Bloodletting

It was probably crummy

It was a bright, unusually warm Tuesday morning when I went to the clinic to have them let my blood.  They required me to fast for 12 hours before they drained me, presumably because they couldn't get accurate sugar readings or some such unless I was completely starving and on the verge of collapse.

After the bloodletting, I really needed to eat something.  In all their infinite wisdom, the owners of the clinic included a Lettieri coffee stand on the ground floor.  I'm sure when these plans were drawn up someone grumbled about corporate something-something-evil, but I was so happy to see coffee and food that the place could have had a giant sign saying "Corporations Will One Day Own Your Soul" and I still would have bought food from them.

As it stood, it was a Lettieri, makers of rather tasty coffee.  I ordered a Sumatran coffee with a chocolate chip muffin.   The lady at the counter demanded that I drink the coffee before driving and I wondered why -- I felt remarkably OK.

Anyways,

I went to work (cuz I felt remarkably OK) and, as I stepped off the elevator, the world started to move.  The rest of the day was spent trying to get the office to stop spinning.  I drank the (very tasty) Sumatran coffee, ate the muffin and then got yelled at by coworkers for not drinking any water.  

HFCS and caffeine save the day!

So I had water, a rather disgusting meal of "Honey Garlic Chicken" from the lunch counter (not pictured because I rid myself of that vile goo as fast as possible), and then downed a Sprite and more coffee.  I used Desktop Espresso, natch.

Eventually the world stopped spinning and I was able to drive home.

Not a Pretty Coffee

Goddamned htc Whatever S Phone!  I took pictures today, uploaded them, and was all impressed at how easy it was (at the price of Google owning my mortal soul), only to find that the photos were awful.  AWFUL.  But, you know, no one reads this blog for the pictures anyways (or reads this blog, period), so I wrote up the whole, stupid post.

Bleuch.

Then I started wondering if I didn't actually know how to use the stupid phone's camera, so I tried to upload them again using a different image size and ta-da! it was all awesome!

Except for the fact that the phone's Blogger app overwrote my published post.  Fuckers. 

Anyways. Onward and upward.  Or something.  Whatever.  S.

To be different, I bought Starbuck VIA Veranda Bleuch in the hopes that the milder roast would not have the burnt ass taste of most Starbucks bleuchs.  But no.  Instead it tasted like watered-down burnt ass.  Lovely.  This shouldn't have surprised me given that the description of the coffee at the back of the pack was reminiscent of Tweeks coffee on South Park.

Fortunately, there was a lunch-and-learn today for the R&D team and they had leftover pizza, Doritos and Lays that they kindly left for us in the break room.  The Cheesy Doritos took care of aftertaste from the bleuch.

Doritos! Doritos! Doritos!

Food Kirsten Ate, But Which Shouldn't Have Been Eaten By Anyone

A Special Report on Fecaliscious Chocolate by Kirsten Koza, misadventure travel writer.
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Snad, I hope you never see this on my dining table again – for many reasons. Normally I’d have sent you a photo of a wrapper. But the fact is, I can’t finish these bars of Maria Tepoztlan chocolate / xocolatl, made by Villa Vainilla.

You can taste the gritty reality of life in Mexico!

My parents were fooled into their purchase by the pretty boxes with Fair Trade stamped on the outside, while they did some last minute shopping as they left Guatemala - obviously without their reading glasses because the chocolate is apparently from Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. I say “apparently” because I’ve been virtually driving around the back streets of Merida for days, using Google Street View, looking for Villa Vainilla’s factory in Cuidad Industrial. I can’t find it.

This chocolate is grit held together by possibly some sort of industrial lube or peasant toe jam (not listed in the ingredients) that coagulates in your mouth and finally dissolves (but not fast enough) so you are left with just a mouthful of debris that honestly feels like something swept off a floor. I even can taste someone's banana peel, in the dark chocolate and cinnamon bar - overt banana peel. And the bars are boxed and then sealed in foil. So I'm thinking the banana peel is actually in the chocolate - not because my parents were smuggling bananas into Canada (which they weren't).

I wish wish I wasn't polite and didn't try so hard to appreciate the chocolate for my parents’ benefit - as if it was a taste that I was going to acquire or explore. After my folks left my place, I inspected the ghastly product and saw hacho en Mexico written on the box and immediately cracked a Montezuma joke. Six hours later, I was running from my bed to the toilet. I thought my two day bout of Montezuma’s Revenge that followed was most likely from the chocolate, but it could have been because I mocked the Aztec King.

Then, when I was feeling better, I did something really stupid. I thought I should have one more bite of the chocolate to see if it was as bad as I remembered it. It took three hours for Montezuma to pay another visit. I have no one to blame but me - but I wanted to make sure I was being fair. Villa Vainilla didn't deserve my quest for fairness. Even if their chocolate didn’t cause me to spend sleepness nights sitting on the toilet – it still tastes like shit.

