Unapologetically Mundane » it’s fun to be fat

Deep-Fried Homesickness

katie ett — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:00:37 +0000

Thinking about going home to Ohio in a couple of days for Christmas has me really craving the kind of fair food I can only get at the yearly pumpkin festival in the town next to mine.

Is it wrong that I evidently associate my hometown with deep-frying?

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011!

katie ett — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:00:36 +0000

Kamran’s been bugging me to post pictures of our trip to Ohio for the Circleville Pumpkin Show (mostly to see himself, I imagine), and I guess pumpkins are still in fashion for another week or two before the holiday sales start and my favourite Christmas song begins to wear on me after only a few days, so here’s a recap of our fun:

My best friend, Tracey, has a long-standing tradition with some of her freshman-year college friends of gathering at her house a few towns over on the Friday night of Pumpkin Show and driving down together. We always park in Ted Lewis Park and then walk up the hill to Court Street, which begins the blocks and blocks of closed streets full of vendors selling pumpkin-related everything. On the way, though, we always pass a house that sells pumpkins (on the honor system! adorably quaint!) and has this pumpkin farmer sitting outside:

Tracey, Dayna the ice skater, and Justin-who-convinced-me-to-buy-my-first-Apple-iBook

Before we had even made it one block into the thing, Tracey was already double-fisting a corndog and a bloomin’ potato that we all shared

and then we quickly moved on to calzones that my dad introduced me to a couple of years ago. I recognized the booth because the same wildly-stereotypical white trash woman was working in it, but she’s very nice and slathers the things in butter sauce before giving them to you, so I’m not judging.

We met up with my dad at the church booth where my cousins were selling hot chicken sandwiches (an Ohio phenomenon that involves cooking chicken in its broth, shredding it, and mixing it with, I don’t know, lots of black pepper and weird thickening stuff that gives the broth this kind of gelatinous texture; it’s awesome despite this disgusting characterization) and said embarrassing citypeople things to remind my dad how long I’ve been away from home.

And then he left, and we ate some more.

• deep-fried pickles
• pumpkin whoopie pies
• fried cheese on a stick
• homemade ice cream
• cotton candy
• deep-fried s’more
• deep-fried buckeyes
• apple cider slushes

and plenty more that I’ve forgotten, no doubt.

We visited the six-foot-wide pie and posed in front of the year’s biggest pumpkin (1436 pounds!)

before sidling up to the stretch of tables, where you can buy every kind of gourd imaginable, for the obligatory sexy pumpkin shot:

And then the HOLY CRAP, IS THAT A FACE ON A PUMPKIN? shot:

We could only guess that these things were grown inside of a face mold. They had the texture of the outside of a pumpkin, so they must not have been carved later, but whatever they were, they were creepy as can be.

When we got to the usual pile of various decorative gourds, Kamran picked up one that was especially weirdly-shaped and made a freaky face for me to take a picture of. Well, right at that moment, some big dumb Circlevillian stepped away from whatever meth he was smoking and yelled,

“HEY!!”

Now, if it had been me holding the gourd, I would’ve thrown it smack-dab in the middle of his big empty head and said, “I FLEW HERE FROM NEW YORK CITY FOR THIS THING!! IF ANYONE LOVES THE PUMPKIN SHOW, IT’S ME!! YOU’D BE MORE LIKELY TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH THAN I WOULD BE TO STEAL THIS GOURD, YOU SLOBBERING BEEF-WITTED CANKER-BLOSSOM!!

But it was Kamran holding the gourd, so he quickly put it back down and apologized, and I caught this picture of him halfway between making the funny face and whipping his head around to see his accuser:

The only thing I could do to get revenge on the guy was to continue hanging around the table and taking pictures so he and his redneck cronies were forced to watch us not stealing anything. I never got this sort of treatment before I owned a pleather jacket.

(I really hope I was making this face to be funny and not because I ever really look like that.)

I enjoyed that this picture harkened back to the days of yore when I had prize-winning potatoes as my blog header image but would love to know how anyone can judge what makes a good pie pumpkin without actually using it in a pie:

Tracey and I modeled our pumpkin earrings by Handmade by Sandi maybe slightly too creepily

and then humped Justin for good measure:

At the end of the night, well past the supposed closing time, we made our way back to the cars and couldn’t resist stopping for one last hurrah as we passed the farthest cotton candy/soda stand on the strip. As we stood waiting for Kamran to get his soda, someone noticed one of these wooden cane/stick things that I would say I associate with the Pumpkin Show even more than pumpkin burgers and pumpkin cream puffs and all of those things.

Growing up, we would spend hours at the game where you won these things. For $5, you’d get 50 rings that you’d try to toss onto one of the sticks, which were standing up in holes cut through a long table. There’d be 30 kids standing around the table, trying to ring one of the sticks or hook the crook of one of the canes, which were hanging above the table even more out of reach.

It was such a status symbol when we were teenagers to walk around the Pumpkin Show with a handful of these things, tapping the ground to remind people of how many you had. And also to pretend to be blind. Naturally Kamran wanted one after hearing about how cool having them used to make us, and he finally had his chance in the last moments of the evening:

But of course he actually left it there, because we’re adults who don’t need status symbols to feel good about ourselves. Except for our phones and laptops and vacations and clothes and cars and dinner reservations.

