Category Archives: it’s fun to be fat

Unsurprisingly, Microwave Cake Tastes Like Microwave Cake

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 9, 2008 – 12:18 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, it's fun to be fat
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Let’s not kid ourselves–chocolate cake that takes three minutes to bake in the microwave is only meant to be consumed out of desperation in the midst of a munchies crisis in the hours between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Or by obese people at any time. And yet my dear friend Emily, who was experiencing neither of these, asked to make it in celebration of her birth.

She sent me a link to the recipe for Chocolate Cake in Five Minutes! Monday at work, and we went out before lunch and tried to procure all of the necessary supplies at one of the delis downtown, which is no small feat if you know New York City and its tiny stores. We knew we weren’t going to find the cake flour, so we went looking for cornstarch to add to regular flour like someone suggested in the comments, but they didn’t have that except in huge bags in the back, so one of the guys had to bring us a little takeout soup container full of it. They didn’t have the cocoa, either, so we bought some packets of pre-melted Nestle’s (what?). And then we gathered everything else and went back to the office to experiment.

Surprisingly, what came out was actually very much cake. The moistest chocolate cake you’ve ever seen, at that. It wasn’t quite as sweet or as chocolatety as we would’ve liked it, but we more than made up for that by slathering it in Nutella, chocolate icing, and peanut butter. Even better than the taste, though, was watching it rise in the microwave. For the first minute, it seemed to do nothing. But at the start of the second minute, it lifted straight out of the mug like a tower and then kept on rising almost completely to the top of the microwave before it got too tall to hold itself upright and leaned off the side of the cup at an angle. As soon as we opened the microwave door, though, it sunk right back down to the top of the mug.

Pleased with our work, we then decided to microwave not just a mug but an entire mixing bowl of the stuff. And here’s the result, melted knife and all:

The Strange Things You Find in Your Local Bodega

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 25, 2008 – 2:17 pm
Filed under it's fun to be fat, narcissism
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My best friend Tracey pointed this out to me on her visit a few weeks ago, and boy, am I glad she did.

Everyone knows that nothing makes food taste better than a smattering of JOYOUS MELTED CHILD.

Mermaid Parade 2008

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 8, 2008 – 1:01 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat, restaurant ramblings
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Most people see the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade as an opportunity for frivolity in the sand, a chance to bare it all in the sun, the one time they can feel free to be themselves. I, on the other hand, see it as a chance to eat a hell of a lot of hot dogs and judge other girls’ spare tires.

And so I present to you . . .

The Last People on Earth You’d Want to See Naked
are Always the First to Take Off Their Clothes

I took these pictures in the span of about five minutes, because that’s how long we cared to watch the parade before deciding that we NEEDED Nathan’s hot dogs. The stand on the boardwalk had less of a line and more of a glob of people standing around it, the idea being that it was more efficient to push and shove your way to front any chance you got than to actually wait your turn like decent, rational human beings. Luckily, halfway through our 45-minute wait, I heard my name being said behind me with a question mark, and I turned around to see Leah, who was in a couple of my creative writing workshops at THE Ohio State University and could always be counted on for stories about maybe liking girls when the rest of the class was writing crap about trying yoga for the first time. We chatted about her MFA in creative writing and the fact that she’s actually using it to work for a food and travel magazine (swoon!) and how badly I want to go to Columbia for my Masters and my great boyfriend and her great girlfriend and so on and so on.

When my friends Sonya and Adam got to the order counter finally, I let these elderly ladies who had been sort of edging their way in front of me squeeze in behind them. Sonya turned back around to stand with me, and one of the ladies said to her, “You go ahead.” I said, “Oh, she’s with him,” and the other lady said, “Trust me, we know. We’ve been listening to you for the last half-hour. They’re together, your boyfriend’s on vacation in California, that girl has her Masters degree from Chicago, and you want your Masters degree from Columbia. Well, we live right by Columbia, and we could’ve had a kosher meal up there. For half the price.” Sonya and I laughed, but we secretly thought they were totally creepy.

An hour after first feeling the pangs of hunger, we found a grassy knoll on which to lunch and went about our munching

and slurping

and gnawing like the rabid beasts we are.

My chili cheese fries came with a tiny fork, which was a real shame, because I was ready to plunge my entire head into those things until I saw that they evidently expected me to be civil about it. And the corndog? THE BEST ONE OF MY LIFE.

So, yeah, it was a great time. It’s just kind of funny that we went to Coney Island on the crowdest day of the year just to eat some hot dogs that are there year-round.

Fat Girls Only

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 7, 2008 – 11:45 am
Filed under it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat, narcissism
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On a walk around the city this weekend, my friends and I came across a store in the East Village with a friendly wide-open door, cute drawings of familiar characters hung on every inch of the front window, and inviting chairs corralled on the sidewalk outside. But upon closer inspection, the drawings turned out to be offensive, and the chairs had phrases like Jews Only graffitied on them. I wish I’d thought to look at the name of the place, but at least I have this memento:

New favourite picture of me ever?

