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eG Foodblog: SobaAddict70 - The horror! The horror!


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Since Nero :wub: kindly passed the torch on to me, I'm going to start with what's happened so far today and update as the day progresses. I'm afraid I'm neither as entertaining as Nero or as poetic as maggie, but I'll try.

Tuesday, 19 August 2003

LOTS of Poland Spring or whatever bottled water happens to be lying around throughout the day.

Breakfast was plain Dannon yogurt, a banana, and a Granny Smith apple.

Cup O' Soup noodles for a pre-lunch snack.

Ever since our corporate cafeteria from hell was closed for renovations and a total redesign, I've been relegated to food hell of a different sort: takeout, sausage sandwiches and scrounging around in the wilds of Lower Manhattan. The cafeteria opens tomorrow, starting with breakfast. Ooooh I can't wait. Gone I suppose will be the radioactive looking frankfurters stewed with peppers, bologna, onions and ketchup that they serve for breakfast. I kid you not. The joke was that someone donated a shitload of hot dogs to the kitchen and they had to get rid of it somehow.... :blink:

Went to a deli-food court across Water Street and got some minestrone soup (for an afternoon snack), and salad bar fixin's. Pretty good -- steamed brussel sprouts with butter, stir-fried snow peas with garlic, cauliflower and broccoli salad, yogurt marinated grilled chicken, and a couple slices of luscious roast pork. Berry, banana and apple smoothie to wash it down.

Just had the minestrone. Nice mix of veggies and penne pasta.

Dinner will probably be leftover takeout from Chola (see the Dinner thread for the gory details) unless I decide on something different.

Soba

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I just plain love SobaAddict70. :wub::wub::wub:

"I've caught you Richardson, stuffing spit-backs in your vile maw. 'Let tomorrow's omelets go empty,' is that your fucking attitude?" -E. B. Farnum

"Behold, I teach you the ubermunch. The ubermunch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the ubermunch shall be the meaning of the earth!" -Fritzy N.

"It's okay to like celery more than yogurt, but it's not okay to think that batter is yogurt."

Serving fine and fresh gratuitous comments since Oct 5 2001, 09:53 PM

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Tuesday (continued)

Picked up some bhel puri mix from a neighborhood "Indian" restaurant near where I work.

Dinner was pretty much leftover tawa paneer (grilled paneer with peppers and onions) and coconut rice from Chola, and a bowlful of cottage cheese topped with bhel puri mix, sauteed onions and a good pinch of Italian-style Mrs. Dash. Poland Spring. Banana lassi for dessert.

Honeydew chunks for a bedtime snack.

-----------

Wednesday, 20 August 2003

Our new corporate cafeteria definitely needs a few more visits before I can form an opinion. It's certainly spacious and expansive whereas the previous version seemed a bit cramped. Placement of some items was not intuitive -- i.e., the napkins are in a bin on a bottom shelf, in the condiment/utensil station. It's probably going to be a while before I acclimate myself to the new environment. Whether or not the food will improve to match the redesign remains to be seen. Wilted lettuce, anyone?

LOTS of bottled water (Poland Spring in most cases) throughout the day.

Plain Dannon yogurt (I thoroughly detest the sugary fruit/flavored versions), asparagus potato frittata. An orange.

[to be continued...]

Soba

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Well, maybe tommy should be our next candidate -- subject to his consent, of course. :blink: The blog series is entirely voluntary. :smile:

Wednesday (continued)

Lunch: stuffed peppers, garlic-sauteed spinach, gnocchi with tomato sauce. I should seriously re-evaluate the cafeteria's pasta production capabilities. This was the first time I've had gnocchi here that didn't go down like leaden bullets. Amazing. Still not foodie-quality gnocchi, but hey, I suppose its a vast improvement from before.

Peppers were stuffed with a mixture of seasoned rice, red kidney beans, ground beef and onions. Not bad, although maybe I should have gone for the herb-crusted halibut.

Dried fruit and nut mix for an afternoon snack.

Dinner (what I'm eating now as I'm typing this): Since I'm here late at the office, I thought I'd give things another go.

Polenta triangles with parmesan, cheddar and minced roasted peppers. Garlic-rubbed leg of lamb with rosemary jus. Roasted herbed red-skinned potatoes. Julienned yellow squash, carrots, zucchini and peppers in an herbed butter sauce. An orange for later.

I'd say things have improved above and beyond the nightmare from before. Time will tell if things level off in the near future or if there's consistency.

Dunno how long I'll be here -- hopefully not too much longer.

