Just When I Thought I’d Seen It All: Yet Another Pumpkin Spice Something

January 3, 2011

How do you like that?

I discovered this Pumpkin Spice Caramel Ghirardelli Chocolate Square (whew!) in our office candy bin today. I didn’t know that this flavor existed! And I’d already eaten one of those white chocolate & peppermint thingies… among other chocolates.

As if I didn’t eat enough chocolate over the holiday. A workplace with year-round candy is a dangerous place.

But I HAD to try this, because I leave no pumpkin spice anything unturned. I think the caramel might have been a bit salty, but overall– nice work.

So now you know that the Ghirardelli Pumpkin Spice Caramel Chocolate Square (seriously long name!) is a thing. And you can look out for it when your very own co-worker brings a big bucket of candy leftovers to work. Or you can probably find it in the post-holiday bargain bin at your nearest grocery.

Pumpkin spice season is starting to feel a little long in the tooth, but I know I’ll miss it when it’s over.

Speaking of long spans of time– since I started Flickr-ing my blog photos, I’ve been posting them on the blog via URL links. The other day I realized that if I ever stop paying for Flickr premium, everything except the most recent 100 pictures will likely disappear. Does anybody have any evidence to refute this? Does WordPress save the pictures somehow? Or am I doomed to pay for Flickr for the rest of my life, and maybe posthumously? (Will this blog even last that long?) (Cue sad, deep thoughts about my own mortality and the impermanence of all things.)

Oh wait, I think I’m going to pay anyway, because I have personal pictures up there, too. Oh well, $24 a year… I guess I can live with that. (Until they raise it.) And after I die… I won’t care. Problem solved!

Okay, I think it’s time to go home and eat some hummus.

xoxo…

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Do It Yourself: Baby Banana Snack for All Ages (Crave! at Work)

December 22, 2010

Mommy & babies.

Hello, all! Have you heard about the rain in Southern California? Madness. Holiday madness. Luckily I survived it and am now watching “Man vs. Food” (yucky food) and “Top Chef: Just Desserts” (yucky people) with my sister and a snoozin’ puppy.

This post is a shout-out to everyone who can’t hide indoors or skip town yet– that’s right, the people who are still working. Here’s a little snack idea for you hard-working folks, utilizing foods that are probably sitting around your office kitchen. I used Crave’s baby bananas (yes, these are from the Holiday Challenge), but you can use adult bananas.

The ingredients:

Various nut butters.

-Pita, tortilla, or whatever bread you need to use up.

-Nutella, peanut butter… anything you think goes delicious with bananas, really. (Not pictured: Raisins.)

-Bananas!

Of course, because I’m me and I like my snacks to be fun and/or adorable, I decided to make my snack heart-shaped.

Pita my heart.

Then I pretty much went to town, trying to alternate stripes of Nutella and peanut butter– so that it would be evenly distributed when I closed the wrap.

I would normally slice a banana into little circles against the grain, but the baby bananas were so small that I just halved them, length-wise.

See the secret smile?

It ain’t pretty, but it tastes good. I mean, banana, Nutella, and peanut butter… it’s hard to go wrong.

Voila.

Does that count as a recipe? Haha. That’s it for my Crave! stuff, hope you enjoyed my fruity snacking/cooking.

Okay, I have to go focus on this commercial for Pajama Jeans.

xoxo…

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Snack [Trek] of the Afternoon, 12/13/10: THE BOBA TRUCK!

December 13, 2010

Boba fete.

Although I grew up in boba-friendly Orange County, I don’t recall ever ordering/drinking boba. Like, maybe I had a sip of somebody else’s once, but I’ve basically never had it before.

So when The Boba Truck! showed up this afternoon and people were excited and I saw that Yelpers highly endorsed it, I figured– this is my time.

Co-worker Charlie and I went out to the truck and smelled a few samples, and settled on the Cherry Blossom Green Milk Tea, which the Yelpers seemed to love. I was a little worried because I can be finicky about tea– I don’t like fruit teas, or mint teas, or… any tea I don’t like–but it turned out that the Cherry Blossom was a solid choice. Subtly spicy, not too sweet.

Purple straw!

“Your boba * your life,” just makes me think… “Your boba OR your life.” CREEPY CHOICE. (I choose life.)

