4900 out-take

My roommate and I are writing a blog called 4900 about eating our way through the 7x7 Big Eat 2010 List (100 Things to Try Before You Die). I bought a book about food writing to see if I could maybe I could improve my offerings as we go along. It has some writing exercises in there, so I figure I might as well do them... The intro sort of suggested that might be a good idea even if you are tempted to skip them. Of course I am tempted to skip them. I don't know if I will do all of them, but some of them might help me out, so I might try a few...like one right now:

Eating a pear is a little like biting into someone's leg. Or at least I imagine it might be. Pears don't have the same snap to them that apples do, not in the skin or in the meat; your teeth are able to sink in a little easier. I just always have this odd sensation when I'm eating a pear, that it isn't entirely natural. They're so tender; all the energy that would have gone into wrestling a dent out of an apple can be spent savoring flavors and marveling how convenient the shape is; don't you love holding the skinny end of a pear while chomping away at the tubby body? Yet another advantage. I guess you can't really count that eerie unnatural leg-bitey feeling as a plus, but luckily it really is just a pear and your fangs help you suck only fruit blood.

Meh, it's different, anyways.

The cheese was as ripe as... the overflow laundry from last weekend that had fermented under my desk for a whole other week.

The donut smelled stale, like a... box of dead bugs in a long forgotten cellar.

The roast beef sandwich tasted as though... "roasted" was its own separate entity, concentrated into a syrup and drizzled generously over the top of the cow on its bed of ciabatta until the bread was also somehow roasty.

I'm really glad that for this exercise we don't actually have to taste anything to write the sentence. I'm not sure I could find a food that would be able to pull those examples off, ha.

I would go to Nombe every night it weren't for extenuating social circumstances. My friends will not be dragged to my favorite restaurant every time, and sometimes they should be given the opportunity to drag me. So it happens that I escape the mercury poisoning, for the moment, at least. A fish special is averted now and then, so I live another day or two. Once to watch the chalkboard for is the tuna temari.

The first day I ordered this dish and the tuna balls came rolled in toasted nori and sesame seeds instead of powdered aomori I was surprised and intrigued. This perhaps seemingly insignificant change (from seaweed to seaweed, after all) actually turned out to be the work of a chef inspired. Where the aomori tended to make the mouthful feel too much like a paste, the bits of crisped-up nori actually added texture instead of taking it away, and highlighted the individual flavors of the fish and the seaweed rather than muddling them. Dipped in whatever ratio of wasabi to soy sauce serves you best, the number of flavors double and your tongue is on a pleasure cruise that will make you forgot all the mediocre tuna you've had in the past.

Dang, I got tired and it got bedtime. When did that happen? Think I will get up early tomorrow and walk to work...