Tales of A Grocery Store Harlot

Most people who know me well know that I love to cook.  This mainly stems from my love of food, but it also partially due to the fact that my mom didn’t do much cooking growing up.  I grew up eating out probably about 6 meals a week (its a wonder I’m not huge).  Because of this, I completely lack any sort of normal cooking knowledge (I one time tried to follow instructions to “scald milk” by burning milk really badly.  Don’t do that.  It smells.).  Therefore, I approach cooking like I do most everything else – as one big mystery with a handy recipe guide.  And man do I love that recipe.  I DO NOT VARY FROM THE RECIPE.  Every time I venture out from the recipe’s guiding hand, I end up with something gross.  It’s pretty much guaranteed.  But I am willing to try almost anything, no matter what level of difficulty.  I figure that the recipe will help me out along the way, like any good guide does.  This means that I am always searching out random ingredients (I am afraid to substitute) and visiting multiple grocery stores READ MORE

Things I am Looking Forward to This Weekend

Things I am Looking Forward to This Weekend

1)  Eating Pho!!!
I am forever in love with pho.  I probably eat it at least once or twice a week.  I like to think that it is extra special healthy, and that there is some sort of Eastern mystical benefits of eating such a spicy/foreign dish.  I mean, I used to call pho a “forest in a bowl,” due to the fact that, unlike most western soups, pho is made up of a bunch of unrelated ingredients hanging out in a big thing of broth.  And it kind of looks like someone emptied a teeny tiny forest into a bowl.  Of course, its not REALLY a forest in a bowl (I like that I spelled that out for you), and I have no evidence that my pho is especially healthy for me, but I have pretty much convinced myself that by eating what looks sticks and leaves mixed with noodles, both my physical and spiritual health are improved.

Now, I am no pho expert.  I have eaten it at a grand total of 5 different restaurants (including one in College Station, which I don’t even know if that should count) that serve pho.  However, I have decided that (in my limited experience) the best pho in Dallas (and I guess College Station) is found at Green Papaya.  Basically, I love their pho because they tell me exactly how much spice to add.  I mean, listen, I am definitely not Vietnamese.  I am very very non-Vietnamese.  If you don’t measure out the burning hot chili sauce and the extra yummy sweet sauce out for me, I will end up with a super burning/sickeningly sweet bowl of noodles and beef, with way too much cilantro and not enough lime juice.  It has happened before, and it breaks my heart every time.  But anyways, enough about the deliciousness that is pho, the point of this bullet is that I get to eat it!  Today!  At lunch!  So it is item number one and things I am looking forward to over the weekend.

2)  Taste of Dallas!
When I first moved to Dallas, I was pretty disappointed in its attempt at a Taste of Dallas.  Unlike the city’s phenomenal efforts at Restaurant Week, Dallas’s Taste of Dallas is slightly underwhelming.  Dallas has some great restaurants!  I want to taste them!  But no.  The restaurants participating in Taste of Dallas are the usual touristy/West End dwelling ones that participate every year.  BUT.  With that all being said, I still love going!  I love buying little $2 samples of all sorts of random food, eating it or taking a bite, yelling “Yuck!” and moving on to the next booth!  It doesn’t matter!  You only paid two dollars!!  And plus, I never get bored.  People are always commenting that, for someone who loves food as much as I do, I sure do seem to only eat a tiny portion of my plate.  Usually, people assume it’s because I am a weird dieter, and that I only eat part of my plate as some sort of wasteful dieting technique.  This is not true.  Mostly, I continue eating READ MORE