Where the Fuck is Portneuf Anyways?

This morning I had an omelet with a side of La Sauvagine cheese on toast. 

La Sauvagine is made by Alexis-de-Portneuf.  This morning my Spousal Unit asked me, "Where the fuck is Portneuf, anyway?"  I had no idea.  But my guess is that it doesn't matter because Alexis-de-Portneuf is a subsidiary of Saputo, the Giant Cheese Machine.

Alexis-de-Portneuf also makes Brie de Portneuf. One time I was watching a pretentious cooking show where they were discussing artisanal cheeses.  The guest (because it was one of those cooking shows where there's a different guest each show prattling on about one thing or another) was going on about how sometimes cheeses look artisanal, but aren't.   As an example, he said, "If I buy a brie that says it's from Portneuf, I want it to be from Portneuf and not some industrial fromage."

And hence, it doesn't matter at all where Portneuf is as this cheese is made in some factory in Laval or Brampton.

Last Week, Nobody Ate

Last week, no one ate. Or at least no one took pictures of anything they weren't ashamed of saying they ate.

Of course, you don't care because you, dear reader, are a figment of my imagination. No one has looked at any of the latest posts. So I'm basically talking to myself. Which is awesome. But also slightly crazy.

Anyways.

Last week was the week where I ate so much take-out crap that I started thinking that I was getting high cholesterol and diabetes. I took pictures of some of it, but I didn't want to publish the pictures because I don't want this blog to turn into "This is Why I'm Fat". So I called Irene hoping she had taken some pictures. Unfortunately, she hadn't.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I've been swamped this week! I've been eating little things here and there. And then when I finally sat down for lunch on Friday, my iPhone memory was full and I couldn't even take pictures of it. Didn't you take any pictures at all?"


"I took some pictures, but they were all of fast food. It's all the fault of those stupid Hostess cupcakes. They're a gateway drug!"

"Hostess cupcakes?"

Bless Irene's innocent stomach! She's been in Canada over 20 years yet she's somehow managed to avoid all disgusting snacky cakes to the point of being totally unaware of their branding. I don't know how she does it. Then again, she also drinks a fantastic amount of guarana soda that she gets from this shady convenience store in some random part of town.

I'll leave you with the picture of an empty Cinnabon box. I brought Cinnabon cinnamon buns to work and within two seconds of placing them in the break room a swarm of engineers descended upon them like a pack of piranhas. They were all gone in 5 minutes.

Revenge of The Office Snack Closet

Oh dear.

The office snack closet had been bare for so many days that I had forgotten about its usual bounty. This morning I opened it expecting some stale social tea cookies and maybe a Ritz cracker or two. I was not at all prepared for what I found: Hostess Vanilla Cupcakes! I had never had a Hostess Cupcake, vanilla or otherwise, before. I had heard of them, but never bought one because, you know, snacky cakes are bad for you. Today, though, those vanilla cupcakes were in the snack closet, so they were provided by the God of the Snack Closet (i.e. our office manager, Linda) for me to consume. It was a sign.

Today, as an exception, there is a picture of food. It is the picture of the uneaten Hostess cupcakes. I took one bite and spit it out. That was a vile, vile piece of edible food-like substance!

I didn't know what I had done to offend the God of the Snack Closet, but I promised to atone! I promised to clean the sink and put dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Anything for the God of the Snack Closet to never tempt me with anymore facsimiles of food ever again!

Then one of my coworkers popped by my desk and scarfed down my untouched cupcake and asked me if there were any more in the snack closet.

Pancakes, Or Memories of Home Ec Class

Every time I make pancakes, I think of Home Ec class. You may be too young (or too imaginary) to have ever had to endure Home Economics class in High School, but once upon a time they gave you credits for sewing a pillow case.  

It wasn't always this way:  At one point Home Ec was a class that taught teen girls how to manage a household so that their families wouldn't go broke or all die of scurvy.  While the girls were learning to balance budgets and meals, the boys were in shop class, learning how to best sever their limbs.  

By the time I hit High School, though, Home Ec and shop were both co-ed affairs, where everyone learned the absolutely useless skills of building a bird house and making pancakes.

OK, fine, making pancakes is not a useless skill as the proper preparation of morning-after pancakes is an important part of the courtship process.  But the pancakes we made that fateful, random day in Home Ec were never going to get anyone laid a second time.  They were made with margarine instead of butter, for one thing.  At the time everyone thought that trans-fatty margarine was better for you than butter and it was the duty of our Home Ec teacher -- a woman who had once taught Canadian Pop Sensation, Luba -- to teach us about healthy choices.  For another thing, the pancakes we made were about 3 inches thick and never fully cooked in the middle.  They were a revolting, gooey mess and we all got As for them even though none of us agreed to eat them.  