The next night, we came back with my dad, and my sister and her husband drove up from Kentucky, and we did it all over again. And we’ll do it again next year and every year for the rest of our lives.

Doughy Deschanel, Zooey’s Fat Sister

katie ett — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:15:49 +0000

I haven’t legitimately dressed up for Halloween for ages. Everybody else is already the Internet meme of the moment, and spending the night sweating in a rented gorilla costume doesn’t seem fun, and I don’t have enough boob to be Slutty Strawberry Shortcake or whatever.

But this year, my costume idea happened so organically I couldn’t not do it. My friend Anthony and I were sitting at lunch one day, discussing an article I’d just read about Zooey Deschanel. I may or may not have been rambling, and he may or may not have said Zooey’s name in an offensive voice just to shut me up, and it may or may not have come out sounding like “Doughy Deschanel”.

Okay, actually, it did come out sounding like “Doughy Deschanel”, and I said, “That’s the name of Zooey’s fat sister.”

And then we were both like, “Oh, crap, that’s the greatest Halloween costume ever.” So I bought myself a faux-vintage Modcloth dress, donned my pink velvet shoes that I so rarely get to wear, and used it as an excuse to buy a black wig and have straight hair for a night.

Great Halloween costume or greatest Halloween costume?

Off to the Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011!

katie ett — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:00:09 +0000

Remember all of the fun of last year’s Circleville Pumpkin Show? Well, it’s happening times twelve this year, ’cause Kamran’s coming, too!

He lived on the north side of Columbus from 2nd to 4th grade and somehow had never even heard of the Pumpkin Show! You guys, it’s THE GREATEST FREE SHOW ON EARTH. Now, Kamran was a little scared when I warned him about all of the toothless and the morbidly obese people he was going to see, but then when I told him that we, too, can become morbidly obese on pumpkin burgers, frozen pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin milkshakes, pumpkin whoopie pies, pumpkin fudge, and pumpkin corndogs, he was all in.

Apparently half of the states of Kentucky and Missouri are going to be staying with my dad and stepmom this week, so Kamran and I have the pleasure of spending it at my best friend, Tracey’s, house. Which means more Cheesecake Factory, more cat pictures, more visits to the abandoned Chi-Chi’s, and more tubs of cookie dough consumed in their entirety at 4 a.m. than ever before!

Plus, now that I have a DSLR, there will be more faux-artful photographs of pumpkins THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE!

Thanks to Mrs. Bachelor Girl for having this printed and mailed to me this weekend!
Such a thoughtful way to feed my narcissism.

Am I the only one out-of-my-mind excited about this?

The Great Hot Dog Cookoff 2011

plumpdumpling — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:00:54 +0000

The best thing about summer, of course, is hot dogs. And the best thing you can do with hot dogs, of course, is eat 13 of them.

Check out my review of this year’s Great Hot Dog Cookoff! It’s pretty incredible food porn, ifIdosaysomyself.

Like a Dog, I Only Love You When You Feed Me

plumpdumpling — Wed, 25 May 2011 16:00:21 +0000

Sometimes, I get upset that Kamran really can’t hang with me when it comes to guiltless gluttony. I have wild fantasies about consuming entire Ritter Sport bars in one sitting, of sitting down with a bag of Doritos (Cool Ranch, of course) and just going to town. Meanwhile, Kamran has wild fantasies about lightly-dressed raw greens and filling up on soup so he can just pee it out later and not gain anything. The times I love him least are when he’s denying my request for pizza for the 27th weekend in a row.

And the times I love him the most are when he comes home and asks, “Do you think we could get a reservation for Momofuku Ko tomorrow?” It’s easily his favourite meal we’ve ever had and also easily in my top two. It’s also one of the hardest restaurants to get into; its reservations system comes online at 10 a.m. every morning, and all of the spots are taken ten seconds later.

But I managed to snag one thanks to hundreds of website-refreshings Friday morning, and we went for an amazing 18-part lunch on Saturday. And then we went to the all-French-fry place again and got Vietnamese pineapple mayo topping:

Then we went to 16 Handles, a frozen yogurt place where you fill you cup with any combination of–wait for it–16 flavors and then cover that with any of about 40 toppings and then pay by the pound. UH-MAZE-ING.

There are totally two strawberry slices in there, which makes the mini Reese’s cups, crumbled regular-sized Reese’s cups, sprinkles, Cap’n Crunch, caramel sauce, cookie dough, and gummy bears totally fine.

Look how jealous that blurry guy behind us is. (Also, is that Ward Williams or what?)

Point is: if I ever loved Kamran, it was last weekend.

Cover Up That Caesarean Scar, Fatty

plumpdumpling — Thu, 12 May 2011 16:00:09 +0000

I’ve never worn a bikini. I burst forth from my mother’s womb at 145 pounds, already wearing footie pajamas to hide my shame, so my beach attire has always included one-pieces and t-shirts. Well, my friends and I are soon going back to the Hamptons beach house we rented last year, and I’ve been actively searching again for the perfect swimsuit after last year’s tankini disaster at Laguna Beach.

I think I finally did find a suit that I’ll like, but more importantly, I was reminded that everyone else likes the wrong suit. For reference, here is the only person who should be wearing a bikini:

I don’t mean to be anti-feminist here, but seriously, if you don’t look like that, why are you wearing one?

Do you just looooove the way the water feels on your stomach? Hey, guess what; water actually soaks through swimsuits right to your skin!

