Category: Food

When transferring the elliptical images over to my computer, I noticed a few images that I hadn’t talked about yet:

I also got these from Costco and they’re super yummy. They’re called spanakopita and the description states: spinach and feta phyllo triangles. According to Wikipedia:

Spanakopita is a Greek spinach pie with a filling of spinach, feta cheese (usually), green onions, egg, and seasoning (often including dill). The filling is wrapped in layers of phyllo pastry with butter and/or olive oil, either in a large pan from which individual servings are cut, or rolled into individual triangular servings (see burek). Once baked, it is golden in color.

In Greece, it is mostly eaten as a snack, an alternative to tyropita.

In restaurants it can be served with tzatziki sauce and a Greek salad. It has become a popular item in Greek restaurants worldwide, and is served as either a light meal or an appetizer.

After it leaves the oven, the outside is crispy and the insides are soft. The only unfortunate thing is that each dish comes with 12 triangles and I can’t possibly finish all of them in 1 sitting, and after you leave it out for some time, the crispiness disappears. It’s also on sale this month (from the coupon booklet).

So I had some left over beef turnip dish thingy from Sichuanese Cuisine earlier this week and decided to finish it up. I also had some left over rice I had prepared to make fried rice with. I was taught that left over rice is the best for doing fried rice, due to the fact that freshly cooked rice sticks to the wok and is too mushy. Leave it in the fridge overnight and the rice-lings harden up. Anyway, I was trying to figure out what type of meat I wanted to add to my fried rice. What better than to use this already cooked meat.

So while I was at Safeway, I picked up some green onion and peas and carrots. I already had eggs, so now I was complete.

It tasted actually really good. Too bad the chili peppers weren’t really edible, so I had to picked them out. However, it did make my fried rice spicy, and that was definitely added an interesting flavor.

Who the heck decided to pronounced bologna as baloney or decided to write baloney as bologna? While shopping at Safeway today (which I have now found out that postage stamps don’t contribute to the $50 total if you want to get the 10¢ gas discount), I was walking down the ham aisle. While trying to decide what to get, I was surprised the Oscar Mayer Bologna wasn’t on sale, but every other bologna was (beef, turkey, etc.).

Anyway, I always just thought “baloney” was just a slang for bologna since it’s not easy for kids to say bo-lone-ga (which is what I’ve always called it). Someone awhile back corrected me and told me that’s how “baloney” is supposed to be spelled. I was like WTF? What idiot decided to spell baloney like that or decided to pronounce bologna as baloney.

Anyway, I decided to look up bologna to see if there’s a good reason for this. According to Wikipedia:

It is commonly called bologna and often pronounced (by hypercorrection) and/or spelled baloney.

However, I did noticed that there was a city in Italy called Bologna:

Bologna (IPA [boˈloɲɲa], from Latin Bononia, Bulåggna in Emiliano dialect) is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, in the Pianura Padana, between the Po River and the Apennines, exactly between the Reno River and the Sàvena River.

They apparently pronounced Bologna as bo-lone-ya, which I can see how, and definitely sounds more correct than Baloney, Italy.

Digging up some more, I found this on Online Etymology Dictionary:

bologna – 1850, variant of bologna sausage (1596), named for the city in Italy, formerly Bononia. See baloney.

If a city like Bononia does exist, I can completely see why baloney is pronounced as so. Searching on Wikipedia resulted in this:

Bononia is the Roman name of several cities, including:

• Bologna, Italy
• Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
• Vidin, Bulgaria
• Banoštor, Serbia

So my hunch tells me that it could be that this sausage was originally called baloney because the Bologna city back then was called Bononia. After the city changed it’s name, they didn’t change the way the sausage was pronounced, and when it was added into the English dictionary, it took the pronunciation of the original Bononia, but used the modern name of Bologna as the spelling.

Fascinating…

Last week during dinner with some coworkers, I brought up about the most expensive coffee in the world. It started with talking about water, tea, and coffee having no calories if you don’t add milk or sugar. So while on the topic of coffee, I had remember seeing them talking about the most expensive coffee in the world in a Chinese detective drama series I saw a few years back. I forgot what it was called, but I remember how it was made. I recalled that they had to feed the coffee beans to a cat. The cat would them poop it back out (I know, faux pas for dinner topic). Somehow, during the digestion process, the cats inner body adds something to the coffee beans that makes it taste and smell a lot better.

Everyone was so disgusted by this fact, they claimed they wouldn’t even try it. I couldn’t understand why… I mean, the coffee beans will be thoroughly wash and all the poop would be removed and there won’t be any remnants of the poop or the coffee beans ever being inside a cat’s stomach. I had brought up about vegetables being inside fertilizer and people just washing it and eating that, but they said fertilizer wasn’t exactly poop. Xyon gave the example of if I would eat undigested corn stuck in my poop if they washed it very carefully. He does have a point, but nonetheless, I don’t think my stomach makes corn taste or smell better, so I wouldn’t do it.

