Thursday, April 10, 2014

I is for Inedible, or How To Ruin A Perfectly Good Chocolate Cake

I am a picky eater, and I'm not afraid to admit it.

I don't like my food to touch. 

I don't like sweet stuff mixed with non-sweet stuff (i.e., glazed ham - gag!)

Every scrap of fat or other ookie stuff must be removed from all meat before eaten (my mother claims I have thrown away an entire cow in my lifetime of trimming, and who knows how many chickens).

I hate tomatoes. I hate, loathe, and despise celery.

I don't eat eggs in any way, shape or form, other than as something to stick cookie dough and cake batter together.

Most vegetables - meh.

There's more, but you get the idea.

Last week, my husband and I went to a very pretentious restaurant here in town for lunch. The only reason we went there, as he and I had both been there, separately, and had not particularly cared for it, was because we had a gift card. Gotta use a gift card.

We each ordered a chicken club sandwich (mine without avocado, because, yuck) with fries. After a lengthy wait, our waitress finally brought our food. And they were not sandwiches. They were wraps. I don't DISLIKE wraps, but, given there was no mention on the menu that it was going to be served as a wrap, it was a surprise. 

The next surprise was that the chicken was finely chopped and distributed among the rest of the ingredients. And that, instead of salsa, there was chopped tomatoes. CHOPPED TOMATOES. I had to do a lot of picking as I ate, but I'll admit, in spite of the tomatoes and the surprise wrap, it was fairly tasty, if you ignored that you only had about three tablespoons of chopped chicken mixed up with all the lettuce and tomatoes, rather than the chicken breast that we expected, until I took a bite and pulled out a big, slimy, curly piece of bacon fat. I willed myself not to throw up, pulled it out, and proceeded with caution.

In the meantime, my husband was analyzing his sandwich wrap, searching for avocado and not finding any.

"You always do this to me," he said. "You order yours weird with everything left off, and it makes them mess MINE up -- oh, wait, there's a piece of avocado."

One piece. One little, tiny, chopped up piece of avocado (still too much, if you ask me) in the entire wrap.

We finished our meal and asked for the check, but when it arrived, my husband said, "Great. We didn't use up all the gift card. Let's order dessert, so we don't have to feel like we have to come back here and use up the rest of it."

Our choices were tres leches cake, key lime or chocolate, or some kind of dessert chimichanga.

Pass on the chimichanga.

And I don't like citrus fruit very much, so pass on the key lime cake.

That left us with the chocolate tres leches cake. I confirmed there was no coffee in it (detest the stuff), and we waited for it to arrive.

As speed is not a trait of this restaurant, we had plenty of time to mull over our choice. Neither of us had ever had tres leches cake, but my husband had heard it was similar to a "poke" cake, where the cake is baked, holes are poked in it after it has cooled, and sweetened, condensed milk is poured over the top of that and allowed to soak in. I had enough time while we waited for it's arrival for me to Google a recipe and read a description by Ree Drummond, of The Pioneer Woman, where she referred to tres leches cake as, and I quote, something "to die for."

Bring on the tres leches cake! Besides, it's a chocolate cake. How bad can it be?

This bad.

A square of chocolate cake with a lovely chocolate frosting was sitting in a pool of milk.

Drowning in it, in fact.

The bottom of the cake had lost all of the chocolatey color, turning it nearly white.

I gingerly took a bite.

Here's what I liken it to: you know when you have a family birthday party and one of the kids doesn't eat all her cake and puts the plate with a big chunk of cake on it into the sink with the other dirty dishes and someone runs some water and the plate with the cake on it fills with water and there's a wet, cakey mess left in the sink that completely disintegrates if you try to pick it up? 

That pretty much covers the consistency of the chocolate tres leches cake. The taste was only slightly better.

I tried a second bite, taking only frosting and the top half of the piece of cake onto my fork, hoping to avoid the scraped-out-of-the-bottom-of-the-dishwater bottom half.

No improvement.

I put my fork down, disappointed.

My husband manfully ate the rest of it, saying it was okayyy, but he didn't love it.

I'm pretty sure what the Pioneer Woman meant when she said tres leches cake was "to die for" was, "I'd want to die 'fore I'd eat that wet slop they call cake."

The frosting was pretty good....
















20 comments:

  1. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand ANOTHER reason to not like chocolate cake.

    But good GRIEF yo! How many picky things you picken on! Wow!

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  2. Hahaha, oh goodness! I would have NEVER pinned you for a picky eater! This is quite hilarious, actually.

    I am suddenly feeling great empathy for your mom. Are your kids picky eaters too?

    Kate at Daily discovery

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    Replies
    1. Yeahhhh, a little picky (okay, a lot). It's come back on me, though, because my son is exponentially worse than me.

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  3. oh Dyanne . I see a new friend in u . I hate choc cake . I dont understand y ppl go gaga over it :)
    can share ur grief . wish u got somethng which tasted good in that restro :)

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    1. I like chocolate cake. I dislike chocolate cake with a bucket of milk poured all over it. Bleh!

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  4. GAG! OMG! I actually gagged when you described the dish water cake! I must be having a rough morning! The other stuff just made me giggle ( sorry I meant to say it made me feel sorry for you both.).

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    1. I can't get the memory of that sensation out of my mouth.

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  5. Picky is an understatement! I'm sure the list is much longer and I for one would like to read more because these things fascinate me for some strange reason. That said, sorry for the awful dining experience but at least it was a gift card.

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    1. Oh, the list goes on and on. There are a few more here: http://iwantbacksies.blogspot.com/2013/01/i-yam-what-i-yam.html

      Maybe I should make an entire list?

      And yes, at least we didn't actually PAY for any of it!

      Delete
  6. WOW.....you have more in common with R than I would have EVER imagined anyone could!!! LOL!!

    The top half of the cake looks pretty good. :|

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    1. And that's why I feel a kinship with Riley!

      The frosting was good....

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  7. Ha ha...very funny post. No offence but I was amused by your fussiness, as well as the way you talk about it. I like the look of that dessert actually. Can you send me some? ;)

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    1. No offense taken :) I embrace my picky eater status!

      You could make your own. Take a perfectly good piece of chocolate cake and pour a bucket of milk over it and let it decompose for a few minutes. Yum....

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  8. Wondering how the pickiness started and why? Did you not have to "at least try" things as a kid? I wish there were more things actually, that I absolutely won't eat. Not so much....I pretty much eat anything...I would have eaten the cake if I wasn't on a "no sugar" kick. I used to love going to Dunkin' Donuts with my dad as a kid. He let me have coffee (with plenty of milk) and a plain donut that i would dunk in the coffee until it was the consistency of that kitchen sink mess you described. Yum! Gail

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    1. Oh, I had to try things as a child. I think my mother eventually gave up. I got it back in spades, because my son is pickier than I ever THOUGHT about being.

      You might not be surprised to know that I am not a "dunker"! Although I do love doughnuts (except for jelly ones, because I don't like jelly).

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  9. ahahahahahaahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I so understand this

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  10. Whaaaaaaat?! I LOVE tres leches cake! Screw them for messing it up and butchering it!

    This is what you get for eating at those pretentious places >.< and you sure are a picky eater!

    Jak at The Cryton Chronicles & Dreams in the Shade of Ink

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  11. Tres leches cake. Yuck. It kind of reminds me of having cake and ice cream but the ice cream melts and gets the cake all soggy. There's a big difference between a nice moist cake and something that's been drowned.

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