Category: mmm… food

As I strolled down Robson Street, I blended perfectly with the crowd. I wore my Gore-Tex™ jacket, hiking boots, and sunglasses, I carried a cell phone, and I smelled slightly of the spicy tuna maki I had just finished. I looked (and smelled) just like your average Vancouverite. That’s why I’m surprised that I was singled out.

A man in a crisp, black suit stepped in front of me, and in a tone reminiscent of MacCarthyism, he asked, “Have you ever been to Hooters?”

Startled, I jumped left to avoid him, and managed to mumble a defensive “No” before slipping past.

“Could I change your mind if I offered you free food, free beer, and free women?” he called after me.

What? For a fraction of a second, I hesitated, which made my response come out like “Nnn—” (insert near-instantaneous moral self-check) “—o”. Thankfully, my feet kept moving, carrying me far away from the moral quagmire.

Three things I desire most in life — food, beer, and women — all free and gratis too. I’m not sure what he meant exactly by “free women”, but I’m sure it was legit. He meant the serving staff, right? The catch was that it was in one of the most low-brow, mouth-breathing, mullet-infested restaurants downtown.

Half a block later, the voice was still echoing in my head: Could I change your mind if I offered you free food, free beer, and free women?

Yes! Yes, goddammit, yes! You could! Oh, the flesh is weak.

I’m off to get my fix of quality Dutch hash. The Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe is, to my knowledge, the best dealer of this substance, and my stomach is set on a heaping plate of smoked salmon hash-n-eggs with a side of sourdough toast on the side.

As I type this, I notice the redundancy of specifying a side of toast on the side. On the other hand, one could order a side of toast and quite easily place it on top, underneath, in front, behind, or in any other location. The positioning of the side of toast is really entirely up to the customer. So it’s not actually redundant at all.

Mmmm. Hash.

Eventually, I promise to blog about something non-food-related.

Well it looks like McDonald’s has brought back their Hockey Hero Sandwich:

three ground beef patties

onions, lettuce, tomato

“Cheese Slices” (processed cheese-like product)

“Pepper Jack Cheese” (more processed cheese-like product)

“Mayonnaise-style Sauce”

all on a “Homestyle Bun”

According to their website, this behemoth burger weighs in at 283 grams and contains 40 grams of fat and 68 milligrams of cholesterol… if you trust those figures. That’s almost two-thirds of a pound of… foodlike matter.

Then add to that the Supersize fries: 178 grams containing 27 grams of fat and 12 milligrams of cholesterol.

Hockey hero? What self-respecting athelete would come within ten feet of this grease-saturated monstrosity? A sumo hero, maybe.

Coffee seems like such a simple concoction. Just filter some hot water through ground coffee beans and presto! You have a delicious and invigorating drink.

Then the office coffee maker came along, and an intuitive process became slightly more complicated. You needed to know where to put the grounds and cold water, how much of each to use, which switches to flip and when, and how to clean it after use. Not difficult at all.

Then came that black day in July when they replaced our trusty coffee maker with a coffee vending machine. I was suspicious from the start, and more so the first time it broke down. But at least someone was maintaining it, and so we were trading a bit of quality for the convenience of maintenance-free coffee any time.

At least for a while.

Today, we learn how to refill, clean, and maintain the vending machine, which turns out to be a lot more effort than keeping the traditional coffee pot. So… why is it again that we have a vending machine instead of a coffee pot?

I’m still eyeing that Insert Coins slot suspiciously.