 

The pancakes I made today, though, were fluffy, tasty, and made with butter.  We ran out of maple syrup, so we ate them with blueberry yogourt.  I think Luba would have approved.

Food: Real and Faux, But Mostly Faux

This morning I woke up early and made myself a healthy breakfast of pocket eggs (eggs in a basket?) and orange-and-peach juice.  It was tasty.  It was nutritious.  It was healthy.  It filled me up and made me ready for the day.  Alls I really wanted was a nice hot chocolate to go with it, but alas, I forgot that I had Ghirardelli instant hot chocolate in the house.

I also totally forgot to take a picture of the empty plate til I was halfway to work.  *sigh*

That was prettymuch it for real food for the day.  

Because I didn't feel like making myself a tuna sandwich for lunch, I ended up not bringing a lunch.  When noontime came around, I had the choice between eating  the Uncle Ben's microwavable rice'n'sauce I keep in the office for emergencies or going out to eat.  I didn't want to get in my car, so I ended up taking out from the greasy spoon cafeteria in the next office building over. 

As today was Friday, they had their usual fish'n'chips.  I've had their fish'n'chips.  It's white fish in a really thick, greasy batter.  The whole thing is fried to death so that the fish is a tough, tasteless wafer.   However, today they also had quesadillas on the menu.  All the guys in the office keep going on about the quesadillas, so I decided to order 'em.  They were...OK?  It was basically chicken, red peppers, onions and cheese between two tortillas.  It was edible.  They gave me two squares of banana bread free (they were in that little baggy at the back).  For a beverage, I chose an A&W Root Beer from the drink fridge in the office.  I figured if I was going to have something revolting for lunch, I might as well also have some high fructose corn syrup to go with it.

 

After lunch, a couple of coworkers and I went to Starbucks.  I should have had the hot chocolate, but I had an espresso.  And I ordered a rice krispy square to go with it.  The rice krispy square was incredibly sweet, so I couldn't finish it.  I finished it at the office with the help of some water (blue cup) and leftover instant Starbucks VIA Xmas Bleuch coffee from the morning (chartreuse mug).  You can see my espresso cup (unwashed from yesterday) in the background,  feeling rejected.

Eating From Home

So you know what's awesome about working from home?  You can eat whatever the hell you want, whenever you want.  Though I do miss the office snack cupboard when I'm working from home, the fact that I can make warm food or make messy food totally makes up for it.

For example, this morning I started my day with a traditional Italian breakfast of hard bread, soaked in water and then smothered in balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt.  It sounds much more revolting than it is.  It's actually rather tasty.   Oh, and it's finger food.  There is no elegant way to eat it.  Your hands will get covered in oil and you may have balsamic dribbling down your chin.   You can't make this for yourself at work.  I mean, fine, you could bring in all the fixins and make it, but then you'd have oily hands and balsamic running down your chin when you'd run into your boss in the lunchroom.

The one thing you can do at home that you totally can't do at work is make yourself a nice, warm meal.  I made myself omurice with some leftover rice.  OK, so I could always go get an omelet from the cafeteria in the tower next door and have a warm omelet for lunch at work, but... But that cafeteria really sucks.  It makes greasy spoon food and smells like oil and their omelets are rubbery and not served on fried rice.   And I wouldn't have been able to wash the whole thing down with Chardonnay if I was at the office.

Of course the downside of working from home is that you have to do the dishes. 

The Acid Burn of Tomato Soup

Occasionally a tech writer has to get together with another tech writer to bitch about tech writer things.  Things like, "How was I supposed to know that I had to document that pressing F2 in Workspace Mode would cause a fire if nobody bothered telling me?!"  

In a totally unrelated note, I'm glad we had our office fire safety training last week.

Anyhoo.

When tech writers need to bitch, they need appropriate food.  They need a food that will enhance their acid tongues.  Foods like tomato and chickpea soup:  red, acidic, hot.  They then need to regain their strength with tasty sandwiches of roast beef and chicken with garlic aïoli and lime avocado sauce.  Sometimes they need to cool down with a light, crisp salad.  

In any case, once they're done their lunch, they have renewed energy and will postpone their plans to quit it all and move to Whitehorse, where they can sit with other writers in midnight sun cafés.

Instead, they'll go back to the office, make themselves an espresso and chase it with a chocolate chip cookie from the snack cupboard.

Grilled Cheeses and Omelets Are Universal Foods

Irene calls me up today and says, "I had a Snad Food Day today!"  So I'm like, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I had a grilled cheese for breakfast and an omelet for lunch!  You always have grilled cheeses for breakfast and omelets for lunch!" 

