food

Egg quest complete!

I didn’t even realize I was on an egg quest until I went shopping for eggs.

Of course, in this time of panic-buying and hoarding, the grocery store had no eggs. Like, none at all, not even the most expensive, free range “the chickens that laid these live better lives than you do” eggs.

I went across the street to Shoppers Drug Mart as they have a few aisles devoted to groceries. I wasn’t expecting them to have any eggs, but lo, they did! I grabbed a dozen (I didn’t see any signs indicating limits but I’m not a panic-filled hoarder) and went to the checkout…where the cashier was standing behind a giant plexiglass partition. It had a cutout in the bottom for me to slide the eggs through so he could scan them. He did so and placed the eggs and the receipt at the end of the till, away from his body.

It was a bit weird.

But now I can have eggs for breakfast for at least six days.

When The Onion comes to the local mall

I was in Metrotown this past weekend and as always it is a bewildering experience, as there are about five thousand stores and a hundred times as many people buzzing through the mall between them.

I did get a pair of glasses and prescription sunglasses at Lenscrafters, though. The experience was surprisingly easy, the woman who helped me was knowledgeable and a couple of promotions made the two pairs (eight eyes, lol!!) decently affordable. The only downside is they won’t be ready until I am partway through vacation. My own fault for waiting so long to get my prescription updated.

While there I spotted an outlet that is Coming Soon® and did a double-take, because it seemed more like something you’d see in an Onion story than an actual retail store. But no, it is real:

I especially like the guy on the left looking like he is about to plow into some meter-high pink monster cone.

It turns out Sweet Jesus is a chain that started out east and is only just starting to open locations out west, like the one above in Metrotown. Their menu seems to be based primarily around frozen treats containing 32,000 calories each. I’m not necessarily objecting.

It’s kind of a ballsy name, though. Do Christians feel good about going there for sundaes? Is it sacrilegious or sacrilicious?

I’ll find out this summer, because I’m definitely going to try…something.

I ate a McMuffin today

McDonald’s recently launched an all-day breakfast menu with a kind of dumb ad campaign featuring “apm” to signify the zany ability to order pancakes in the a.m. and p.m.

sausage and egg McMuffin
470 calories. I don’t care. Much.

I happened to be downtown at 1:30 this afternoon and remembered the all-day breakfast menu, while simultaneously remembering it had been a long time since I had an Egg McMuffin®. These two thoughts converged and I found myself ordering a Sausage and Egg McMuffin at the Waterfront Centre McDonald’s. I averted my eyes from the menu behind the counter as they now show the calorie count of each food item (kudos to them for doing this, though).

Because all-day breakfast is radical and new they had to make my McMuffin fresh. I was given a number on a plastic card for my order.

The number was 42.

This couldn’t have been a coincidence.

The Sausage and Egg McMuffin was surprisingly tasty. I mean, it’s exactly what it appears to be…an English muffin, a sausage patty, an egg and a slice of processed cheese. But still, it was yummy.

I feel guilty now, but in a slightly profound sort of way, like it was destiny.

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Food fussiness then and now

When I was a kid I was a fussy eater. I would have been content to live on pizza and chocolate if it had been permitted, but my parents were strangely not amenable to such a limited, if delicious diet. Instead I ate most of the food put before me. But not all of it. Here’s a few items I regularly passed on:

  • tomatoes
  • onions (unless they were onion rings, because deep frying makes everything better)
  • broccoli
  • mushrooms
  • cauliflower
  • peppers
  • Brussel sprouts
  • meat loaf (I actually ate this, but grudgingly)
  • bread crusts (I didn’t actually dislike bread crusts but somehow my mom thought I did. I eventually told her to leave them on.)
  • liver
  • turkey necks
  • mincemeat tarts
  • anchovies

As an adult I became much more open to eating just about anything, as long as it was edible and wasn’t still moving on my plate when served. That said, there are a few things from the above list that I still won’t touch:

  • Brussel sprouts are horrible anti-food. You will never convince me otherwise.
  • I still don’t care much for meat loaf. Something about the combination of textures and flavor puts me off.
  • liver is yuck, like chewing on sour shoe leather
  • eating turkey necks is just weird
  • mincemeat tarts are grossbuckets; if you also happen to have butter tarts, all is forgiven
  • anchovies on pizza is disgusting. Why not just roll a salmon over the pizza then cover it with a box of salt? The taste experience will be largely the same.

