Instead of an endeavor to cook 536 recipes in 365 days, I’m starting smaller.  Much much smaller.

Also, the likelihood of my experiment being turned into a book/movie is far less likely.  If somehow American cinema reaches a new low and every movie idea on earth has been officially been exhausted, I reserve the right to pick who gets to play me in the film adaptation.

Anyways, the premise of the experiment is simple.  101 days of writing.  That’s it.  I just have to make it through 101 days.  I might follow a specific topic.  Maybe several.  Maybe none.  Who knows.  I just have to write, largely to retain whatever creative capacity I have remaining in this dull logic-processing brain of mine.

Want to follow along?  You’ll find me for the next 101 days here:

http://101daysofwords.wordpress.com

I’ll try to do some guest spots on this blog in the next 101 days, but if I’m MIA, you’ll know where to find me.

Till then, take good care of this place for me.

I shall call it, for a lack of better terms, the cycle of fatness.

You see, this is how the cycle begins.  First, you eat.  This is simple enough.  I am actually a certified professional in this field.  If you need professional advice on what you should be eating, you should be coming to me.  Surgeon General’s Warning: Strictly following my advice can result in obesity, diabetes, unpopularity, and in most cases, death.

After a period of such eating, there will be the need to counteract all the deliciousness.  This can stem from a variety of reasons – body image consciousness, a significant other, health issues, or just plain difficulty getting from the bed to the couch to watch TV without being complete exasperated.  Let’s not even discuss any kind of side route to the kitchen for a snack.

So, in order to fulfill such need, you decide to hit the gym.  A noble decision indeed!  You throw on some exercise clothes, grab your iPod or an alternative non-Communism-supporting portable media device, strap on some running shoes, and you feel like you’re ready to take on the world and pare down your collection of stretchy pants.

At this juncture, one of three things will happen.

1) You will go to the gym, walk inside, and be completely intimidated by all these crazy medieval torture devices.

2) You will go to the gym, only to find that the place you pay an exorbitant amount of money for on a monthly basis has been rented out for something ridiculous like a high school swim meet leaving you with nowhere to park and excessively high blood pressure from your wasted dollars.  In your fury, you head home and/or your nearest cheeseburger purveyor and eat away the anger. (note: this has only happened to me twice.)

3) Someone calls you to see if you’re ready to throw down all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue.  Federal law dictates that it is a felony not to comply.

It becomes obvious that the cycle comes around full circle if situations #2 or #3 were to occur.  That was easy.

But what if you find yourself in situation #1?

You feel like your very presence in this mausoleum of calories is already the victory that you came to reach.  You stroll through the gym convincing yourself that you totally belong there with your unwaivering confidence.  Any fear is masked under a guise of looking at no direction in particular, yet avoiding eye contact with anyone and everyone.  You hope and pray that something – anything – looks even vaguely similar to the gym equipment you have in your prized virtual mansion as a result of countless hours of The Sims 3.  Finally, out of the corner of your eye, you see something that is both recognizable and not so daunting..

A bike!  It looks bolted down pretty well, so there’s really not much risk in finding yourself careening uncontrollably at that somewhat cute girl/guy that you tried not to stare at as you walked in.  Besides, you learned how to ride a bike when you were a kid, and you never forget, right? RIGHT?!

Hop on that familiar machine, you fitness guru you.  What’s this?  Buttons and screens and lights?  While unlike the Huffy you used to cruise the mean neighborhood streets with, you leverage your adept logical reasoning skills to master this technological behemoth in front of you.

Start!  The only button you really needed to press, because let’s face it, you totally lied on your weight for calorie calculations and maybe even your age if you got that desperate.  You take off pedaling, reliving both your bicycle-based adventure-seeking youth and your equally blissful dream of donning the yellow jersey at the Tour de France.

Wiping sweat off your brow, you take a big swig of water from your newly purchased “This may be overpriced but it proves I really work out a lot” water bottle.  The intensity is so high at this point that you wonder if it’s bad form to just pop open the top and douse yourself with the rest of the water.  You glance over at fellow cyclers near you, giving them a sly grin as your imagination visualizes them as competitors on a winding mountain road.  You know you have to keep pressing on as they’re neck and neck with you, though that probably has a lot to do with how the gym sets these machines side-by-side in a line.

Muscles aching, you look forward to the end of this strenuous workout, thinking about the washboard abs you’ll have to show off once you get off this devil-possessed machine.  Eventually, your legs give out from under you and you collapse onto that blinking, taunting screen, with the following blurry text scrolling across your now-somehow-tired eyeballs.

Elapsed Time: 2:30
Remaining Time: 27:30
Calories: 14
Average Heart Rate: 184

Awesome.  Simply awesome.  Your hard work can now be rewarded.  No, MUST be rewarded.  You drag your tired body back to the car, thinking about what to reward yourself with.  A new TV?  Hmm, no.  A new car?  Eh.  A new water bottle?!  Maybe.

Then suddenly, it comes to you.

