Tag Archives: food

Mar 27 2012
21 Comments
Anecdotes, Egypt, Three minute read

A Lunchtime Revolution

You know you’re in Egypt when you’re surrounded by Russians in Hurghada and see this walking in front of you on the beach.

Based on a true story that happened last weekend.

We’re on vacation and it’s lunch time.

We’ve all had a hard morning. After sleeping in and enjoying a leisurely breakfast, some students ventured to the beach, where they were subjected to a blazing sun and gorgeous views of the red sea. Unfortunately, their fragile psyches were scarred by the unreasonably high ratio of body mass to swimsuit size, and they saw more Russian butt cheeks than anyone should have to see in a lifetime. They need nourishment.

Others of us suffered equally in the lobby, where we were tortured with 90s pop music, cigarette smoke, and slow wireless internet.  Our applications did not load quickly, and people we did not want to see came and sat next to us. We are exhausted from the effort of maintaining simple sanity in the face of such hardship. We need refreshment.

It’s 1:24. According to the itinerary, lunch is in six minutes. We seat ourselves at a dining table, preparing to renew our souls. Silverware is fidgeted with, glasses filled with water. We are ready.

But something’s wrong. The staff is still setting out the food. The buffet is yet incomplete, and only the salad bar looks prepared. This does not bode well.

A few minutes pass. It is now 1:30. The staff gives us no signal. Do we sit like dumb beasts? Do we help ourselves to salad? Do we drink water and laugh as if everything were fine even though our stomachs cry out for salvation?

Unable to wait any longer, I decide to go for the salad bar. Just as I’m about to grab a tong-ful of cucumber slices, the staff member in charge of fruit arrangement stops me and says firmly “You wait five minutes. Please,” and points to my seat with disdain. This was not a request. I turn away, starving and indignant.

“Excuse me?” I think to myself,  “Are we not on vacation? Is this not an all inclusive resort? Can we not act as we please? Is the salad bar not sitting in front of me, waiting to be devoured? Are there not hungry students behind me, waiting to eat? What kind of a cruel topsy turvy upside downy hell is this?”

I sit down. The time is 1:35. Angry mutterings rise from the table, “What did he say?” “Why can’t we eat the salad?” “I’m so hungry.” “What does it matter to him? They’re not even doing anything to it.” “grumble grumble complain grumble.”

And so we sit, staring at each other, grousing from every end, the buffet a mere 10 feet to the right.

Finally I could take it no more. What was this madness? It is lunchtime, the time in which we eat the lunch.

“Colleagues,” I said. “My peers, friends, brothers, sisters, acquaintances,  enemies, and Steve, will you stand for this, that we should be deprived of eating lunch at the appointed hour? Will you submit to the arbitrary tyranny of the hotel staff? Will you cower and recoil in fear from a single man? No, dear friends. This is our lunch time, and lunch we shall, a great lunch, one that shall go down in history as the greatest resort lunch ever taken. Brothers, sisters, Steve, let us lunch!”

And with that I rose and went to the salad bar. A great cheer erupted and the others followed. Lunch we did, and I learned that the taste of victory is only as good as the food at the hotel.

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Mar 21 2012
30 Comments
Anecdotes, Egypt, Three minute read

Jam Quest

All the sweetness of sugar, with a hint of fruit

What started as a quest for 70% fruit jam ended with me hopelessly lost and asking a gas station attendant for directions to the Nile.

When I first came to Egypt, I had a peasant’s understanding of the world and was content eating jam that was merely tasty and cheap. To me, jam was just a colder and more gelatinous form of candy that happened to contain the occasional hunk of fruit. However, here in Cairo I encountered people who subscribed to a different jam-philosophy. Oddly, they believed that jam should taste like fruit, not sugar. I heard the term “fruit percentage” for the first time as they sneered at jams that consisted mostly of artificial coloring and sugar.

Because of them, I was forced to try a jam that contained 60% fruit. It was a strange experience. My taste buds, accustomed to being blasted and then numbed by the sweetness, instead found themselves underwhelmed.

I enjoyed it on an intellectual level, but my ignorance had not yet been beaten out of me and I  wanted my sugar jelly back. However, something strange had happened to me. I had been afflicted with the sugar-guilt. Now when I went to the supermarket, I secretly craved the cheap, facemeltingly sweet jams, but the sugar guilt haunted me and I purchased the sixty percent instead. I thought maybe the reason I didn’t love it as much as my friends was that there wasn’t enough fruit. Perhaps if I tried a jam with more fruit, I would see the wisdom of jam snobbery.

