Gracenote

I've mentioned The Coffee Trike before, and I was thrilled for San (the owner) when I found out he was opening a brick and mortar location. What a wonderful new endeavor for him!

Quick Definition List to make this post easier to follow:

1. Gracenote Coffee Roasters (Gracenote Coffee) have been around since 2012. They roast locally, and they source some delicious beans.
2. Gracenote Boston Espresso Bar (Gracenote Boston) is the brick and mortar shop that San opened in October 2015. 
3. The Coffee Trike is the wonderfully innovative trike that San used to bicycle in to Dewey Square every Monday to Friday unless the weather was super bad. He used Gracenote Coffee.

Unfortunately, The Coffee Trike had been parked right outside my train stop during my morning commute, and while Gracenote Boston is only a few blocks from there, location, it's in the opposite direction from my office. An extra eight blocks on a winter morning is huge. This morning I decided to hell with it, I missed my morning deliciousness, and I was going to get some. There are two great coffee shops near my office, but they aren't The Coffee Trike, and it's about damned time I checked out Gracenote Boston.

The full review can be found behind the link after this quick summary:

PROS

• Delicious cold brew. Seriously. The best.
• Friendly, helpful staff.
• A charming and pretty shop.
• Located close to South Station.
• They use Gracenote beans and also sell them so you can bring them home.
• They use Square so if you have the app on your phone but forgot your wallet you can still get your caffeine goodness. 
• The daily Twitter posts are useful and generally accompanied by craving-inducing photos. 
• Some staff (maybe all? I don't know) might use beautiful latte art on your drink.

CONS

• San wasn't there. Thankfully his staff is super friendly, so I had a lovely introduction to my morning.
• No seating.
• Small drink size.
• The shop was built for tall people. 
• Weird location that's off the beaten path but only by about .15 miles.
• Really hard to find the first time. All future trips will be a piece of cake
• The website doesn't provide info on the brick and mortar location.

SUMMARY

• Go there. 
• Seriously. Go there. 
• YUM!

Stay Open on Thanksgiving, Please!

I'm working from home on Thanksgiving, and I'll be doing it from a local coffee shop that's staying open because I live in the Boston area. This means I can't afford to rent my own apartment and have a roommate who has her family coming over for Thanksgiving. Rather than hide in my room in my pajamas afraid to be forced to eat with them if I dare walk out to pee or grab a sandwich for lunch, I'm going to a local coffee shop.

I can't get back to my hometown for Thanksgiving, and even if I did go back, my mother and grandmother have passed away. My sister goes to her husband's mother's house for holidays, so I'd drive down in the middle of the night, eat a bird at a stranger's house, and then drive home so I can get back to the office and work on Friday. My office is open Friday, but I'm working Thursday because I had an invite for post-Thanksgiving hanging outs on Friday :-)

There are a lot of companies getting flack for being open on Thanksgiving, but being open on Thanksgiving isn't necessarily a bad thing. If fat Aunt Martha drove three hours to get here and you immediately dumped a pot of coffee on her outfit, she can run to Sears for a new blouse (since nobody else's clothes are large enough for her). When you realize you forgot to buy cranberry sauce you can send one of the kids out for the cranberry sauce that comes out of a can. While they're at the store, you'll probably text them to pick up extra stuffing, some celery, and butter without salt (because you forgot that Grandpa's heart problems require a low salt meal).

All the screaming about how people shouldn't have to work on Thanksgiving and stores should be closed pisses me off. Here's some of the reasons why:

I'm Going to Eat Some Worms

When I was in junior high school, the school musical was Oliver. Food - glorious food! The above video shows the orphans singing and dreaming about having enough food to eat and about having tasty food.  They were tired of porridge and probably suffering from malnutrition, but we were able to have fun and sing and dance and just have a blast.  My sister was one of the singing orphans.  She was a tiny, skinny slip of a girl, so she fit in very well.

My sister also liked to eat bugs.  I don't think she ate all bugs, but she did put chocolate on ants to eat them. I'm not sure if it was to gross other people out or just because she liked the taste of ants. I do know that my sister is a ridiculously picky eater.  She turns her nose up at all sorts of wonderful foods, but would probably sit down with a bowl of chocolate covered ants if I sent them to her.  However, the place I usually see chocolate covered bugs for sale is ThinkGeek, and I'm just not willing to spend $19 just to send my sister a gag gift of chocolate covered protein.