Were you hoping for some awesome bikini tan lines? TAN LINES ARE NOT SEXY.

I imagine you’re not doing it to show off your love handles or the fact that no amount of padding will give you sideboobs.

And I kind of doubt you want people noticing that your midsection’s shaped less like an hourglass and more like one of those fat pencils we used to use in kindergarten.

You know what hides love handles, weird foam padding, and your giant potbelly that sort of reminds one of a poisonous growth on a treetrunk?

ONE-PIECES! For me, even models look better in them:

I guess I’d just rather see less and imagine perfection than to be assaulted by how imperfect everything is. And don’t try to tell me that imperfections are beautiful, you bikini-wearing sap.

The Very Worst Book I’ve Ever Read

plumpdumpling — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:30:23 +0000

I need to rant about the book I’m reading right now. I originally noticed it years ago while working at the bookstore and was taken by the luscious legs on the front cover. The book was a great seller and was always faced out on the shelf to attract attention, so I would often happen upon the legs and give them a quick admiration while putting other books away.

It’s called Jemima J, although I used to accidentally call it Jemina J in my head, pronounced JEM-inna, because my brain evidently blocked me from thinking a woman could be named after a brand of maple syrup. Anyway, I suddenly remembered the book the other day, procured a copy, and finally read it after all these years.

And it turns out it’s horrible. Not just horribly written, although it is that, despite the main character claiming in the first few pages that she has a real way with words. But mostly, it’s just written by what must be a horrible person. Author Jane Green’s anti-heroine hates herself, calls herself disgusting, talks about how much others pity her, has no social life, can’t get ahead at her job, avoids the mirror, and can barely speak to her beautiful roommates. All because she’s fat.

And that’s fine. Maybe some overweight people actually do feel that way. Maybe some overweight people actually consider backing out of rooms just so their hunky co-workers can’t see their humongous backsides. And Jemima does have a humongous backside. She eats bacon sandwiches for breakfast, mayonnaisey salads for lunch, and entire sleeves of cookies after dinner to deal with her emotions, and every time she steps into a room, people stare at her, because she’s so freaking massive. Or so we’re led to believe.

At one point, after we’ve listened to this superficial, spectacularly boring narrator go on and on about how her life would be perfect if she was a size 8–apparently this was the model-thin in the year 2000–the author finally reveals her weight: 204 pounds. Which is a size–what? 14? 12?! I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like the end of the world to me. But according to the author, Jemima has a double or triple chin (Can someone explain to me how a triple chin would look?), can’t walk down the street without having to stop to pound down a thousand calories or so, and can barely be contained in clothing. And she’s never had a boyfriend, because who could date someone that fat?!

Oh, oh, and here’s the better part: when Jemima finally decides she wants to get “healthy”, she joins a gym and stops eating. And gets down to 120 pounds in a couple of months! Yaaaaay, Jemima! Yaaaaay, eating disorders!

I’m sure there’s some really important lesson at the end of the book about being happy with yourself and not meeting creepy guys on the Internet and sending them Photoshopped pictures of your head on a magazine model’s body, but I’ll never know, ’cause I ain’t finishing this crap. My only consolation is that I didn’t pay for it.

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: The Ten-Mile Walk Around Manhattan

plumpdumpling — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:00:34 +0000

Months ago, my best friend, Tracey and her husband, Dan, introduced me to “Adventure Time”, the most imaginative little 15-minute program on the Cartoon Network. Kam and I started watching it together, and while we were out walking and uncovering unknown parts of the city a couple of weeks ago, we talked about how “Adventure Time with Jake and Fin” should really be “Adventure Time with Kat and Kam”. And at the same moment, we said, “We should probably start a blog for that.” Well, I can’t even keep up with the blogs I have now, so I’ll just try to make it a feature here.

So I present the very first:

The night before our walk, I submitted a plan to trek down 2nd Avenue to Meatball Shop, since Kam had never been there. He objected, citing the fact that we’re trying to live healthier, non-sandwich-oriented lives and blahblahblah. So instead I found us the health food restaurant Natureworks, where he would get something dumb like a Super Salad, and I would attempt to pass a meat lover’s pizza (with low-sodium cheese, Dishy!) off as something one might eat when one is not trying to slowly kill one’s self. And then we would go to my favourite pay-by-the-pound frozen yogurt joint, where I promised I would only get fruit toppings instead of my usual cookie-dough-gummy-bears-Cap’n-Crunch combo. (But I was lying.)

Fortunately for me, Natureworks is closed on Sundays. So instead, we decided to play it casual and look for something delicious on our way to the fro-yo. Thanks to Tasting Menu, Kam’s favourite food blog (other than donuts4dinner, of course), we knew to stop into Kalustyan’s for a falafel sandwich when we came across it, only we were never actually able to locate the falafel counter.

What we did find were rows upon rows of shelves upon shelves stocked with every single spice you have and haven’t heard of. We’re talking twenty kind of cinnamon, beet powder, granulated garlic, five kinds of mustard seed, tomato flour. We saw pickled wild cucumbers, every flavor of honey, canned ghee, every color of salt, nut mixes like you wouldn’t believe, fifty kinds of sugar. Kam was in I-haven’t-seen-this-since-the-last-time-I-was-in-Iran heaven, and I just enjoyed listening to Indian music while I perused.

