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What I ate last week. Ranked #182 in food podcasts in Mexico according to an email I just got.
NEWS & UPDATES
https://www.forbes.com/sites/amandakooser/2025/02/11/opossum-hospitalized-after-gorging-on-a-costco-chocolate-cake/
Food memory: going to the mall to accompany my host in Berlin buy soap and seeing a man buy a cafeteria tray full of cake slices with a naked woman tattooed on his arm
Literally had a panic attack at 11pm because I found out Keebler danish wedding cookies were discontinued and remembered the last time I ate them with my family because my sister found some and felt like my whole family was dying. I always have panic attacks when I realize the 90s are over. Never had panic attacks until after I got Covid. Maybe because of feeling of not being able to breath, or the feeling of not being able to go back to the way things were but also my cat died around this time. That’s probably also why I started having panic attacks.
Northern food: pickled sheep nose peppers stuffed with cheese
Neese’s sausage is back and it’s going to come in a box now instead of waxed paper. Brian said keep the box. I said I’m not keeping a box that was filled with sausage. He said it’s not loose in there like shoes in a shoebox. He says the extra sage version is the best. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8nS1CEx/
SCENTS
My side of the couch smells like someone sat here and ate a bag of cool ranch Doritos and wiped their hands in the couch
Le Labo Geranium 33
Official description: https://www.scentsplit.com/products/le-labo-geranium-33-sample-decants
Blind review: First sip of a gin and tonic, potpourri satchel, Anthropologie (the store), a smooth slope, yellowed paper, 2005, orange ribbed tank top, opening up my mother’s jewelry box, floral fabric
Has that same sickly sweet, powdery, tea-like, rose scent that Rose Baie has; like a can of Brisk sweet tea
INTERNET
TIKTOK
Greek potato meatballs https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8n6C2Bb/
Soda cake https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8nMC9bu/
Forgot to save the video but someone made homemade zebra cakes and used marshmallow fluff and butter for the icing and it looked absolutely perfect. They butchered the cake. Used a hexagon cutter but wasted so much cake in between each stamp instead of just lining the hexagons up. They would line up perfectly. Like tile! hello
Sally’s chocolate chip cookie came up on my feed. She shapes the cookies as tall cylinders so they don’t spread out too much https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8nYLJ3R/
Coors light flavored cheezits
Eggs Janette https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8nMmY83/
August 3, 2026 (Monday)
9am: Leftover coffee with half & half.
10am: Olive oil toasted heritage grain sourdough with Danish butter, crunchy peanut butter, and sriracha, made at home.
1pm: Back to Nature white cheddar crackers and a glass of iced tea, made at home.
3pm: Back to Nature Rosemary & olive oil stoneground wheat crackers with cream cheese.
6:30pm: Sausage and onion South Shore bar style pizza, made at home.
8pm: Jeni’s coffee ice cream.
South shore bar pizza
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8ndDN55/
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/south-shore-bar-pizza-recipe
Made this recipe on Sunday with freshly ground hard white wheat. Baked off half of the dough on Monday. Stretched out on a 12” cast iron with edges up the pan and let rise for about 1.5 hours. Topped with frozen pizza sauce that I previously made, except I added some sugar and hit it with a stick blender until smooth. Topped with grated white cheddar and mozzarella, thinly sliced yellow onions from the farmers market, and seasoned ground sausage from the Virginia gas station. Put the cast iron on a metal pizza steel that I accidentally keep referring to as a steel that had been heating in a 525 oven for an hour. After about 10 minutes moved both steel and cast iron to top rack and broiled for 5 mins. Didn’t want to remove it from the pan because there was too much fat rendered off the sausage and didn’t want to start a fire. I tipped the cast iron and let the fat slide over the edges and into the bottom of the pan to fry the bottom of the crust. Topped in parmesan as it came out of the oven.
Pretty good; nice, short crust with crispy edges and great flavor; not as good as Ernie’s or Cristo’s in massachusetts that I remember; next time I would cook in a thinner metal pan next time that would heat up quicker than cast iron to get a more crispy crust. Good browning but bottom crust softened as it cooled.
August 4, 2026 (Tuesday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
9:30am: Toasted heritage grain sourdough bread with Danish butter, made at home.
1pm: Back to Nature Rosemary & olive oil stoneground wheat crackers and a glass of iced tea.
5:30pm: Tony’s white chocolate.
6:30pm: Sausage and onion South Shore bar style pizza, made at home.