The milk in the tea was non-dairy creamer, but they also have 2% Lactaid and soy milk. In case you were wondering. I’ve always wondered. That’s been part of my trepidation about the boba experience. (I drank WHAT? FULL-FAT BUTTERMILK?)

The tapioca pearls (boba balls?) were described to me as tasting like black licorice, and I can’t think of a better way of putting it. (They probably taste like tapioca, but I don’t really know what that tastes like…) They’re kinda… cold and squishy? And chewy. I don’t know, this is all going to sound really “that’s what she said.”

You should know this about boba balls: There are many of them. (The photo is deceptive.) And with every sip you sip, they will travel up your large special straw and try to jump into your mouth. (I know, I know…) Which is cool for the first few. But after a while… I was over the boba. Occasionally some sort of crazy suction trick would happen, and the balls will be suspended in the straw, defying both science and religion. (But mostly gravity.)

What WITCH conjured this spell?!

In high school I was in a Jewish leadership program that met in Irvine (very boba-friendly), and I remember some program-mates getting boba in a nearby outdoor mall and using the boba balls as awesome spitballs. I thought it looked SUPER fun. And they stuck to walls like a charm. (I bet the mall people LOVED us.)

Seeing as how I drank this in my cubicle, I resisted spitballing all the boba balls that I didn’t want to eat– but I did end up spitting the majority them onto a napkin. Better all that crazy gel on my napkin than in my easily upset stomach.

Shiny.

That’s the beginning. The pile got intense. There was a LOT of boba in there. This reminds me of really large caviar, and also of these cannonball piles I once saw at an old fort in Puerto Rico. (And maybe other old forts, too. Old forts… they all look the same!)

In conclusion, I liked the milk tea. The boba balls were a novelty but it got kinda tiresome having to deal with them. Maybe next time I’ll try the lychee jelly… or just hold the boba balls. (Yeah, yeah… hold the balls.) (Maybe THIS is why weird Google creepers are hitting my site.)

But I’m glad I tried them once. Cool experience, really nice guy working the truck… and really nice Charlie bought my tea for me. Inter-coworker chivalry is not dead!

Okay okay, time to shut this one down while I’m ahead. (I’m not ahead…)

xoxo…

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Snack of the Afternoon, 12/7/10: CHERRIES!!!

December 7, 2010

I'm so excited/And I just can't hide it.

Today I opened the office fridge and– much to my surprise and delight– encountered a bag of cherries. Big, ripe cherries. The best kind. (I think size does matter, with cherries.) (This whole post is a fantasia of “that’s what she said.”)

This is not the kind of thing I expect on a random Tuesday in December. (Is this cherry season?) (Does it matter, in these modern times?) I was VERY happy. So excited. It doesn’t take much, on a Tuesday.

Also, the cherries were adjacent to some “virgin lemonade.” That kinda made me giggle. (And smile because I like lemonade… not sure what makes it virgin, though. Pure lemons?) (Not sure if I’ve had “virgin lemonade” before. HA.)

Don’t read this, moms.

xoxo…

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Snack of the Afternoon, 10/19/10: MANGO & PINEAPPLE

October 19, 2010

Smells like Hawaiian spirit.

I was totally delighted when I spied sliced mango and pineapple in the fridge. They smell like Hawaii, and I keep dreaming that I’m in Hawaii. (Usually in the dreams something anxious or crazy is happening, but that’s not Hawaii’s fault.) (Why won’t my subconscious just shut up and let me enjoy Hawaii?)

You can’t take an imaginary snack-trip to Hawaii without making a joke about getting lei’d.

You got lei'd!

In comparison, the weather in LA is rainy and dreary. This morning the sun was out, but when I stepped outside my apartment I found that the rain had upgraded from the previous days’ drizzle to Big Fat Drops. But where there’s sun and rain, there’s a rainbow!

Birds fly over the rainbow...

That was today at about 8:15am. I tried to enhance the rainbow, but instead I accidentally obliterated it and made a much artsier pic.

But yeah, Hawaii in my mind. And I love pineapple and mango.

And I couldn’t find any Kit Kat bars.

xoxo…

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Snack of the Afternoon, 9/29/10: TERRA SWEET POTATO CHIPS

September 29, 2010

Sweet.

These are new to the kitchen. YES! We usually get the Terra chips that are more of a variety and I just pick out the red and orange ones. (Sorry… I’m THAT jerk.) So I’m glad to have the ALL ORANGE (aka, just sweet potato) chips.