Next, we made our way down to Gramercy Park to admire the fine architecture (which still isn’t as pretty as Kamran’s building) and watch a squirrel dig a nut out of the ground (we don’t see a lot of wildlife around these parts, if that isn’t obvious):

Kam informed me that Gramercy Park is actually private and requires a key for entry. Indeed, we saw tourists leering at locals through the iron bars and watched as one man flounced his coveted key about before unlocking the gate and settling down among the manicured greenery to read his Sunday paper.

We continued downtown and resolutely concluded that it was finally the day that we were to try Artichoke Basille’s famed pizza. Since its launch in 2008, Artichoke has been lauded as one of the best–if not the best–pizza in NYC. You have your Lombardi’s holdouts and your Grimaldi’s hangers-on, but I can tell you definitively and unquestionably that Artichoke is ten times better than either of those.

Let me state for the record that I like a thick crust. I would say that I like Sicilian-style pizza, but that’s not even true, because in New York, they always overbake the crust. The point of thick crust is that it’s bready. So what I’ll actually say I like is an underbaked crust. I don’t even mind if it’s straight up dough in the very middle.

Artichoke is not a thick crust. It’s a thin crust, and it’s a crusty crust, and I should not, therefore, like it. But it was delicious. It was perfect. It could convert me. It was done but not overdone. It wasn’t burnt! DO YOU HEAR THAT, OTHER NYC PIZZERIAS?! IT IS POSSIBLE TO BAKE A PIZZA AND NOT BURN IT.

We got a crab slice and an artichoke slice, and although you’ll have to wait for the full review on donuts4dinner, I will tell you that the artichoke slice was like eating a piece of crusty bread coated in the Alfredo sauce they serve in the little cup with the pizzas at Olive Garden. I know that won’t seem like a big deal to you snobs who refuse to like chain restaurants, but those of you who have tried the Alfredo will understand, I know.

We also saw what we think might be the tiniest apartment building in NYC. Do you see how thin that thing is? Even if each apartment takes up the entire length of the building, that’s still only . . . 200 square feet? Less?

Next, we went to Porchetta, a tiny storefront where the pig is given top billing, both with the giant stencil on the wall and with the display case full of the most succulent scored pork:

We took our sandwich to Tompkins Square Park and sat at one of the chessboards to chow down and throw back some ginger soda.

The sandwich was–to put it lightly–very, very good. The pork juices soaked into the crusty bread and dribbled out onto our fingers, and the moments where we bit into those suuuuuuuuper-crispy bits of skin were truly blissful.

So blissful, in fact, that I guess I sort of audibly expressed my joy. Without realizing that a makeshift soup kitchen had been set up behind me. I had thought it was just a large family enjoying Sunday lunch in the park until Kam told me I might want to keep it down. “Soooooogooooood,” I was murmuring in a porkdrunk stupor as the homeless people behind me were eating what was probably their only meal of the day.

So what did we do to repent for our gluttony? EAT MORE! This time, we went to Pommes Frites, which literally only serves French fries with a bazillion different sauces of your choosing.

We went with the black truffle mayo, which was delicious but probably too heavy to follow a slice of pizza and half a pork sandwich. Their wasabi mayo or peanut sauce is what you need when you’re already ten pounds heavier than normal due to pig and cheese grease. But we dutifully finished our cone of fries, dutifully scooped the strays out of the bag, and dutifully threw what we couldn’t eat onto the sidewalk for the homeless. And then Kam kicked them around a little accidentally, inciting a deep conversation about how much sidewalk flavor is too much sidewalk flavor for a homeless person.

Are we bad people?

Next, we casually walked through the Lower East Side and realized we were near our very favourite store for discount sweets, Economy Candy. But, you know, since we were eating healthy that day, we popped in for two tiny Cadbury Creme Eggs and popped right back out, no chocolate-covered s’mores in hand. And they were only 50 cents each! Why, that’s what they cost in places like Ohio! Kamran pocketed them for later and proceeded to make incessant testicle jokes.

I was trying to push Kam to take me to a riverfront park, but the farther we got from the center of town, the shadier things started getting. There were parking lots and people playing Latin music from boomboxes in front of bodegas and . . . OH!

You guys, there was this one dude on the street who was literally just stopped dead in his tracks on the sidewalk with his feet at weird angles and his head lolling to one side. He was clearly unwashed and clearly on a bender, all stooped over with his arms hanging limply at his sides. I swore he was going to reach out and grab me as we passed, but he seemed to be asleep. Moments later, though, we turned back to stare some more, and he was hobbling along the sidewalk. SO CREEPY.

Needless to say, by the time we came upon this GANG GRAFFITI, we knew it was time to hightail it out of there.

Just kidding! Nice mural, PS 140! Oh, yeah, have I mentioned that the public schools are named by number here? Pretty creative stuff, guys.

While we were down there, we figured, “What the hey, let’s cross the Willamsburg Bridge.” Because Kamran, believe it or not, has never set foot on a bridge in his five years here.

