How Much Yoga Do I Have to Do to Burn Off My Lunch?

Do you remember The Raccoons? You know, that Canadian cartoon about a bunch of scrappy raccoons that prevented some evil aardvarks and their piggy minions from ruining their forest? Of course you do because I'm talking to myself here. I mean, I even remember that the theme song for The Raccoons was called Run With Us and was sung by a chick that I confused with Alanis (pre-Morissette). I also remember that The Raccoons debut was on some education kids show about fitness.

Of course, I also seem to remember that that guy from The Guess Who was somehow mixed up in all this, so it might not be totally accurate.

Anyways.

300 Calories?

The point is that on this fitness show, some old guy and a pig would demonstrate how many minutes of physical activity you'd have to do to burn off the calories in foods. Like you'd need to do half an hour of jogging to burn off a chocolate bar.

And full-fat yogurt, too!

This is salient because today, before lunch, I went to the gym. In a fit of post-New Year's resolution fanaticism, the gym posted the expected number of burnt calories per class. The yoga class I attended boasted 300 to 600 burnt calories. That probably took care of the VIA Xmas Bleuch, cheese string and Japanese rice crackers I had in the morning, but it was all negated by my lunch of leftover black bean and sausage soup with avocado I had after the class. I did, though, opt not to drink one of the millions of cans of Sprite currently sitting in the office fridge, so there's that.

Fart Food

I remembered to take pictures of the black bean and sausage soup only after I washed the dishes. 

For once that the stupid soup turned out well -- and it was Spousal Unit who made it!  Dammit! -- I forgot to take pictures of the empty plates.  The soup was garnished with avocado cubes and everything.  

Soup is No Longer Served

I think the reason why the black bean soup came out so well was because of the pork fat in the sausage.  I think if that sausage hadn't been in it, Spousal Unit's soup would have tasted just as bland as my totally vegetarian version usually does.  But that's why they make Tabasco sauce.

 

À la recherche du pain perdu

In French, French toast is called "pain perdu" because it's made with old, stale bread (pain=bread, perdu=lost).  Spousal Unit and I are big fans of making French toast out of the stale bread hanging around the house.  Today we made French toast with some week-old sourdough bread.   

We use three eggs.  Many people will tell you to use fewer, but we find that three eggs for half a loaf works.  We also add maple syrup in the batter because a bad cook told me to do that once.

The bad cook in question was the original cook at the vegetarian place I used to frequent when I was in grad school.  She made these gawd-awful wraps and chickpea mushes that gave vegetarian food a bad name.  The only thing she made well was French toast.  One day I asked her the secret of her French toast and she said "maple syrup".  She put maple syrup in the batter.  That made the bread caramelize and gave it a woodsy-sweet taste.

She eventually left -- or was fired, I don't know.  She was replaced by this fantastic cook who turned the place around and totally made it happening.  He got rid of the wraps and added black bean burritos and hemp burgers and blueberry upside-down cake and brownies and then this local celebrity started hanging out there because he was in love with the waitress, but then she left to be a nanny somewhere and he stopped coming and then I graduated and the place was sold and it's probably totally different now.

Anyways.

Because of that first gawd-awful cook, I started adding maple syrup to my French toast batter and never looked back -- except for that time when I made Nigella Lawson's doughnut French toast, but that was because her boobs told me to.

Business Park Grocery Store Rotisserie Chicken

I didn't bring a lunch today.  At lunch, I asked the new guy in the cube next to me if he wanted to go grab lunch.  He said sure, but where.

Do you, fictitious reader, work in a business park?  If you do, you know that there are a zillion places to eat, but you have to drive there.  In other words, there is no wandering around and browsing the restaurants; you have to know where you're going when you get into that car.  And that's why me and the new guy in the cube next to me -- let's call him Al -- that's why Al and I spent the next 15 minutes naming all the places nearby and why we didn't want to go there.

We ended up at the grocery store.  We really wanted burgers, but the burger place is within walking distance of a large hardware company and it's always packed.  So we settled for rôtisserie chicken from the nearby grocery store.    It was not Gordon Ramsey's chicken.

