Mysteriously Ground Poultry

My friend Judy gave me this fabulous turkey chili recipe that I regularly make with great success. The recipe is so good that I have passed it on to others who have found it similarly yummy (perhaps the greatest success was my friend Jeff then enabling our friend Carey as well). The base meat is ground turkey, which I usually find at Trader Joe's in the meat section. The other day Caroline and I went to TJ's to restock for the start of the school year, and I decided to grab 1 lb of ground turkey so I could make a nice batch of chili and then leave it in the fridge for easy dinners for the rest of the week.

Fast forward to last night, when I actually made the chili. The first step is to saute up the onions and garlic, then add the meat and cook all the way through. Ground beef, turkey, lamb and ostrich all cook down nicely to those perfect little tiny meat globules that one wants in a sloppy joe, bobotie, shepherd's pie and chili consistency. The joy of dishes such as these is that all the flavors are pleasantly balanced and present in your mouth whilst eating. As I am cooking the meat, I discover that it is not separating nicely but rather is cooking into solid chunks of white meat. Cooked ground turkey is a darker color, so I rather quickly suss out that I am in fact making a ground CHICKEN chili instead. Dammit! The end result was ok, but the flavor was not as complex and the stupid chunks of ground chicken add a slightly off texture to the chili.

I don't understand why Trader Joe's stocks the ground chicken next to the ground turkey, as the uncooked meat is the same color but the end result is very different. Additionally, who the hell uses ground chicken in the first place? The only possible use I could come up with is chicken burgers, which can be purchased pre-made from Trader Joe's in a delicious chili lime flavor that are far superior to any hand shaped varieties. So thanks a lot, Trader Joe's, for ruining Judy's chili recipe. I'll think twice before acquiring any ground poultry from you.

How Do You Spell Indian Buffet? "R-O-L-A-I-D-S" or How I Got "Chamberlain'd" into a Stomach Ache

Today, the esteemed members of my partnership decided that it was time to bypass the putrid swill in our dining hall (seriously, we get the LOWEST quality ARAMARK caf service; I know its the lowest because I just reviewed our P&L distributions this year. A little research by my main man google, and voila, ARAMARK pricing and we are bottom-fucking-tier) and sail away from the friendly Irish shores of our favorite pub Mollie's. Needless to stay, I fully supported a little adventuring and was pretty excited to see what other culinary delights are hidden amongst the financial institutions, shoe-shine locales and men's clothing stores that dominate Midtown Manhattan.

As we met to decide our locale I should have noticed the storm gathering; specifically the Indian monsoon that was abrewin'. Led by Abhishek "Naan" Sud, the idea of hitting the Indian Buffet was quickly proffered and accepted by everyone -- everyone except yours truly. Let me start by saying this: Indian food is delicious and I thoroughly enjoy it. I do not, however, enjoy Indian food when it has been sitting and coagulating in a metal tray for many hours (how they feed so many people on the sub-continent without leading the world in antacid technology, I do not know). And today, I believe we reached record levels of oozing and discoloration. I'm a team player, so I went ahead and delved into this contemptible mess. Let me tell you, it was as bad as I thought it would be, maybe even a bit worse.

The end result of this ridiculousness: I spent an entire afternoon with stomach churn that was about 10x what Ginger got from her ill timed gastronomic backflips in her last post. What really fucking "grinds my gears," to steal a line from a GREAT Family Guy episode, was that this little foray into that shitbox was PREVENTABLE. Abhishek is Inidan and his wife is Indian. This fucktard eats Indian EVERY-GODDAMN-DAY. And yet, he feels like we do not support his ethnic food of choice because we like to go to a chill bar right by us when we go out and he won't get over it. You know what? THAT'S FUCKING LIFE. We have had the same ongoing debate about cricket as well; it's a pussy sport and he needs to accept that but until the world has kow-tow'd to the greatness that is Indian culture, it won't be enough. Putting that aside, we have also been to this place before, IT SUCKS DONKEY DICK. We all knew it, but because there is nothing else and everyone decided to get their Neville Chamberlain on (because he will whine and whine and whine), we got stuck going there.

There will be no next time for this guy. As Eric Cartman was once so fond of saying: "Fuck you guys, I'm going home..." That is the only response to the stupidity that I am dealing with. By the way, my stomach settled down, finally, at about 4am. Thanks Indian Buffet, you're shittiness may only be surpassed by my desire to burn you to the ground (though the coagulated trays of food are probably a great fire retardant).

Portion Control

For dinner last night my dad and I had some sweet and sour pork with rice. The pork was already made, so I cooked up 2 cups of rice for the two of us. Usually this is enough to feed the both of us with a little left over. Our rice cooker here in SA is really basic, the pot purports to be nonstick but that's a pretty big lie--the rice sticks to the cooking pot like nobody's business. My dad is trying to combat a way to get the rice to stick less (adding more water, adding less water, turning it off immediately after the cycle is complete, etc) but no luck. So, tonight he decides that we should just eat all the rice in one go!

I heat up his pork and serve him some rice and then go to heat up mine in the microwave. He goes back to the pot and serves himself some more rice and has really an obscene amount on his plate. When my pork is done heating, there's just enough rice in the pot to serve me about 1/2 a place of rice, just in the center. That is a perfect amount for me, so I don't have a problem with it. I sit down at the table and my dad says, "Oh, do you not have enough rice? I'm so sorry, I didn't realize you hadn't taken any yet. Here, have some of mine!" I explain that this is a perfect amount of rice and that I don't need any of his, but he does have an awful lot on there. He won't let up and keeps trying to give me rice. Now, my parents have been overfeeding me rice for a long time. They simply don't understand that I am no longer 15 years old and on a swim team wherein I exercise heavily for 2.5 hours every day. My metabolism has slowed some and I just don't eat a huge 10" dinner plate HEAPED full of food for dinner. I like to fill my plate more with veggies and meats with a SIDE of rice to get some carbs. And yet, every time I am home with my parents, they emphasize how I need to eat MORE. It's very frustrating. My dad then goes on to lecture me about how rice isn't fattening. Which, technically, is true, but we're not eating brown rice, which helps you burn fat, which I would totally devour in large portions additionally for the fiber benefit. I just don't want a giant amount of white rice for Christ's sake!

The next morning we are driving to work and my stomach feels crappy. It feels like a combination of hunger, cramps and just general upset-tummy feelings. I'm pretty quiet and my dad is concerned about me. Finally I admit that my stomach isn't feeling so good and I might be really hungry. Of course he has to shoot back with, "I told you you should have eaten more rice last night." This of course turns into me snapping back that the rice have nothing to do with my current condition and that he needs to leave it alone. How fricking ridiculous, I stuffed my face with sweet and sour pork AND two squares of chili chocolate for dessert PLUS a spoonful of honey as a post-dessert dessert around 10pm. Clearly not eating enough was not the problem last night!

I got to work and relieved the problem by visiting the bathroom -- sometimes you just have to go in the morning [sorry to describe bathroom activities but I just want to make it clear that this wasn't HUNGER, it was needing to go #2. If you're grossed out by that, you need to read the book Everybody Poops. It's true. Everybody poops. Even girls. The general unwillingness of women in this country to discuss their bowel movements might be worthy of its own fatwa, in fact.].

I'm so sick of my parents trying to behave like I'm still some teenager who doesn't know her own body. I've lived away from home since high school and I think I know how much to eat and what to eat a hell of a lot better than they do.