Bye Bye Bon Vivant

That name is stupid now and doesnt make much sense. While I still like eating and thinking and writing about food, the title does not fit. Comment here if you have any ideas!

Holy guac- I haven't blogged in a whiiillllleee.

I don't know why I haven't written. I've been doing nothing with my life. I take that back, if you count finishing Julie and Julia THE BOOK in three days and watching a boat load of The Food Network I've actually been pretty busy.

The book was good, it wasnt life changing or anything but I could not stop reading it. It made me want to cook French food though. Strike that. It made me want to eat French food and never attempt to make it because it made Julie into a hot mess.

On to brighter things:

The holidays are coming up. Thanksgiving is one of my favorites. I always feel like cooking a lot for the holidays. I plan all sorts of things. Pies, muffins, sweet potato dishes. I only ever make sweet potato casserole, but hot damn it is good. One time some one told me it was like crack. I'll take any compliment I can get. Its not like a made up the recipe myself or anything though. Its borrowed.

Thank God for the holidays approaching- I had such a mind lapse about food that I almost blogged about dog food. I hear Chef Michael's is pretty good stuff. But my dog doesn't like the green things, which is remarkable because I thought dogs were color blind. hmmmm.

Update

Ironically, the Food Network is having a day dedicated to tailgating this Saturday starting at 9am. whooohooo!

Tailgatin'

Guess what? My school has been undefeated in football since 1870...Its never won a game either....Mind trick? Not really, Loyola doesnt have a footbal team- and THIS is why I never tailgated until this fall.

Boy was I missing out. Its a shame I never got to expirience how good seven layer dip, burgers, baked beans, and beer can taste on a brisk fall day. Not until recently when I went to the Michigan vs. MSU game, did I get to have all this. Theres something about the atmosphere that can change everything about the way your food tastes(not to mention how you feel about the game). Burgers rock most of the time, but sometimes (for me anyway) its just not worth it to ingest all the fat.

Game day is another story. Thank god for football and anything else that makes food-holidays out of nothing. Thanksgiving is awsome, but its only once a year. Therefore, anything that designates a day to drinking and eating fattening fare like wings, nachos, hotdogs, and everything listed above should be preserved.

Dont get your panties in a bunch.... I dont think football is going anywhere. Its the schools that dont have teams that are the bad guys here. I say Loyola students should start a revolution and go on strike until Loyola gets a football team.

Wow that was quite ranty, but I think I brought it full circle enough for you to see my point.

Football food= good
No football team= bad, takes away the joy of the game.

Stuffed Food

I need to give a shout out to the great inventors of the world. Those being the men and women who invented stuffed or filled food. I don't mean tacos and things of that sort... I'm talking about the good stuff- the food that you don't know whats in it until you bite in yourself. Typically, these goodness-filled foods also end up being the best foods in buffet lines.

Every culture has them. The Chinese have dumplings and egg rolls, the Lebanese have kibbi and the Greeks have grape leaves. Personally, Italians are the luckiest with ravioli, tortellini, arancini, spedini, and I could go on but I wouldn't want to brag. Of course, many of these foods originate in one place and are then shared with the world and adapted in all sorts of new ways, but that's a different blog.

Anyway I just wanted to share my appreciation with the world and get all the readers to venerate stuffed foods, whether your grandma made it or it came frozen from a bag.

Im getting side tracked here, but maybe I should apply for a job writing commercials for the Olive Garden when I graduate. By the looks of it, they have a lot of cheese-filled pasta that I could "riff" about all day long.

Until next time, Peace Love and Stuffed Food.

Aldi is the Bomb

By popular demand (believe it or not) I've been asked to update my blog. I don't even know how long its getting to be between posts but Ava and Katie, I'm sorry. I hope you enjoyed your shout outs.

Anyhow, since I'm so busy these days trying to get to class and sorority stuff, I barely have time to do anything. You would not believe the number of television shows I have to catch up on. Seriously man. This also means that I'm too busy to go to a big grocery store and buy all my faves in bulk like I used to....

Solution: Aldi's

I love this place. I get in and out with my weekly essentials in 20 minutes tops. This is because I'm too cheap to buy bags, so when my arms are full, I know its time to leave because nothing else will fit in my purse to be carried home. I can walk out of there with steak, lunch meat, salad, and avocados for less than $12. Can you say "bonus?"

Aldi has the best frozen food too. Pasta, stir fry, BISON BURGERS. All these things are very reasonably priced and the best part is that I don't get confused by market competition because theres only one of everything and its all cheap. There are no fancy displays distracting me, enticing me to buy 2 for 1 Doritos when I don't even want them.

So rock on Aldi's shoppers. And all you haters keep hatin' because then there's more for me.

and that's your "Daly"-no, more like weekly Dose of Bon Vivant. Ciao.

Its been a long time..

Yikes. Its been about five weeks since my last post. Luckily you didnt miss too much. I have had blogger's block as well as cooker's block since I finished summer school.

Now, I am back at school trying to eat anything possible to survive without going to the grocery store. Thank God for Aldi's though.. I purchased five items there for 12 dollars and that includes steaks, fresh veggies, and lunch meat.

Something else happened that I never thought would since I've been back in school. After freshman year of college I was so excited to move into the apartment-style dorms which had kitchens, I wouldnt be forced to eat in the cafeteria ever again. I never liked cafeteria food, even as a kid in school I asked to bring a lunch every day(chicken in the shape of a dinosaur creeped me out).