I tried to resist putting ketchup on these, but I had to give in to the power of ketchup. Malcolm Gladwell knows what I’m talking about. (Thanks for sending me that article, Thomas!) (Everybody read it!)

The chips look a little different on the bag. The orange looks like cheese, as in, Doritos.

Orange alert!

Apropos of nothing, I’m really excited about tonight’s “Modern Family” episode. According to Movieline, it’s the one where Mitchell and Cameron finally kiss!

In the episode entitled “The Kiss” (!!!!!), Mitchell’s steadfast refusal to show affection in public turns into a tiff with Cameron.

I know I’m going to identify with this BIG TIME. I’m always negotiating how I feel about PDA (public displays of affection), re: myself and re: other couples. Sometimes I see a couple kissing and love them so much, and sometimes I see a couple holding hands and think, You clingy bastards!

And who knows what people are thinking about ME? (And… who cares?) (To clarify: I mean me kissing other people. Not myself. Then I’d KNOW what they were thinking: Weirdo.)

I wonder what Malcolm Gladwell has to say about PDA? (Speaking of taste buds and kisses, what is the taste of a tongue? Umami? Whatever you ate last?) (Yuck.)

xoxo…

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Snack of the Afternoon, 9/27/10: SHAVE ICE! (Tropical Shave Ice Truck)

September 27, 2010

Hey, look who's wearing nail polish again.

In case you thought I was LYING when I said it’s hot in Los Angeles right now… today was actually a record breaker. According to the LA Times, today was LA’s Hottest Day Ever. Really.

I wore shorts, knowing that the office might be over-compensatingly over-air conditioned. It was so hot in my apartment this morning, I didn’t really have any other option.

A few minutes after I got to work, I received an email announcing that the Tropical Shave Ice truck would be in our lot at 2:30pm. I don’t know when the building procured that truck, but it must have been SO in demand today. Major kudos whoever made this happen.

"Tropical shave"? That's a whole different story...

Ironically, I didn’t go outside until I went to get my shave ice. Co-worker Bryan compared the heat to a blow-dryer… it was definitely over 100 degrees (F). I actually didn’t mind standing in it for a few minutes. But I’m kinda cold-blooded, in the reptilian sense. (I also had to get warm enough to WANT the shave ice.) (Okay, I wanted it no matter what.)

I got one for myself, and one for my boss. That means… two pretty pictures! (Hers is prettier.)

Clown wig!

We both got vanilla ice cream at the bottom of our ices, which turned out to be an AMAZING finishing touch. The red in that picture is a flavor known as Tiger’s Blood. Isn’t that badass? Get me some Tiger’s Blood! (It’s strawberry/coconut.) (I totally would have ordered it, but I’m not huge on coconut.)

The yellow is pineapple and the green is lemon-lime.

I also got lemon-time, with guava and strawberry. It looks like a dirty Christmas snowball. But that might have something to do with the fact that I took this picture indoors. Seemingly in the pitch dark. (It was the room, actually.) (This photo reveals nothing.)

Don't judge me. I'm still delicious.

I don’t know how the shave ice people were keeping their ice from melting in this ridiculous heat, but it was perfection. The ice was ethereal, almost like the cotton candy of ice. So smooth. Not at all grainy or crunchy.

When I got through enough of the ice that it was feasible, I stirred it in with the vanilla ice cream at the bottom. The ice cream plus the ice and juice created this amazing slushie/smoothie… I would not have guessed that I would be such a fan of this.

A thousand times yes.

Yes, that is a tiny doggy in the background. His name is Sully. I was hoping to get a shot of him standing under my shave ice with his beggy little face, but he was preoccupied with his master. That’s okay. I get it.

Sully had a squeaky toy goose, which I thought was funny because the pilot “Sully” Sullenberger FLEW INTO a flock of geese. Dogs imitating pilots who may or may not be their namesakes! (I love you, Sully. Both of you.)

You are probably sitting there saying, “FUCK you, Elysse! It’s still over 100 degrees in my apartment and I ain’t got no shave ice truck!” To you, I say, “Fuck YOU, because you don’t know my life.”