I wonder if she knows that she regularly eats bugs?  I know that I have washed my veggies well and discovered a bug in them while cooking, and I'll admit that I am one of the first people to freak out when such a thing happens.  However, processed food also contains bugs, and the FDA is happy to explain why and how this happens.  They created a system of "action levels" to decide what level of insects, rodent hair, etc., might be in the foods we consume, and they had a good reason to do so.  It's simply impossible to create "perfect" food. Instead, their goal is to manage the levels of what's in our food to ensure that we're getting the least nasty option.

For example, they don't look at pesticides as a way to keep bugs out of our food.  No, pesticides exist to keep growing foods from being eaten and destroyed by bugs. They assume that our food will have bugs in it from a variety of different methods - infestations, contamination, just by virtue of the damned things getting in even when we work to keep them out.  Heck, we've been battling moths in my apartment for months, and now the stupid buggers are just clinging around the kitchen trying to make baby moths RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES.  It's just mean.  It's not like I am standing in front of the moths with a second individual trying to make baby people in front of their eyes!
 Anyway, I'm off track, and I'm bitter that the moths won't go away.  We aren't interested in having chemicals brought into our home, so we're just sort of hoping they'll disappear.  So far, we're losing the battle.

So we're always eating an allowable amount of things that are generally considered unsavory within the American diet.  What we don't think about is why bugs should be in our diet.  Current food production uses far more resources than it gives back. It's expensive, and it's a really shitty use of our resources.  The environmental impact of cow farming is massive and stinky.  Elizbeth Grossman notes in Yale Environment 360 article that, "According to the EPA, a 2,000-cow dairy generates more than 240,000 pounds of manure daily or nearly 90 million pounds a year. The USDA estimates that the manure from 200 milking cows produces as much nitrogen as sewage from a community of 5,000 to 10,000 people."  Insects are a great source of protein and other nutrients, and they don't create nearly as much sewage!

Try some of the delicious and edible bugs available in the US!

The above photo contains a link to a great resource for bugs, but if you don't think you can handle looking your bug in the eye while you eat it, try out something like this:  milled whole cricket powder. How's that for a great way to enjoy a nice, high protein muffin?

All of this sounds great, but I'm going to be honest - while I don't eat meat very often, I haven't purposely added bugs to my diet, and I don't intend to.  I have the standard American fear of eating bugs.  I can accept that there's certain amounts of bugs in my processed food, but I just can't pick up that chocolate covered grasshopper and pop it in my mouth. This is the one thing that my sister can be more adventurous about than I am. 

That being said, I still love to sing about it!

Have you purposely chosen to include bugs in your diet?  Tell me about it!

Hotdog!

I haven't been feeling well lately, so I haven't wanted to eat. However, I woke up ravenous, and I'm restraining myself from going out and getting every kind of bad food I can imagine.  Well, not really restraining myself so much as pulling up pictures of my bank account.

The "good" part is that there is no place that I know sells hotdogs near my office. After days of eating very little, and then being nauseous after I was done, I find myself craving hotdogs.  And not just any hotdog.  No, I want a Sonoran hotdog, the King of Hotdogs.

http://www.roadfood.com/Restaurant/Overview/6880/el-manantial

The above hotdog happens to be from a food truck at 1575 36th Street in Tucson. However, my favorite Sonoran dogs came from a different place. I don't know if it's still there, and I can't remember the exact intersection, but if I was in Tucson, I'd be there after work today!

So what's a Sonoran Hotdog?  It's something that turns my stomach to think about whenever I'm not in the mood for one.  A Sonorah hotdog is a bacon wrapped hotdog that has onions, chili, tomatoes, mayo, and mustard.  They always have a grilled chili pepper on the side (although the one in the photo above is from a place that wraps the chili in bacon, too!).

