Housekeeping
It’s official. My record keeping is a mess.
While cleaning today, instead of paper writing (the ultimate avoidance technique as the house always needs cleaning), I came across a receipt that I don’t want to lose. It’s not for much, a total of $8.33 (cash) spent on a pound of strawberries, a package of over-priced semi-sweet chocolate chips, an almost impossible to locate bag of popcorn (not microwave) and one banana. All of this, to feed a sweet tooth. Or many sweet teeth.
I occasionally (read: one to two times/week) make the treats for my husband’s institute of religion classes. It all started when I observed the forlorn faces of a group of students one evening, peering hopefully into the large common room with a hopeful “give us a reason to sit around and mingle” look. Such a sad thing, life without food greasing the wheels so conversations can start up and friendships develop. Unfortunately for them, the twin terrors of school and a subway ride make my favored kind of outrageous productions untenable. Instead, I make things like curry-chocolate drizzled popcorn. And it’s fabulously good.
This idea, like so many of the ideas in the world around us, is a borrowed and paraphrased version of various things I see. Vosges Naga bars, chocolate covered popcorn at a birthday party . . . A true case of high meets low. People seem to be willing to pay all sorts of money for a good chocolate bar, so why not play around and make my own fascinating flavors? In other words, I spend my free time coolhunting for my culinary mind. Unfortunately, it’s about time that coolhunting got codified and filed, because like my receipts, I find my ideas scattered.
Recent expenditures of note:
$4.75 (cash) at a taqueria in Bushwick, as part of a culinary expedition with other food studies students. I now have my own little bit of cultural cachet, having eaten at a hole-in-the-wall somewhere close to the L-train Jefferson stop. Yum. Stampede over, loving crowds.
$36 (cash) at Klong with a group of friends to celebrate the short little bit of time when one was actually in town. Yummy food. Really bad lighting (yeah, I’m a bit shortsighted, but when I have to put the candle ON my menu to read it, you have a problem), weird music (trying so hard to be hip, but since I don’t know hip, I have no idea if they succeeded. Probably not.), but I liked the food. Then again, as an eater, I tend to like most food. Sometimes I feel like a pretender amongst the food-lovers of the world, because I am not a connoisseur in most areas. Hot chocolate and cupcakes may be the exception, but even then I couldn’t eloquently explain the differences between various shades of red velvet unless they were in front of me. Then we’d have a great discussion about sweetness balance and overall frosting to cake ratios. Anything else, I find myself somewhere in the middle of the tasting game: jack of all trades, master of none.
$19.88 (credit) to Key Foods for groceries. Boring typical groceries. Except I bought two small chickens, who are now living in my freezer waiting for a nice Sunday dinner.
And, of course, $1500 in rent (check) to my lucky landlord. He will be happy to know that I chose to NOT put plants on the roof.