Living in New York City is hard: There’s too many people, there’s too much noise, it’s far too expensive. Most people think I have it easier than most because one of the hardest daily decisions is more or less made for me: Where to eat lunch. This quotidian question bothers most offices but at Google, the answer is seemingly simple: Why, in the office, of course. With free food available, that would appear to be the beginning and end of it but it’s not. No, it’s not. You see, there’s still three options:

5 Borough Bistro
On the same floor as Engineering. Convenient but less variety.

Hemispheres Cafe
Located 4 flights up (endure the excruciating pain in your legs as you climb the stairs or endure the excruciating delay as you wait for the elevator?) but has more choices.

Chelsea Market
Across the street and therefore not an option in this 90°+ weather but does have made to order sushi.

Each has its benefits and in this installment of Way of the Spatula, I will hopefully allow you, gentle reader, to vicariously experience them. We start with my tasty lunch from Hemispheres.

Clockwise from top: Mutton Chop with Wild Mushroom & Arugula salad; Radicchio, Apricot & Cashew salad; Strawberry, Blueberry, and Honey Smoothie; Banana, Pistachio “Ice Cream”; and Roast Butternut Squash. Not pictured: Berries (on left) and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup cookie (in vivo).

Of course, the food is all free and one can feel free to take some of whatever they like – I try not to take too much but stranger things have been known to happen… My general plan is to find a tasty looking meat and then supplement the rest of the plate with as many interesting vegetables as I can find.

The mutton chop struck me as an odd item: Normally one has lamb chops, not mutton. Mutton is mature sheep and is still tasty. The chops were actually cooked medium which, given their “in a big (All-Clad) pan” nature, is surprising. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve had mutton chops anywhere except at the office so I can’t complain about the variety.

The Wild Mushroom & Arugula salad featured a variety of mushrooms, the predominant one being probably a porcini or oyster mushroom. While good, as Seinfeld once said “Hey, salad’s got nothin‘ on this mutton.” I picked it mainly because mushrooms typically go well with meat.

On the other hand, I took the Radicchio, Apricot, and Cashew salad because I like cashews. Unfortunately, I forgot I don’t like Radicchio or other bitter greens. I ended up picking around it.

Two items came from the Raw station, the smoothie and the “ice cream”. The ice cream is interesting for two reasons. First, it’s dotted with flowers making it a lot more visually appealing. Second, the recipe contains no ice cream. In fact, it’s made from agave, banana, and pistachio. To be honest, the texture isn’t much like ice cream; it’s closer to mashed banana but the freezing process makes it more ice cream like.

The Raw station is one of the more interesting ones. Given the dubious limitations on preparation (vegan and a cooking temperature no higher than 115°F), I’m surprised I often find one or two items to take from there. I’ve even asked for recipes for a couple of their items like their Walnut Taco Meat and their Black Sesame Butter.

Lastly, while I didn’t photograph the cookie (some things are better left undocumented), I’d like to note that the cookies are really good. Since they’re made there, sometimes you can get warm ones when they’ve just come out. Surprisingly, my favorite ones are the white chocolate with dried cherries but I’m never one to turn down peanut butter, unfortunately.

More next week!

Silly question? I thought most of my readers would say that to themselves. I guess the real question is: How MUCH do you really like meatballs fast? Well, if the answer is A LOT and REAL fast, then check this out. Grubdudes is putting together a speed eating contest featuring everyone’s favorite ball – the meatball!  If you live in or around the Boston area and would be interested in participating (speed eating), becoming a sponsor or are a local or national media outlet that would like to be present for the event (hint: Guinness Book of World Records, maybe?) then keep reading!

Grubdudes is looking to partner with local business to sponsor the event, an event hall to hold the event, as well as vendors and assistants to help with organizing it. If you are interested, please send your info, ideas and how you would like to help to grubdudes@gmail.com.  For the short list, we are looking for:

• Food sponsor (to provide the meatballs)
• A venue to hold the event, preferably with a kitchen (approx 100 people capacity)
• Assistants to help organize, set up tables, sign contestants in, etc.
• Volunteers to help promote the event such as local or national food blogs, websites, newspapers, etc.
• A local charity (fitting) for possible donation of revenue generated by the event

Also, if you feel you have an an idea that could benefit us in our quest for the ultimate food eating contest, email us at the address above, and we will get back to you as soon as possible!

PS… the photo is courtesy of my mom!

Originally posted on GRUBDUDE.

You know what’s great?

Brownies.

They’re so good. Some like them warm and gooey. Some like them moist and cakey. Some like them with a side of ice cream. And despite these differences in opinion, practically everyone loves brownies.

And as they should, too.

Brownies are an affirmation that life is good, that fun is good and that, yes, you do deserve something warm and fresh from the oven every now and then. Because whether or not those brownies came from a box or made completely from scratch, those brownies are going to get eaten and you can bet your sweet Aunt Margaret¹ those brownies are going to be enjoyed.

Damn skippy.

You know what’s even better though?

Brownies with stuff on ‘em.

Mmmm… stuff. Who doesn’t love stuff?

Here, the stuff in question is plain cake frosting and peppermint candies. So simple, right? In particular, the brownies pictured in this article were inspired by my then surplus of candy canes leftover from last Christmas. I merely unwrapped the whole lot of them, put them in a bag and hammered away at them. I then liberally sprinkled the candy cane debris onto some frosted slices of brownies and presto: Peppermint Iced Brownie Fingers.

