Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Mmmm....Bagels


I recently had an opportunity to travel to New York. Ahh, the mother-load of good eats. Not discounting LA food at all, but I'm used to it, and New York provided me with a mecca of delicious treats that was almost overwhelming. What can I say? NYC I <3 your food. I'm only feeling slightly guilty about my love for NY, LA you just own another part of my heart. The main thing that warmed my heart was the bagels. Not just any bagel. Ess-A-Bagel, bagel. Thank goodness I got to meet up with my dear friend Katie that was only happy to meet up with me to share the Manhattan bagel experience with me. My travel group didn't quite understand my love of food and my search for this bagel experience.

Let me describe this bagel, maybe we should capitalize this, it deserves it's own pronoun. Now, let me describe this Bagel. I ordered the everything Bagel: poppy seeds, salt, garlic, onion, and sesame seeds, they might have included some bagel magic too, who knows? The crust, was let me say, crusty. Such a perfect thin crunchy crust. The bagel, sorry, Bagel was still warm from baking. They don't toast at Ess-A-Bagel. And quite honestly they don't need to. Normally, I love toasted bagels (no capitalization here), this way they get warmed up and have that little crunch you need to counter the soft doughy-ness of the center. But like I mentioned earlier, the Bagel (capitalization here) was still warm from baking. Ahhhh... I opted to add Lox, tomato, and cream cheese to this. This was vacation food remind you. I felt I could indulge. And I did. The Bagel was huge, tasty, and warmed my soul. How can you pass this up?

I don't think I quite understood what the West Coast was missing from bagels. I've had wonderful and fresh bagels from the Western Bagel Factory in Van Nuys. Which, if you ever have the chance, they are pretty decent too. But alas, nothing compared to this Bagel. We really are lacking here. I had another bagel in NY, but it was just your ordinary fresh bagel. So they miss out too. How they can sell these sub-standard bagels in NY, I don't quite understand. I've heard of a few other great bagel shops in NY, Jersey, and Brooklyn so I'm not discounting these. Maybe not everyone wants to be a bagel elitist. I might have been conformed though. I'm now a bagel snob. *sigh*

In leaving as a bagel snob, I've decided I must go back to New York to have a complete, or more complete food tour. The Bagel was just a skimming of my food adventures in NYC. Plus, I need to go back to experience the other burroughs. Maybe to find the best pizza pie.

P.S. I apologize for the poor food photography. I was so excited to taste the Bagel I forgot to take a picture before I took a bite, plus I'm not so good at the photography. Eating, yes. Photography, no.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

the perpetual food junkie is here

I'm a self proclaimed food junkie. I don't claim to know a ton about food or the culinary arts, but I'm always striving to learn more. Food is constantly on my mind. And not just in a "Hey, what's for dinner tonight" way. I mean constantly.

On a recent roadtrip with a girlfriend we talked 90% of the trip of calorie counting, what cheeses we liked, what are good potluck foods, mastering our christmas cookies (this trip was far from Christmas by the way), cupcakes, wedding cakes, as you see the list just goes on. In this same trip my wonderful friend Sheryl introduced me to The Pioneer Woman. What a great food blog. No wait, what a great blog. You should check it out for yourself :) From there I found myself in a frenzy of food blogs. It has definitely fed my appetite for food addiction. Such as Smitten Kitchen, Bakerella, Sweet and Savory Life, and the list goes on again. This introduction to the world of food blogs gave me a push to start my own blog. This blog has been in the works (all in my head of course) probably since I was a little girl and wanted to become a food critic to eat at the best restaurants for free. I didn't go this route for a few reasons, I'm not the best writer, I'd probably have to go to culinary school (which one day I'll do when I marry rich or win the lotto) and I'd probably have to get over my aversion to fennel/licorice, and start eating more meat. I'm also pretty lazy too which you'll probably find out pretty soon.

I hope this blog represents a side of me that I'm truly passionate about. I'm hoping to include some tried and true recipes, tried and not so true but hopefully soon to be true recipes, food items that I've found, my food adventures, and possibly my service criticisms and restaurant reviews. I have a huge pet peeve for rude service. Not the slowest service mind you, I'm pretty tolerant of someone else's hectic day, but until I'm being rude to you, then I deserve to be treated with equal respect. Clearly this is a hot topic for me.

So here we go. This is my intro to the world of food blogging. I hope you enjoy. Bon Appetit!