Trashflower » Food and Diet

Aziz Azari and the Terrible Horrible Samba Room Dinner

admin — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:34:31 +0000

Last night, my friend Fan (name changed to protect the semi-innocent… yeah, right) and I went down to Comedy Works in Denver. For those of you who don’t know what Comedy Works is – well, its exactly what it sounds like it is: a nice little semi-dive comedy club in LoDo. We decided that before heading to the club, we’d get dinner at the restuarant right next door: The Samba Room.

The Samba Room has a Latin-Cuban menu, chock full of things I don’t normally consider eating. But Fan said that the mohitos were great, and that the restaurant got great reviews. I guess we should have been a little suspicious when we were seated in a back corner upstairs, behind a pillar; we didn’t really look the part of most of the rest of the patrons, who were still in in their business casual slacks and sweaters. The server came by, took our drink orders, and disappeared. For 20 minutes. When he finally came back, with my mojito that tasted more like pure raspberry syrup than a mojito, we placed our dinner orders. Calimari to share, scallops for Fan, and pulled pork for me. When the calimari arrived, I was hopeful. Hopes that were soon to be dashed. The calimari was oily and chewy. So oily that it left little oil puddles on the plate from the 4-5 pieces that we ate.

Our server came back, asked how things were. Fan, in his perfectly honest way said “That’s not very good. Its much too oily,” and gestured toward the oil puddles. The server, amazingly, agreed, saying “Yeah, that’s not good. Do you want some more?” Yes, crazy server. We want more nasty oily calimari.

Fan: “Oh, no. But I don’t blame you.”

Server: “Of course, not, I didn’t cook it.”

And away went the nasty oily calimari. We waited, tried to chew on the sugar cane in our sugary mojitos. Mine was more like bamboo than sugar cane. There was no way to chew it.

Then came the entrees. Again, hope flaired; again, hopes were dashed. My plate was literally 2/3 full of canned black beans. in a semicircle around a scoop of rice that was reminscent of elementary school lunches. The pulled pork had a neat presentation, in a purple banana leaf. Unfortunately, the small amount of sauce was mostly on the leaf, not on the pork. And as I dug through the leaf to get to the meat, I had to sort out the fat globs and the bone. Yes. BONE in the shredded pork. Shouldn’t you check and make sure you’re not serving BONE as part of your shredded pork?

Fan’s dinner… well, it wasn’t much better. In fact, it may have been worse. His scallops tasted like citrus urinal cakes. They were buried under these weird chip things, that basically tasted like double fried corn flakes. Oh, he also got some stringy mashed potatoes and some more of that tasty pork that I had. Blech.

Yummy, deep-fried cornflake noodles.

Server: “How was everything?”

Fan: “Its… well, there. Can we get our check? We’ve got a show to get to.”

So, we get the check, and leave at least 1/3 of the weird, bad food. Everyone else in the restaurant seemed to be cleaning their plate. I swear one woman was about to pick up h

er plate and lick it clean. Apparently they don’t have tastebuds – they were all destroyed by the alcohol or something. Blech.

So we go next door to Comedy Works… about which I will write more later. But lets just say that The Samba Room gets a huge, giant thumb down.

WiiFit – Weee!

admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:49:30 +0000

WiiFit comes out on Wednesday. After I finally got my Wii (after annoying the living crap out of several area stores by calling on a daily basis to see if they had any), I’ve been pretty content with my small arsenal of games. I play:
* Guitar Hero 3
* Lego Star Wars
* Super Mario Galaxy

And, of course, some of the sports games that came with the Wii. I’m not the kind who will go the day a new video game comes out, but I’m tempted to do just that this week. WiiFit is supposed to get us off of our duffs and onto the WiiFit board for some interactive workout fun. Its got Mii Games (similar to the sports games) that will get your heart rate up, simulated jogging (which sounds like even less fun than real jogging), and balancing games. It will also test your fitness, and assign you a “FitAge.” (Move over RealAge… there’s a new game in town.)

I think the part of the WiiFit that I might be most interested in is the yoga modules. As you go through Yoga classes on your FitBoard, the system gives you alignment tips and tells you when your weight is off balance. That’s something difficult usually for a yoga instructor to do. In traditional yoga classes, alignment tips tend to be generalized for the whole class, not individualized to a specific student.

The truth is, I’m not likely to pick up WiiFit this week because I’m in the midst of moving, and I need a new desk and a vacuum cleaner a great deal more than I need a new video game. But come later in the year, you can be sure it’ll be on my wish list.

PS. Might not hurt to read a review of WiiFit from MSNBC.

Hula Hooping! Now that’s a way to get a smaller waist!

Productivity-Enhancing Foods

admin — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:42:36 +0000

I’m a big fan of snacking. I joke that I only have one meal a day, and it lasts all day. (Ok, so maybe I’m not quite that bad… but I do have a fair number of snacks that I keep around in case of munching emergency.) So, when I found this list of 20 foods that help boost productivity, I had to share it. And after this post, I have to go to the grocery store to pick up some of these delightful goodies.

Walnuts. These are full of omega 3 fatty acids to help you think more clearly and keep you focused. Excellent source of protein, but be sure to chew well.

Strawberries. As with carrots and flaxseeds, strawberries surprisingly aid in better eye sight. Eating strawberries has also been linked to preventing cancer.