"Well, not quite.  I do have grilled cheeses for breakfast quite often," I said, "but I typically have omelets for supper.  And that's only on evenings when I don't want to cook."  

"I didn't want to cook for lunch," she said, "so it's the same thing.  Did you notice that the leftover piece of grilled cheese is in the shape of Brazil?"  

Then she told me about the omelet.

Have you seen Tampopo?  Of course you haven't, and not only because you, dear reader, are a figment of my imagination.  I think only 12 people in North America have seen it and I know each and every one of them.  There's something to be said for having a repertoire theatre within walking distance of your university.

Anyways,  Tampopo is a Japanese movie about food.  There's one scene where they make omurice, a Japanese rice omelet.  Irene and I both learned to make omurice after watching that movie.  My omurices, though, usually don't involve tomato sauce or ketchup, but do include tobasco.   Irene's omurice from today included bonito flakes and black sesame seeds, because, like I said, she's a better cook than me.  Also, I don't like the idea of bonito flakes. 

Banana Muffins Fail

Do you live with a small proto-human referred to as a "toddler"?  I do.  It's interesting.  They can't be reasoned with; they can't -- or won't? -- follow simple instructions; and their manual dexterity is somewhat underdeveloped.  They also insist.  And when they don't get their way, they throw themselves on the floor and scream.  

Yesterday I had two mushy bananas sitting around and I decided that they needed to be made into muffins.  My usual muffin recipe takes 3 bananas, so I had to go trolling the internets for a 2 banana recipe.  I found one and was gonna make it while the toddler napped. 

But the toddler did not nap.  Instead the toddler kept running around the apartment like a bat out of hell, so I decided that making muffins would be a "nice activity" to do with it.

Because the recipe only used two bananas, there was more milk and oil in it than my usual recipe (banana being a wet ingredient), so already the texture of the batter was a bit different than usual.  Then the toddler insisted on stirring the batter. 

Toddler are not very dexterous.  The toddler ended up mixing the batter for about half an hour -- without actually having mixed it! -- before I managed to wrench it away from it and actually mix it.  But by then the damage was done.

The resulting muffin was a barely banana-flavoured, gummy, heavy mass.  Its only saving grace were the Ghirardelli (60% cocoa) chocolate chips I threw in.  Those chips would make cardboard palatable!  Prior to discovering these Ghirardelli chips, I used the same chips that my mom used when I was a wee bairn destroying her desserts: the post-war era chocolate-flavoured foodstuff known as Chipits. 

Anyways, the muffins were the only non-soup food I ate all day.  The toddler ate all the chips in the muffins.  The Spousal Unit just kept repeating, "these aren't the same as usual" and only ate half of one.


I've learned my lesson:  always use the 3 banana recipe and don't bake with a toddler.

Irene and I Have Tea

Irene and I don't live anywhere close to each other, so we didn't have tea together.  But we're both sick today and we both had tea today.

Irene always has a vast selection of tea, both herbal and otherwise.  When I think about her place, I always smell tea brewing.  I, on the other hand, only brew tea when I'm sick.  So if you show up at my place and smell tea brewing, it's cuz I'm sick and maybe you should leave and come back another day.

I had my usual Peppermint Amour tea from David's Tea.  I have other herbal teas, but after two decades of trying to convince myself that rosehip, linden and star anise are flavours I like in my warm water, I've given up.  I don't really like herbal tea.  I bought these two fancy teas from David's -- Vata Ayurvedic and Immunizer -- that smelled beautiful in their tins, but when I brewed them I felt like I was drinking pot pourri.  Like, seriously, I felt like I was sipping the essence of a La Cache store.  (Are there still La Cache stores?) 

The only herbal tea I like is mint tea.  That's it.

I brew my tea in a Bodum.  Yeah.  Leave me alone.  At least my mug is cute, though some would say that it's culturally insensitive.

Meanwhile, back at Irene's, she was having a lovely breakfast of Ovaltine sprinkled on bananas.  I thought that sounded kinda revolting, but she assured me that it's the tastiest thing evah and that she's been having this for breakfast since she was a little girl.   I know she's a good cook and all, but I still wouldn't try it.   

I think she also drank some Ovaltine with it.  But that looks like a cold drink and Ovaltine's usually hot.  Maybe you can make Ovaltine cold?  I don't know.  I don't like Ovaltine. 

Apparently I don't like a lot of things.