Anyway, after I came home, I decided to look up some information. It turns out it’s called Kopi Luwak. According to Wikipedia:

Kopi Luwak or Civet coffee is coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus).

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $120 and $600 USD per pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and United States, but it is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though supplies are limited. One small cafe, the Heritage Tea Rooms, in the hills outside Townsville in Queensland, Australia has Kopi Luwak coffee on the menu at A$50.00 per cup.

Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee, and luwak is a local name of the Palm Civet. The raw, red coffee berries are part of its normal diet, along with insects, small mammals, small reptiles, eggs and nestlings of birds, and other fruit. The inner bean of the berry is not digested, but it is believed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee’s flavor by breaking down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste. The beans are excreted still covered in some inner layers of the berry. The beans are washed, and given only a light roast so as to not destroy the complex flavors that develop through the process.

So it turns out a it’s not exactly a cat. A Palm Civet is actually a cat-sized mammal in the family Viverridae, sometimes referred to as the Toddy Cat. And it’s not really coffee beans, but coffee berries. I had no idea coffee berries existed. Anyway, I’ve pretty much gotten to the point I’d tried anything if someone recommends it to me, and wouldn’t mind trying a cup of this coffee. I personally don’t like coffee that much, and if I do drink it, it’s usually in the form of mocha or a lot of milk and sugar.

But A$50 (~US$40) for a cup of coffee… Wow!

Last week, I met up with MandalayX as he was up in Seattle for the PAX 2007. I was invited a few friends, but PAX isn’t really my thing. I enjoy playing games, but not as much as what most people would assume. Let’s just say the game I play most often is still probably Free Cell, and I can go without turning on my Xbox 360 for months.

We met up on Thursday night and we caught dinner and just chatted. There was a lot of catching up to do. For those who don’t know, MandalayX was my roommate freshman year in the dorms. We’ve kept in touch, but didn’t really see each other that often after the 1st year. He appears to be doing well, but his hours are rather harsh. I guess that’s the problem with family businesses. He wanted to check out my place so I took him back and showed him around. He even got to try out MexiCoke. He said their wasn’t much difference in the initial taste, but the aftertaste was definitely different.

All in all, it was a pleasure to see him again. That reminds me, I still have some food left over from that night… Guess that’ll have to wait till Tuesday as I’m going over to a friend’s place for a cookout for Labor Day.

Was going to blog about my new file server, but that’ll have to wait.

After eating a chips ahoy cookie yesterday, I suddenly had an immense toothache. One of my teeth has been aching recently and when I tongued it, I can feel a small hole. I’m thinking, either a big cavity has formed or my filling is broken off. It’s hard to measure size with tongue as it just felt like a gaping hole.

So I went to Rite Aid after work today for 2 items, one of those dental mirrors so I can see what the heck is going on with that tooth and the other was for some pineapple coconut ice cream.

Finding the dental mirror was rather simple. They had 3 options: $6.99, $7.99, and $8.99, all which also came with 2 of those teeth scratching thingies. I opted for the cheap one cause all I really needed was the mirror.

Anyway when I walked in, I had noticed they didn’t have an ice cream counter. However, I was even shocked to find out their ice cream section was almost completely empty. Looking at the tags, it didn’t look like they carried any Thrifty/Rite Aid brand ice cream. I was highly disappointed.

When I got home, I shot this email over to Rite Aid customer service.

Hi,

I’m from California and recently moved up to Washington. I’ve always been a big fan of Thrifty/Rite Aid ice cream and had a craving for some pineapple coconut ice cream today.

However, I was disappointed that the Rite Aid next to work did not have an ice cream stand nor sold any of Thrifty’s/Rite Aid’s famous ice cream in the frozen section.

I was wondering if there are any Rite Aids around my area that do have an ice cream stand or sell Thrifty/Rite Aid brand ice cream.

Thanks!

Yes, I really WANT pineapple coconut ice cream.

Then I went to check out my tooth. Turns out the 2nd tooth left of my left canine did in fact have a big hole where filling once used to be. Whenever I eat something sweet or cold, it sends chills down my body. Guess I’ll be using my right jaw for awhile now.

My initial guess is that I had chewed or something hard and my filling didn’t like that. Could be all the ice I chew all the time.

I really need a dentist recommendation up here. If anyone’s got a good one, please let me know.

If you’re wondering if I’ll be giving up sweets and cold stuff in the meantime, the answer is a rather clear NO. Give me sweets or give me death!

Upon further inspection, it doesn’t appear the filling has fallen off, but actually part of my tooth. With my Canon SD1000 in macro mode and no flash mode and with the help of my LED flashlight, I took these 2 pictures (DO NOT CLICK IF YOU ARE EASILY GROSSED):

It looks like the filling didn’t crack and is rather smooth on where this new hole is. I wonder how I managed to crack this hole… It looks exceptionally dirty and I even went to use mouthwash after seeing the 1st picture. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have help as you can see in the 2nd picture. As you can see, the rest of my teeth are pretty clean. I guess my toothbrush can’t reach into that tiny hole.

Grrrrr. I really need to see a dentist asap now.