That's Nerdalicious has a post about a variety of types of dogs, and I want so many of them!  However, I want mine to be a beef dog, thank you very much.  I'm not a fan of the regular ones.  Check out the link for some yummy hotdog ideas:

http://www.thatsnerdalicious.com/meat/40-hot-dogs/#more-80792

Bento

A bento box is a meal that has several small dishes, and the boxes sometimes have different layers that nestle together or are one box with a variety of small containers that can be added to compartmentalize the meal so your foods don't all get mixed together. I've read that the traditional Japanese bentos tend to have a container of rice, some fruit, some sort of vegetable dish, and finger foods like tamagoyaki, hard boiled eggs, etc. They are to pack your lunches in, but I think that the idea could be applied to any meal, even if it's not in a box.

Photo from amazon.com the Yum Yum Bento Box book

Living alone, my meals have become ridiculously simple. They're tasty, but rather dull looking, and even when they're tasty, I just don't enjoy them anymore. I don't have a usable table, and my dishes are bland. I have been putting together something simple and then just eating it at the computer. For breakfast, I'll have a rice ball or two, miso soup, and an egg on the side. For lunch, I've been having a sandwich with an apple and some fruit, and for dinner, I've been having pasta, a salad, and eggs. I just don't seem to be interested in spending all that time in the kitchen to make something just for myself. It doesn't feel worth the effort. I've been snacking on cream of wheat or dumplings made from bisquick. I make all different types of eggs (hard boiled, egg salad, tamagoyaki, poached eggs mixed into rice, etc., scrambled with different seasonings, etc.), but even that gets old. I sometimes add some variety by getting the Trader Joes edamame tofu nuggets (If you haven't tried them, go get some! They're awesome!)

These simple meals are not causing me to lose weight (which wasn't my intention), but they are leaving me feeling rather blah about my meals and craving cookies and sweets and other "more interesting" foods. Every trip to Trader Joes leaves me fighting with myself to not buy their delightful peanut butter cups, a cake, or something else that will let me mix-up my meals. I remind myself that the bread that I purchase is interesting, that I have roasted red peppers, a variety of condiments, and whatever veggies are in the house so I can make all different types of sandwiches, or that hummus on my salad is a delightful change, but it's just not enough.

This has left me thinking about ways to make my simple meals more attractive, and that reminded me about bento boxes. Several years ago, I began reading Jennifer's Vegan Lunchbox Blog.  I was fascinated with the really bento lunches she would make for her son, and I loved that they were vegan (I don't eat meat very often). I've recently become fascinated with bentos again, so I looked her back up again. Jennifer has written two books cataloging basic bento meals (I hadn't realized she'd published a second one), but she's not the only bento box book author. Some of the bento box books are so detailed and offer some adorable and nutritional meals. There are so many books on the market right now!

One thing that several bento bloggers have noted is that when you buy a bento box, it might appear to be too small for your lunch, but if you fill them with healthier foods, you will be quite satisfied.  For example, instead of adding cheetos to your lunch, add sliced vegetables. The veggies take up less room, are more filling, and have a positive nutritional value.

I am looking at the Mr. Bento.

Photo from EpicSelf

Mr. Bento's not as attractive as some of the bento boxes out there, but it's convenient, and most important to me, it can hold wet foods, even soup. Mr. Bento is larger than many of the bento boxes, but I would rather have an empty container then not enough space for my meals. I am about to start working 70 hour work weeks. This means that I'll probably want to have two meals, or at least more afternoon snacks, at work. I ride a motorcycle to work, so I need something that is absolutely leak-proof because backpacks are jostled about the contents often do not stay upright.

There are quite a few bento accessories out there . Of course, I want these items so that I, too, can have adorable lunches, but I'll stick with buying the bento box for now. http://www.allthingsforsale.com/ has a very large selection of cute bento accessories. A few of the items they sell include silicon cups shaped like animals to partition your food with, rice ball molds so your rice balls can come in shapes instead of being round or triangular like the ones made by hand, and vegetable cutters so you can make fun-shaped vegetables. I have a rather large list of items I want from this site, including some adorable dressing containers so my salads won't get soggy.

Mr. Bento comes with a spork, and sporks have never been my favorite utensils. So I want to get the portable utensils and case.  I'd like to get the really cute chopsticks and forks that have carry cases, but this case will be more useful. Such a shame, the black cat fork and case is so cute!

Photo from Allthingsforsale.com

So I'm jumping on the bento bandwagon a bit late (or at least it seems that way as I peruse websites), but I think it will be fun.