Not much of a cheese shop, is it?

Posted on May 22, 2010

At the deli counter in a nearby grocery store, I was ordering some cheese (white cheddar, on sale for $6.99/lb.) and a slack-jawed-yokel-ish couple queued up next to me.

“Wow, look at all this cheese,” said the male yokel.
“Wow,” the female yokel concurred. “They must have every kind of cheese here.”

After hearing that, I thought they must not be fans of Monty Python. While Monty Python’s “Cheese Shop” is famously known for it’s lack of cheese, standing in front of the deli counter, I saw it’s possible to go quite a way through the “Cheese Shop” list before coming up with a cheese this deli had in stock.

To be fair, the grocery store has different types of cheeses in different areas of the store. It’s possible to find cheeses such as feta, gouda, edam, etc. in other areas. It’s just that the deli counter only has about a dozen types of cheese, and only cheddar and swiss (emmental) are mentioned in the Monty Python sketch.

Bento box

Posted on August 23, 2009

This last paycheck, I ordered a Mr. Bento jar/box/thing and a rice cooker. At work, I normally get food from the Riley cafeteria or McDonalds, neither of which is very cheap. The least expensive thing I sometimes get is a grilled cheese and fries from the cafeteria, which costs around $3.00. A wrap from the cafeteria costs about $4.50. On a day-in/day-out basis, this gets to be sort of expensive, and the variety is sort of limited, which is why I wanted to try something different.

In Japan, a bento box is a bit like a lunch box or a box lunch in the US. Bento boxes can be bought in stores or from some restaurants as ready-made meals, like a box lunch in the US. However, you can also buy the empty boxes themselves, which are essentially lunch boxes with compartments. Mr. Bento is a model made by Zojirushi. It’s an insulated stainless steel container that holds four microwaveable bowls in a stack. In theory, the bowls on the bottom of the stack will stay hot, while the bowls at the top will be room temperature.

The main downside I can see is that the bowls don’t look that large, so I won’t be able to fit a sandwich in one. However, if I’m planning on eating a sandwich, then a bento box probably isn’t necessary. The main upside is having a variety of food for lunch, which means a sandwich isn’t necessary. When it arrives, I guess the thing will be to figure out what to make for lunch. The challenge for me personally will be to remember to prepare something ahead of time.

I also ordered a rice cooker. My only previous experience with one was a former roommate from Japan who brought one with him. I could never figure it out because all the buttons were in Japanese, but he ate a lot of rice and swore by it. Looking on Amazon on a lark, I found a) there was a variety to choose from, and b) many were reasonably priced. I sort of wondered about the quality, but the one I ordered is from a Japanese company (Zojirushi, as it happens), and had many good reviews from Amazon customers. Strangely, most of the people who gave it high marks said to ignore the instructions that come with it. While the principles of cooking rice are the same, American rice is usually longer grain compared with Japanese rice, so needs more water…or something like that. It may take some experimentation to get it right. It can also be used as a steamer, so that will be nice.

Since boneless, skinless chicken breasts were on sale at the grocery store today, they will probably end up in most of my lunches this week. I need to figure out some good bento sized lunches :-)

Review – Hong Kong China Buffet

Posted on May 25, 2009

I’m a big fan of Chinese food. Growing up in Pepperell and Townsend, Massachusetts during the 1970s, if we wanted foreign food, the only option was Chinese. Even then, it involved a long-distance phone call to place the order and a drive to Fitchburg to pick it up. As a kid, I was amazed by the white boxes made with folded cardboard that had wires for handles. The food was exotic to my young mind. Fried rice was brown with veggies and bits of pork or chicken, and it had flavor. Sweet and sour pork, and Chinese chicken wings. The mysteriously named chow mein and chop suey. I was ravenous for pork cutlets, spare ribs, teriyaki, and egg rolls. Years later, when we moved to Alamosa, Colorado, Chinese food was no longer on the menu. With a large Hispanic population, Mexican restaurants were fairly common in southern Colorado, and they opened my eyes to a world of new dishes. It’s no surprise that when I’ve moved to new places, I’ve sought out good places to find Chinese or Mexican food.

In downtown Indianapolis, five or so blocks away from my apartment building is Hong Kong (a/k/a Hong Kong China Buffet). This small, mom-and-pop type restaurant serves food that reminds me of the Chinese food the family used to get in Massachusetts. P.F. Chang’s it’s not, since the atmosphere is very simple with tables and booths. There are a few Chinese items, such as a calendar from a Chinese food distributor, but they don’t give the place an Asian ambiance so much as remind you that this is a family-run restaurant that serves Chinese food. Most of the time I go there and the place is empty of customers. However, I usually go on weekends and after work, and I think most of their business comes from the lunchtime crowds from several nearby companies. For what its worth, I usually get takeout.