My life is that I just invented a DIY bottom-of-the-shave-ice vanilla ice cream slushie, using household ingredients. FOR YOU. (Now I bet you feel kinda crappy for cursing me out. Serves you right!)

It’s really easy:

-Vanilla Ice Cream

-Fruit Juice (I happen to have orange juice) or Soda

-A Fruit Pop (make sure it complements the juice/soda– I had an orange Popsicle but that seemed too uniform, so I used grape)

(And by “pop” I mean frozen ice on a stick. Not Midwestern pop, which means soda.) (Weird.)

Pour the juice/soda over the pop to soften it. Add vanilla ice cream. Stir.

It’s good, right?

YOU’RE WELCOME.

Because on a hot night, there’s nothing better than a little do-it-yourself. (Or with others.)

Don’t say I never did anything for you. (Or that I never cooked.) (Okay, no heat was used. But when it’s too hot to go near an oven, this is cooking.)

xoxo…

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Snack of the Afternoon, 9/9/10: APPLES & HONEY

September 9, 2010

L'Shanah Tovah!

This was actually my snack yesterday afternoon, but I saved it for today because it’s OFFICIALLY Rosh Hashanah RIGHT NOW. But I’m going to eat apples & honey again tonight, so this isn’t a TOTAL lie.

As legend has it, this should cause me to have a sweet new year.

I’m not the type of person who adds sugar to fruit, because fruit is already sweet, but I gotta say– the tart Granny Smith apple with that sweet honey was delectable. And still healthy.

Now, if you’re looking for a sweeter, less healthy, apple-related way to celebrate the new year, I direct you to this most brilliant (as in, shiny) cupcake. It was spotted by one of my Binge operatives at a Crumbs Bake Shop in NYC. (I didn’t Binge-tag it because I didn’t take it myself.)

My sweet tooth hurts, just looking at this.

A big apple in The Big Apple. Get it?

That might go down as one of my favorite pictures ever. I spent several minutes gaping at it, earlier today. I consulted the Crumbs website, and they don’t list whatever flavor this is. [Wait! It's called The Big Apple... and it has to do with teacher appreciation? That's all I got.] I’m guessing it’s apple-something? Whatever it is, I love it.

Apples and honey!

xoxo…

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Snack of the Afternoon: FROZEN YOGURT from BIG SWIRL TRUCK

September 2, 2010

You go, swirl.

As several bazillion people have pointed out, today’s date is 90210. Kinda clever. My hometown’s zip code date happened in 1961, so I totally missed out on THAT. (I don’t know if I would have noticed, since I didn’t catch this one.)

What’s the big deal? This is a ONCE IN A CENTURY occurrence. You will probably be dead when it happens again. And Beverly Hills might have a different zip code… or be underwater. Or worse… nobody will care about Beverly Hills anymore. (Beverly Hills thrives on attention.)

But who cares about anything anymore? Moving on.

This is one of the Friday-est feeling Thursdays I’ve ever encountered. I cannot convince my brain that it’s only Thursday. (And next week will be equally confusing, with the lack of a work-Monday.)

But that has nothing to do with the Snack of the Afternoon. Lately we’ve been spoiled not only by LUNCH trucks, but by a few DESSERT trucks. Today we were graced by the turquoise presence of the Big Swirl Truck. It’s basically Yogurtland on wheels.

You can buy a $3 or $5 cup and fill it as high as you want. I bought the $5 cup, but I didn’t fill it that high. I probably would have paid less by weight at a Yogurtland. Ah well. My bad. I didn’t take advantage! (And I was still quasi-full from falafel.)

While my brain continues to try to pull a Friday afternoon shutdown on me, here are some pictures…

The dispensary.

I don’t know if you can tell, but there’s a lot of sparkle going on with those spoons.

I took great interest in the toppings dispensers, which had some sort of propeller element to their design.

Not pictured: Ghirardelli chocolate sauce. Yes.

And now, for my own personal creation…

Prettiful.

I like taking pictures in the sun… the colors look so bright and cheerful. (Those sprinkles were really crunchy.) (And that light brown yogurt is dulche de leche.)

Funny that Big Swirl likes to emphasize the BS. Whatever floats their truck.

The flavors were all yum. Maybe a hazard of having a yogurt truck in the sun, but the pistachio was kinda soupy. Still tasty, but I couldn’t take much, lest it soup up the rest of the flavors.

