10.11.10 — Pie Sunday Leftovers

Every so often, one of my coworkers hosts Pie Sunday. She bakes a ton of pies and has people over to eat pie, watch movies and hang out. My wife and I didn't go this time because sitting in a room full of pie and people eating pie would be a new kind of hell since we couldn't, or wouldn't, join in. No worries since the hostess brought the leftovers to work today.

I'm not going to do my normal find the grossest thing about the food item to try and convince myself that whatever it is that I'm not eating tastes horrible anyway, so I'm not missing anything. I've done Pie Sunday before. They are all delicious. Seriously delicious. People go into food comas after eating this pie.

Sigh. No pie-induced coma for me.



Here is a melange of several pies, including apple and pecan.



This is a Gluten- and Lactose-free Blueberry Crisp. I don't know how one makes a crisp that is both gluten and lactose free, but she is the master at these kinds of things.

10.8.10 — Candy from the Sea

Our boss took a couple weeks of vaca and went out to Cannon Beach. This is what he brought us — a box of salt water taffy from Bruce's Candy Kitchen. I don't think an individual piece of taffy would do that much damage to my daily calorie budget (my fillings on the other hand...), but taffy tends to be a little like Lay's Potato Chips — you can't eat just one. So, I eat none.



He also brought this back. Called "Sea Foam," it is apparently a honeycomb (bees, not cereal) based confection dipped in chocolate. Each of those chunks are between 1-2 inches across. Someone who ate one said they taste just like Violet Crumbles, an Aussie treat. I was so intrigued that I was ready to give in and try one out. One of my more level-headed office mates talked me off the ledge.

10.7.10 — DICK'S!

If having an ass load of fried chicken and all the fixin's wasn't bad enough today, the agency held a little party for one of our coworkers who is very pregnant (dilated at 3cm and holding — yes, her dilation amount has been announced over the agency intercom). What do you feed a woman who is about to pop any second?

Dick's, of course.

I think there were many implied jokes. Dick's taste good in your mouth, everyone craves some Dick's every once in awhile, who can say no to a pile of Dick's, she's pregnant so we already know she likes Dick's... really, this stuff writes itself.

For me, this was as hard or harder (yes, I know, going for the low hanging fruit there) to resist than Reuben Tuesday. I'm unafraid to say I love Dick's. I used to gobble up Dick's whenever I could. I'd get 2 Dick's, a couple fries and a chocolate shake - throw in a couple tartars for good measure - and then race home to eat it all. You have to be quick with Dick's because if the fries get cold then you're left with a limp lump of flaccid potato-shaped grease. It was also usually a good idea to not look to closely at the ever-growing grease stain on the bag. But, I can tell you, grease or not, Dick's do indeed taste good in your mouth.



Dick's shakes — any flavor you want so long as it's chocolate, strawberry or vanilla.



You thought I was kidding about the grease stains. Look at those puppies. The burgers aren't wet. It wasn't raining while they were being brought into the building from the car. They weren't accidentally dropped in the sink. No, all that "wetness" is pure grease. Yummy.

Oh, and just for the sake of full disclosure, my "normal" Dick's order came to just about 2100 calories — about what I eat in a day now.

10.7.10 — Meeting with Ezell's

There is some sort of big meeting going on and Judy ordered out for catering from Ezell's, a chain of fried chicken restaurants in Seattle. I'm told that their fried chicken is good — one coworker called it "paradise." Perhaps, but even paradise in a giant aluminum foil tub with some grease coagulating in the bottom loses a little of its luster.



This might be very lumpy mashed potatoes or especially gooey potato salad. Either way, it instantly made me want to hurl. Gurk. (Potato salad is my kryptonite)



Industrial sized coleslaw. Nice.



One of these rolls probably has the same amount of calories as my entire lunch. Slather some butter on one (or two) and make it meal!

10.6.10 — Honey Crisp!

Stuff I absolutely ate today. It's Honey Crisp apple time, so I took a lunch time jaunt up to the Pike Place Market and bought a bag of the giants — a couple for me and some for my coworkers. And yes, I both of mine. They are expensive (almost $3 a pound), but oh so good. Sweet with just a hint of tart, crisp all the way through the apple — it actually snaps when you bite into it, and HUGE. I do love my Granny Smiths (I have a couple each day for snacks — the Honey Crisp in the photo is taking the place of the Granny Smith I ate in the morning), but I would be eating Honey Crisps every day if they were in season more. Like crack off a tree.

10.4.10 — A Uwajimaya Run

Judy went up to Uwajimaya's and brought back a grab bag of snacks. Thanks to a recent visitor to Seattle from the Philippines, I've tried the BOY Bawang Corn Snacks. Holy crap those things are tasty — kind of like Corn Nuts but not as hard, lightly flavored with garlic and salt, and waaaaay too easy to go handful after handful straight to open, gaping maw. It was hard to resist them.



More from the trip to Uwajimaya. I don't need to crack one of these open to know my future doesn't include eating fortune cookies.

10.1.10 — Cheese + Crackers = Nips

We had our monthly agency meeting and of course had lots of snacks. I'll give the organizers props however. They did include a lot of fruit too, which I gladly ate. They also had this line-up: cheese slices, crackers and Cheese Nips. I had to ask myself, isn't that a little redundant? If you have cheese and crackers, do you really need Nips? If you have Nips, do you need cheese and crackers? There was some kind of snack math going on and I suck at the new math.



More from the agency meeting. Yep, these are the ones that got me. I finally broke down and had some of these nuts after watching coworker after coworker dig in. On my 10-mile bike ride home, I had to fight the need to puke. Serves me right I guess — I finally give in to one of these food temptations and I get sick.