Made south shore bar pizza again but in an oddly shaped metal pan from an antique store; I didn’t have a ruler so I placed it on top of an 8.8 x 11.7 inch notebook and it fit perfectly so I guess that’s what size the pan is. Based on what the pan says on the bottom and the measurements I think this might be a pan for a toaster oven. I felt like i was able to get the dough a lot thinner this time. My gut told me to start cooking it with the sauce only which is what I should have done. Still too soft after baking for 12 minutes on steel on bottom rack, then broiling for 10, then resting. Soggy. Put back in the oven to try and crisp up the bottom. Still soggy. In hindsight I should have cooked on bottom rack pizza steel for up to 20 minutes and hit it with the broiler to finish. Kind of feels like a casserole rather than pizza. Might reheat well on the pizza steel. I might try the other south shore bar style pizza crust. I’m not sure if this is the one but there is also a lot of user error on my part. Most people in the KA recipe reviews say it’s super crispy, with a few people complaining about it being really soggy. I would reduce the amount of sauce because I used a full cup of sauce instead of the half cup, and reduce the and toppings, and bake longer on the bottom next time. 8-10 minutes in pan and 2-4 minutes out of the pan is no where near enough time for my oven. Reheated it on the steel and it was better.
August 5, 2026 (Wednesday)
7am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home, and a leftover slice of pizza.
9am: A cup of coffee with half & half at the office.
Cake room: A copy of London Review of Books and NYT Cooking page-a-day recipes for Slow Cooker Chipotle-Honey Chicken Tacos and Grilled Steak With Sauce Rof.
11am: Leftover Greek moussaka.
5pm: Green tea, cold Szechuan noodles, wontons in chili oil, sweet and sour lotus root, and Western Cumin China Chicken at Acacia Tree Asian Cuisine 玖食 餐厅 (原 大长今 Former Dae Jang Kum) in Cary, North Carolina.
7:30pm: Jeni’s coffee ice cream and a piece of Tony’s white chocolate.
Pizza was great cold
Got an iced coffee from the student coffee shop and it tasted like cleaning products so I threw it away
Having an office job feels like being a hostage
Combo of an insane week that was non stop meetings before the semester begins and last minute founding out that friends were visiting so we probably weren’t going to be home for the second half of the week so we could go see them meant no grocery shopping so we HAD to go out to dinner. They could have come over but working from home with all day meetings is so hard when your office is also your guest room and I feel rude and crazy locking myself in my bedroom all day to take meetings.
Only people in the restaurant. Accidentally ordered spicy big tray chicken. It was good but honestly not as good as the version I made but it did come with hand pulled noodles which is unbeatable. Brian tried to order garlic shoots with ham but they were out. As we got up to leave other people had ordered what we got. I want to try the curry version next time.
August 6, 2026 (Thursday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
10:30am: Leftover cumin chicken over rice.
3pm: Spicy chicken nuggets with scorchin’ hot sauce from a Wendy’s in Haw River, North Carolina.
4pm: A cheeseburger from Whataburger in Kernersville, NC.
8pm: A pour of Leveller Brewing IPA, a can of Zzillicoa helles, and a bottle of Rothaus pilsner.
Stopped at a Wendy’s an hour into our road trip. Reminded me about the time we stopped at McDonald’s twice on a less than 2 hour drive to Richmond. Once per hour.
I love the smell of a cigarette in a hot parking lot. Reminds me of going to Disney or Florida in general with my family. Smell of burgers cooking in the distance. That’s the smell of the 90s.
Also reminds me of the first time I ever went on a road trip with Brian when we first started dating and we stopped at Wendy’s to use the bathroom and when I got out of the bathroom, Brian was sitting at a table by himself housing a chicken sandwich.
PULLED over an hour later at a sign that said del taco and whataburger because we’ve never had either. Also had a Culver’s which Brian also wanted to go to but I said no
Biggest fast food burger I’ve ever had. Took one night and was immediately full. Fine but also whatever. Should be called whateverburger. Brian got a patty melt the size of a shoe box. AI generated burger. Tasted close but not really. Cheese was on the bottom.
Bottle shop with a guy who was DJing an intense set the whole time and had to stop to let us pay for beer
August 7, 2026 (Friday)
9am: Coffee with half & half from Artisun in Hot Springs, North Carolina.
10:30am: Three eggs overeasy, sausage, coffee, half a pancake with butter and maple syrup, hash browns, and biscuits with white gravy at Smokey Mountain Diner in Hot Springs.
2pm: Gluten free cheddar jalapeno crackers, a can of Wrexham lager, and a can of Pisgah lager.
7pm: A Mexican lager, flour tortilla chips with queso and guacamole, seasoned French fries, a fried plantain with aioli, and a pretzel with grainy mustard and queso at Big Pillow Brewing in Hot Springs.
