09. 01. BREAKFAST

garlic bread with cream cheese

If the bread’s got garlic in it, that makes it garlic bread, right? We accidentally bought a thing of cream cheese that didn’t come in a sealable container, but was packaged like butter. So we felt that the cream cheese was in dire need of being eaten. Needless to say, this urgency wore off in a day or two and currently the rest of the cream cheese is sitting in a separate sealable container in the fridge. It’s okay bread, though, even if it doesn’t actually taste anything like garlic.

08. 11. DINNER

bread with olive oil and oregano

I am rather glad that I am backdating all these meals because otherwise these entries might not have been so calm. We had pretty good food for dinner on the 10th (분식) and lunch on the 11th (fondue, or what may pass for it in moments of great hunger) as well — okay, let’s be honest, the fondue wasn’t actually good at all — but pretty much immediately after lunch on the 10th, the family entered one of its spells of yelling. So much yelling. We spent an entire afternoon at the museum because there was too much anger to do much of anything else, and I could feel it in my back for the whole day and all of the 11th. The standing around, I mean, not the anger. But anyway, by dinnertime of the 11th, things had calmed down somewhat so the meal wasn’t incredibly awkward or anything. Yeah, we do that sometimes. Yelling. But I digress. This Italian restaurant is called Bellamonte, another of those places we frequent as a family, and it has infinitely better food than Di Matteo. Score!

insalata caprese

Good times, good times. They told us that they couldn’t make the rucola pizza for us because the rucola that they had wasn’t fresh enough, but confusingly enough there was a whole bunch on top of the caprese salad. I couldn’t really tell that they weren’t fresh, but at any rate, aren’t the vegetables in a salad supposed to be fresher than, you know, the vegetables that get baked in a freaking oven along with massive amounts of cheese? Huh. Anyway, caprese, yay.

insalata di mare

I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the right name for it, but Italian isn’t one of the languages I even pretend to speak and the website seems to be down so I can’t look it up on their menu. We don’t usually order this, we go from the caprese salad to the rucola pizza to the seafood spaghetti with the baked top, but Dad was feeling it and he was paying so we went for it. Amazing stuff. For a restaurant that’s definitely got good food and has even been on TV a couple of times (then again, what with all these food-related shows, it’s hard to find a decent restaurant that hasn’t been on TV once or twice) the place sure is always empty. Also, I forgot to take a picture of the spaghetti with the baked top, which is a pity because it has that huge dough covering and all, but suffice it to say that it went where it was destined to go, namely down my esophagus.

mushroom pizza

And that’s not Italian for anything, but bear with me here. As I mentioned above, Bellamonte refused to serve us anything with rucola on it, except the caprese salad which totally had rucola on it, and we were too hungry to really argue with them so we just went for the mushroom pizza. I mean okay integrity is great but if you give me pizza like this I will definitely shut up. I really wanted to have the rucola, though, so that I could compare it to Di Matteo’s and laugh in the latter’s face. Then again, that means absolutely nothing because somehow they get more customers (must pay off being across the street from a university) and we will probably go there again. Damn you, habit and tradition!

팥빙수: shaved ice with red beans

I have chosen this summer’s keyword to be “정갈함”. This adjective means some supernatural combination of cleanliness, crispness, modesty, purity, and a good deal of empty space. Kind of like wearing nothing but cheap white fabric that’s been washed to a blinding level of whiteness. So in theory, I support this sort of shaved ice, the prevalence of white, the lack of fruit. But to be frank, Napoleon Bakery, your shaved ice tastes like a bowl full of bland. It’s a thin line between my ideal for this summer’s keyword and blandness, and this is still better than Burger King’s travesty so I forgive you, but you will not last long like this. It was a good move infusing the milk straight into the ice so that the shaved ice would have a flavor instead of being so many spoonfuls of water, but for some reason it doesn’t really work. Maybe you need more milk? Or some more of anything, just anything, I mean it’s very tame and it was cold and I enjoyed it, but can’t you do better for four dollars? Must you rob me of my money? Incidentally two hundred dollars was withdrawn from my account and my mother and I panicked and she sent me to the bank before she realized that it was just the automatic withdrawal for this fund that she signed me up for when she created the account. PSYCH

06. 27. BREAKFAST

olive oil and bread with walnuts and craisins

So it seems that this bread is finished. It looks like that lump we always talk about, black bread in Eastern Europe while a hungry artist or a shepherd on a quest packs it into his bag along with either half an onion or a fistful of cheese. There is a goat involved in this somewhere. And fingerless gloves. The goat is usually the shepherd’s and the gloves are the artist’s. I have standards for my stereotypes. Also note the splash of current events in the background. We talked about the beef fiasco a bit during debate coaching last night — it’s over, no more crazy hours for me — really I can’t wait until it’s actually coaching for debate, not coaching for the essay writing prelims before the debate. At least debate is a bit like fighting and that makes it slightly more exciting. I don’t know, writing is hard to teach someone. I think it’s a pinch of logic, a dash of grammar, and a pound of flash. You can’t give someone flair, though I do think you can teach yourself to some degree. I’m working on getting mine.