Check in with y'all later....

Soba

edit: corrected day.

Edited by SobaAddict70 (log)
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Query:  Do people tend to change what they typically eat when they do these foodblogs?  I did.

Heck, no! You got the good, the bad and and blah, even when the food involved had more than two syllables. And the accent in the wrong place.

Margaret McArthur

"Take it easy, but take it."

Studs Terkel

1912-2008

A sensational tennis blog from freakyfrites

margaretmcarthur.com

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Query:  Do people tend to change what they typically eat when they do these foodblogs?  I did.

I didn't... but the ferrets gave me a lot of pressure to underreport the amount of food they ate, as they didn't want to appear too gluttonous. These days they're on a raw meat thing, rather than cooked. And they have been subtly suggesting that I buy them some frozen baby chicks to eat.

--

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I didn't... but the ferrets gave me a lot of pressure to underreport the amount of food they ate, as they didn't want to appear too gluttonous.  These days they're on a raw meat thing, rather than cooked.  And they have been subtly suggesting that I buy them some frozen baby chicks to eat.

I will move out if you feed the ferrets frozen baby chicks. :angry: Just so you know.

Meat comes in the grocery store, shrinkwrapped.

Yes, it DOES TOO.

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

K

Basil endive parmesan shrimp live

Lobster hamster worchester muenster

Caviar radicchio snow pea scampi

Roquefort meat squirt blue beef red alert

Pork hocs side flank cantaloupe sheep shanks

Provolone flatbread goat's head soup

Gruyere cheese angelhair please

And a vichyssoise and a cabbage and a crawfish claws.

--"Johnny Saucep'n," by Moxy Früvous

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I didn't... but the ferrets gave me a lot of pressure to underreport the amount of food they ate, as they didn't want to appear too gluttonous.  These days they're on a raw meat thing, rather than cooked.  And they have been subtly suggesting that I buy them some frozen baby chicks to eat.

I will move out if you feed the ferrets frozen baby chicks. :angry: Just so you know.

Meat comes in the grocery store, shrinkwrapped.

Yes, it DOES TOO.

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

K

Kind of bloodthirsty.

I guess she wants you to use live chicks so it is more sporting. I'd think that the feathers going everywhere would be a problem.

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Wednesday (continued)

When I got home from work last night, I was a bit mawkish so ordered out for steamed pork and chive dumplings from a local Cantonese takeout palace. Also got a vegetable spring roll and a container of brown rice.

Scarfed the dumplings and roll. Had half of the brown rice with leftover keema mattar and onion chutney. Iced blueberry oolong tea.

Not sure what to do about dinner tomorrow, but Veselka's is on the horizon.

-------

Thursday, 21 August 2003

LOTS of bottled water throughout the day. Poland Spring wins again.

Fruit cup for breakfast -- watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, strawberries, blueberries, banana, mango and pineapple. Also cottage cheese, blanched almonds, raisins and shredded coconut on top.

Salt and vinegar potato chips as a snack.

Lunch was "veal meatloaf". This apparently was ground veal that the kitchen thought to shape into a mystery meatloaf. With an herb mushroom sauce, it went down surprisingly well. :hmmm: Green beans almondine and roasted squash as sides. A banana for dessert. (I try to eat A LOT of fruit each day. Satisfies my sweet tooth craving...but sometimes the spirit is weak, ya know?) A roll with chipotle garlic butter....wow.

Munching on some trail mix now...

(to be continued...)

Suzanne: its a partnership with Marriott Food Service. MFS has been employed by my firm for at least 13 years going strong -- they were there when I started at my firm in 1990. Still, I can't help but compare food services with other firms, like for instance the one provided by Davis Polk & Wardwell. I once went there for lunch while visiting a friend several years ago...their cafeteria blows the one at my firm away by leaps and bounds. Metaphorically speaking -- foodwise -- it's like the difference between Babbo and San Domenico. :blink:

Soba

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baby chicks indeed. foul, foul, fowl. :wacko:

Soba, what does the 70 mean at the end of your screen name? Number of bowls of soba noodles you'd like to consume per diem?

I always assumed it was the year he was born, since I know we are the same age and I was born in 1970.

But it could have something to do with soba I guess. :blink:

Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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About my handle -- when I first joined eGullet, I was under the handle "SobaAddict", but shortly afterwards there was some sort of glitch -- can't remember what it was exactly (maybe Rachel and/or Jason can explain) -- that caused a bunch of users to reset their passwords. This would've been around March 2001. I'm not sure exactly if I forgot my password or something but I remember distinctly not wanting to bother with this small administrative detail so I just created a new screen name and explained on the boards that SobaAddict and SobaAddict70 were one and the same.