Then she had her tea.  It's apparently called "Éveil des fleurs" and it's a Chinese Green Tea.  Not only are her dishes, tablecloths and teapots cuter than mine, but her tea even has a cuter name!  Anyways, this tea is apparently a mix of green, white, rose and flower tea.  So there.

The one thing we had in common is that we both used our tea to wash down some Tylenol.

And there you have it:  A tale of two teas. 

Irene Has a Cold, But She Still Ate

Today is a special day.  My friend Irene (pronounced EE-ray-Nee, like in that song by Caetano Veloso -- not because she's pretentious, but because she's Brazilian) heard about the blog and wanted to contribute. 

I was like, Irene, honey, you're an awesome cook and I loves ya to bits, but we neither work in the same office nor live anywhere close to each other.  But she was all, "I'll email you my pictures and tell you what the food was!" So I said OK.

Now a note about Irene:  she's an awesome cook and she was the only person I knew in grad school who knew how to make a proper quiche, so she's going to elevate the level of this blog quite a bit.  She's also an awesome photographer and will make me look bad.  But since no one's reading this, it doesn't matter.

Anyways, on with Irene's lunch.

As the title of the post indicates, Irene has a cold.  Hence, she didn't have a very complicated lunch.  The first picture she sent me was of this lovely clean bowl. 

I called her up and asked her what was up with the cute picture of the clean bowl. 

"Oh.  I washed my dish and fork before I remembered that I was supposed to take pictures of the finished food.  It was risi e bisi, because I'm sick and didn't want to make something too complicated."

There you have it:  When I'm sick, I make frozen fish sticks; when Irene is sick, she makes risi e bisi.  (Risi e bisi, btw, is the fancy Italian name for rice and green peas.  Knowing Irene, they were probably from frozen rather than from the can.)

Next she sent me the picture of her afternoon snack: a banana.  She said it was very sweet.  She couldn't really taste it since her nose is blocked.  She also lamented the slow decline of the banana and the sad news that they were going extinct because of some virus.

The last picture she sent me was of three Ricola wrappers.  "They're for my cough," she said. 

"Do they work for you," I asked.  "They don't work for me at all."

"I don't know.  They taste good, though, and make me feel better."


And there you have it:  The food Irene ate. 

She's very much into this, so I'm guessing her food will feature prominently here.  In fact, I'm guessing her food will appear more often than my food.  If anyone's reading this, you'll probably be happy about that because there are only so many pictures of coffee mugs and tupperware a person can handle.

Food Amongst The Ruins of Good Taste

Today was a bad day for food and conversation at the office.

The snack cupboard was starting to go bare, which meant that the denizens of the office were starting to get grumpy.  I ate the before-last cheese string.  Whomever had the last cheese string neglected to take the empty box out of the fridge, making everyone expect cheese when there was none.

The next thing to go were the chocolate chip cookies.  This huge box of Chunks Ahoy! was opened yesterday.  By 2pm today, there were 2 cookies left.  I took one and left the other on the communal table. Being the nice person I am, I "recycled" the box.  Of course, the "recycling" bin goes into the trash, but I pretend it doesn't to appease my conscience.

In between the cheese string and the cookie courses, there was lunch.  My lunch today consisted of stir-fried leftover rotisserie chicken with rice and carrots with Peri-Peri dipping sauce.  The Peri-Peri did an adequate job at masking the taste of the stir-fry.  For "dessert", I had extra-fat blueberry yogurt.

My lunch purse is hiding the coworker who was sitting across from me and who didn't want his face on the internet.  Presumably he is a fugitive from justice. Or he didn't want to be associated with today's lunchtime discussion about horse husbandry.  Either way.

In which I finally eat something that isn't a grilled cheese.

I finally had something beside grilled cheese for breakfast.  I go through these phases where I'm like "I LOVE grilled cheese!"  or "I MUST have a hard boiled egg to get enough protein for my day!"  My grilled cheese phase is over and not just because I've run out of cheese, though that's pretty motivational.

Anyways, I made oatmeal.  Like real oatmeal, not the stuff in the packet where you add hot water and get a gooey, gummy mess.  There's plenty of that stuff in the office snack cupboard and the only people to eat it are the Gym Guys who believe it's actually equivalent to real oatmeal.

But I digress.

I made oatmeal.  I mixed large flake oats (for texture) with quick oats (for creaminess) and cooked them for about 10 minutes.  I added tonnes of salt and then smothered the whole thing in maple syrup for a sweet'n'salty breakfast.  I washed it all down with some apple juice because we ran out of OJ.

