Peppers and Eggs at Home

For dinner, I had some red and yellow peppers, raw, and a Cadbury's orange creme egg. Okay, two creme eggs...



I had a late lunch of kasha and salmon, so I wasn't terribly hungry tonight. Moreover, our journey to the grocery store was not very successful. I've been craving lots of veggies lately, and Schnuck's had very few. I suppose it's in between seasons? I'm still craving roasted fall veggies like squash, beets, parsnips, and carrots, but their squash and cauliflower were really sad looking. The parsnips looked great, except for the creepy wax coating. I really don't like peeling my root veggies, so that was a dealbreaker. I didn't even see the beets. I ended up with some peppers, carrots, and onions.

Then I saw the Easter candy. I LIVE for Cadbury's creme eggs. The dilemma was choosing a flavor. So many good ones...

While perusing the Easter candy, Jon told me I should get some Peeps for the Washington Post's Peeptest (Peeptacular? Peep-o-rama?), but I know they no longer accept entries from outside the DC metro area, and I HATE Peeps. DC people, this is your reminder. Start Peeping. I will blog about it if you do...

Armadillo in Texas?

For dinner, I had lobster ravioli (not as posh as it sounds- thanks, Costco), with a garlicky tomato sauce and a glass of Yellowtail Pinot Grigio. Oh, and an orange-flavored Cadbury's egg for dessert. It was all pretty good.

More interesting is what I ate last night: a catered dinner at the Galleria's Westin Hotel, as part of a grad school celebration.

The first course was a mixed greens salad with a balsamic vinaigrette and a rather large, deep-fried goat cheese thingy. I want to call it a "purse", but that sounds pretentious. It was actually very good- nicely balanced dressing, an interesting mix of greens, and rather innovative cheese thingy. I wish the rest of the meal had been that good.

We didn't get a choice of entree, although our Kosher friend was accommodated with a fabulous-looking roasted veggie plate. The main course was chicken. It reminded me of an armadillo on the plate. Not kidding- the scaly chicken skin was left on, and it had been stuffed and cut into slices that resembled an armadillo's rounded carapace. I tried to remove the skin, because it had the leathery, rubbery texture of chicken feet (don't ask), but most of it refused to come off. The filling remains unidentified. My first thought was of mushed veggies, ratatouille gone wrong, but the texture was too smooth, and it had a toxic yellow-orange tinge. Sort of unconscionable, considering a simple stuffing of cheese and roasted pepper (or any number of other, not-toxic-orange things) would've been amazing. The green beans that accompanied it were crunchy, hard, and raw.

The desserts had been taunting us the whole time, as they'd been placed in the middle of each table prior to service. Unfortunately, they were deceptively attractive. I settled on a chocolate mousse sitting atop a thick, crumbly chocolate crust base. The mousse was decent, but had a plasticky texture. It had been dusted with too much cocoa powder, which puffed all over the white tablecloth with each forkful of mousse. And the crust was too thick and cakey to balance the mousse.

I tried a spoonful of the other dessert for research purposes. It was far worse. It looked like berries mixed with Cool Whip, but it had been sitting out too long and tasted like styrofoam. Next year, we'll advocate for better food.

Experimental Breakfast at Home

For breakfast, I had oatmeal. Special oatmeal.

See, it's getting close to Easter, which means primarily one thing- Cadbury's chocolate eggs are here. I know they're actually disgusting, full of sugar, corn syrup, and other things I rail against. But I love them anyway. They're the one mass-produced candy I can't get enough of, and it's only gotten worse since they started selling them in 4-packs. So, I happened to have about six of them sitting on my counter this morning (including three of their new orange-flavored ones, which are amazing), and I really, really wanted to eat a chocolate egg for breakfast, instead of boring oatmeal.

So I formulated a compromise. I'd heard about people making cupcakes with a chocolate egg in the middle, what about egg in oatmeal?



I broke the egg into a few pieces and placed them on top of my bowl of oatmeal and milk, then microwaved the whole mess until the egg looked melty.



Finally, I mixed the softened eggs into my oatmeal. It looked disgusting.




Not so good in terms of taste, either. The egg gave the milk a nasty fake flavor and almost puddinglike texture, and the oatmeal ended up tasting like watered-down Cocoa Pebbles. Interesting experiment, but not one to be repeated.