The Williamsburg Bridge is actually quite nice, despite what I’d heard. Everyone says it’s too loud for good walking, and it’s true that you walk alongside traffic for a quarter of it, but at that point, the traffic has continued on straight the whole time, but you’ve been steadily climbing higher and higher above it on the sloped platform in the center of the bridge. Then you run into this lovely sign that I think pretty much embodies NYC as a whole:

It’s kind of pretty, but it’s also kind of super jacked up, and nobody cares to keep it nice, including the people who are paid to, so the sign ends up reading WI LIAMS U GH BRIDGE. But the nice thing about the bridge is that at the sign, the platform splits into two so that pedestrians get the lane to the right, and bicyclists get the lane to the left. If you’ve ever been almost run over a zillion times by bicyclists on the Brooklyn Bridge (not that I blame them, because pedestrians are always inconsiderate and hog the whole thing), you’ll understand what a good idea this was. Plus, the bridge was sooooooo much less crowded than the Brooklyn Bridge.

And had better graffiti, too.

mouseover this photo for hilarity

The one thing the Brooklyn Bridge has going for it is that it’s not entirely encased by fencing like the Williamsburg is. This isn’t really the best place to get pictures of the city from afar, youknow. But I kinda like ‘em, anyway.

We went halfway across the bridge and then started back, just in time to catch the J train whizzing between us and the cyclists, to find someone’s dropped keys but not do a damned thing about it, and to learn that Vomito loves NY.

Just off the bridge, we found ourselves on Attorney Street, which was an excellent reminder for Kam that his New York State Bar results won’t come for another month and a half. But look how happy he is still!

And look how trashy those girls behind him are. Is that a leather jacket you’re wearing backward over your denim jacket, ma’am?

We had been out for more than five hours, and our grocery shopping duties were calling, so we started back toward Kam’s apartment in Midtown. We walked up Avenue B past Luca Lounge, the bar he took me on our first date, lo those four and a half years ago, which has been closed for years but still sits abandoned.

At 23rd Street, we started to feel a little weak in the knees.

At 29th Street, we started talking about how much pain we were in. “But good pain!” we exclaimed, trying to fake our way into fitness.

At 34th Street, we had to sit down on a bench for five minutes.

By the time we got home, it hurt to lower ourselves onto the couch.

By the next day, we couldn’t stand without wincing. Five days later, we’re just now feeling normal again. So maybe we weren’t quite ready for a ten-mile walk. But we sure did have an adventure.

If you’re curious about our path, here’s a glorious map version with all the stops:

There is Nothing Hellish About Ohio

plumpdumpling — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:00:45 +0000

My best friend, Tracey, picked me up at the airport Tuesday night, and we immediately went to [Giant Retailer That Goes Against Everything I Believe in but is Open at All Hours of the Night] for Cadbury Creme Eggs, Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, and unmatched photo ops like this:

We sat around getting fat the next day and then drove the 20 minutes to our hometown to have dinner with my parents and dessert with our other best friend from high school, Katie, and her daughters. Well, the older one was already in bed, so we just fed Dairy Queen frozen hot chocolate (FHC for short, of course) to her baby:

On Thursday, we spent literally all day scrapbooking at Archiver’s and then had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, where Tracey was less-than-pleased with the amount of whipped cream on her plate, which she foolishly considers filler:

(I gladly ate it for her, of course, and a bunch of whipped cream is way better than the PAPER–yes, I said PAPER–I found in my sandwich.)

Then we went to Skully’s for Ladies 80s and had THE BEST time. We got back to her house from dinner around 9:30, and I was hinting practically the entire way home that I didn’t really have the energy for dancing. We kind of hemmed and hawed for a while, and when Tracey’s other friend canceled on us, I was especially ready to sit down with a tub of cookie dough and call it a night. But Tracey was really pushing to go for some reason, and in the end, I knew I’d end up having a good time, but it turned out to be THE BEST time. There were enough people there that we didn’t feel exposed, but there weren’t so many people there that we couldn’t bust out our incredible dance moves, and they’ve started playing 90s music now, so we totally got to relive junior high with Blur and Nine Inch Nails.

The next night, I celebrated my stepbrother’s daughter’s second birthday with my very festive dad:

my spectacularly vested stepmom:

and this CRAZY PRINCESS CAKE that I probably deserve for my next birthday:

Saturday night, I convinced my cousin Ethan and his wife, Katherine, to hold a party so I could see his baby, Kaydence, and take sort of creepy photos of Bethany, my twin cousin (we were born 47 minutes apart!), resting her head on Kaydence’s butt:

Instead of the roadkill his mom promised, Ethan made us these awesome grilled burritos so he could use his MAN SPATULA (or, for my feminist friends, his larger-than-normal spatula that in no way makes it manlier than any other spatula):

We played tons of six-handed Euchre, and since my dad was on a different team, he made someone else cry instead of me. YES!:

even the baby knows Euchre is serious bizness

Now, my dad lives on what he lovingly refers to as The Compound. A couple of years after my mom died, he married my awesome stepmother, Lois, whom he went to high school with and whom I’ve known my whole life, and he moved into her house a few miles away from my childhood home. She lived right next door to her dad, and when he died last year, her daughter moved in there with her husband and twin daughters. Her eldest son, meanwhile, converted the barn in between the two houses into this beeeeautiful home for his wife and daughters, and my dad built another barn behind his and Lois’s house. So it’s basically three big, ol’ farmhouses in a row out in the middle of nowhere. The Compound.

Anyway, arriving home to The Compound on Saturday night, I noticed for the first time that my stepsister’s girls are keeping their 4-H pigs in a little hut out back with a heat lamp built in to keep them warm. My dad, the farmer, scorns them for this, of course, but I think it’s cute. The only problem is that when you look out the back door, it appears that the poor little piggies are being

SWALLOWED BY THE FIRES OF HELL.

