You know what? 29 feels a lot like 28 did, except that I am spending the morning of my 29th birthday with my leg elevated and an ice pack on my right knee. That damn library injury is still plaguing me! Maybe it’s age playing yet another trick on me, its best trick was sinking my metabolism.
Regardless, there are still wonderful moments in this past week that count as mini-miracles:
Miracle #1: Biscuits. I. Love. Biscuits. Growing up in New Jersey as a first-generation Vietnamese girl, biscuits weren’t common. All of you “born in the south and raised on biscuits” readers are probably reading this, shaking your heads, and thinking, “that poor, deprived girl.” Yeah, that’s how I feel, too! Now, I make it a point to eat biscuits whenever possible and have been hunting down a good recipe (look for a future post on this “attempt”). Out of nowhere, like a Birthday miracle, I had TWO separate biscuit encounters this week! First was a surprisingly delicious cinnamon raisin biscuit from a restaurant in my hometown (I won’t mention the name because while the free biscuits in the bread basket were good, that’s basically where it stops). I thought sweet biscuits would follow the bagel rule, i.e. bagels should not be sweet – it’s a bastardization of bagels. But the warm, flakey biscuit benefitted from just a hint of cinnamon and a few raisins sprinkled throughout. The second was from Nathan who works with the a la carte team at L’École. He created a special for yesterday’s brunch menu: biscuits with country gravy that had chunks of sausage in it. Shut. up. Chef Christine and I split a plate, swearing to ourselves that we would only eat a bite each. Who were we kidding. The first bite of the buttery, just salty enough, sweet aftertaste biscuit smothered in creamy, bacony, hint of nutmeg country gravy made it impossible to stop. Actually, I wrapped up leftover biscuits and had them with marmalade for dinner… not so much on the diet/lifestyle change.
Miracle #2: The launch of Cooking Issues. Holy cheez its, you have no idea what it took to get this thing up and running – it truly took a miracle to go live last week. I work for a mad scientist/genius. Unfortunately, that much intelligence means that he doesn’t operate the way most people do. Trying to get him to sit down and focus on organizing something, creating processes, editing my posts, etc. is like herding kittens. We could barely even name the blog – it took more than a month to come up with “Cooking Issues,” a name that we all hate, but that is less offensive and more web and content-appropriate than anything we were coming up with before. Not that “I want a coconut-fetching monkey” was a bad name…
Miracle #3: Not waiting an hour for a table at Ippudo. Ippudo itself is amazing, but not a miracle. However, going in and seeing an empty bar, then finding out that you can go straight into the back dining room is absolutely miraculous! I’ve waited no less than 40 minutes for a table, even waiting more than an hour and a half. I have a little problem with low blood sugar… I go into hypoglycemic rage. My husband actually carries snacks with him sometimes to make sure that I don’t lose it when we’re in a car or far from a place where I can get instant food satisfaction. Otherwise I blackout and wake up surrounded by people cowering in fear… Anyways, I’ve actually been in the midst of a blackout waiting for a table at Ippudo and my husband has had to run across the street to pick up a cookie to keep me going. That’s before we discovered that you can order pork/chicken buns at the bar… Now that’s the first thing my husband does when we arrive – he orders me a Ginga Kogen beer and a Chicken bun. Yummy white steamed bun dough around sweet and savory glazed chicken, a little crunch of iceberg, tangy mayonnaise and some hot sauce usually hold me over while I stare at the dining room longingly. Of course, no wait means eating at 5:00 PM on a Sunday… The Akamaru Modern with an added marinated egg and hard noodles is my blue-hair special of choice.
I’m off to see what this week holds for me! I wish you a wonderful week filled with biscuits.
Mindy's Recipe For Disaster 