A quick heads up—today’s post is potluck. After you read it, I expect you to bring a comment to share with everyone. Also, I’m doing a double post today, the second in honor of Valentine’s Day. So be sure to scroll down.
If you’re a regular at Blue Kitchen, I figure you either like to cook or are a friend or family member who feels honor bound to visit. Or maybe you’re C.) all of the above. But there are times even those of us who loooove to cook either don’t have the time or the energy or C.) all of the above. What do you do then? Drive through? Pizza? What are your defaults? Your delights? I’ll go first.
For us, if we’re not up to cooking, it’s usually because we’ve worked late or have umpteen things to accomplish after dinner. If that’s the case, we also don’t have the energy or time to go someplace and sit down for a nice relaxing meal. So it’s got to be fast and on the way home. Cheap is good too. Our defaults, driven more by geography and speed than desire, are usually Chipotle or Taco Bell. I know. Shut up.
But then there are the guilty pleasures. We recently rediscovered one: Egg foo yung, those pancakelike deep-fried patties of egg, vegetables and meat or seafood. A longtime staple of rather suspect Chinese American restaurants, they’re often found next to those ersatz Chinese dishes, chop suey and chow mein on the menu. And in St. Louis, they’ve even invented something called the St. Paul Sandwich—an egg foo yung patty on white bread with lettuce, tomatoes, mayo and pickles. So I was stunned to recently discover that egg foo yung is actually based on an authentic Shanghai dish.
Before going any further, I have to say that Marion and I are regulars at more than a couple of restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown, places where we would probably not be allowed back if we ordered egg foo yung. And we tend to avoid generic food court Chinese food at all costs, in no small measure because the foods they serve tend to feature the same gloppy brown sauce that is a key ingredient of egg foo yung. But there’s something about egg foo yung that transcends national origin to become one of the world’s true comfort foods.
And never was it more comforting than one night a few years ago. In a fit of temporary insanity, we had agreed to our older daughter’s request for a sleepover birthday party with six guests. A total of seven girls, including the birthday girl, who needed all the caffeine and sugar buzz we’d also intelligently provided like a shark needs swim fins. They weren’t being bad, mind you—it was just the perfect storm of noise and energy and gross out humor. Silly me. I thought having daughters, it would be all Barbies and tea parties and I would escape the various bodily function jokes of my own childhood. I’ll wait while my women readers enjoy a good laugh at my naivete about now. That’s okay. I deserve it.
Marion and I were hunkered down in our room, grimly watching Saturday night TV and each privately longing for a tranquilizer dart gun as the party raged on outside our door.
And then we remembered the late night Chinese take-out place not two blocks from our house.
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in our room with wonderfully satisfying plates of egg foo yung, steamed rice and gloppy brown sauce. I think we must have also had a couple of glasses of some modest white wine. The world was suddenly a better place.
Okay, your turn. What’s your default take-out or delivery? What’s your guilty pleasure? Try to stick with fast and cheap and, if at all possible, greasy this time. I’m sure we’ll talk about fancier options in a future post.
Terry,
I had a laugh with your post – delicious reading (pun intended). 🙂
Imagining the birthday party with 7 girls was something – I have a 13-year-old sister, who has loads of friends her age, and I know how loud and full of energy they can be.
I’m not familiar with Chinese food so I kept wondering about egg foo yung – I must confess I googled it. 🙂
My guilty pleasure is not actually take-out : when I’m not in the mood for cooking – and that’s something extremely rare that happens under particular circumstances, as you perfectly described – we buy a ready to bake pizza at the supermarket, I pop it into the oven and it bakes while Joao and I take showers and get into our comfy pajamas.
Not fancy, not expensive, but pretty good sometimes. 🙂
Ah, Patricia…I can relate! For a while, I couldn’t get enough of Amy’s frozen pesto pizza. But ok, Terry. You ask for greasy and cheap. I can kind of honor that – using the Brooklyn Heights measure of cheap, that is.
With an ice storm approaching last night (and of course ice storms are one reason I use not to cook), I decided to pick up comfort yummies. So…from Theresa’s Polish restaurant I got an overflowing corned beef on rye with sweet hot mustard, an order of creamy cole slaw, a small order of potato pierogies with fried onions, and a piece of babka (with raisins and a bit of a sweet cheese filling). But, since that wasn’t guilty enough, I went to a great deli a couple of blocks away and also picked up half a barbecued chicken. All for less than $20. This will last me well into tomorrow when guilt will finally move me to cook something healthy. But in the meantime…I am oh so grateful for the ice storm!
Chinese food is always the default when I don’t want to cook. I’ll get a container of noodles (any kind, though lo mein with scallions and garlic is my favorite), grab a pair of chopsticks, and eat them out of the container while watching cooking shows on TV.
Would have commented earlier, but I’ve been laughing all day at the memory of a house full of little girls having sleepovers when our daughter was young!
Loved the line about “longing for a tranquilizer dart gun…”
Our default is pizza because we don’t have any really good Chinese restaurants in the immediate neighborhood, plus pizza is my husband’s favorite food on earth.
In our old neighborhood my favorite default was Vietnamese food but no such luck where we live now.
I think my default must sound boring, but I have a Whole Foods market close to home. I will stop by there and get some of their “Kickin’ Chicken” salad, and/or their cranberry tuna salad. Add wine and crackers and you’ve got a great meal. I just don’t stop off at the pizza place anymore, as somewhere along the way I lost my taste for grease.
Love the part about the girls’ slumber party! I can sorta remember those days……..
We knew you could cook, but you were holding out on the being a saint part. 😉 Great story!
Go-to food has got to be falafel wraps. A local place here in LA serves it with a yogurt-tahini sauce and tabouli. But my favorite falafel comes from a hole-in-the-wall place in Providence. There are times I have contemplated flying the 6 hours just to eat one. What can I say?
All this talk of take-out is making me want some, I think I’ll even go Chinese (which I never do for all the reasons you described plus the MSG factor).
We love Sushi take out and do it every Sunday. I’m a spicy tuna roll & a california roll girl, John does the eel/avocado roll & a nigiri assortment.
Pizza is the only delivery option around here, but I love to bring home Kung Pao Chicken from a little Chinese restaurant in the area called Golden Leaf.
Funny, almost everyone lists some type of ethnic food as the food of choice when doing the lazy thing – I’ll let you slide this time with the whole Taco Bell thing – and my wife and I are no exception. We actually have three different regions ( I mean restaurants) we rotate through on those days we just want to shut-down upon arriving home: Mexican, Indian and Thai.
The Mexican is the ultimate greasy endulgence…deep fried shreaded beef tacos!
The Indian is somewhat, shall we say, more healthy, although the Chicken Tikka Masala has a deliciously rich and creamy sauce.
Finally, the Thai is just plain tasty, and we like to think it is “healthy”. Sometimes being tired and lazy (or busy) can have its rewards.
-J
It has to be pizza from the pizzeria on the corner. Roughly 2 minutes walk, about 5 minutes wait while the pizzaiolo shoves it in the wood oven, 2 minutes while they add a bottle of wine and a slice of cassata to the bag… We get a margherita and a margherita with Speck and rocket leaves. Crispy-based, mozzarella-melting, tomatoey heaven. The only downside is that you have to walk back, bearing your takeaway pizza boxes, through a crowd of hip young thangs having cocktails at the cool bar on the corner. But one or two eye you with a look that clearly says they wish they could swap their margarita for your margherita.