WHAT THE FUCK, LAYS??

I was having a perfect day. The weather was nice, I ran into one of my old classmates, and everything was going great....until I came home with my groceries!! First, I went to Whole Foods to get perishable items and dinner, and then went across the street to a Super Fresh to get non-perishable items. I usually don't eat chips but since I had picked up a sandwich from WF, I decided to get a bag of chips. I looked for the "healthiest" item in the aisle, read the nutritional info (mainly fat content and carbs) and threw it into my cart. It was Lay's Baked BBQ chips.

I got back to my apartment, opened my sandwich, opened the big bag of chips, took out a few and put them on my plate, and put one crisp in my mouth. It had a different taste. I have tried regular Lays BBQ in the past, and this one was different. Most likely, it was because it was baked, not fried like the regular Lays. So then, I decided to check the ingredient list. First thing I read was "CONTAINS EGG, MILK, SOY, AND WHEAT INGREDIENTS". Hmm....sure these are potato chips, I asked myself. I understand milk because it might have cheese, and these days, it's difficult to find a product without soy or wheat ingredients. But egg? That's an odd one!

So I continued reading the main ingredients, which are as follows:

Dehydrated potatoes, corn oil, modified food starch, sugar, salt, and less than 1% of the following: onion powder, soy lecithin, dextrose, leavening (monocalcium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate), natural flavors, molasses, fructose, spices, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, torula yeast, wheat starch, garlic powder, malt extract, maltodextrin, extracts of paprika, citric acid, chicken fat, soy flour, tomato paste, corn syrup solids, yeast extract, barley malt flour, lactic acid, egg yolk, and whey.

Chicken fat?? WHAT THE FUCK IS CHICKEN FAT DOING IN MY BAG OF CHIPS???? I would've overlooked the chicken fat had it come at a time when I wasn't a vegetarian. But seriously...chicken fat? I know about deep fried shit in tallow and lard, but this is taking it a bit too far. So then, I decided to check out Lays' website to get more info on their other products. What do I find? A lot of their products contain Porcine, or pork enzyme....essentially, enzymes from piggies. Almost all of them have natural flavors. For those of you who don't know what natural flavor is,
The exact definition of natural flavorings & flavors from Title 21, Section 101, part 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations is as follows:

"The term natural flavor or natural flavoring means the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional."

Few years ago, I had read a book by Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, where he described the differences between artificial and so-called natural flavors. I won't go into all the details, but the bottom line is that natural flavor isn't really "natural". Some more research later I found out that Frito Lay's wasn't giving out exact information about what kind of flavors were included in "natural flavors" (figure it out for yourself if you're smart enough). Hmm..... MOFO ASSHOLES!! I mean seriously!!??!

Is it too much to ask for vegetarian yogurt, vegetarian Starburst and Skittles, and vegetarian potato chips...like they have it in the UK?

Chuck Africa, WE need this!

A couple of days ago, I was watching the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien where he mentioned KFC's new sandwich with deep fried chicken breasts instead of buns, so I decided to search it on the net to make sure such a sandwich exists. UNfortunately, it does!! It's still in the testing phase so is available only in Providence, RI and Omaha, NE....and thank god for that!!

So the "sandwich" is called Double Down and between those two deep-fried chicken breasts are 2 kinds of cheeses, bacon, and sauce. Calories? I wasn't able to find any accurate information on that, but I'll be damned if it doesn't have at least 600 cals!!

So what did I do next? I tried searching for other outrageous menu items on America's restaurant chains' menus, fast-food and otherwise....and the results were shocking!! I always knew that DQ's Blizzards contained pure FAT and that Starbucks couldn't be healthy with all that whipped cream (regardless of what Mary-Louise Parker has on Weeds). I knew it, I knew it, but deep down, I was wishing that it wouldn't be all that bad, for the sake of humanity. Well, it is....check out the following items:

• Domino's Pasta Bread Bowl, Pizza Primavera. Couldn't find nutritional info on Domino's website but got it off from another website. 1340 Calories...that's more than a day's worth of what I should be taking in (1200 given my lifestyle and need to lose weight)


• Ruby Tuesday's Boston Blue Burger. 1424 KCal....smooth! Again, couldn't find it on Ruby Tuesday's website.


• Hardee's Monster Thickburger. Two 1/3 lb. charbroiled 100% Black Angus beef patties, 4 strips of bacon, 3 slices of American cheese and mayonnaise on a sesame seed bun. 1420 Cals.....oh momma!


• Wendy's Baconator. This one has 830 cals but 51 gms of fat (76% DV based on 2000 calorie diet) and 23 gms of saturated fat....more than 100%....!!


• Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing. I believe this one is from the book, Eat This, Not That! Whopping 2900 calories....that's more than two days' worth of calories for me!!


• Old Spaghetti Factory Chicken Caesar Salad, dinner portion, 990 cal. For a salad???? Just keeps getting better, doesn't it?


• Baskin Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake, 2600 cal

NOW I understand why this is the fattest nation. Unfortunately, the problem runs deeper than this and it seems like no one cares about the people who actually eat this trash. I cannot imagine how it must be for the ones who eat such things....limited income, no health insurance, lack of awareness and education, and chronic ailments...that's some life!

My homemade naked burrito with guacamole, pico de gallo, black beans and brown rice is waiting for me....but I guess I just lost the appetite!

