Some things I ate today

[muckefuck]

• Gai tom kha I was feeling a little throat-scratchy and under the weather this morning and remembered that spicy Thai soup is one of my favourite remedies. Plus, I'd been meaning to try out this newish place near work anyway. It was quite tasty, but I do have a plea for Thai restauranteurs everywhere: Will you please stop putting tomatoes in my food? Seriously, WTF? You're Thais, not Mexicans! You're supposed to put in exotic tropical herbs and vegetables that I only sorta recognise--like the Vietnamese do--not things I already know...and HATE!
• Mint Mojito Orbit Gum Freebie from a student worker, which should tell you something. The lime wasn't really lime, but that didn't bother me as much as the mint not being mint. It definitely had an herbal taste, something familiar but not normally used to flavour gum...hmm...Oh, right. CILANTRO! Again, WTF?
• Rum-banana gooey butter cake I was teasing a co-worker about using a staff association knife to cut up a dessert for a private potluck he was going to and managed to wheedle a piece out of him in the process. "Where are you from?" I asked him. "I'm from California." "Then what the hell are you doing making gooey butter?" He had no idea it was a St. Louis thing; his source was a Paula Dean cookbook. Even weirder, he's never had it plain. His considers his best version one made with chocolate cake mix and cocoa and peanut butter in the filling; the least successful included blueberries. Bizarre--it would never have occurred to me in a million years to put anything fresh into this cake, but his goal is actually to figure out how to make it "completely from scratch". Is it just me, or is that kinda of like trying to figure out how to make s'mores without store-bought graham crackers or marshmallows?
• Cadbury egg The last bit of our Easter candy! I told monshu "You're going to hate it!" and yet I was still unprepared for the face he pulled. You'd think he was eating hột vịt lộn rather than a big ball of syrupy goo. The funny thing was, just before I bit into it myself, I was trying to recall some half-baked juvenile notion I had about making "fried Cadbury eggs" like in a skillet of something. Before I could say anything, monshu told me that one of his commutemates had been talking about eating "fried Cadbury eggs". "I take it she meant 'deep-fried'," I said, but he couldn't remember.

Comments

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

Is it a cadbury's cream egg? (they also do ones with chocolate centres and crispy outsides, see) I can't stand those things! I bet they do do them deep fried in batter in Glasgow though, they'll batter and fry anything there.

Gooey butter cake is sponge with buttery cheese cake on top, right? Sounds good but heavy. Have you ever tried lardy cake? The main attraction is the lard, but there's also dried fruit to distract you. I think you come away from eating it significantly weighed down.

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

I've definitely heard of them being battered and fried, and yes, I suspect it was in Glasgow...
Lardy cake is one of my favourite ever things, and I can't find it anywhere anymore (admittedly I'm right in the south of the UK, so not its natural habitat). And I can't try making it because then I'd have to acknowledge just how scarily unhealthy it is.

[febrile.livejournal.com]

I've always heard it as "T(h)om kha kai?"

Spelling notwithstanding, it's the best sick food ever, and I wish that there were cheap Thai restaurants down here. In NOLA, it's "exotic."

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I have a love-hate relationship with cream eggs, which goes back to when I was a kid. I always think they're going to be great asI unwrap them, but come away slightly sickened... but now they come in 12 packs of a smaller size, that problem's almost fixed, which is a disaster for my waistline.

[exentric.livejournal.com]

OH god. When I was a kid and visiting the Philippines, my grandparents tried to make me eat one of those.

Balut, that is.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

I told monshu "You're going to hate it!" and yet I was still unprepared for the face he pulled.

That image makes it all worth it for this particular Easter Bunny.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, he was very relieved when Bunny Binks' enormous head finally got eaten and no longer stared at him every time he smoked, watched tv, or lounged on the couch.