Coca Cola Less Than Zero

Last week I neglected to bring a lunch to work so I headed to a nearby food court and chose to consume some of the edible products offered at McDonald’s. Specifically I had a McChicken Meal, which consisted of:

  • McChicken sandwich. A couple of limp white bread buns filled with shredded lettuce, something like mayo in copious quantities and a deep-fried patty that was allegedly scraped together from some parts of a chicken. The most remarkable characteristic was the blandness of it all, like flavor was specifically worked out of it as an unnecessary part of the burger.
  • French fries. McDonald’s fries are often thought of favorably and I’m not sure why. Even if you move past the nerd debate over beef tallow/vegetable oil for the frying, the best thing I can offer is the fries are hot and crisp. They have the skins removed, so there’s no particular flavor (see a trend?) and enough salt to make a family of deer happy. I was going to use some ketchup on them but adding to the briny taters seemed like sprinkling gunpowder on your sticks of dynamite. Is it really necessary?
  • Coca Cola Zero. I tried to order water (even in a kill-the-earth plastic bottle) but they had none. I was given a cup to fill from the soda fountain. I figured they’d have soda water there but apparently not, so I chose the sugar-free option of CCZ. It has been several years since I’ve had a carbonated beverage so my sinus cavities were a bit frightened by the bubbles but it did indeed taste like the Coke I remember from days of yore. I can’t imagine how people drink this stuff regularly. I managed to finish the half-cup I filled and only as an attempt to wash away the salt coating my tongue, throat and everything else inside my body.

On a scale of 1 to 5 Twinkies, I rate the McChicken Meal 4.5 Twinkies. The Twinkie scale works in reverse, so more Twinkies is worse.

I’m packing my lunch every day now.

My grocery list

In case I ever become a famous author, here is my grocery list from today for someone to put in hardcover to see if it really would sell. It also highlights how unexciting my diet is and why I managed to lose 40 pounds.

  • fat-free cottage cheese
  • 3 hothouse tomatoes
  • 1 head of green leaf lettuce
  • Grape Nuts cereal (a friend refers to it as ‘dirt and sawdust’)
  • Tomato and balsamic rice crackers (this is my ‘fun’ food)
  • Vitasoy unsweetened soy milk (for the dirt and sawdust above)
  • 1 can 6-bean mix
  • 2 tomato & basil boneless & skinless chicken breasts (I usually make my own marinade but got lazy today)
  • 1 dozen large white eggs

I should note this is not an all-inclusive list since I walk to the store and have so far been unsuccessful in growing additional arms for carrying extra bags, but it’s a good overview of some of the staples I regularly pick up.

I am probably one of three people in North America to eat breakfast cereal with no processed sugar in it (zero in both the cereal and milk). I cheat a little by sprinkling a dozen fresh blueberries on top, though. Yum.

There are times when I use dried beans and others when I go for the can. The only thing I don’t like about dried beans is the long prep time (an hour or so), especially when it’s already quite warm inside. If I can (ho ho) I try to buy beans that are low sodium. Most stores offer this now.

The cottage cheese is my usual go-to snack for later in the evening. The veggies are for my turkey sandwiches, which are quite yummy, if I do say so. Eggs are for breakfast, obviously.

What’s missing from this list vs. one I would have made slightly more than two years ago: any processed food, sugary drinks and/or cookies.

I kind of miss the cookies.