I had heard rumors of Mom’s jam: a 70% wonder found only at a place called Dina Farms. Months ago I had seen this store, and after spending too much time inside one day I decided to go on a jam hunt, relying only on my memory and my innate directional instinct. I set out confidently and within ten minutes found myself completely lost on the edge of what seemed to be a forest in the middle of Cairo. “Where did this come from?” I wondered.

Then I thought to myself, “The Nile. I must make towards the Nile. I will use its mother banks to as a great trail of breadcrumbs.”  I happened upon a gas station attendant and asked him where the Nile was. Confused at my apparent confusion, he asked me where I was trying to go and I said resolutely:  “I want to go towards the Nile” He pointed me in the right direction and soon I saw the glimmering waters in front of me. I was happy to be on my way home, albeit jamless.

Later on, I considered how ridiculous it was that I had just used a 4130 mile long river as a landmark to find my 2 person apartment. I imagined my reaction if a bedraggled tourist in downtown Oklahoma City asked me where the Rocky Mountains are and decided sometime’s it’s better just to leave such matters be.

P.S. Vote for Belle at Educlaytion’s March Movie Madness. She’s up against Atticus Finch, and let’s be honest here…she deserves to beat that sucker.

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Mar 15 2012
762 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life, Social Media, Three minute read

This One’s for All the Bloggers Out There

So this is what a hangover is. I don’t remember this picture being taken. Why am I putting this on the internet?

I was eating a PB&J out of tinfoil during class and thinking about blogging, as I often do. I had recently read a friend’s blog that he just started a few months ago and doesn’t update very often. Its future doesn’t look good—a few more months it will likely become another blog corpse silently occupying net space.  As I read his first tentative posts, I was reminded of my own blogging beginnings that stretch back to my senior year of high school.

It was a secret blog, called The Drevet (now deleted), and I posted a mere two times. The first one was the obligatory and awkward, “Hello world,” in which it seemed I was preparing to face all of humanity and be utterly rejected. It was the kind of introduction that set the bar so low even I couldn’t reach it. After only two months I stopped thinking about The Drevet and life moved on.

As I continued to reminisce and munch on my sandwich, I stumbled across another phase of beginnings: college. At this point, I suddenly realized the striking similarity between getting drunk for the first time and blogging for the first time.

When I first overindulged, not a moment before I turned twenty one (wink), I was fascinated with the very experience of it. “Wow,” I thought, “so this is what being drunk is like.”  It didn’t matter what came next in the evening because we were already having an awesome time through the act of inebriation itself, which was to us was inherently interesting.

In the beginning, I was also captivated by the phenomenon of blogging. The fact I could publish whatever I wanted for strangers to read and maybe enjoy was both thrilling and terrifying. And just as newbies feel awkward around alcohol, like they’re doing something taboo and exciting, I would get nervous in front of the computer screen, staring at the blank blog post box and wondering what I would say to the world. What if someone actually read it?

As a baby lush, I felt the constant need to discuss my level of sloshedness with my fellow drinkers, “I’m not drunk guys,” “Do I seem drunk?”  “I’m drunk drunk drunk drunk drunk,” etc. To everyone else this kind of blathering indicated it was time to change conversation partners. The more experienced drinkers had already found out that being drunk is not interesting or special, but to me the topic was endlessly engrossing for everyone and worth repeating dozens of time in the same night.

Similarly, in the first blog posts, I was self conscious about the fact I was blogging and tended to talk about the act itself, how it was hard to think of something to write or that I didn’t think anyone was reading it (no one was), and the end result was that I wouldn’t say anything at all and my predictions would come true. And just like a group of okay friends that get drunk at home hoping for something exciting to happen and then end up going to bed early, I wasted the potential of blogging by using it in a sarcastic and apathetic manner, only to defeat myself in the end.

Through many unfortunate nights and some unfortunate blogposts, I learned the real magic comes with a critical combination of both substance and medium: blogging and content, or alcohol and activities. But like most things, this is the kind of lesson that one must learn through their own experience, though we hope for our own sakes that newcomers learn it before anyone heads to the bathroom to vomit.

And my metaphorical vomiting days aren’t over yet. I will always be learning both how to drink better and how to blog better.