Papaya. The colorful fruit helps protect you against the potential damages of secondhand smoke, rheumatoid arthritis, and even the common cold.

Pear. Usually only available during the pear season and when they come out, I always get them. They taste good, they’re cool in the mouth and they are hypo-allergenic.

Read more from Lifehack.org

Mac: You Can't Be What?

admin — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:41:56 +0000

Since I’m a registered iPod owner, I get the fun, promotional emails from Apple. Despite the fact that they break every best practice that I’ve learned for designing promotional emails, (They’re all images – very attractive on the surface but impossible to read without an HTML-enabled email program… but more about that will appear on eMedia Daily) I enjoy looking at their campaigns.

The campaign for their new iMac left me wondering about the consiousness of Apple, however.

The primary tagline? “You can’t be too powerful or too thin.”

Granted, we’ve all heard that before. You can’t be too rich or too thin. You can’t be too anything or too thin. But the fact is, in our society that is driven by how thin you can be, there is such a thing as too thin. Take, for example, Nicole Ritchie, Mary-Kate Olsen, and Kate Bosworth… all good examples of how we are obsessed with weight. It goes beyond the celebrities as well. At my office we have a “biggest loser” competition, which is often populated by the people who need to lose weight the least. I’m not sure if its supposed to be motivational for someone with 25 pounds to lose to be egged on by someone who wants to lose 5.

Either way, you can be too thin. You can be so thin that your body shuts down. And while I accept that this is just a marketing ploy from Apple to promote the thinness of their recent iMac release, it pays to be socially conscious.

Trouble Breathing

admin — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 02:25:32 +0000

In yoga, we talk a lot about prana, or breath. Working with your breath can help you get deeper into postures, and can help you maintain a difficult posture longer. It also can affect how you react to stressful situations, and maintain body temperature.

As it happens, most Americans breathe “wrong.” For most of us, when we inhale, our shoulders raise, and our belly sucks in. Then when we exhale, our shoulders drop, but only slightly. If we’re truly using our diaphragm and lungs to breathe the way we should, our bellies should rise with an inhalation, as we bring air into the very bottom of our lungs, and it should lower as we exhale, constricting our diaphragm and pushing air out of our lungs. I’ve been trying to breathe correctly, to see if I can actually feel a difference in my body.

What made me write this is simple: while I was working on my other website, I looked down to see one of my cats sleeping next to the chair. I realized that she breathes correctly – and it made me a little sad that our society teaches us to breathe in such a way that we “stay skinny” and tighten our shoulders up around our ears. At least, we can still find instances of breathing correctly, and with some practice, we can bring our shoulders down, and our bellies out, and learn to use our lungs again.

Why I'm Giving Up Food

admin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:13:32 +0000

Yes, you read that right. I think I’m giving up food. In the past week, I’ve had more “bad food” experiences than I’d like to recall – including at least 3 incidents of cold chicken from well-known (and often well-liked) restaurants. Maybe I shouldn’t get chicken – and maybe grilled chicken is especially prone to being bad. But when you bite into something that is supposed to be hot, and is instead decidedly cold, it ruins the whole experience.

This isn’t just isolated to chicken, either. I had a nice, safe, veggie wrap for lunch yesterday. The artichoke hearts tasted fishy. I don’t know if they were just stored next to the tuna salad, or if they were truely rank, but either way, they were less than appetizing. One half of a wrap later, I’d had enough.

Now sure, I’d like to lose some more weight (and keep kicking butt in the Biggest Loser competition at our office), but I didn’t want to do it because the mere thought of food grosses me out. I’m truly starting to wonder if I want to integrate any food into my life that doesn’t just come from the produce section of my grocery store – that I can come home and wash, and determine if it’s edible.

Bleh.

Life on $5 a week

admin — Tue, 01 May 2007 03:54:03 +0000

One brave couple is trying to live on $10 each for 2 weeks for food. They’re doing this in honor of the people in third world countries who make less than $1.00 per day. I’ve read through most of the comments, and I have to agree that the one thing they are not taking into consideration is the fact that a dollar goes much farther there than it does here. If you’d like to follow their stories, here are the links to their individual blogs.
His
Hers

The No-Workout Workout

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 14:30:37 +0000

Since I’m always looking for ways to burn extra calories without extra time at the gym (or in my case, any time at the gym), this seems like a good option: The No-Workout Workout.

Of course, I’m not at all sure how well some of these really fit into every day life, without having people look at you and think “What the heck is that crazy person doing!?”

What Do 300 Calorie Meals Look Like?

admin — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:51:05 +0000

Ever wondered what 300 calories looks like? Well, it could look like a package of Swiss Cake Rolls.

Or, they can look like actual 300-400 calorie meals. They look pretty tasty to me. Now, all I Need is someone to cook for me.

Ellen is right on this one…

admin — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:39:00 +0000

“I gotta work out. I keep saying it all the time. I keep saying I gotta start working out. It’s been about two months since I’ve worked out. And I just don’t have the time. Which uh..is odd. Because I have the time to go out to dinner. And uh..and watch tv. And get a bone density test. And uh.. try to figure out what my phone number spells in words.” – Ellen DeGeneris

Note: I had to edit this post because someone mistakenly thought the previous title “I’m with Ellen” meant that I had decided to change my side of the fence and had replaced Portia De Rossi as Ellen’s muse. That is not the case, and shall never be the case. But Kev – thanks for trying buddy.