I would make an Ohio/hell joke here, but I think it’s pretty clearly much more like heaven.

My Superfantastic Weekend and What I Ate

plumpdumpling — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:05:31 +0000

I had such a great weekend that I’m actually going to talk about what I did rather than write some abstract post about “American Idol” or whathaveyou. Ready for this?

On Friday night, I picked Kamran up from work, and we rode the subway to Astoria, which is a neighborhood in Queens that’s getting to be known as the new Williamsburg (my previous neighborhood in Brooklyn), because it’s cheap enough that artsy, non-trust-funded types can actually afford to live there and eat from the plethora of Greek restaurants. It’s still not quite as settled as Williamsburg was, though, because there was a point where the streetlights just sort of stopped existing, and we found ourselves thinking, “Why did we agree to come to this god-forsaken borough?!”

But then we remembered we were about to eat CHICKEN, stuffed with CHEDDAR, wrapped in BACON, covered in MOLE, topped with melted MONTERREY JACK, and smothered in crumbled FETA at Fatty’s Cafe. Obviously worth it.

Lorraine seductively models the Contraband Chicken,
as if it’s not seductive enough on its own.

There were much better photos of Ash, Mike, and Lorraine,
but the look on Ash’s face here is SO GREAT.

Please tell me why Kamran posed normally in this photo with Jeff
but threw a gang sign in the photo he took with me.

On Saturday night, Kamran and I went to dinner at the famed Serendipity 3 with my longtime blogfriend Kim of Good Hair, Kim Luck. We’ve seriously been reading each other’s LiveJournals and then blog for years now but failed to meet when we both lived here, realized we probably made a mistake once she moved away for a while, and decided not to butcher it this time when she moved back recently.

The lovely and talented Kim shows off her young chicken sandwich and the hair
she had dyed especially for me, or so I tell myself.

Kamran sips espresso instead of helping me eat our giant Can’t Say No Sundae,
which included peanut butter pie, vanilla ice cream, bananas, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream.

After Kim and I had been talking about “Gossip Girl” stars and handbags for 15 minutes, Kamran leaned over and whispered that Sarah Michelle Gellar was at the table next to ours with her family, which prompted us to try naming more than three things she’s been in. I failed ridiculously and didn’t slyly take a picture of Kim with Buffy in the background, but rest assured that she’ll be ceremoniously added to my list of famous people I’ve seen in NYC.

Even though Kim was in a dress and heels, we coerced her to ride the tram to Roosevelt Island with us, which is basically a 3-minute ride in the air to the tiny island next to Manhattan. We used those 3 minutes wisely, though, by loudly talking about how people from Roosevelt Island are pathetic if they think they’re part of Manhattan.

On Sunday morning, Kamran and I were treated to brunch at La Silhouette, which I think is just trying to get the word out that yes, they serve brunch, and yes, it is awesome. As if my cheesy, crusty, piled-high-with-ham croque madam wasn’t enough,

they also served us the entirety of the dessert menu. (And we secretly kind of liked their sundae better than Serendipity’s!) The full review will follow on donuts4dinner.com, obviously.

Super fun times!

They Changed the Name from Stuffing to Dressing to Make It Sound Less Dirty

plumpdumpling — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:00:31 +0000

I’m in Ohio for Thanksgiving!

While there, I plan to:

• sleep in my own bed and actually spend time with my family now that my best friend, Tracey, finished grad school, got a job, and can’t stay up until 4 a.m. with me every night.

• have Thanksgiving meals with my stepmom’s family, my mom’s side of the family, and my dad’s side of the family within a span of 6 hours. All of them will involve entirely different menus that are traditional to each family, meaning that I’ll be forced to eat pecan pie, pumpkin roll, and old-fashioned cream pie just so I don’t appear rude. Oh, the hardships of the dedicated gourmand.

• try to think of awesome things to put on my Christmas list for my dad’s side of the family but ultimately just write

• eat dinner with Noel Cordle at The Cheesecake Factory, WHERE SHE HAS NEVER EATEN BEFORE.

• not shop on Friday, except possibly online, where I’ll be earning double cash back by using Ebates. (See what I did there?)

Oh, friends, it’s going to be a great time. Until I have to be at the airport at 4:30 a.m. on Monday.

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2010!

plumpdumpling — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:00:28 +0000

104 years of celebrating pumpkins, people.

And celebrating deep-fried everything, of course.

Do you think the very first Pumpkin Show was full of corndogs and chocolate-covered frozen cheesecake on a stick?

Or do you think they just stood around and worshipped the giant gourd? (This year’s was the largest ever!)

That’s right. 1600 pounds of pure pumpkin.

It’s certainly changed from when Tracey and I first started going as kids. There are now BLACK PEOPLE there. And people speaking SPANISH. And this guy, whom I spotted almost as soon as we got there the first day.

“Serious or ironic?!”, I whispered to Tracey when I saw the back of his jacket. “Oh, my god, we have to find out,” she replied, a mischievous gleam in her eye. And then he turned around, and he was wearing a vest and tie. And then his boyfriend walked up. Swoon, swoon, swoon.

Some things will always be the same, though, like this ancient carousel that shows up every year.

And like the display of the outfit belonging to the current Miss Pumpkin Show. (When I showed my diverse group of co-workers the photos of the past Miss Pumpkin Shows, one of them said, “They’re all white!” And I was like, “I’m sorry, this surprises you somehow?”

