get a nice, creamy sauce?  You do, it’s true.  This is just my pesto mixed with about two tablespoons of non-fat yogurt.  Then pasta, shrimp and sun dried tomatoes.

And now I will probably have some chocolate chips.  I think I deserve them.

I went all kinds of crazy at Starbucks this morning and got mocha syrup in my grande misto:

It cost me an extra .30¢ (and possibly a gazillion calories) but it was worth every penny.  Really, it was all I needed to start my day off on the right foot.  But then I got this email as an added bonus, courtesy of the worst spam filter of all time:

From: habing <7434180_2001@66-168-189-190.charterga.net>
Date: Thurs, 10 Jul 2008 07:42:34 -0400
Subject: Invitation to new shop opening
Stand tall stand strong, voices that care are crying from your pants.

I had no idea that voices that care were crying from my pants!  I will stand tall and strong now.  Thank you, Habing!

It’s going to be a good Thursday.  I just know it.