As you shout your order through that drive-thru speaker box, you sense that sweet gratification that this double cheeseburger is going to be 14 less calories than usual.

As of this update, we’re up to 104 different places.

This list covers 688 days – 8/23/2008 to 7/12/2010

We eat at a new place approximately once every 6.6 days.

We’ve eaten in 7 different states: GA, CA, PA, IL, TX, FL, NY

22 of 26 letters have been covered – missing letters: Q, V, X, Z

Most important, this is what we ate:

Cheese slice at Gaby’s Pizza
Porterhouse Steak at Peter Luger
Cheesecake at Omega Diner
Dumplings at Joe’s Shanghai
Boba at TenRen’s Tea Time
Hot dog from a street vendor
Americano at Stumptown Coffee
Gyro from a Halal street vendor
Pastrami and corned beef at Carnegie Deli
Strawberry cheesecake at Carnegie Deli
Sausage pizza at Bravo Pizza
Red Velvet Cupcake from Magnolia Bakery
Gelato at Golosi
Blueberry pancakes and sugar cured bacon at Clinton Street Baking Co.
Shack Stack and Black and White Shake at Shake Shack

and of course, 14 bagels from Pick a Bagel for the road/freezer.

Not bad for 3.5 days, right?  That’s not even including a wedding and a reception and all the touristy sightseeing stuff.

Pictures of deliciousness after the break.

http://news.cnnbcvideo.com/index.shtml

Shameless plug for Northridge and their awesomeness.

Appetite for China’s 100 Chinese Foods to Try Before You Die

1. Almond milk
2. Ants Climbing a Tree (poetic, not literal, name)
3. Asian pear
4. Baby bok choy
5. Baijiu
6. Beef brisket
7. Beggar’s Chicken
8. Bingtang hulu
9. Bitter melon
10. Bubble tea
11. Buddha’s Delight
12. Cantonese roast duck
13. Century egg, or thousand-year egg
14. Cha siu (Cantonese roast pork)
15. Char kway teow
16. Chicken feet
17. Chinese sausage
18. Chow mein
19. Chrysanthemum tea
20. Claypot rice
21. Congee
22. Conpoy (dried scallops)
23. Crab rangoon
24. Dan Dan noodles
25. Dragonfruit
26. Dragon’s Beard candy
27. Dried cuttlefish
28. Drunken chicken
29. Dry-fried green beans
30. Egg drop soup
31. Egg rolls
32. Egg tart, Cantonese or Macanese
33. Fresh bamboo shoots
34. Fortune cookies
35. Fried milk
36. Fried rice
37. Gai lan (Chinese broccoli)
38. General Tso’s Chicken
39. Gobi Manchurian
40. Goji berries (Chinese wolfberries)
41. Grass jelly
42. Hainan chicken rice
43. Hand-pulled noodles
44. Har gau (steamed shrimp dumplings in translucent wrappers)
45. Haw flakes
46. Hibiscus tea
47. Hong Kong-style Milk Tea
48. Hot and sour soup
49. Hot Coca-Cola with Ginger
50. Hot Pot
51. Iron Goddess tea (Tieguanyin)
52. Jellyfish
53. Kosher Chinese food
    
54. Kung Pao Chicken
55. Lamb skewers (yangrou chua’r)
56. Lion’s Head meatballs
57. Lomo Saltado
58. Longan fruit
59. Lychee
60. Macaroni in soup with Spam
61. Malatang
62. Mantou, especially if fried and dipped in sweetened condensed milk
63. Mapo Tofu
64. Mock meat
65. Mooncake (bonus points for the snow-skin variety)
66. Nor mai gai (chicken and sticky rice in lotus leaf)
67. Pan-fried jiaozi
68. Peking duck
69. Pineapple bun
70. Prawn crackers
71. Pu’er tea
72. Rambutan
73. Red bean in dessert form
74. Red bayberry
75. Red cooked pork
76. Roast pigeon
77. Rose tea
78. Roujiamo
79. Scallion pancake
80. Shaved ice dessert
81. Sesame chicken
82. Sichuan pepper in any dish
83. Sichuan preserved vegetable (zhacai)
84. Silken tofu
85. Soy milk, freshly made
86. Steamed egg custard
87. Stinky tofu
88. Sugar cane juice
89. Sweet and sour pork, chicken, or shrimp
90. Taro
91. Tea eggs
92. Tea-smoked duck
93. Turnip cake (law bok gau)
94. Twice-cooked pork
95. Water chestnut cake (mati gau)
96. Wonton noodle soup
97. Wood ear
98. Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings)
99. Yuanyang (half coffee, half tea, Hong Kong style)
100. Yunnan goat cheese

85/100.  That’s a little more like it.

Taken from here:

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Only 55.  Somewhat disappointing.

