Author Archives: emsilees09

Mar 01 2010
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La Splenda Vita, My Life in Hoboken

The Queen of Stretching Food

From the March 5, 2010 edition of Hoboken’s Progress:

For someone like me, who sees the grocery store as the bane of my existence, you would think that Fresh Direct would be my saving grace. No more having to pass on the 10 for $5 deal. No groceries falling out of plastic bags torn open by the metal buckles on my boots. I thought this was it. So did my roommates.

Apparently, I just have a problem with the whole concept of buying food unless I’m completely out. While my roommates loaded their online carts on the Fresh Direct site with goodies, when it was my turn, my cart carried two boxes of granola bars, and then my desire to buy diminished immediately.

Missing an entry in the Merck Manual, my roommates and I have affectionately labeled me as the queen of  “stretching” food, ie: if my food acquiring habits were to be tracked on a graph—my trends are extremely predictable. No matter what, I will always find a way to dodge buying groceries.

I present to you exhibit A. This morning, I awoke to find that I was out of oatmeal. My box of America’s Choice was such a tease. Digging around my pantry, I found that I was actually out of a lot of things that are staples in my diet–namely, any source of protein other than peanut butter and two eggs. I decided to keep the eggs for a dinner scramble, so I succumbed to a breakfast of slathering peanut butter and jelly on pretzels. To my delight, I was quite satiated.

Exhibit B was last week: I arrived home, starving, with the suspicion that I didn’t have much in my cupboard. Upon opening my refrigerator, I find a leftover half of a cold sandwich from Luca Brasi’s. Huzzah! I got to work.

It is also quite fortunate that I have a somewhat small stomach and so I fill up very easily. Using that to my advantage, I dissect the turkey, mozzarella, roasted peppers, and arugula of the Big Petey as if I had just hunted it in the wild, deciding what to eat and what to spare for another time. Instinctual survival skills were definitely kicking in.

What I’m about to tell you I find half impressive, half sad. I took the mound of turkey and wrapped it up to use as lunch meat for a sandwich, and then demolished the rest of the sandwich for dinner. One sandwich supplied me with three meals.

My family still talks about the Chef Salad I ordered at a diner whose leftovers fed me lunch for the rest of the week. In my own defense, there was about a pound of turkey and ham atop another pound of lettuce. Or maybe, I’m just resourceful.

Sometimes, I think I just like the challenge of splicing together random ingredients on an empty stomach. Other times, I think maybe I’m just lazy. But I like to think it that whatever does not kill me only makes me stronger.

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Feb 18 2010
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Frugal fitness, Recipes/Cheap Grub

Pop Treat

When I was a kid, I was an extremely picky eater. As I’ve mentioned before, I was so picky (how picky were you??) that I honestly ate white bread and ketchup sandwiches for lunch when I was six years old. I did not like melted cheese or raisins. I also did not like crusts.

Disliking crusts as a child is not an uncommon finding, but what was unique was the way in which I would discard crusts, or “find” crusts on items you wouldn’t think had them, like Pop Tarts.

Yes–Pop Tarts have crusts. If I bit into any part of a Pop Tart that did not have any trace of the sweet strawberry or blueberry jam filling, out of my mouth it went. BLEH. I left the crusts behind on my plate like chicken bones.

Cut to 20 years later, and I’ve gotten better about crusts. In fact, I even like them, especially when crusts are chewy. (I also developed a habit of secretly coveting slightly stale food just for their chewiness factor.) I have also found that Pop Tart crusts are even better when they are HOME-MADE, as I delightfully discovered upon baking my own as a Valentine’s Day treat for CP.

Ingredients:

  • Pie crust, I used refrigerated since I don’t know how to make my own…YET
  • Jam–I used seedless strawberry
  • Glaze (recipe below)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to the temperature setting on the pie crust box. I set my oven for 450.

Unroll the pie crust and let sit for about 10 minutes so that it reaches room temperature. I didn’t have a pizza cutter to cut out a large square, but found that using the dull side of a knife works well. Then cut the square into whatever size rectangles you want. I used a 9” pie crust and got six rectangles out of the dough, perfect for three Pop Tarts.

Place a spoonful of jam in the center of a rectangle and top with another piece of crust. Crimp all four edges with a fork. Repeat until all of the pie crust is used.

Bake the pop-tarts for about 7 – 8 minutes or until slightly brown.

Once cooled, top with the glaze. Since I was a little late in getting to the store, all the red sparkly sugar was gone! Luckily, I had red food coloring, and just added it to the glaze to make it pink.

To Make the Glaze:

  • 1 cup powder sugar
  • milk to thin

Add milk a little at a time to make the powdered sugar thick, almost syrup-like. When the Pop Tarts have cooled, top with the glaze and let dry.