I read in the Nutrition Advisor that Montezuma drank 50 cups of unsweetened cocoa a day. A mug of homemade hot chocolate today, made with a good brand of cocoa, has about 3.8 grams of fibre in it - so one can imagine how much more fibre would have been in Montezuma's (I always assumed that all that fibre was the truth behind Montezuma's Revenge). His cocoa was probably much like Maria Tepoztlan's debris filled chocolate - this is probably really authentic Aztec chocolate - but then Aztecs used to do things like genital blood-letting before leaving for work in the morning, enjoyed human sacrifice, and Aztec burglars used to carry around the severed arm from a female who died during childbirth because they believed that made them invisible (did I just make that last bit up - I don't think so) - anyway  - it stands to reason then, that their chocolate wasn't very good, either.

Less revoltingly stinky than the chocolate.

I'm still sick. It took all my will to open the boxes of chocolate and just take a picture. I'd rather have opened my box containing the shrunken head I bought last week - and he makes my entire house reek - I'd rather kiss my stinking little Amazon on the lips. 

From Kirsten Koza (www.kirstenkoza.com)

Too Tech Stupid To Take Pictures

I usually take pictures for this blog using my inherited iPhone 3 that barely works as a phone, let alone anything else. 

The iPhone has fallen on concrete, asphalt and ceramic tile without (too many) dire consequences.  I mean, sure the backlight didn't work sometimes and the mic would cut out randomly, but, you know, I could live with it. 

Actually, I couldn't.  I was looking into a new phone.  I hadn't made a decision about what to get when I dropped the iPhone on my parquet floor.  That did it.  The screen shattered. 

In order to maintain the integrity of my SIM card, I replaced the iPhone with an htc something-something S that I don't know how to use.

The long and the short of this is that until I figure out how to use this new phone, there will be guest submitters.   You might be happy about that (if you exist) as you'll have a happy reprieve from endless pictures of tupperware containers.

It's too bad, though, as I had recently taken a picture of a good coffee made using Silvia.

If you exist and would like to submit anything, let me know.  I'm guessing that if you're reading this, you're probably someone I know in real life who feels sorry for me.

I Refuse to Stop Taking Pictures of My Empty Plates!

The office (well, the whole building) receives The Globe and Mail newspaper daily.  It gets left in the breakroom where everyone reads it over lunch or snacks or other breaks.  It was a good newspaper a couple of decades ago, but has since become a bastion of dumbass in a sea of stupid.  Their "Life" section is an especially poor example of what constitutes journalism, with crowd-sourced advice columns and reader-submitter "essays" about how having knee surgery made them appreciate gardening. 

Today, along with a story about how Beyonce is breastfeeding or something, there was an opinion piece about how everyone needs to stop taking pictures of their food unless they have something interesting to say about it. 

I don't know what this guy's problem is, but I'm not going to stop taking puerile pictures of plates just because he told me to!  In fact, I'm going to take more!  And say less!  There!  How'd you like that, silly Globe&Mail guy?  Pfffffffffffffff!!!!!!!!!

Not Avocado and Cheddar Crepes

We were supposed to have avocado and cheddar crepes.

Whaddya mean "Ewwwwwwwww"? Hey! Come back here!

Lacking a certain je ne sais quoi.

Avocado and cheddar crepes are tasty! They aren't as good as brie and avocado crepes, but they're pretty damned good. The coolness and firm creaminess of the avocado counters the hot, salty oiliness of the cheese, making for a very satisfying taste experience, whether in a crepe or in a sandwich.

And avocado and cheese crepes are even better when smothered in maple syrup.  Though in all fairness even cardboard tastes awesome smothered in maple syrup.

OK.  Are we good now?  You're gonna try this at least once, right?  No?  Well, too bad, this is my blog and my food.

Anyways, all the avocados were bad despite looking firm and being bought only two days prior, so we just had cheese crepes.

Powdered Donuts!!!

Monday morning, I wandered into the break room, asked Mitch, one of the engineers, how his weekend was and opened the snack closet.  The week before we had hosted some of our salesdudes for training, so we had a bounty of crap.  But this week, we weren't expecting all that much. 

Mmmm....donut!

 

You can imagine the surprise on our faces -- Mitch and I -- when we saw a vat of powdered donuts sitting in the snack closet.  Mitch dug in right away, not at all concerned that he was the first one to open the container (I'm usually too shy to open virgin packages).  He popped one in his mouth and mumbled "Mmmmm...fresh!"  Then he popped in two more.

I took one right away.  OK, I took two.  They were soooooo tasty!  I don't know what it is about grocery store powdered donuts that makes them so fantastic.   Maybe it's the way the soft, bland yellow donut interacts with the cool, soft, powdery sweetness of the sugar coating...or something.  

They were all gone by Tuesday, but everyone in the office thanked the God of the Snack Closet i.e., Linda the office manager, for the bounty!