Another Pizza Fail

Overcast and rainy all day. Tomorrow was to be an organized ride to Montauk, but it looks in doubt. A ride in the rain would actually be fun, but because of dying hurricane off the coast, it looks like a potential coastal flooding situation and predictions of 30mph winds from the east - a head wind. If it were coming from the west, it would be on like Don Cornelius.

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, smoothie, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
I got a selection of fruit from the local conventional supermarket yesterday. The mango and kiwi, when cut open, didn't look right so I tossed them. Banana, blueberries, grapes, good yogurt, dead organic milk, ice cubes, vanilla sugar, sea salt. And then there was coconut....

I picked up a coconut at the market, thinking it could add an interesting angle to the smoothie. We never did coconuts in c-school, so when I got home, got on google and found howtoopenacoconut.com. I got the nail and hammer, and put all sorts of holes in the nut, but only a few drops of water leaked out -- I suspect maybe they were drained by an evil coconut water conglomerate? With a towel and hammer, knocked it into pieces. With a paring knife, I cut the white meat from the shell, rather poorly, leaving a lot of meat behind.

This morning, I first placed some coconut meat in the blender with some milk, and pureed for a minute. Stuck my finger in and....fiber and grit. It's like I placed some balsa wood in there. Not much coconut flavor, either. Everything else in, let rip for 3 minutes. Pour, taste, first reaction is to throw it out. Sat with it, four sips, mouth full of grit. So I passed it through a fine metal mesh strainer, and now it was quite smooth and nice....but really, not as a healthy as when I leave it unstrained.

What did I do wrong? Does the coconut need to be baked, like a gourd like squash, to be usable? Any one have any ideas out there in Internetsland?

BREAKFAST 2: 9:30am, 2 pieces wholewheat toast with hummus, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Betsy said she was hungry. I was hungry. "Hey Betsy, are there eggs in the fridge? I can make pancakes." Betsy says yes, she was planning to hard boil them. Then makes me promise I'd make her banana walnut pancakes. Get to the fridge, no eggs. -sigh- She thought a box of butter were eggs for some reason. I love my wife, but if she were the cook, we'd starve or...

AM SNACK: 11am, popcorn, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5 ....eat popcorn every day as a major meal! But I used butter as the popping agent -- no air popper or neutral oils.

LUNCH: 2pm, burger and small quantity of fries, small piece of "chocolate pizza", water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
At Max Brenner below Union Square, B, E & I dined with friends of B visiting from Boston, a group of 3 other adults and 4 other kids. I don't enjoy restaurants like this, with a hokey theme that sacrifices quality for entertainment -- the theme being a retarded Jaques Torres crossed with Willy Wonka. A big menu, I was looking for something light and painless. But everyone at the table ordered burgers, which indicated to me this place must move a lot of them, and if I ordered something from an obscure corner of the menu, perhaps it wouldn't be fresh.

I was impressed by the size of the meal -- a relative scant amount of fries (by American standards), 2 large pickle spears, a large but not stupid burger. I guess this makes sense, as the desert menu is even larger than the food menu, and room must be left for this profit center. As it turns out, one of the owners of the restaurant was doing a taste test of new dishes right next to us, and some of the kids were staring him down. So he sent over a complimentary chocolate pizza for the table.

After being impressed by the meal, I thought hmmm, maybe I misjudged this place, especially if their signature -- chocolate desserts -- are good. And it's pizza, right? Oh boy. Basically, this was nutella and roasted marsh mellows on a crust, similar to the smores pizza I've made in restaurants and at home. The marsh mellow was neutral, the milk chocolate spread was ok, but the crust was gross. Obviously machine stamped, obviously pre-baked who knows how long ago, reheated quickly to melt the toppings. The result was a bready, tough crust that just made me fall back to my original position that this place is for tourists, kids, and kid tourists. Still, it was very nice of the owner to comp us. He kinda looked like a clean-shaven bald version of my cousin Iddo, who is also Israeli.

DINNER: 8pm, large green salad, vegetable Stouffers french bread pizza, 1.25 bowl
Feeling bummed about the weather and not being able to ride tomorrow. Frozen pizza of my childhood always meets my needs.