P.S.: Fun fact alert–for any one of you reading this that loves Ghostbusters, when I pulled the Pop Tarts out of the oven, some of the jam had leaked out. Not a problem at all–easy to clean up–but what made me laugh was that the bubbling strawberry jam instantly made me think of the goo from Ghostbusters II, so much so that I took a pic of it.

Feb 17 2010
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My Life in Hoboken

There’s Always That One Guy

From the 2-19-10 issue of Hoboken’s Progress:

If you build it, they will come.

If you congregate on a field, they will show up.

And if you sign up for a casual touch football league, they will not only sign up on the roster, but they will be sure to throw their water bottles at the bench and screech at their teammates, while the onlookers try not to laugh too hard.

Oh, do not be fooled. I was definitely a spectator at this game. I was the one trying not to laugh too loudly at the disgruntled quarterback. Just as much of a guarantee as the previous statements, if you place a ridiculously aggressive player in a game meant for leisure, people will laugh at him.

Perhaps there’s a bit of Murphy’s Law at play, but it is always inevitable: there will always be at least someone who takes a game too seriously.

In this instance, it was during a 2 o’clock touch football game on the Hoboken High School field. I was out with the boyfriend cheering on the roommies. Although we were failing to keep warm in the 20-degree weather, this guy was on fire.

With four games in play on the field at the same time, this guy somehow managed to steal the entire show. At first, he started to get a little loud during a team huddle. Something about him being the quarterback and that no one should call his name. I don’t know all the rules about football, but this seemed a little unnecessary. I wasn’t the only one. Huddled together, I heard the boyfriend trying to muffle a laugh. We looked at each other and immediately both thought—game on. Sorry to my roommates, but this was the game to watch.

We observed subtly, steadying our heads to face slightly left while we still stood in front of my roommates’ game. Though this posed as was quite the challenge given the wind that afternoon, our interest was peaked, and it was sort of impossible not to pay attention to the “quarterback.”

And we were not disappointed. In the midst of some exaggerated arm movements, he not only continued to yell comments, such as, “It only takes one foot! One foot!” after an opposing player made a touchdown, but he also got so worked up that he threw his water bottle at the bench on the sidelines, so hard that water flew out everywhere, even back at him. It even got his fanny pack wet. (OK, maybe it wasn’t a fanny pack, but he definitely had something strapped around his waist, and for entertainment purposes, it may as well have been a fanny pack).

Whether or not this is really Murphy’s Law—that for every one casual game, there will be at least one insanely intense player that may ruin the experience for someone—regardless, for the spectators, people like that “quarterback” are pure gold. I will surely keep my eyes peeled for him at future games, though my ears will probably find him first.

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Feb 05 2010
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La Splenda Vita

It’s Always Sunny In NYC

While I may be a timid driver, I am by no means a timid pedestrian.

I know what you must be thinking—a timid pedestrian? But, it’s a fact. They do exist.

Such creatures are those who commit the following acts while walking in the city: wait out each red light at an intersection even though there aren’t any cars passing through; run to the other side of the street when the “walk” sign is still blinking (the light hasn’t turned red yet, people); and those who start to cross against a light, but then hesitate—while you walk smack into them.

I used to feel a bit insecure that I don’t like to drive much, but ever since my status as a confident NYC walker has recently been compromised, I’ve decided that being considered as a timid or (gasp) slow walker is so much worse.

I blame this ugly rumor on the weather. Due to a weather pattern I have come to discover that hovers above the Hudson River during the winter season, my reputation as an urbanite is now under fire.

For some reason—and I really cannot fathom the science behind this—in Manhattan, unless there’s a blizzard, by the time that I step one foot out of the 33rd Street PATH station, any snow that I mustered through in Hoboken has already become an after thought in the city. Random puddles are the only evidence that some precipitation had fallen.

Can someone please explain this phenomenon to me, since not only am I baffled by this, but also, it makes me look like I’m a slow walker in inclement weather, since I have a tendency to be a little late on “snow days.”

I’m the only employee that treks into work from Hoboken, and without fail, I always seem to be the only one held up from getting a late start due to snow. Coworkers who do not have to cross a river to get to work do not believe when I explain that Hoboken looked like it had magically moved a dozen latitude degrees north when I awoke.

During my first winter working in NYC with a “real” job, during the first snowstorm of that season, I actually questioned if I had to go to work. I decided to call my co-worker and fellow Hobokenite to discuss. She was in the same boat as me—first real job, first snow day in the real world. We decided it was best to talk about this in person, over mugs of oatmeal and coffee in my kitchen. Before we knew it, by the time we finally made it into work, at was around 11 AM—and of course, there was no snow to be found on the streets on NYC.

As a consequence of this mysterious weather pattern, I appear as a timid city walker. But, I’m telling you, it’s real, and it’s out there.  I may have been naïve my first snowstorm, but I know for sure now. It’s not me. It’s the Bermuda Triangle of snow over the Hudson.

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