Food porn takes flight.

When I look back over the past few months of this blog, aside from the air-travel stuff, there’s an awful lot of references to food. One of, if not the, greatest passions of my life – it’s also been (rightly or wrongly) an emotional crutch, a distraction, a pleasure and a pain.

I have wanted to have a blog about food for so long, but have never really had a purpose, you know, something that made it different. So I went out and instead of a purpose, I found a porpoise – so the blog is all about how to eat water-park inhabitants.

It’s not, www.eatsmeetswest.biz is the blog that charts my indoctrination into an entirely new cuisine for me. Above and beyond having a Thai Green Curry in Peckham, my knowledge of real Thai food is pretty slim. Now, I’ve been to Thailand a few times and indeed, when I started this blog, the first entry was in fact a recap of my extremely expensive holiday in Phuket. When I read that now and look at me now, so much has changed – and with KK co-editing for me (he’s the brains behind the menu’s) it’s full rice steamer ahead!

Anyway, www.eatsmeetswest.biz is my our endeavour – it’s less of a blog and more of a place to store my online recipes. You know, when I started blogging, like emw.biz — I did it for me and if it was read by friends and family, well that was their benefit. This new blog is my place to keep my memories of learning, loving and longing for new foods. 

Ghin Khao!*

 

 

* Let’s eat!

The last straw?

I went on a cruise last week. I’ve wanted to have a vacation on a boat for as long as I can remember. To set sail from Manhattan, with a Tiffany blue sky is a unique experience, watching the tip of America’s centre fade away as you feel the gentle chop of waves and the brisk air against your skin. 

We were heading for Sweden, well, something Swedish actually. Ikea Redhook, for a shopping expedition. I was certain that although we had gone because we wanted to purchase just one item (a silicone spatula) that we would walk out with no end of gnargs, fnargs and komss. 

The water taxi to Red Hook is A LOT OF FUN. It’s not quite the Isle of Wight ferry, but it’s damn close (sorry Sean). It’s clean, immaculate and came in flatpack form with an allen key. Who was allen anyway?

The store really is big. I mean, like HUGE. Bigger than this season’s Real World house (currently showing on MTV, check local listings) and bigger than most of the port that surrounds it. It’s the world’s largest cobalt blue lego brick – and everything within is available in huge quantities.

So shop we did – sensibly and frugally, getting just what we needed (3 mini palm trees as 79 cents, a roasting tray, tea lights and rice bowls) and hit the cafeteria for a snack.

KK had the Chicken Nuggets and Fries – obviously to spite me. And proceeded to empty half the salt from the dead sea onto his carbohydratey goodness. 

I, on the other hand (not that KK was on my hand, as it were) had the roast salmon and vegetables. As the meal was being plated by a man who had a rare form of dyslexia that prohibited him from comprehending the phrase ‘low-fat’ his ladle dipped in to a sauce.

The salmon was 300 calories. The sauce, fruit based (Swedish) was probably 3000. I said ‘do I need that’, he said ‘it’s what you asked for’ and proceeded to deposit a bee’s nest of weight gain onto my plate. You do indeed get what you ask for.

Orange juice to accompany, in one of those irritating boxed that take a 34 year old 2 hours to open and a 2 year old 3 seconds. I looked in vain for a straw. None. Ikea are selling probably a million of these orange cartons a day and no straws. Not even the little one that used to be glue gunned onto the side of the carton. 

I walked to the cashier – who was aksing her friend something, and asked her ‘we don’t stock straws’. Who the hell ’stocks’ straws? It’s not Lladro or Petunias – it’s cutlery for drinks.

Anyway, we got it open, finished our meals and took the subway back – the thought of the water ferry at night had a ‘US Airways on Final Approach’ feel to it.

179

I don’t want to harp on about it, but that’s my weight in pounds right now. I think that’s 3 Oprah’s (my definition of about 40 pounds, which she wheeled out on a trolley a few years ago, before the cheesecake struck back).