The Return of the Xmas Bleuch

Dammit, Silvia and Rocky!  Because of the two of you I've had to go back to drinking Starbucks VIA Xmas Bleuch in the morning!  Because of you, I needed to down it with a stupid sesame-poppy-seed cracker and water.  But this morning the water cooler was out of order, so I had to drink the tap water and THAT tastes like water with dissolved metal in it.  Fie upon you Rocky and Silvia!  Fie!

Chartreuse Mug looks pretty pissed off.

I tried, Silvia&Rocky.  I tried.  I even looked up stupid online videos about how to use you.  You know what I found out?  I found out that you, Rocky, never actually dispense the right amount of coffee.   So I tried eyeballing the amount of coffee that was going into Silvia.  But no dice.  NO DICE.  The coffee was still weak and revolting. 

I surmised that possibly it was the coffee.  But the coffee is fancy-ass Black Cat Classic Espresso coffee!  It's supposed to be The Shit. 

Being the good little former-scientist I am, I decided to just try my own coffee in the Silvia.  You may remember (if you exist) that my coffee had made the office a little insane when I made it initially.  I expected the same effect this time.

Alas, this was not the case.  I made a double with my coffee and it was OK.  It was way, way better than with the fancy-ass Black Cat coffee, but it still wasn't the same syrupy-strong cup that the Silvia made initially.  Nor was it as tasty as the coffee Desktop Espresso made. 

Obviously something has happened to Silvia in the past two weeks that I've been away.  And obviously Black Cat Espresso is not The Shit.

As such, Silvia&Rocky's Evil Empire has been defeated by the scrappy Desktop Espresso Team.  For now, at least.

Which One's Han Solo?

A Grainy Day: Rice Crackers and Wheat Soup

The office was closed between Xmas and New Year, so it it's only been open since Tuesday.  When I returned to the office today (Thursday), I didn't expect much from the snack closet. I figured it hadn't even been stocked, especially since half the engineers were still on vacation.  But no, the snack closet was stocked -- with the bizarrest food ever!  

There were weird ranch-flavoured baguette bites, the stupid sesame-poppy-seed crackers, Costco brand granola bars, two-bite cinnamon rolls (!) and Japanese-style rice crackers.  Oh, and in the fridge there was some kind of onion dip that Linda, The Office Manager and God of the Snack Closet, said was the bestest thing ever.  I'm sure it tasted great, but it included such tasty ingredients as monosodium glutamate, so I stayed away from it even as she scooped some into Jim from QA's plate.   

Instead I ate the rice crackers and sesame-poppy-seed crackers.  What's left here are the nori-covered crackers that I hate.  Nori tastes like dead fish.

For lunch I had leftover wheat and lentil soup.  It was from a package.  I thought I was buying red lentil and barley soup.  Instead it was wheat.  Whatever.  It was edible.  

Not Barley Red Lentil Soup

Desktop Espresso To The Rescue!

I returned to the office today and found that (1) the Rocky Doser/Grinder and fancy-ass coffee had arrived and that (2) no one was making espressos with the Silvia.

Bad Silvia! Bad!

I figured that, you know, I'd give the old girl a whirl.  I tried 5 times to make an espresso.  FIVE TIMES!  And each time, it sucked.  I blame the Rocky Doser as well as Silvia.  The doser never put out the right amount of coffee.  Ever.  And Silvia?  Even with the right amount of coffee and the right tamping of the stupid coffee, it made a shitty coffee.  It was cold.  It had no crema.  It was bitter.  Maybe the coffee sucked.  I don't know what it was but by 2pm I had had enough!  It was time for Desktop Espresso to come to the rescue!

The Undisputed Champ!

I made some coffee with Desktop Espresso and it was tasty!  I gave some to the guy in the cube next to me (who is now in the cube down the aisle from me, thanks to a cube reshuffling) and he was very happy!  He hadn't had an espresso since Silvia had displaced Desktop Espresso as the coffee maker of choice.

By the end of the day, two more people had approached me about getting in on the Desktop Espresso coffee.  Take that, Silvia!  I knew that Desktop Espresso had nothing to fear!