9pm: A can of Pisgah Oktoberfest.
Cher Cher is the spot in DC
White flour was not cooked all the way
Appalachian special Appalachian Classic
A classic breakfast not for the faint at heart.
Four eggs, bacon, sausage, tenderloin, country ham, chop steak, gravy, potatoes, two biscuits, pancake
Live music is insufferable
August 9, 2026 (Saturday)
10am: An iced coffee with milk from Artisun in Hot Springs, North Carolina.
12pm: A cold brew with half & half at Antique Tobacco Barn in Asheville, North Carolina.
4pm: An Innertube lager, cherry cider, steak frites, and summer farm plate at Burial Brewing Forestry Camp in Asheville, North Carolina.
6pm: A Faunta Flora Lake James Lime lager, a Parker house roll with whipped butter, mussels, steak, cavatelli, Caesar salad, chocolate pot de crème, an espresso, and a shaken Braulino amaro at Tall John’s in Asheville.
8pm: A Rothaus pilsner, oysters, steak tartar, crab bucatini, mussels, and a lime basil daiquiri at The Admiral in Asheville, North Carolina.
Watermelon marg
Got there as soon as the kitchen closed. About to pass out so I drank a beer.
Brian got a cider and it was great then got an imperial stout that tasted like a mounds bar
Steak and chimichurri were great. Thin fries. Vegetable dish was fine. 3 is a weird number of oddly shaped mozzarella sticks to serve. Asparagus was too raw.
STEAK FRITES* (GF) $35: Dry Aged Apple Brandy NY Strip, Hand Cut Fries, Chimichurri
SUMMER FARM PLATE: FRIED MOZZARELLA, DATTERINI TOMATOES LADY PEAS, ASPARAGUS, BASIL, LEEKS, PARSLEY PUEE, GARLIc
TALL JOHNS
Mussels: green garlic, ginger, vadouvan curry
Cavatelli: lion’s mane, corn butter
Bavette steak: poblano summer squash casserole, horseradish
Chocolate pot de creme: salted peanuts, chocolate whipped cream
Tall John’s mussels were better although they needed to cook out the coconut flavor out of the curry IMO.
Focaccia with admiral oysters was great plus chorizo was nice
Braulio amaro: crisp and refreshing but also cola nut flavor “around here people like their amaro shaken” ok
Great steak with amazing crust. Squash was fine but I don’t love squash. Cavatelli was very whatever
Walked a cemetery around mumbling that I had been over served
ADMIRAL
Beef tartare: chile aioli, mustard seed, chive, ramp, black garlic, egg yolk
Mussels: chorizo, sun dried tomatoes, xo sauce, white wine, parsley, focaccia
Crab bucatini: nasturium butter, guanciale, mimolette, chives, calabrian
Lime basil daiquiri: rum blend, lime basil citrus cordial
Can’t put anything shaken up inside of me
It’s just something the body does it when you shake it
Cocktail tasted like a clean bathroom
Admiral founded 2007 so similar to commodore era
Stanbury
August 8, 2026 (Sunday)
9am: An iced red eye with half & half from Artisun in Hot Springs, NC.
10:30am: An Americano and a BLT from Vaste Rivière Provisions in Hot Springs.
3pm: Bhel puri and a paneer tikka roll at Botiwalla by Chai Pani in Asheville, North Carolina.
7pm: A hot fudge sundae from McDonald’s in Mocksville, North Carolina.
Wanted to go to Huli Sue Hawaiian food but Brian derailed us
Turns out Botiwalla is all over the damn place, including raleigh
Bhel Puri: Tangy, crunchy, sweet, and spicy - an Indian street food classic. Puffed rice, flour crisps (puris), crunchy chickpea noodles (sev), cilantro, and onion dressed with tamarind & green chutneys.
Paneer tikka roll: Paneer (Indian farmer's cheese) charred with onion & bell peppers marinated in yogurt, lime, Kashmiri chilli paste, & tandoori spices. Wrapped in hot buttered naan with Desi slaw, onion, cilantro & green chutney.
Pulled over in Mockville because Brian needed to piss every hour because of how much coke zero he was consuming and and saw a woman walk out of the woods with a baby
Honorable Mentions (diabetes summer)
NYT black & white cookies
NYT crumb cake
KA blueberry buckle
Wacky cake with mayonnaise
Iambaker / cupcake project vanilla cake
Funfetti cake with lemon lime soda
KA sour cream coffee cake but with Preppy Kitchen vanilla buttercream
Chocolate chip cookies
https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies/
https://www.afamilyfeast.com/copycat-entenmanns-chocolate-chip-cookies/