Yes, Kristin, the "70" refers to part of my birth year. I was born in 1970 as well....but MY birthday is on Christmas Day. :sad: This is part of the reason why I'm not a fan of Christmas specifically and holidays in general.

Thursday (continued)

For the uninitiated or non-NY eGulleteers among us, Veselka's is an Eastern European/Russian (or Ukranian) coffee shop/diner located on 2nd Avenue near 9th Street in the East Village. Veselka's is primarily known for being open at all hours of the day and evening, and serves great renditions of EE/Russian classics such as borscht, cabbage soup, stuffed cabbage, kasha varnishkes, pierogies and blintzes. They do diner fare like hamburger deluxes and sloppy joes, but I've learned that the Eastern European stuff is the way to go.

I didn't have dinner at Veselka's but I was there for a late night snack.

Dinner: I actually felt like Japanese food but not sushi, so takeout from one of the innumerable Japanese places in my neighborhood. Clear soup, the ubiquitous salad with iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber and that orange/carrot dressing that I can't quite deconstruct. Zaru soba, topped with minced scallion and bonito. I went the extra mile when it got to my place, and also had on hand sesame oil, furikake and Mrs. Dash. Also -- spicy crunchy scallop maki roll (crunch provided by tobiko which coated the outside of each section) and saba sashimi. You can thank Jinmyo for turning me into a mackerel freak. :wink: Evian.

Later, I got a craving for cabbage soup, so I hailed a cab and went down to Veselka's. Had a nice bowlful of cabbage soup, thick with chunks of potatoes and chicken, and melt-in-your mouth cabbage. Couple of slices of challah to go along with that. A mini-fruit tart to finish things off for the evening. LOTS of water.

Now that I'm thinking of borscht, I may go to the West Village for dinner tonight (Friday). There's a place on MacDougal called the Olive Garden or Olive Tree (can't remember exactly what the exact name is, but it's NOT that OG we all know and love (to hate)). This Olive-something is located above a comedy club and has your typical diner food along with Greek/Mediterranean stuff like shish kebabs, hummus and babaghanouj. Their borscht is a meal in itself -- cabbage, beef, potatoes, carrots. Sour cream. A couple of slices of pumpernickel bread to accompany things. Will report back later.

Friday, 22 August 2003

I never eat breakfast at home, since I can just grab it at work. Just had my first bottle of Poland Spring, along with a breakfast burrito: scrambled eggs, roasted onions, peppers, tomatoes, spinach and feta cheese. The cafeteria serves breakfast burritos as part of their staple breakfast items. Past burrito fillings include turkey bacon and onions; roasted tomatoes, onions and peppers; chorizo, roasted garlic and chicken; and spinach and mushrooms. Today's has got to be my favorite yet.

(to be continued...)

Soba

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Friday, 22 August 2003

I never eat breakfast at home, since I can just grab it at work.  Just had my first bottle of Poland Spring, along with a breakfast burrito:  scrambled eggs, roasted onions, peppers, tomatoes, spinach and feta cheese.  The cafeteria serves breakfast burritos as part of their staple breakfast items.  Past burrito fillings include turkey bacon and onions; roasted tomatoes, onions and peppers; chorizo, roasted garlic and chicken; and spinach and mushrooms.  Today's has got to be my favorite yet.

Soba, I think breakfast burritos are totally underrated, and I wish someone near the ol' day job here would sell them (and take on the responsibility for my waistline in the process). I remember when my aunt was re-tooling her cooking style, because her two young sons had just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and the breakfast burrito became a total staple for them.

A few years ago, when they wrote a couple of books that were published by the American Diabetes Association, they included several excellent BB recipes...I'll find them at home and post 'em if anyone's interested (I'm pretty darned sure I can get permission to do that if I need to, since they're my cousins and all).

This is a great blog--I'm just put Veselka in my palm pilot and will need to plan a trip there soon, I think. Thanks, Soba! :cool:

K

Basil endive parmesan shrimp live

Lobster hamster worchester muenster

Caviar radicchio snow pea scampi

Roquefort meat squirt blue beef red alert

Pork hocs side flank cantaloupe sheep shanks

Provolone flatbread goat's head soup

Gruyere cheese angelhair please

And a vichyssoise and a cabbage and a crawfish claws.

--"Johnny Saucep'n," by Moxy Früvous

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