Having calculated my BMI on the NHI website I’m a 25. Which is .1 off of being ‘normal weight’. This is a massive achievement for me – and my insane Dr. who actually gave me a piece of medically sponsored paper with my weight this time last year – and a couple of weeks ago.

Clearly I have lost another 6 pounds since then. So the new me versus the old me is causing some concern to friends who I haven’t seen for some time. I do not have the AIDS, nor Cancer – what I do have is someone in my life who is passionate about food (we watch more food television than anyone I know, by rights we should be the size of houses).

And as you’ll you may see from my Facebook page I have gone to the extent of creating a ‘food porn’ folder – into which I place pictures of the stupendously tasty meals that we are concocting.

When I say ‘we’ I actually mean KK – he does the science part and I’m the big chopper. So much so that I gave my chopping finger a blister just last week. 

It’s been a tough couple of months (we will come onto that) and I think my body has retrenched into looking after itself – which is both welcomed and a welcome distraction.

I suppose what I’m saying is, when the chips are down – don’t eat them.

An homage to Ross.

Ross Weinstein (a very clever friend of mine who works at News Force, an organisation that invited me to be on its advisory board) is prone to photographing his meals. 

So I have today.

I’ve been under the ‘asian spell’ recently and culinary wise that’s come through in my cuisine. Today was seared tuna with Ponzu and Wasabi, grilled scallop with fresh lime served with carrot, sesame and vinegar and salad with ginger dressing.

I’ve really Asian’d the fuck out of this one. And it was completely delicious. Contact me for the recipe (although there’s not much more to it that than). Ponzu is worth finding – we had to go to 3 stores to find it and got the last one in WholeFoods at Columbus Circle, possibly the busiest supermarket in the solar system.

Lamp. Repositioned.

Lamp. Repositioned., originally uploaded by J L Sanchez.

This is not the title of some Dreamworks SKG kack short film featuring
birds on a telegraph wire (you know who you are).

It is the delightfully stylish standard lamp that I have had to patriate to
my bedroom. Seeing as it has no artificial light source at all.

If this is a standard lamp, does that mean there is a sub-standard lamp?
Would that be a shorter desk lamp? Or just contain more Chinese melamine?

Cindy and I arrived home to our seperate quarters to discover 2 huge
triffid size plants in our bedrooms. Bath towell all over the floor and
dirty plates left here – but its ok, as we know have 2 plants that will
rape us in our sleep and we’ll only notice when all leaves fall out in
Autumn.

Today I finished my first book and truly loved and relished having my
fingers on pages. Even after I’d swam 50 lengths to see a rivulet of water
traverse my page post departing from my hot brow was captivating.

But not as much as my new diet.

We will call it the Cindy. It goes like this:

Breakfast- eggs boiled, 2 of. 1 grilled tomato. A fresh fruit plate,
coffee. 30 minutes of horizon staring.

Lunch – nada, nothing,niet. Apart from the oh so subtle bubbling of my
flesh as it bonds with the sun lounger.

Dinner – a 3 course meal, which here is verging on microscopic which we
both agree is a GOOD THING.

Starter: more of an amuse bouche (do you think ‘water-boarding’ would sound
nicer if it was in French? Or ‘bail out package’ I always thought that
was a gay man’s first action in the sauna)… Tuna, raw, rolled in
peppercorns with wasabi.

Main course: fish or lamb. No carbs. This was the My Little Pony of lambs
tonight.

Dessert: always persuaded by Cindy and never let down. Although I’m not
quite down with so much sauce art on the plate (you know those squeezies
that make great food look like an epileptic lose of bowel rodent has been
trapped under the cloche.).

Coffee. Pondering. Laughter and a bit, just a teensy eensy bit of ‘look at
this powerpoint’….

No fucking sign of Richard on the email for a gad about now; so sleep
beckons. The plan for tomorrow – same as… The storm of iMedia fast
approaching!