Atmosphere aside, the food is great. Almost always, I get a quart of pork fried rice and three egg rolls, but if I have extra cash, I often get something else as well. Today, I also got an order of chicken sticks (teriyaki chicken) and sweet-and-sour chicken. Plus, every time I’ve ordered an entree, they’ve thrown in an order of fried wontons for free. Since this is takeout, they toss in a few fortune cookies and packets of duck sauce, soy sauce, and hot mustard. They used to include plastic forks, but this time they didn’t. Maybe it’s the economy. Sadly, I’ve never known them to add chopsticks, which I’ve always thought were great for things like sweet-and-sour dishes, among others. Luckily, I’ve got some here at home.

In the past, when I’ve ordered Szechuan food or other items listed as spicy on the menu, the items were hardly spicy at all. This was also an issue at another Chinese restaurant I used to go to in Colorado Springs. However, at that restaurant, if we ordered a spicy dish, and we added that we wanted it spicy, it would come that way. I don’t know if that would work at Hong Kong, but it might be worth a shot.

Prices are fair. My usual order of a quart of pork fried rice and three egg rolls comes to about ten bucks. Cans of soda are a bit expensive at $1.25, though I admit I don’t know what they serve for beverages in the restaurant itself. Spending $25 or more for takeout buys enough food for a few days worth of lunches or dinners.

If you’re in Indy and want good Chinese food at decent prices and away from the crowds, I recommend Hong Kong, either for takeout or dining-in on the weekends.

Hong Kong
1524 N. Illinois St
Indianapolis, IN 46202
(317) 951-8882
(317) 951-8686
(317) 951-8889 Fax

Rating:  

Review – Häagen-Dazs Green Tea ice cream

Posted on May 23, 2009

Saw this at a nearby convenience store a week ago and immediately did a double take. WTF, thought I. Who in their right mind would make an ice cream flavored like green tea? Is there a gimmick to it? The label shows a milky green tea in a brown cup, but I couldn’t grok if cup was made of chocolate or if it was just a cup. Today I got some to try it out.

Häagen-Dazs Green Tea ice cream is not what I would call flavorful. There is flavor in that pint container, but it’s a bit bland. It’s almost, but not quite, entirely unlike green tea. This green tea ice cream makes vanilla seem exciting by comparison. What flavor that is there is subtle and hard to pinpoint. Maybe hints of jasmine, but too understated to say for certain. Overall, it’s not bad, but far from great.

Rating:  

Value

Posted on June 2, 2008

My cell phone just proved its worth. Coming back home after work, I took the elevator, as usual, to my fifth floor apartment, but this time the elevator got stuck. The only light was the emergency light, which wasn’t much. Luckily, I stopped off for Chinese take-out on the way home, so I was set for food just in case.

My impression has been that the elevator seems to act up in the heat, and while it is hot out at the moment, I’ve never been in the elevator when it’s gotten stuck before. I pressed all the buttons and nothing happened, when it dawned on me to use my cell phone to call the management company. They sent someone over and had me out in about 10 minutes. I’m glad I caught them before they took off for the day. The maintenance guy said it was a heck of a time for a power outage, which I thought was odd since the lights in the hall were on. My DSL modem still seems to be on, but the air conditioning isn’t working. I wonder if we’re having a brown-out or something. Maybe it’s a sign for me to trudge up five flights to get in shape :-/

*** edit ***

That was weird. Something was up with the electricity. The outlet next to the computer desk was fine, but the HVAC unit on the other side of the same wall wasn’t working. The lights in the kitchen would go on (didn’t test anything else in there), but the lights in the hallway, the bathroom, and the great room wouldn’t. (BTW, “great room” is probably a better term than “living/dining/bedroom.”) The power came back on a little bit ago.

I didn’t trust doing any computing for fear of taxing the building’s power grid, so I took the time to do some cleaning up. That’s still an ongoing project, but it is probably 60% – 75% finished :-) Then it will be a matter of keeping it clean afterward. *sigh*

Articles

Posted on April 6, 2008

When learning French, articles are the bane of my existence.

In English, we have the definite article the and indefinite articles a and an, and we often drop them. For example, in the preceding sentence, I could have written, “…the indefinite articles…”, but didn’t, and it isn’t a big deal. In French class, one of the first things we learned was “No naked nouns” – every noun must be preceded by something, usually an article, but numbers work too.