Restaurant Review: Roebling Tea Room; Renegade Craft Fair 2008

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 25, 2008 – 2:39 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat, restaurant ramblings
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A couple of Sundays ago, my ladyfriends and I wanted to meet for brunch–and it should be noted here that brunch in NYC can strangely fall anywhere between the hours of 10 a.m. and 8 p.m.–in my neighborhood of Williamsburg, which is uncharted territory for us as far as brunches go. We planned to check out Egg, which New York Magazine named Best Overall Breakfast this year, but their sign-in sheet was packed, and they stopped serving at 2, so we deliberated for a while

and then walked down to the Roebling Tea Room, which you will be incredibly interested to learn is named after the man who designed the Brooklyn Bridge. (And also the street that the restaurant sits on, but that’s better left unmentioned.)

My friend Emily had her brother’s Yorkiepoo (I know, right?) with her because she’d thought we’d be eating outside, and dogs on patios here are as numerous as taxicabs, but luckily Penny happens to be the cutest dog alive and won our waitress over with only a swish of her little hypoallergenic tail. It also helps that pretty much everyone who sees her mistakes her for a child’s plush toy at first, so Emily could just stuff Penny in her bag and let everyone believe she’s the kind of grown woman who’s unable to leave home without her playthings.

We were seated right away–despite the fact that we were a group of six and the place looked packed–in front of the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows that line the front wall and make it evident that the building was once a warehouse of some sort. They filled the room with light and ruined all of my pictures, but it was well worth it.

The walls were covered in green paper with white molding, antiquey sconces, and equestrians on white horses, the tables were thick, dark wood, and the waitresses were neighborhood women with infrequently-washed hair; funny how those things all fit together.

Bridgette ordered the baked cheddar eggs, which came in a little souffle crock next to a bigger crock of grits, surrounded by two huge slabs of raisin toast with apple butter. I’m used to scrambled eggs that I make myself from $1.99 grocery store cartons, so hers tasted dreamy to me, and her grits had a cheesy taste to them that we didn’t expect.

Emily and Beth ordered egg and cheese sandwiches that looked so boring to me on the menu but turned out to be monsters with dense, seeded bread and a folded heap of fillings. They’re a couple of dieting assholes and left the top of the bun untouched, and I was soooo jealous . . . until my pancake appeared.

The menu touted it as “A BIG BAKED PANCAKE (DUTCHSTYLE W RHUBARB & SPICED BUTTER)”, and never have capital letters been so appropriate. It filled the entire plate and more, piled high with warm fruit and a mound of flecked butter that had just begun to pool. The middle was a bit underdone for my taste, but the outside edge was delightfully crunchy, and the whole thing was filled with fruit. At the time, all of my friends and I were like, “Mmmmm, rhubarb!” But, umm, the menu was wrong, and we realized later that it was actually pears.

LaChantee and her boyfriend, Brandon, ordered a couple of salads that had exciting toppings but were still salads and therefore don’t deserve mention. But they did have homemade potato chips, and that’s the only reason I’m still friends with them.

Our food took approximately an hour to arrive, and no one seemed concerned about patting us on the head and thanking us for waiting, but that and the noise level in the place were the only drawbacks. My iced green tea latte tasted like the most delicious grass imaginable (and I mean that in a good way), and LaChantee loved The Lovers Tea, which arrived in a nicely sized pot with strawberries, vanilla, and sweet cream. The prices were very reasonable (and maybe even cheap) for the amount of food we got, and wine and tea list was extensive. After tasting what I did, I want to go back every week until I’ve tried the whole menu.

To wile away the afternoon, we headed to McCarren Park Pool (featured on this past season of “America’s Next Top Model”) for the Renegade Craft Fair and passed two people doing what appeared to be performance art. This pretty much sums up my neighborhood:

The craft fair took place in the pool, which has been drained for more than a decade now, and was rows and rows of vendors selling their homemade wares. Emily picked up enough Christmas presents to give the entire state of New York a happy holiday, but I kept my purchases to one necklace with a glass strawberry (mostly because I’m too cheap to spend $65 on a felted purse). HOWEVER, the fair was totally inspiring and made me want to go home and start making things right away. Those vintage-fabric skirts selling for $200? I could make one for $2. Those greeting cards with the funny phrases? My best friend and I have been thinking up even funnier ones for months now. And those $65 felted purses? I’m commissioning her to make one for me as we speak.

There was also this amazing project called 1 Bite 7 Days, which is going to be a documentary based on the Japanese proverb that says you gain seven days of life for every new food you try. I didn’t get to participate, because I was too interested in chowing down on Mister Softee ice cream,

but I love the idea of it, especially because Boyfriend Kamran has crammed so many exciting new foods down my throat in the year and nearly nine months I’ve been dating him. I think I should get seven extra years, by the way, for agreeing to eat the GONADS OF A SEA URCHIN with him.