It was the 10th anniversary of Tracey dragging her friends Justin and Dayna to the Show to eat wildly inappropriate-looking fruits-made-unhealthy,

so she made them some adorable commemorative pumpkin pins.

Whether we planned to or not, we ran into absolutely everyone we knew in the three days we went to the Pumpkin Show, including my cousin Bethany and her brother’s baby daughter, Kaydence. Don’t fear; I have an entire series of photos of Bethany peeking out from behind the foods we ate, all creepy-eyed like that, which I’ll post over at donuts4dinner.

I have a long history with the Circleville Pumpkin Show, you know. Why, my great-aunt was even featured on a magazine devoted entirely to it back when she was a mere girl.

But I have an even longer history with Pickaway County itself, which is celebrating 200 years of existence this year.

And I’m sure glad it exists.

Circleville Pumpkin Show, Here I Come!

plumpdumpling — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:00:21 +0000

I flew home to Ohio last night for a week of the

CIRCLEVILLE PUMPKIN SHOW!

Which some people like to refer to as the “Circleville Pumpkin Festival” or the “Circleville Pumpkin Fair” or the “Podunk Hillbilly Gourd Celebration“.

But they are wrong. It’s a show if I’ve ever seen one.

While there, I plan to meet Noel Cordle (and Ryan Cordle, too!), to upset Julie‘s adorable kids in their double stroller, and to

EAT EVERYTHING I ATE LAST YEAR ALL OVER AGAIN.

(And more.)

What Other People’s Lives Must Be Like Every Weekend

plumpdumpling — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 22:00:13 +0000

It’s been two weeks since it happened, but it lives in my mind as if it was yesterday: the weekend Kamran decided he didn’t care about law school (his last semester!) and let me make a brunch reservation for us.

We dined in front of Lincoln Center at Bar Boulud, which was so completely boring as to render the name of this blog un-ironic, despite its cheese pastries that sparkle in the sun:

We made our way through Central Park to avoid 59th Street and the horse-drawn carriages that line it, but of course those itch-inducing allergybuckets follow us everywhere:

Walking down 5th Avenue, we passed by the all-glass Apple store and saw this man “coincidentally” standing outside:

And then stopped by FAO Schwarz, which oddly, neither of us had been to in our 5+ years here to:

1) take multiple pictures of ourselves with the LEGO Chewbacca while small children anxiously tried to crowd us out:

(that’s me and my cleavage between his legs!)

2) test our strength on a foam puzzle that’s the size of Kamran’s entire apartment:

3) and learn the true meaning of factory farming:

We talked about stopping by a Duane Reade to grab some candy to get our blood sugars primed for Halloween, but then we realized we were too close to Dylan’s Candy Bar to pass it up. What you have to understand about Dylan’s is that it’s a microcosm of New York City itself: it’s the most wonderful place on Earth and has everything you’d ever want in life, but you can’t even begin to afford it, and it’s full of all of the worst people imaginable. Dylan’s has every kind of candy ever made, but it costs $13.99 per pound. It has clear staircases filled with your favourite childhood treats, but they’re constantly crowded with dumb tourists. It’s wonderful. And awful.

So Kamran and I decided to get a single pound of candy to split, which we deemed a “reasonable” pre-Halloween snack. Then we got into the checkout line, which stretched literally to the door. As we stood there, a kind-of-friendly-but-kind-of-surly dad started talking to us out of nowhere about how he’s lived in NYC for 30 years and had never heard of Dylan’s up until then, and we just looked at him like, “Sucker.” Then he turned to his kid and said, “Should we try to make this last until Monday, or should we eat it all today?”, and I felt such love for humanity at that moment.

But then Kamran whispered, “There’s a lady over here on a Rascal who keeps eating the candy, and it’s really depressing me.” And indeed, this superfat middle-aged blobby thing came speeding over to our area a second later, gnawing on whatever she’d picked out of the bins with the “no sampling” signs on them and just smiling to beat the band. She couldn’t fit her scooter through the racks of candy blood we were standing near, so the guy and his son behind us offered to let her in front of them in line.

Outside, we passed a homeless person propped up against the side of a building, and not two feet in front of . . . it . . . I spotted an abandoned gummy bear that would’ve been soooooo perfect for Lost and Lonely Leftovers, so I stopped and took a step backward but then reconsidered and kept walking. Kamran asked what I was doing, and when I told him, he seemed to think this made me a bad person! But clearly this homeless person wasn’t hungry if it was letting a perfectly good gummy bear just sit there.

Moments later, the lady on the Rascal went speeding past us on the sidewalk, honking her horn and digging into her bag of candy as we went on to curse at old ladies.

Well, not “we”. Me.

These Boots Were Made for Walkin’

plumpdumpling — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:00:41 +0000

I do not run for things. Like, physically. This is perhaps the reason why the gym doesn’t work out for me. I would much, much rather be late to something than to hurry myself, to rush across the street on a flashing Don’t Walk sign to catch a fleeting bus or to plow down some station stairs to catch a train sitting with its doors open for an extra second. I think people who run for things look stupid. I hate people who are too eager. I hate people who care about things too much when they’re things I don’t care about.