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Mar 14 2012
39 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, One minute read

Is Peanut Butter Good For You?

This is enough peanut butter for roughly three days.

Yes. It’s what we in the medical community call a “healthy food,” and it should form a significant portion, if not the majority, of your diet. Most white, male doctors recommend eating 4-8 tablespoons of peanut butter a day (32- 64g) in order to maximize its health benefits. These include decreased excess energy, facial sprouting, peanut mouth, and a heightened sense of disclarity.

If you’re trying to lose weight, female doctors say you should replace two meals a day with half a cup (64g) of peanut butter and wash it down with one cup (128g) whole milk. In order to see the best results while using peanut butter, you should also avoid eating vegetables or other bulky foods like whole wheat and oatmeal, since they will only hinder your body from taking in more peanut butter.

In addition to being a nutritious oral food product, peanut butter is also scientifically proven to have effects as a hair treatment, carpet cleaner, and virus removal software for your personal computer.

Just as peanut butter performs the sacred cohesive act in a sandwich made with crustless white bread, it is also a driving force of social cohesion. Countries whose populations consume a high amount of peanut butter, like the United States of America and Mali, are generally referred to as “paradises on earth,” which is sociologist speak for “a great place to live.”  Countries with low rates of gross peanut butter consumption, like Belgium and Egypt, are more prone to social unrest and mayonnaise based diets. Even though mayonnaise is a nutrient the body needs, basing an entire nutrition system on it will undoubtedly hinder the television production capacities of said countries.

If you have any more questions about whether peanut butter is good for you or not, please re-read the paragraphs above and don’t call me at home.

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Mar 09 2012
46 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Modern Life, Three minute read

Why People Love Tasting Gross Food

Who would think this could taste bad?

It’s happened to everyone at some point. You’re at the new Thai restaurant when the adventurer of the group tries to shows off and orders Thai black glutinous rice for dessert. To everyone else this is clearly a terrible mistake. The dish is presented to the table and looks unfortunately like a dark puddle of goo.

Silence. Stares are exchanged around the table between each other and the bowl of black slime. The daredevil laughs it off and goes in for a bite, strings of goo stretching from the spoon. Still chuckling confidently, she puts the spoon in her mouth. Suddenly, her face goes completely blank. Her stomach drops and cuddles with her bowels. Her face crumples in horror at the substance she’s ingested. Just like everyone thought and as the name itself suggests, the Thai black glutinous rice is disgusting. With everyone watching, the sad victim swallows bravely, gasps for air, and then says, “This. is. foul. Do you guys want a bite?” Everyone says yes.

Why do the others want to taste this obviously disgusting dessert? Haven’t they learned from their friend’s experience? This same phenomenon also occurs in cases of particularly nasty stenches or weird things you can do to your body to make it hurt.

In my capacity as a rational being, I understand that one should not want to eat unpleasant food, smell something that will makes one salivate yet also wish for death, or inflict harm upon one’s body, and yet I go for the bait each time.

The thing is, even though I know something tastes bad, I will never know how bad it is unless I experience it myself. Is it sawdust wafer cookie bad or partially raw meatloaf bad? Is it stale pop tart bad or putrefying chicken bad? How disgusting is it? Will I want to vomit or just laugh it off? Will a drink of water be enough or will I claw at my tongue with my fingernails? Will my eyes water and my nose run? Will I perspire from the hands? The armpits? To what extent will my gag reflex be activated? To what ring of hell will I descend? I have to know!

And I’m not the only one. I know others out there seek to understand just how repulsive life can be. That’s why these bizarre cultural things exist.

How will you fully understand everything a hamburger can be if you don’t eat a fancy $20 dollar one from a restaurant, and a sixty cent one that is inexplicably slimy from Peaches Cafeteria in West Virginia? Can you truly appreciate the sweetest of perfumes without stumbling upon a pile of gym laundry that has remained damp for 6 months in the corner of a male locker room? What does a feather pillow mean to you if you haven’t been afraid your entire nose is going to crust up and fall off because of the severity of an oozing sunburn?

Yes, these things are disgusting, but they are a part of life, and I embrace them. In some way or another, we all do. These dances with repulsion build solidarity where we experience everything life can be. I believe they even add to life’s beauty.

On that note, do you want a bite of this gas station hot dog?

P.S. My apologies to anyone who likes Thai black glutinous rice.

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