When I tried this idea a second time, candy canes were no longer in stores. So, instead, I used starlites. You know, the standard peppermint candies you see that’re usually individually wrapped and found on your grandmother’s coffee table? Yah. Those. And even then, I used two different kinds of starlites: the standard red and white peppermint ones for the first batch and the less common green and white spearmint ones for another. I even went and added the teensiest bit of peppermint extract to the brownie batter for the red one. Despite the lack of candy canes they still wound up looking Christmasy because of their colors but rest assured, o reader, they were tasty all the same.

So, should you want to take your brownies (store bought, box-made or whatever) to the next level and think that good isn’t good enough, try icing them and layering them with some crushed peppermint candies.

I mean, come on. That lily isn’t going to gild itself, you know?

¹ Way of the Spatula does not condone nor encourage the use of relatives as gambling currency or their monetization thereof.

If you want to impress the hell out of me, make me something to eat with fruit in it that actually isn’t a dessert. No, really. I don’t know what it is exactly but the inclusion of fresh fruit in an entree makes me immediately go, “Wow, what an innovation!” as if each time I encounter such a creation, it’s for the first time ever. I guess I’m just easy to please sometimes. (Must be the short term memory loss. I forget.)

In all seriousness, I love fruit. It’s clean. It’s natural. It’s great. I’ve always found that fruits have a simple sort of sweetness unlike table sugars, where each one has a singular sort of taste that’s a signature specific to it. (Booyah! Alliteration combo!) When it comes to ice cream flavors, I’ll take fruit flavors over any of the savory flavors any day. Hell, I’ll reach for a scoop of sorbet or sherbet before regular ole ice cream if only because of the near guarantee that the frozen treat’s main ingredient is indeed fruit. And, when I think about it, sure, fruit is probably the number one reason I side with the Pie Faction in The Great Cake vs. Pie Debate (and, yes, fruit tarts totally fall within the realm of pie, thank you very much).

So, yes, fruit.

Fruit, fruit, fruit.

And let’s not even go into mere aesthetics as far as they’re concerned. I mean, I’m the only guy I know who goes into grocery stores and journeys into their produce sections with a camera in hand in order to take photos of the brilliant array of colors and pleasing natural geometries that fruit has to offer. (I get strange looks, yes.) One of these days, I’m going to make it over to the farmer’s market downtown with my digital camera in hand.. and I just know I’m going to come home with a full SD card of shots.

The main downside of fruit for me is the timing that’s involved with their handling. I mean, not only do they have a built-in expiration date, you have to consume them within a particular time window as determined by ripeness. Avocados and bananas, for example, are notorious for price differentials based on whether or not what is on display at your local grocer is already ripe or not because, really, who wants to wait around for them to ripen? After all, you need to make your banana milkshake or fresh guacamole now, goddammit, and you’ll pay whatever price for that. Well, obviously.

My other complaint about fruit is, well, it’s packaging. Peeling sure is tedious. As is pitting or removing pesky seeds. Adding fresh lemon juice to anything is a chore if only because of the steps you need to take to ensure that the seeds don’t come out with the juice (and the steps you wind up having to take because the seeds will often go into the food in spite of your efforts anyway). And then there’s coring. Bleh.

Fortunately, there’re lovely kitchen tools such as the above. That there is an apple corer or slicer. In some places, it’s called a wedger. Not only will it slice out the core of your fruit, it’ll segment it too. And it’s easy to use: simply grab the little guy with both hands, position the center hole over the stem of your apple or pear and then press straight down. It’s almost Hellraiser-like in the way it just cuts and divides up your fruit but it’s a pretty neat tool. Check it out:

Notice the weird sort of contour in the cut apple bits? The bend? That’d be from me losing my grip a little as I was pressing down. So, my bad. But still, kinda neat though, right?

So a while back, I decided to make a salad. Not the usual kind of thing I do, no, and I thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if I put actual fruit in there?” And so I did, putting that little corer/slicer/wedger thing to work.

It came out great. You should give it a whirl.

Red Butter Lettuce and Spinach Salad with Fruit and Almond

what you’ll need

• red butter lettuce
• baby spinach
• 1 pear
• 1 apple
• 1/4 c cranberry raisins
• 1 c grape tomatoes
• 1/4 c almond slivers
• 1/4 – 1/2 c feta cheese

what to do

1. Cut up apple and pear into thin slices.
2. Combine the sliced fruit with the rest of the vegetable ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Mix.
4. Top with almond slivers and crumbled feta.
5. Toss before serving. Enjoy.

It was the last day for my boss over at the company I work for the other day and, because it’s an unspoken tradition at workplaces the world over and, really, it’s the right thing to do, our team took her out for lunch. It was, of course, a means for us to collectively say goodbye as well as provide us a chance to hang out just one last time and, hey, there was food involved. So, yippee yippee.

We went to a lovely restaurant called Finz Seafood & Grill. There, I had the steak tips. (Well, specifically, I had the Marinated Sirloin Tips.)

Not until one of our number pointed it out did it occur to me how silly it was to be at a nice seafood restaurant (that’s at the water, even) and order myself a beef dish. In my defense, though, both of my adjacent boothmates also ordered some variety of those steak tips and not actually fish. So, I wasn’t exactly alone. Still felt silly, though.

Later that night, I went out to see a movie with a friend and when the film let out we wound up having dinner in town at a local Longhorn Steakhouse.

There, out of some retarded sense of balance or some such, I felt compelled to have seafood. (Specifically, the Wild West Shrimp starter.) And, you know, not actually beef. At a steakhouse.

I, um.. Yah. I kind of fail at going out to eat.

..both dishes were tasty despite my failings, though, and would recommend you try both out:

Finz Seafood & Grill
76 Wharf Street, Pickering Wharf, Salem, Massachusetts (978) 744-8485

Longhorn Steakhouse
401 Park Dr, Boston, Massachusetts (617) 247-9199?