For lunch I has lentil soup with popovers.  Popovers!  They're really easy to make.  And they're really tasty and buttery and make an excellent vehicle for lentil soup, provided your lentil soup tastes of something.  It's actually tough to make lentil soup taste of anything except dirty water.  You have to add in tomatoes and balsamic vinegar and, if you're not opposed to eating animals, prosciutto or speck.  And it absolutely needs salt.  You can't go low salt with lentil soup.

Is that a fish stick I see before me?

Today's lunch was brought to you by sitting at home alone, somewhat sick.  Because of this, I didn't put much effort into lunch.  Instead I just warmed up a Jane's something-something frozen pollock fish fillet thingy.  It was OK. I prefer the beer battered fish that tastes mostly of oil and fat and sad desperation.  This one just kinda tasted of fish, breaded.

I washed the whole thing down with some coffee, natch, and some chocolate.  Now, a note about coffee: I usually buy Kimbo espresso coffee in the black packaging (Napoletano?  Who the fuck knows), but it's been kinda scarce lately, so I've had to buy other coffees.  The before-last time I bought coffee, I bought Illy coffee that costs $14-$16 a container, about $10 more than the Kimbo.  

Now, many people have said to me, "Snaddy, Illy coffee tastes no better than regular $5 coffee.  You just think it tastes better because you paid more for it."  To those people I say "Pffffffffffft!" Especially after I essentially did a blind taste test with Kimbo Gold Medal coffee.  

As the Black Kimbo was still unavailable the last time I went grocery shopping, I bought Kimbo Gold Medal coffee ($6).    That evening, I asked my Spousal Unit to make me an espresso.  I figured he was making it with the Illy since there was still some left.   When I went to taste the coffee, I was amazed at how bitter and tasteless it was.  So I says to the Spousal Unit, I says, "Dude, did you make the coffee with grey water or something?"  And he's all, "Dude, no.  I made it with the new coffee."  And there you have it:  there is a difference between Illy coffee and Kimbo Gold Medal.

See? I eat things other than coffee...

To prove that I eat, here's a picture of the omelette and OJ I had for breakfast.  There ya go.  And if you must know, the omelette was rubbery.  Not shown:  The espresso I made myself right after.

I swear I eat!

It appears that all I ever post about is coffee and snacks and junk food.  But I tells you, I eat!  I do!  I just totally forget to take a picture.  Like on this day (this was what, Thursday?) I had my black beans and rice for lunch and totally forgot to take a picture because the lunchroom was locked in a heated discussion about how dumb children are.  

I didn't remember I was supposed to take pictures of my food til I finished my single short espresso at Starbucks.  It was OK.  I don't know what to say about Starbucks.  On the one hand, I frequent their establishments.  On the other hand, their espressos are never the same way twice.  Sometimes they're bitter; sometimes they're smooth; sometimes they're hot; sometimes they're cold.  On Thursday it was OK.  I did buy some of their "Christmas Blend" VIA coffee.  It's supposed to be "spicy" and "bold" which is code for "tastes like burnt ass".  

Oh, and the Sweet'n'Low packet in the background?  Not mine.  It was my coffee companion's.   I don't do artificial sweeteners.

Eating out is never hard to do.

Did I eat out today?  Yes I did!  I went and got myself a grilled veggie sandwich with goat cheese and a chickpea and tomato soup.  And I washed it all down with a fancy Italian soft drink.   You'd think that a veggie sandwich wouldn't be that filling, but it was! 

I did take it to go, but only because I truly enjoy the lunchroom at work.  The lack of windows, combined with the exceedingly loud foosball table, makes for an enchanting atmosphere. 

I was supposed to go to Starbucks with some workmates, but I forgot and made my espresso anyways.  I paired it with some delightful Danish butter cookies from the snack closet.  

(The snack closet was bare for much too long and riots were imminent.)

I swear I ate something other than coffee and chocolate today!

Twas the day after Halowe'en and all through the office not a healthy snack was consumed, not even a muffin. 

Here we have the very tasty mini Aero bar I had as a mid-morning snack with my coffee.  Look how clean my desk looks.  So uncluttered and pristine.  You'd never know that I had shoved everything to the side to take this picture.

Not pictured: the two mini Kit Kat bars I had already eaten at this point.

I did have an actual lunch, but I totally forgot to take a pictures of it.  I remembered to take pictures after I had my little espresso, made with my electric Bialetti.  It makes two cups and I share with people.  See?  Sharing.  Like in Kindergarten!

Anyways, you can see my chartreuse mug with the leftover morning coffee in it, as well as my navy mug that has water (yes, water) in it.   Oh, and those are my sneakers.  I was hoping you could see the coffee stain on the right one, but it doesn't seem to have come through.

Not pictured:  The mini bags of Cheetos I ate as an after-lunch snack.