Yet last Friday morning, I found myself turning the corner onto 42nd Street, seeing the bus waiting at the stop, noticing there was still a long line of people waiting to get on, and actually breaking out in a run. I have no idea why. I was running late, but why would I care about running late? Maybe it’s that I knew I would be getting to the stop just as the bus was pulling away and that everyone on the bus would know I had meant to get on it and that that would be more embarrassing that bothering myself to run for it. I’m irrational like that.

So I took off in the fastest jog I could in a pair of really rubbery flip-flops, and things were going pretty well. I probably could’ve walked just as fast if I really wanted to put in the effort of swinging my arms and rolling my hips and all, so I figured I was still looking fairly nonchalant to anyone who might be judging my eagerness, yet I hopefully looked like I cared enough about making it onto the bus that the driver would take pity and wait on me if everyone else loaded quickly.

But then, halfway down the block, the toe part of one of my flip-flops suddenly somehow doubled under itself and messed up my rhythm, and I had to stop to straighten things out. Just then, this beautiful brown-skinned woman went gliding past me in a summery black dress, her natural hair highlighted with a white faux flower. Her long, slender legs, fitted with soft black ballerina flats, flitted in front of her one at a time like those of a more-graceful gazelle. I somehow expected that she’d stop, that we’d laugh about me trying to run in my stupid shoes, and that we’d walk arm in arm to the bus. Instead, she probably laughed as my shorter, stouter legs, bound in too-tight, too-hot jeans pounded the pavement in comparison, and while she boarded the bus nimbly with a bounce, I hoisted myself up, out of breath and windblown with the entire bus glowering at me for making them wait.

That’ll teach me to try.

Although I Don’t Necessarily Want Them Touching a Seat I May Someday Sit on, Either

plumpdumpling — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:45:27 +0000

The other day, I saw a man on the train so fat that his testicles bulged between his legs like a cantaloupe in the crotch of his navy blue sweatpants. I wondered how you get to a point where you’d rather sit and let everyone see your melon-shaped balls than stand and conceal them between your tree trunk thighs.

Deep-Fried Homesickness (10)
Caught in the Train Doors (10)
Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011! (16)
Doughy Deschanel, Zooey’s Fat Sister (63)
Off to the Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011! (13)
Aint Wet (4)
The Great Hot Dog Cookoff 2011 (14)
Padded Seats and Warmed Hearts (15)
Like a Dog, I Only Love You When You Feed Me (18)
Cover Up That Caesarean Scar, Fatty (15)

You Don’t Freakin’ Know Me, Wii Fit

plumpdumpling — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:00:21 +0000

Yesterday, as Kamran was doing his Body Test on our Wii Fit, the little Wii Fit Board icon thing with the unexplainable baby voice decided to take a detour and asked him how I was doing. Then, it asked him to select whether I looked lighter, heavier, or the same after my recent sessions of hardcore Wii hula-hooping and Wii bowling.

Kamran looked at me as I sat eating chocolate fudge brownie Ben & Jerry’s and politely chose “the same”. The Wii Fit told him that perhaps he should pay more attention to me. We laughed, since I’m always doing dances around his apartment on the weekends to get him to pay attention to me instead of his law school books.

The Wii Fit then told him that in studies, dogs that are paid more attention by their owners are more motivated. Hmph.

If the World was Fair, Candy Pumpkins Would Be Available All Year

plumpdumpling — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:52:58 +0000

This is all that’s left of Halloween, but it sure was good while it lasted. Kamran and I spent Friday night watching horror movies instead of, you know, piecing together a simple costume so as to not disrespect our friend Anthony’s party the next night.

To make us feel extra bad, Anthony seriously went all-out for this thing. As if we weren’t impressed enough to actually know someone who owns a house and can therefore have a legitimate house party (even if it was out on Long Island), he had the place covered in cobwebs and bathed in creepy lighting with awesome additions like strings of razorblades hanging in the doorway to the dining room. His friends all had elaborate costumes, and he went around the party in an H1N1 emergency response team uniform, drinking what he said was germ-ridden waste.

I ended up wearing a pink tank top with a black shirt covered in stars over it and said I was aurora borealis, while Kamran wore a striped sweater and said he was Freddie Kreuger had he gone straight, stopped murdering kids, and gotten his PhD. No one was impressed, but we brought a box of thirty assorted candy bars with us, so we didn’t get egged.

Of course, we ended up eating at least half of those thirty candy bars ourselves and stuffing more in our pockets for the long ride home on the Long Island Railroad, but no one was sober enough to notice.

Take Somebody to Applebee’s, and Give Them Hot Wings

plumpdumpling — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:55:47 +0000

Although I absolutely can’t get behind Charlyne Yi’s weak chin, there’s one reason I’ll be seeing the movie Paper Heart, and it’s this clip from the trailer:

I am a hot wing fiend. But only boneless wings. And only the ones at Applebee’s, really. Sitting in a booth with my best friend in Ohio during Applebee’s happy hour, when a basket of wings will run you $3.50, is my idea of heaven. I once knew someone who worked at Applebee’s, and when I asked him if he could get me a bottle of the buffalo sauce, he told me it comes in a 20-pound bag. And while that should be disgusting, it only made me love it all the more.

However, there’s one thing that may keep me from ever eating a buffalo wing again, and it’s these photos of my friends Jack and Jeff from our recent outing to Leisure Time Bowl. This should not in any way dissuade you from going to Leisure Time, though it may dissuade you from keeping your lunch down:

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