Reflection and Rice Milk
Omnivorous Fish claims to be a blog about “eating, drinking and opining,” but looking back, it seems kind of sanitized: plenty of eating and drinking, but not so much opining.
Maybe this is because I have been busy and been a little depressed about being on the road, away from the Greenmarket and the Agent. Maybe it’s because I’m sitting in an extended stay studio in fucking Holland, OH drinking Rosenblum zinfandel out of a plastic fucking frosted tumbler. Maybe this is for some other reason, but whatever the genesis, it seems a little impersonal. Some of the feedback I’ve gotten has hinted that some of the acerbic comments I make in life are missing, and that my “voice” comes and goes.
Sorry.
Looking back on what’s been written, I can say that one thing that is odd is that all of the restaurant reviews I have written have been positive. I haven’t been to a stinker restaurant lately, outside of the chains I have been afflicted with recently; and if you need me to tell you that PF Chang’s and Chili’s suck, then you don’t need me: you need your fucking head examined. I did go to a terrible independently owned restaurant in Toledo yesterday (The Distillery), but it’s really a bar that has food, and when you walk in, you pretty much know it’s going to be terrible: it’s too dirty to be good, but not random enough to be one of those kick-you-in-the-nuts-out-of-left-field-good places.
One thing is for certain: I have used a lot of colons so far, and may use more.
I found a natural foods store in Toledo, called [Claudia's Market](http://www.claudiasmarket.com/). When you walk in, it seems like the real deal, resplendent with the Sweet-Looking Cropped Hair Girl at the Wall of Teas and Herbs, who told me I just take the whole jar up to the counter, where they will weigh out what I want for me (no doubt with a bone spoon and a set of brass scales using moonstones as counterweight), and the Militant White Girl With Dreadlocks at the cash register. We got some goodies, including buckwheat-flakes and some [Honest Teas](http://honesttea.com/page.php?id=211). NK got some [Virgil's Root Beer](http://www.virgils.com/about.shtml) and we shared a few items like my fave on cereal: [Rice Dream](http://www.tastethedream.com/pages/products/ricedream.php) Original Enriched. [*What I forgot to mention was that it had the most abominable produce I have seen since my last trip to the Whole Foods in our neighborhood. Truly abysmal. Very disappointing since we had to get on THREE different interstates to get there.-jf 8/17/06*]
It may come as a shock to you who don’t know me, and some who do, that I like rice milk. Do you know why? It doesn’t have the lactic protein aftertaste that milk has, and when I eat something first thing in the morning (like cereal) I don’t want that ice-cream-you-forgot-in-the-back-seat taste in my mouth. It was actually a serendipitous discovery: I was volunteering at [Falcon Ridge Folk Festival](http://www.falconridgefolk.com/) one year and they had run out of milk at the coffee table, and my choices for my coffee were soy milk (elgruckgah!) or rice milk, which I begrudgingly tried. If you’re unaware, rice milk tastes just like milk, only without the lactic cow taste. Now it’s a staple for cereal, and because it keeps indefinitely, I always have some around (I often keep some ultrapasteurized milk around, too). It has been used as a stand-in for milk in pancakes and muffins, although usually augmented with some clarified butter (there is ALWAYS butter at my house).
Before I forget, I’m listening to “Catch Me When I Fall” by **Daybreak** from their album First Light.