Having a yogurt truck right outside kinda makes me miss the days when the commissary was only a short walk away… frozen yogurt ANY day. (If I could get away from the phones.) Eh… I don’t miss it that much. There’s still plenty of yogurt in my life.

These pesky snacks and sandwiches keep popping up and forcing me to backlog my planned entries. But it’s okay. Something to do on Friday. (I might have to scale back, lest the food-blogging portion of this blog because as overwhelming as the TV-recapping portion once was.)

Cheerfully blah… (Maybe the sweet tea is finally wearing off? Haha.)

xoxo…

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Snack [Trek] of the Afternoon, 8/31/10: COOLHAUS TRUCK

August 31, 2010

Are the walls blocking the truck, or making this pic artsy?

Okay, the Coolhaus truck was here. I met the unicorn. (It even has a horn? Or a cool pink protrusion?) Some say that you should never meet your unicorns, for they will always disappoint you. I wasn’t disappointed, per se, but conditions were not ideal. (Starting with my Oregon Trail-style drinking-of-bad-water at 7:15am.)

One very cool thing about the truck is the use of decorative magnets to post both the day’s menu and pictures of famous architects. (Another cool thing is the story of the founders. It’s on the site.)

I was saddened by the lack of "dirty mint chip" today-- whatever that means.

I remember this name from my years of being an architecture student’s roommate. (Also: Corbusier.)

Koolhaas on Coolhaus.

My original dream order, based on the website, was one snickerdoodle cookie and one ginger cookie, with dirty mint chip. (I don’t know what makes it dirty, but I wanted to find out!)

Unfortunately life doesn’t always hand us dirty mint chip. By the time I got to the truck, pickings were slim. I ended up getting one snickerdoodle cookie and one chocolate chip cookie, with carrot cake ice cream. And I got co-worker Daphne her alternate: chocolate chip cookies with peanut butter. Here’s an architecturally unsound shot. (My hands are small!)

Double decker!

If you look in the bottom left corner of that picture, my cardigan kind of blends with the carpet and it looks like my hand is floating in space. I’m Thing from “The Addams Family!” (That’s why you never see my face.) (Also… that’s why my flavor descriptions are limited. I have no mouth!)

I’m sorry, these pictures are kind of blurry and sucky. I’ve been holding myself to a higher standard lately. But sometimes life doesn’t hand you super-clear pictures OR dirty mint chip. You still gotta post SOMETHING.

Eat this ad.

The ice cream sandwiches are wrapped in edible paper, which is apparently made of potato starch… something like that. I was hoping it would be made of sugar. I ate some just for the heck of it, but it tasted like… actual paper, only a bit more melt-in-your-mouth. Not my new favorite snack or anything. But interesting.

And of course the paper had an ad on it. They should print fake government secrets. Eat after reading!

My mistake was that I actually ate the big chunk of carrot cake that was in my carrot cake ice cream. I felt a little stomach-unhappy after that. (Also– Cake mixed in with ice cream, served on a cookie? Really, Elysse?) (At least there were real carrot-pieces. Vegetable to the rescue!)

Here’s a very noir shot of that situation…

Triple dessert threat.

Looks like I was eating it in jail. I ought to be locked up, for this behavior.

Actually, I put the whole thing in a bowl and ate it very conventionally. I like to try everything separately, together, etc etc. The snickerdoodle was not quite as soft as I like my cookies (though I was happy to have a reason not to eat the whole thing– especially since I ate more carrot cake than I’d bargained for), but the chocolate chip cookie was just right.

Playing with my food./Demolition.

So I had a kinda mixed experience due to multiple factors (I was also in a MOOD because I’m trying a new hair product and it gave me a BAD HAIR DAY), but I’m definitely open to revisiting this truck.

Hopefully next time they have the dirty mint chip! Or the red velvet ice cream– if it’s anything like carrot cake, I’m guessing it’s red velvet cake smooshed into vanilla ice cream. Color me intrigued. (Even though the red velvet identity crisis rages on, especially after eating a red velvet from SPRINKLES on Saturday and not feeling true love for it.) (My heart belonged to cinnamon? Never thought I’d say THAT.) (Although… I DID choose a snickerdoodle today. I feel another identity crisis coming on!)

Next time, I hope to go with Lauren! I know she’ll delight in the architect magnets… and the desserts.

xoxo…

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