In the usual spot today (on our office file cabinets), my coworker Ed left some incredibly delicious pastries shipped straight from Nazareth, Israel! They're mostly variations of baklava, that flaky, buttery dessert made of phyllo dough, pistachio, sugar and, well, butter. They were much smaller than their American versions. I guess we supersize our Middle Eastern sweets, too. Oh well!
There's a 'fridge in our West Paterson office that hasn't been officially in use -- or cleaned out -- since last summer. That's when the department in our company that had been using the fridge moved out to another location.
For some odd reason, when it moved, no one in the department cleaned out the fridge. Now we have stuff in there dating back to '05, '06 (apparently no one cleaned out the fridge while they actually used it, either).
So, in the interest of, oh, not dying from mold contamination, a few brave souls cleaned out the fridge today. I had to document the event. Our before:
Here's what we threw out, frozen dinners, ice cream, milk, juice, yogurt, Chinese take-out and more, all of it far beyond expired...
Here's Danny scrubbing a shelf...
Here's the moldy bottom...
Moral of the story, kids? Keep your fridge organized, clean and filled with foods that have not yet expired...you'll save time (cleaning a mess like this sucks), money ( we had to throw out a lot of expensive food) and your health (unless you enjoy food poisoning).
This is not shaping up to be a good morning in my West Paterson office. My coffee was weak, though I swear I brewed it the same as always, and it made my lovely and endearingly frank coworker Sachi sick to her stomach ("I'm so nauseous!" she told me by the water cooler). Then the banana I brought from home smushed in my bag into a bruised slimy mess. Gross.
What can I say, when you work near a computer for hours at a time, breakfast and lunch merit some sort of celebration. And who wants any rain on their parade? Oh, hey, wait! Cinco de Mayo is today!Mmm, Mexican hot chocolate...that'd help my case of the Mondays.
My coworker Joe surprised the office today with a delicious Russian Orthodox Easter bread. A friend gave him the 8-inch tall cylindrical treat called kulich, a sweet, crumbly cake stuffed with dried fruit, freshly baked at a nearby Russian Orthodox bakery in honor of the church's Easter (called Pascha) yesterday.
The Russian Orthodox Church (and all other Eastern Orthodox churches) celebrates Easter later than Western Christian churches because it follows the ancient Greek calendar called the Julian calendar, named after emperor Julius Caesar. Western churches follow the Gregorian calendar, named after 16th-century Pope Gregory XIII.
He put the bread in our "usual spot" for office treats, on top of the file cabinets. It looks pretty impressive, huh? So tasty. Thanks, Joe!
My coworker Meredith ordered some pizza from a West Paterson pizza place (that shall remain nameless) last night. It was delivered an hour late, she said, which annoyed her. And when it arrived, she was horrified when she tugged at one slice and the cheese and mushroom topping oozed off the slice in one giant glop. Joe, an editor and pizza connoisseur, cast his eye to the pie and gave his assessment: it was too hot, the cheese hadn't set.
Mere didn't buy it. How do make a pizza where the cheese just falls off instead of tearing nicely, Meredith asked me this morning, eyes wide as saucers. How do you keep the cheese on?
My theory? Too much cheese, too much grease. It's heavier, and therefore more likely to fall off, and tough to tear. It might not have been deeply cut into slices, requiring more of a tug (and subsequent plop). To solve this problem, it might help to blot the pizza with some napkins and cut the slices again. But alas, I'm not sure. Any pizza experts out there? Let me hear your thoughts!
Says one coworker, a Clifton resident, of his green bagel purchased at a Clifton supermarket bakery this morning, "Eh. It's like a roll with a hole in the middle." Delish!
Anyone else eating any green bagels today? I enjoy those sold at Bagels Unlimited in Little Falls and Lakeview Bagels in Clifton (the green bagels pictured in the top of my blog come from there).
Most random e-mail message in my inbox today: "I think the problem with Swedish fish is that I really don’t like them until they are stale. I should have bought some on Friday, opened the package, and let it sit."
Hmm. Not sure how I feel about stale Swedes. But, uh, yeah, you'd have to wait an eternity for any stale-ing action if you left 'em in that package. Nothing gets inside those things. No air, no air (Chris Brown and Jordin Sparks totally know what I'm talking about).
Send me a random e-mail ... stevens@northjersey.com
In the usual office food spot today: packaged donuts from a donut outlet store in Totowa. They were left there late yesterday afternoon and most remained through this morning. Hmm. Zero refrigeration. Little coverage. Exact same fresh taste.
Chemical preservatives, anyone? Eeew or ooohhh?
In the usual spot on the file cabinets for food offerings, one of my coworkers, Joe, surprised the staff today with some delightful Russian hazelnut cream chocolates called viliena. Ahhh, so good! (FYI, I noticed yesterday that chocolate-hazelnut spread is on sale for 99 cents a tub at Corrado's in Clifton...oh yah.)
<--- Doesn't the box look fancy?
One of my coworkers, a man who says he's a completely inexperienced cook, decided to impress his wife and her friends at her "Lost" party last night by preparing the peanut-butter chocolate cream pie I brought in to the office last week.
The pie looked amazing (click on the pic for a closer look)!!! Go Tom! He went a little heavy on the peanut butter, but no matter, his wife and her friends still went wild for it. E-mail me if you want the recipe!
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