Now, after 21 years of hating mass-prepared food, something has happened. My parents got me a meal plan for the cafeteria and I LOVE IT!

I SO appreciate being able to make any salad or sandwich I want, and then have fruit that I can take home with me.

The plan is a safety net when I am busy and away from the apartment.
I know now that I will be able to survive on this meal plan until the meatballs and bread that my grandma gave me to take back to school run out. After that its back to grocery shopping and more planning.

Taste Bud Damage dun duh dun dun

I sat down to blog about 2 hours ago and while I was thinking of something to write about, which was obviously going to be food, I got hungry. With summer school finals and moving out of my apartment falling in the same week, I’ve neglected to go grocery shopping in quite a while. So a few hours ago when I needed food, I made one of my college girl staples: stir fry.

All I had in my kitchen was a can of black beans, frozen stir fry veggies, and a cupboard full of spices. I sautéed the veggies with a little PAM until they were caramelized and then threw in chili powder, garlic, basil, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. It was the best thing I’ve eaten in a while, and the only calories came from the veggies at 30 calories per cup and the beans at about 100. It was a spicy, yummy, low-cal treat for a poor person like me.

I love spicy food. As I dumped chili powder and red pepper flakes into my pan, I wondered if eating spicy food was going to damage my taste buds and as a result, ruin my chances of being a good food critic. After all, how can you critique foods for a living if you can’t taste anything?

After about an hour and a half of research, I am relieved to say that eating spicy foods does not ruin your taste buds. It only numbs them for a short period of time. Furthermore, if you do happen to damage your taste buds either through smoking cigarettes or burning your tongue, it isn’t permanent because taste buds renew themselves after time. The only bad part about taste bud renewal, is that is slows down with age. Fascinating.

Well lucky me I guess. I’m still on the right track to eating for a career. Thank Goodness!

Comfort Food Pairings

We all know that certain flavor profiles go together in cooking; ginger and citrus, sweet and savory, etc. I fully subscribe to this idea, or rule of eating, that layering these certain flavors is a good idea and will make for good food.

What I am about to do is compare Jell-O to Crème Brule (I hope you appreciate the reference to "My Best Friend's Wedding"). There is a different variety of food pairing out there that I don’t really get, and that is comfort food pairings. I was intrigued by a friend the other day who was dipping pretzels in whipped cream cheese, and it made me think of all these things that people do to their food that I just don’t support.

If you haven’t noticed, I love making lists. So here is a list of weird food pairings that I think should be stopped:
· Pizza and Ranch
· Grilled Cheese and Ketchup
· Scrambled eggs and Ketchup (I am not a "ketchup hater," I swear)
· Kraft singles should be outlawed on everything besides grilled cheese
· Chips and Brownies
· Putting Syrup on Breakfast Meat
· Taco Bell Sauce on a McDouble

Now, here is a list of unique comfort food pairings that I don’t necessarily eat, but still make sense:
· Oreos and Peanut Butter
· Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Fluff Sandwiches
· French Fries in a Wendy's Shake

I certainly sound angry, but I am just on a tangent. I am not mad at the people who eat these things; I've tried some weird stuff too. This includes spreading butter on a gooey chocolate chip cookie. That however, is beside the point. My point is that I like food okay, a lot. Therefore, I don’t think it should be violated. Food is good if it can be eaten in its original state without being masked by some weird sauce. So if you can’t eat something without it, don’t.

You know your becoming a real adult when...

You can pick up someone from the airport successfully.
That is without getting lost or having to loop around again.
That is all I have for today. Ponder it.

What am I going to do with myself?

I am a planner. I plan everything and I plan things too far ahead of time. For instance I know what I will probably make for lunch tomorrow. Whatever.

If this blog serves no other purpose, at least this post will remind me about the plans I've made for the future. I make a new plan everyday. Most of them are contingency plans since I'm planning (or is it more like 'banking?') on the fact that I will not be able to get a real world job when I graduate.

If I'm not going to be a magazine food critic, PR agent, or entertainment reporter after I earn my Communications degree, I'm moving back in with my parents and from there will:

1) Apply to culinary school
2) Intern for free at a news station
3) Start a business (which I wont reveal because I actually think its a great idea)
4)Marry a rich guy
5) and if all else fails, Ill be a waitress

ponder that.

My First Blog

So I feel like the new kid in school, except by school I mean blogging and I have never been the new kid. However, I'm assuming this is what it feels like... I'm nervous that I will be bad at this, that I will run out of good ideas, that no one will read it or heaven forbid even find this thing among all the other places one can travel to on the web (I hear new kids feel invisible after the first day of being stared at). I'm sure my family will read because I'll tell them to (Hi Mom!). But it isn't the same. I hope that these "random thoughts" I speak of in my profile will actually be interesting to other people. Hold on-- I'm having one right now.

Do a lot of people think that their lives would make for great reality TV? I know I've thought this at least once before, but I wonder if everyone else thinks this and secretly dreams of having their own show.

Anyway, I'm not about to go on Rock of Love Bus to launch my food writing career-so blogging seems like a good start. Here's what I'll probably write about:

Good, healthy recipe ideas I come up with
Good, unhealthy recipes I come up with
Sharing the meals I am able to pull off with random ingredients found in a college kid's cupboards (and I don't mean Ramen Noodles)
Good and bad restaurants I go to
Cravings
The random thoughts I contemplate

So that's it for today. I know this is sort of an abrupt end to this post, but I'm going to try and ease into the whole blog-scene. Wouldn't want to over do it on my first day.