Life’s like a box of cereal
You might have to suffer through 20 spoonfuls of dry flakes to get to one cluster of granola.
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Cilantro-lime rice and bean bowls at my apartment
My home, or yours
As a first generation* Chinese American with liberal non-tiger parents, I grew up with few cultural expectations. A child of children of a forced-secular state, we had no gods to pray to, no holidays to celebrate. But even I knew that I committed a cultural sin this week when I put butter and salt in my rice for the first time in my life. It wasn’t even the good rice, I just used bottom-shelf Basmati, threw a knob of butter into the boiling water, and squeezed a liberal amount of lime and sprinkled salt and endless cilantro on it. I topped it with black beans sauteed with garlic and onions and cumin. Then I sat in the corner, trying my best not to make eye contact with my beloved 10-pound bag of sushi rice, and cleaned my bowl.
*Possibly second generation, depending on whether you index by zero or one.
Vegetarian super burrito at Lupe’s East LA Kitchen
1607, 110 6th Ave, New York, NY 10013
The goal of me meal-prepping burrito bowls was to save money and avoid getting takeout for lunch. Instead, it just fed fuel to the fire instead, causing me to crave (freshly-prepared) Mexican food at all hours of the day instead of what I meticulously packed the night before. Sigh. I ended up caving and getting a super burrito for lunch at Lupe’s, a brightly-colored, happening Mexican place on the corner of sixth and Watts. The super burrito (no meat, and no cheese, please) was both delicious and infuriating. It was infuriating because I spent 12 dollars on something composed of flour, rice, beans and some smushed avocado. It was delicious because there’s nothing more comforting than a warm, squishy burrito drowned in sauce and served with a scoop of yellow rice, and no matter how I try to stew my beans, they never come out as good. Sigh, indeed.
Blueberry lavender almond milk beverage at Trader Joe’s
Your neighborhood Trader Joe’s
You’re either the target audience for novelty flavored almond milk, or you’re not: There’s probably very little the actual beverage can do to change your mind. Personally, I’m a swing voter. On the one hand, I only buy unsweetened soy milk, and rarely drink sweetened beverages that aren’t fermented and/or alcoholic. On the other hand, I’m a sucker for any food that sounds like an anthropomorphic animal would consume it in an Redwall novel, and “blueberry lavender almond nut milk” definitely makes the cut. Also, Trader Joe’s promises that “it tastes as if you’re frolicking through a blooming lavender field while eating blueberries,” which sounds nice as I am currently very sedentary indoors. I didn’t exactly frolic when I poured the almond milk over my cereal, but to my surprise, it’s not unpleasant, as far as almond milks go. Actually, it kind of already tastes like cereal-soaked milk, in a mildly-sweet, lightly flavored way. I can’t think of too many other good uses of this beverage, because the flavor combination is too distinct to put in your coffee or tea, but for a bowl of Cheerios, it’s definitely better than plain almond milk.
Strawberry yogurt O’s at Trader Joe’s
Your neighborhood Trader Joe’s
You can tell a lot about a person by how they go through a box of cereal. Do they immediately pick out all the good parts, leaving a trail of dusty dry flakes behind? Or are they willing to suffer 10 spoonfuls of plain cereal in hopes of hitting a cluster of granola or yogurt-covered fruit? As hard as I try to be patient (which is not very hard), I’m firmly in the former group. The strawberry yogurt O’s cereal at Trader Joe’s is especially bad for impatient folks, because, contrary to the what the photo on the box promises, there’s actually very little dried strawberry and yogurt chunks in comparison to the vast sea of what are essentially slightly dry and oversize Cheerios. However, if you do manage to land a perfect spoonful of plain cereal, yogurt-covered O’s and all the mix-ins, it’s pretty great.
Canelés at la Colombe
400 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10003
Sometimes I feel a little ridiculous, sitting at my laptop late at night, trying to come up with a more poetic way to talk about a pastry I ate. But then I remember that a Frenchman once wrote 1,500 words about a madeleine, and challenged an openly gay literary critic to duel to the death for accusing him of having a gay lover… of which he had many. And then I realize that nothing I ever do will be extra enough for a life of literary fame. Anyways, now I’ve run out out space to actually wax poetic about canelés, my personal favorite of type small buttery French pastry. Canelés, done right, are an architectural masterpiece that can’t be replicated at home; shaped like a tiny fluted cylinder with a dent at the top, the outside is caramelized to a beautiful burnt mahogany (traditionally, with a mixture of butter and beeswax), while the inside a moist, creamy custard scented with vanilla and rum. If only my mother had offered me a canelé in my youth; maybe then I’d have written a novel, too.