As an aside, it’s interesting how learning another language makes you realize everything you forgot about your own language, or maybe it’s just me. In English, nouns are usually preceded by something as well. We can use articles and say, “The cat is purring,” or “A cat is purring,” but we can also say, “His cat is purring,” and, “Three cats are purring.” To me, the latter two aren’t articles, but they seem to be used in that manner. We could also say, “Some cats are purring,” which is an indication of quantity, but not a definite amount. I suppose I could look it up in a dictionary (precriptivist vs. descriptivist arguments aside), but I’m a bit too lazy for that at the moment.

French has the definite articles le, la, l’, and les. Since nouns in French have gender, the articles used depend on the gender of the noun. Le is used for masculine words and la is used for feminine words. L’ is used for words that begin with vowels (for either gender, IIRC). It’s similar that we use an in English, except an is indefinite and l’ is a definite article. Les is used for plural nouns, regardless of gender.

French also has indefinite articles un (masculine), une (feminine), and des (plural). If I remember correctly (it’s very possible I may not), un is also used for feminine words that begin with vowels. To top things off, French also has partitive articles du (masculine), de la (feminine), de l’ (vowels), and des (plural).

In general, partitive articles indicate a portion or part of something. In French, we could say:

J’ai mangé une pizza. – I ate a pizza. (A whole pizza)
J’ai mangé la pizza. – I ate the pizza. (The whole thing)
J’ai mangé de la pizza. – I ate some pizza.

In writing that, it dawned on me that saying, “I ate the pizza” could also indicate “I ate what was left of the pizza”, at least in English. I don’t know if that would be the same concept in other languages.

As if that wasn’t difficult enough, articles can be modified by prepositions. À means to, at, or in in English, and it can modify les articles définis, but to me it seems like another set of articles. Au (masculine), à la (feminine), à l’ (vowels), and aux (plurals) are handy, but they mean another set of rules to remember.

I keep thinking that if I stick with French long enough, I will get some sort of epiphany regarding the rules. I learned some of this in Second Language Acquisition last year. I think the key is experimentation and feedback. In class, our vocabulary and knowledge of the rules is enough where we should be able to hold simple conversations or maybe read some children’s books. However, since we probably use English exclusively outside of class, it’s difficult to put our lessons to practical use. Maybe I should get a pen pal or something.

Free Rice!

Posted on November 11, 2007

Not for you though. Free Rice is an online game where you test your vocabulary. It’s multiple choice, and for every correct answer you give, the sponsors donate money to buy 10 grains of rice. Now this doesn’t seem like much, but it’s pretty easy to rapidly earn much more. In less than 30 minutes, you can probably earn 1000 grains of rice. I’m guessing that maybe 1000 grains of rice is equivalent to a good (though not substantial) meal for someone.

The program is run by the United Nations and gets money from sponsors who place ads on each page of the game. The game started in October and only a few hundred grains were earned the first day (probably somebody testing it out). Over the past couple of days, it’s pretty well exploded in popularity. It’s a good deed and good for the karma. Normally I don’t like ads or endorsing things, but this is very worthwhile.

Play the game, expand your vocabulary, and feed the hungry. Whoever thought it up must be a genius.

Latte art

Posted on April 23, 2007

Considering the name of this site, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m a fan of latte art. Here is a post found via Digg.

Adventures in Dentistry, pt 3.0.1

Posted on March 21, 2006

It dawned on me today that a lot of the times I’ve had dental work over the past year, the weather has been foul. It doesn’t really affect my attitude too much, but as I trudged through the snow today, I remembered when I got the other tooth pulled on December 22, 2004, it was snowing, and when I was getting the scraping and root planing done, it rained a few times. Odd but interesting.

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Datsa’ Pizza

Posted on March 1, 2006

Walking home from work today, on my way to get my Powerball ticket, I stopped at a tiny restaurant called Datsa’ Pizza. The place opened earlier this year (well, last year) on N Pennsylvania just north of the Central Library construction site and right next to Urban Element. I’ve walked by it a bunch of times without ever going in. It never really dawned on me that a place so small might be worthy of my attention. They don’t deliver. They have dine-in and carry out only. That said, a week or so ago, I was walking past and noticed they had a digital photo of a calzone taped to the window. I briefly channeled Homer Simpson (Mmmm, calzones), then walked past. Today when I was walking by, I saw the photo again and did quick double take and walked in.

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