In search of perfect Ful

The last week of December 2008 was perhaps the best week of having breakfast. That week was different. It was unique. It was oh soooo good! And there was only one thing that made it so good - no, not that dreamy Arab - Ful Medames, a.k.a Egyptian Fava beans. If that makes me sound pathetic, so be it....you cannot judge until you've tried it!! FulMedames was a part of the Arabic breakfast I used to have, which also included pita, baba ghanoush, feta cheese, labneh, hummus, and eggs. But Ful always overshadowed these other insignificant things! The whole week that I was in Dubai, that's all I used to eat for breakfast....Ful Medames with pita.

After coming back from Dubai, I started to miss Ful. I knew I shouldn't have gotten attached to it, especially since I knew I wasn't going to be able to have it for more than a week. I thought Ful was going to be like an exotic affair you had in a foreign land....intense, but gone in a week never to be seen again. Every morning I had it, that's what I fooled myself into believing. I started counting down the days we had together. The week was up, I was back at my place having carbs for breakfast. Life was dull without Ful. And that's when I decided to make Ful, simply because I had to have it.

I'm not a good cook....I know only 3-4 things at the most, and those are barely edible. But I decided that I had to do it if I wanted Ful. I searched the net for Ful Medames recipes, and (un)fortunately, there were a gazillion Ful recipes out there...and each one different. I figured out it wasn't going to be an easy task trying to get Ful back in my life, but that's the price I have to pay. And so, the search began....

The first recipe I checked called for canned fava beans. I thought to myself, that shouldn't be difficult, I mean they have all kinds of canned beans...black, red, butter, kidney, black-eyed, etc. Turns out, it's more difficult than I thought. The local grocery store didn't have it, so I went to Whole Foods and even they didn't have it. So I went to Trader Joes but no luck there either. I finally went to an ethnic store in West Philly and was lucky to get dried fava beans (not canned). Because of this, I decided to look for recipes that required dried fava beans instead of canned ones.

The first time I made Ful, it turned out really disgusting...not even remotely close to what I used to have in Dubai. The peels of beans made it hard to chew, it didn't have a smooth texture, and left a bad taste in my mouth. So, after a couple of weeks, I decided to try another recipe. For this one, I soaked the beans overnight, peeled them, and cooked them in pressure cooker. Still a bad taste. A month later, I tried another recipe where I soaked them, peeled them, and simmered them for 2 hours. No luck....still left a bad taste.

By this time, I was down to enough beans to make Ful for 2 more days. Day before, I thought I should give it one more try. So I soaked the beans overnight, and did not peel them. Yesterday, I cooked them for 4 hours, seasoned them with cumin, and added olive oil, parsley, de-seeded and chopped tomatoes, and chopped onions. That made the taste a little more bearable, but still not good enough. What happened to the creamy texture of my favorite Ful? During this time, I had also been to a couple of middle-eastern restaurants that served Ful, but nothing as good as the one I had in Dubai.

I have enough beans left to make it one more time, and if I don't do it right this time around (or come close to it), I'll have to give up on Ful....and I don't want to do that. It is good for my health, it's filling, and it's high in fiber, protein, L-dopa and iron, and low in carbs and fat...they're everything a person could ask for. But it seems like I'll have to give up on them...on Ful, which will forever remain an exotic dish of the middle-east. But I have one more shot, so the quest continues.......

Ice-cream.....finally!

Not so much an ice cream as a non-dairy frozen dessert...
In case you didn't know, I'm a vegan (I do have occasional slips)..make that a sweet-toothed vegan. Before you get on my ass with that, I'm a vegan not for health concerns but for animal rights and ethical issues. Anyway, so being a vegan who loooooves chocolate and everything sweet, it's been difficult for me to keep up with my habits. I made vegan jelly-filled cupcakes and brownies but unfortunately, they aren't the same as the "real thing", and besides, I have to cook of which I'm not a huge fan. So a couple of weeks ago, I was at Whole Foods and decided to checkout the frozen dessert aisle just for the heck of it...and to my surprise, I HIT A FREAKIN' JACKPOT!!! Ohhhh mannn.....I don't have to limit myself exclusively to sorbets anymore! I discovered the most amazing thing ever known to humankind today...VEGAN ice cream!!! I picked up a pint of Coconut Craze and when I opened it and took the first spoonful, it was...FIREWORKS!!!! Seriously, if you can get hold of it in this lifetime, I'm pretty sure you'll free yourself from the cycle of life-n-death!!

It was too good to be true. The overall coconut taste with shredded coconut, almonds, and more-often-than-occasional chocolate bits.....droooooll... It had absolutely no taste of soy and other ingredients not found in actual ice cream..it didn't even feel as though it was vegan, and the best part? Zero cholesterol! I'd give it a 9...until yesterday! I got another flavor yesterday - Key Lime Pie - which I finished off in 2 days! Don't judge me...you'd do the same if you had this. The pie crusts in the dessert were just...well....I don't have words for it, but I don't know how they do it! Neither ice cream nor gelato come close to this baby...heavennn

Doesn't make sense

"fresh ginger: product of China"

This is the height of....import!! Wonder how it even stays "fresh" if it's from China. How long does ginger stay fresh? Crazy, I'm tellin' ya!!!