Join “Chinese Southern Belles” Natalie and Margaret Keng for a fun, palate-pleasing course celebrating food, family and culture. This mother/daughter team combines Chinese and Southern heritage and perspectives to present this unique course on Asian cuisine in the South. Class includes: 1) An Asian grocery store fieldtrip and tour where you’ll learn to navigate Asian vegetables, meats, spices, noodles and more. 2) An interactive classroom session exploring the connection between Asian food, culture, and history; cooking strategies; and kitchen pointers. (While this is not a cooking class, samples of popular food items, recipe ideas, cookware, and creative shortcuts will be covered.) 3) A teaching tasting at a local restaurant where you’ll learn to order authentic dishes that may not be listed on the American menu.

Awesome.  Simply awesome.

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

Liam Neeson is so hardcore.  What else would you expect from Oskar Schindler/Qui-Gon Jinn?  I’m so going to watch this movie.

6am : out the door en route to poll location

6:12am – 7am : waiting in line at the Heritage Educational Center, Nintendo DS probable

7am – 8am : fighting through the old decrepit Republican-types who would let Sarah Palin within the District of Columbia limits to place my vote for whoever Barack Obama is voting for

8:09am : trying to get out of the parking lot without getting hit by some blind old lady who voted for McCain because they “like Sarah Palin for her personality”

8:43am : at a Starbucks claiming my free election day coffee

8:58am : hopefully at the office

11:48am : Shane’s Rib Shack on Perimeter Center Dr, claiming my free chicken tender meal

12:25pm : Krispy Kreme in Roswell for my free donut

1:32pm : food coma from lunch kicking in

2:56pm : random baseless political debate amongst coworkers – “yeah, but Tina Fey played Sarah Palin and Tina Fey is kinda hot”

5:02pm : Ben and Jerry’s on Windward Pkwy. getting my free ice cream

5:48pm : Shane’s Rib Shack on Windward Pkwy, getting another free chicken tender meal

6:54pm : home, flipping through channels looking for an unbiased report on election results

7:21pm : giving up on finding an unbiased report and America as a society in general, off to another Starbucks for another free cup of coffee

7:58pm : back at home, watching networks spend tons of money on pretty displays merely to color in different parts of the country a deep blue.

sometime later : asleep, while Barack Obama keeps Sarah Palin back in Alaska, where she can continue to keep an eye on those Russians to further her foreign policy experience.

People who know where I go must think I’m crazy to know this.  The places I shop at are busy, crowded, multi-cultural, patience-lacking, shopping-cart-ramming food affairs.  Yet, that’s what I love.  I love seeing what other people buy.  I love the crazy family discussions regarding fish.  I love watching the awkward gawking from the obviously single guys in the instant noodle aisle every time a cute girl walks by.

Most of all, I love wandering the aisles.  There’s nothing like taking in all the sights and smells (not always a good thing) of a world of food.  There are always those things that I wish I could afford to buy – huge gorgeous scallops, sashimi-grade fatty tuna, deep colored saffron, huge chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano.  One day, I should splurge and pick up one or three of these things.

The problem is, I always come home with all this random food, then I find myself eating just so the stuff I buy doesn’t go bad and go to waste.  I need either a) self-control, b) people to feed, or c) better ways to use all this food.  Then I find myself with a dwindling fridge and an excuse to go to the market.  It’s a vicious cycle.

I’m going to go eat something.

Sometimes I try to keep up as posts come in, but with so many feeds now and so little time during the day, they tend to back up.  We’re looking at about 600 unread articles right now – yikes.  That’s just from a day or two.

Now you know how I keep so knowledgable about…everything.  Shh, the secret is out.

Via xkcd.com:

The goal?  Design some awesome looking stuff.  The niche?  I’m not using Flash.

Here are some things I’ve been reading:

Keep an eye out, things may be a-changin around here.  I’m more than open for some feedback when it does.

This place may be one of the best chain coffee shops there is.  Their coffee is pretty good, the iced coffee is cold brewed, and their iced tea is surprisingly good that I find myself ordering that fairly often.

The Caribou Coffee nearby my office used to be my little lunch hang-out spot.  I’d grab something to eat real quick, head to Caribou with a book, and drain my lunch break poured over a book and a cup of coffee.  It’s a nice change from a desk and a screen.

Well, I took a little break from my lunch routine for a few weeks just because it got a little busy at work, but when I showed up at my lunch-time hide-out, there was an immediate sense of distance, rather than coming back to a familiar home.  The signage was gone.  There weren’t any cars in the parking lot.  Then it struck me – they closed down.  All in a matter of weeks.  I had to suck it up and go to Starbucks.

There’s another Caribou closer to where I live, near Toco Hills.  That’s where I’m at right now.  I guess there’s some amount of karma involved, since I was greeted by signs indicating the newly-established 24-hour-ness of the place to appease the emotional anguish from losing the other one.  Where was this when I was in college?  Though, with all the studying I’ve been doing lately, I kind of feel like I’m back in college.  Well, not really, since I didn’t study nearly this much in college.

Some grad student just came by to ask me to fill out a survey for her research.  She, like a lot of other random girls coming through here tonight, is actually pretty easy on the eyes.  I wonder when Emory starts up again…

Which non-white person comes to mind when you read this list?

from the washington post