Tomorrow: what Sarah Palin did for me yesterday (and its a little racy)…

Schlafen sie gut in das bed (love ya Seany!)

The kind of honesty this world needs.

Back to Denver.

Shall we just go through my day so far?

Up at 5am to catch an 8am flight from La Guardia, which is remarkably on time. It’s also jammed full and my upgrade didn’t clear, so I’m in seat 8921B. The only respite is the large quantity of quite attractive men. Denver seems to collect the rugged outdoor types. All check shirts and workers tans.

The flight lasts for approximately a week and the only food served comes for 5 dollars (cash only – of which I have none because Jet Blue are credit card only) in a acid green plain box and contains of all things a mini can of tuna. Food fit for a Guantanamo inmate I think.

Finally we land, although it’s more of a drop (I expect we ran out of petrol) and trundle the 54 miles from the runway to the terminal, land is cheap in Colorado. As the sun sets and we arrive it feels like an overnight in the cabin waiting for the doors to open.

We’re a mile high in Denver and yet I’m feeling quite low. I walk off the jet and into the terminal. Starving hungry (I had a slice of ham for breakfast at 5am, although that’s more like a late dinner really isn’t it?) I look for food, a chance to cheat my diet which I resolve in myself by seeing it as a reward for not buying one of their ’snack options’. I walk up to the McDonald’s counter and demand a cheeseburger (I was planning to not eat the bun). At which point the server, who likes like an extra from Oliver! with hair that looks like a sack of rusty nails murmurs something so incomprehensible to me I swear my eardrums were punctured as we fell onto the runway.

Having asked her to repeat what she’d said three times, I realise she’s telling me that it’s still the breakfast menu. Clearly it may be 10am in Denver, but it’s 12 in NYC and I need some food. However, as I’m now so totally infuriated by her inability to speak properly (without regard to my apparent inability to hear properly) I skulk away. And loop the arrivals hall looking for ANYTHING salty and stodgy.

Welcome to healthy Denver. There’s nothing. This is the most beautiful part of America I know, with some good rugged people and outdoorsy types, maybe that explains the drought of bad food options. I’m obviously more furious than ever.

I leave get to the arrivals hall and need food. So I find the ‘Marketplace’ a store that looks like it was decorated by someone who runs those ‘paint your own mug’ shops in destitute towns in Cornwall. There in the corner, beyond the gift cards, stuffed animals, 4 feet long strips of gum and cling filmed chocolate squares sit 2 types of cheese. I buy both and consume them rapidly.

To the taxi and into it straight away (having remembered to get cash). The driver looks like he’s auditioning to be Eddie Murphy, but from the 80’s when it was all Thriller Leather, smiles and copious amounts of ‘recreational drugs’. We exchange dialogue, supposedly but once again I don’t understand him and ask him to repeat what he just said. Unfortunately I can’t hear that either as we are suddenly travelling so fast his words are lost in the sonic boom.

Clearly he doesn’t know how to get to Golden (the other side of Denver and in the mountains and quite lovely) and obviously nor do I. Enter the iPhone 3G, a product so refined and beautiful but burdened with the energy efficiency of a Sherman Tank. I plug in the address, and the little blue dot tells me where I am. Apparently I’m on 14th Street by 10th Avenue in Manhattan and the route is 3 thousand miles and will take one and a half days.

Once again, the iPhone is iAnnoying and promptly rebooted.

GPS working we race to the offices, from what I can see through the speed induced distortion, the landscape is as ever captivating.

Within 30 minutes we arrive at the offices, and I arrive to meet my client, it’s 1030am. I’ve been up since 5am, travelled a couple of thousand miles and eated a stick of processed cheese and some ‘wafer thin’ ham. I’m greeted with ‘how nice to see you, you’ll have plenty of time to prepare, we’ll start the meeting at 2pm’.

Bingo Bango Bongo.