06. 25. BREAKFAST

bread with walnuts and craisins

To symbolize the repetition in my meals, I have decided to use the picture of breakfast from yesterday. Despite what it may seem, it was a conscious decision: I was standing with the camera in my hands, looking down upon the table, thinking, What’s the point if it’s going to be the same food as yesterday? I’m honestly not complaining because it’s not even like you’re actually aware of what you’re eating during breakfast, you’re just sort of stuffing it into your mouth as you try to pry your eyes open. But anyway here is a philosophical representation of the ouroborotic nature of consumption.

06. 24. BREAKFAST

bread with walnuts and craisins

It seems that I will face a moral dilemma every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. Class ends at ten to one, and will often go later than that because the professor is youthful and full of the holy ghost of the English canon. This will obviously mean that I am nearly dead from hunger by the time class is out. So does that mean that I should stuff my face before I have to leave at eight, or should I restrain myself because, really, I am kind of dieting? Today I posed this question to my mother, who then offered to change my piece of bread for hers. I guess two slices isn’t even an option in her summer diet rules and regulations handbook.

06. 23. BREAKFAST

bread with walnuts and craisins

Craisins. What a miserable word. Why not just “dried cranberries” or something along those lines? It’s as though you can’t be a dried berry of any sort without having to fit into the mold of the raisin, the great forefather or all dried berries. Anyway, this bread is good stuff and I will be enjoying it for the next few breakfasts to come.

06. 21. BREAKFAST

sliced bread and butter

Overheard in Seoul: [two female grad students are on the subway] — student #1 says to student #2, a conspiratorial whisper, “…And she would take the New York subway every day to school and back, and she said that she couldn’t stand it, everything about it was so filthy.” Student #2 nods: “I’ve heard that said,” she replies. Also, this morning I saw a drunk man lying asleep in front of a florist’s. Sometimes I don’t understand this city.

06. 19. BREAKFAST

sliced bread and butter

In bold defiance against established society and the predictability of food-related pictures, today I present a photograph the subject of which you can barely make out. Or, you know, I had early tickets to Get Smart and I was in a great frazzled hurry so I forgot to take a picture when I was actually eating the bread and butter. I love early tickets — not matinee showings, because that’s still late enough for the sun to be up and everyone to potentially show up for the screening — but the half-priced early tickets, four dollars for an eight-thirty movie. There’s not much else to do when the most amazing jet lag in the world puts you to bed at eleven and gets you up by six. Get Smart was alright, I suppose, it had its moments but I might have been expecting too much from it. The jokes to laugh ratio was rather unfortunately low. If I weren’t so desperate for Steve Carell’s film career, I might say that it was actually not a very good movie. But as it stands, I am, and I won’t. Maybe Horton will do better, he’s adorable in that.

06. 17. BREAKFAST

walnut raisin bread and mystery sausage (천하장사)

The bread is an old friend, the last slice of which I thought somebody had eaten but in reality it had just slipped behind some containers and was hidden from the prying eyes of the world. It’s all gone now, though. And the mystery sausage, that was an impulse buy because I realized that I hadn’t had one since I was in elementary school or thereabouts. For a snack with a name like “THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD”, it’s ridiculous how mystifying its composition is. Kids will eat anything without question. Actually, I still eat it without question. Apparently it contains fish, pork, egg and cheese as possible sources of protein. Some snack. Now they seem to be selling knock-offs of this time-honored food, packaged with drawings of sexy cartoon people and catchy marketing phrases. Who are they kidding, it’s a snack made of fish and pork. You can’t glam that up no matter how hard you try.

06. 14. BREAKFAST

bread and pumpkin seeds with rosemary olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Things keep being added to the same two slices of walnut raisin bread, and the description keeps getting longer and longer. Today it was pumpkin seeds that appeared out of nowhere. The rosemary is ever present, of course, but it looks somewhat trim now so I’m going to be less crazy with its use. Unfortunately my mother is still all for it so it will nonetheless end up in every single meal. There are worse fates.