Food Blogging?

2011-06-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'm what they call a "foodie." But I don't want to become a pretentious food blogger, or a person who gets all wrapped up in recipes and cooks things and takes photos of them artfully, in soft lighting, with a perfectly designed table setting.... Though I kind of love taking photos of beautiful food, I admit. It's all about the colors and textures. And describing things is harder for me than taking a nice photo. But today, today is about my disappointment with the ruination of the simplicity of grilled cheese. Grilled Cheese?! you say, incredulous. But you cannot ruin a grilled cheese sandwich!

Oh yes, you can. You can run a food truck, with a really polite and nice staff, and be starting off in your own business. You can park near where I work, on North Calvert Street, and gather a crowd. You can make us wait 15 minutes for our white bag full of lunch. But you cannot create a good sandwich. There are options with crab and lobster and olive oil and tomato. This is a truck DEVOTED to just the grilled cheese. "Gourmet" grilled cheese, even! But... it was sad. It was taken right back to my office, and plopped down on my coworker's desk, and we all (three of us) opened our wrappers and did a bit of a double-take. It was not pretty or gourmet. My coworker had the pita with "Armenian string cheese." The other had a chicken-combination sandwich (a special). I picked a simple whole wheat and cheddar grilled cheese, with a tomato basil soup. But the whole wheat was so thin. It was soaked through with oil & butter. Something that made it shiny. I am all about butter, because it makes an excellent grilled cheese. However, it was soaked, and even when pressing napkins on the sandwich, it was greasy and flat and soggy. The paper was oily. My fingers were icky, and I was all about grabbing a remaining napkin to clean them off.

I also tried the soup. It was vaguely creamy, had oil floating on top, and wasn't strongly basil or tomato tasting. It wasn't BAD, but it was rich without the flavor. It had chunks of mysterious vegetables in it. I don't expect miraculous soup, unless I go to certain places. (Miss Shirleys & Golden West are the ones that stand out to me.) But it's slated to be "gourmet grilled cheese" and the sandwich, and the soup, fell flat. Flat and soggy, to be exact. The soup, I threw out 1/3 of the way in. (I was trying to give it the benefit of the doubt.) I tossed the entire center of the grilled cheese, oily and soggy and bland. *sigh* It was... so sad.

I tried a new grilled cheese. And paid later with stomachache / regret. After my "treat" of food truck sandwich at lunch today, I'm sitting in class going, "Why didn't I just skip the damn grilled cheese?! Why not have sat inside and not enjoyed the weather, and eaten my carrots and hummus?!!" Why, indeed?

So, the food truck that's normally there, at N. Calvert, had better get their truck fixed. And I will welcome them with open arms, saying, "Thank you Curbside Cafe! Thank you for not giving me sad, soggy food!"

deviouscupcake

Food Blogging?