Scooperbowl!

I had relatives visiting for the first week in June, which was super awesome! I got to do fun Boston things, learn about the city (because they had been on tours, and then reported their findings to me), and hang out with my family. One of the fun things I got to do, that I would never have noticed on my own, was go to the Scooperbowl!! You pay $10 and then enter a fenced off area with all you can eat ice cream! Yum!

You entered through a giant pink ice cream cone!

There were many different stands from different ice cream makers and you could just wander up and take which ever flavour took your fancy. There were even people wandering around offering chocolate sauce to go with your ice cream! I'm sure you're not surprised that I always picked the most brightly coloured and weird flavour at each stand. This was a mistake.

I ate:

• Espresso chip - the tastiest, because I hadn't yet adopted my "eat the blue one" policy. Not pictured, because I was too busy eating to take photos.
• Popping candy - did not pop. Was very blue, with a violet swirl. Tasted sugary. And wrong.
• Cotton candy - Very pink, with gritty rainbow choclate chips. At this point I was realising that the "choose the most colourful" policy didn't seem to be a particularly good one.
• Lemon poppyseed - this was a nice pale yellow, as befits a delicious ice cream that may have seen actual lemons (no blue ice cream available at this stand, thank goodness).
• Lunarmax cheesecake - a MIB3 tie in from Baskin Robbins (like the donut). It is green because the moon is made of green cheese (I am not kidding, this is what the ice cream lady said). However, the ice cream wasn't minty, or pistachio-y, it was just cheesecake flavoured. I was flagging by this point.
• Americone Dream - apparently I am not a fan of blueberry ice cream, even though this wasn't spectacularly blue.

A respectable SIX cups of ice cream. Totally worth $10.

The rest of my family made more sensible choices and generally had more delicious ice cream. The take home message, I think, is that you should almost always choose the ice cream that sounds tastiest, not just the most colourful.

I bet most of you realised this long before you were 28 and a half years old.

Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tarts: a terrible error

You might remember my previous Pop-Tart experience, but it is safe to say I have learnt nothing from that, as when I was in the grocery store the other day and noticed new Pop-Tarts then it was inevitable that I would buy them. Especially because they were covered in rainbow sprinkles. 

I present - Confetti cupcake flavour Pop-Tarts!

Confetti cakes, which are just white cakes with rainbow sprinkles in the cake and in the frosting, are fairly common here. You can get "Funfetti" mixes in the supermarket (I like the name and their rainbow-ness). They are highly colourful, but very mild in taste. So I figured it would just be a mild sweet flavour and I could totally polish off 8 Pop-Tarts. And how wrong I was.

The photos don't really explain the icky "birthday cake flavour". A lot of things are cake flavoured here, I have eaten birthday cake oreos (mint ones are far superior) and cake batter oreo ice cream from JP Licks (very batter-y in flavour and far superior to actual birthday cake oreos). However, these Pop-Tarts were a complete failure, filled with nasty cake-y flavour cream and bland sugary-ness. I swear I could feel my tongue drying out from all the sugar (like an osmosis thing?). So I took the bite that you can see in the top photo, broke a piece off for the second photo, then tried to make myself eat another bite, gave up and had a nice bowl of Weetabix (from Wholefoods, which also sells Nandos sauce! Joy!). One week later I accepted that I didn't want to eat any more cupcake Pop-Tarts and that I didn't know anyone who did. No more cupcake Pop-Tarts for me, I gave up and threw them out.

Shame I'm missing out on those eight vitamins and minerals. And all those weird colours. It would be nice to start each morning with a rainbow.

The Shamrock Shake does not rock my world

I cut this a little fine, as I bought my one and only mint flavoured Shamrock Shake from McDonalds on their last day of sale at 10pm. Even though I (sensibly as it turns out) got a small I still said yes to whipped cream and a cherry because you have to jump in with both feet. Brave explorer etc. So I signed up for an astonishing 500 calories of milkshake. The calorie count was not the only astonishing thing. It really was THAT GREEN. No fancy filters here. Just more luminous, green, enormously processed food for St. Patrick's day. As an aside, so much "St. Patty's Day" stuff, not St. Paddy's.... why?

You see how the shake is kind of stripey, that's because the shake machine squirts green liquid and then white milkshake and then green and then milkshake and so on. I couldn't find a way of surreptitiously taking a photo, but fortunately the history of the shake is preserved in its layers - stratigraphy! The layers are kind of runny though, particularly the green liquid stuff (ug, it all sounds so unappetising - how did I drink ANY?!). I have to admit that I wasn't excited about trying the shake, even before I saw the squirty machine and the layers, and afterwards, well.....

Unsurprisingly, even after mixing the shake remains really quite green.

For some reason, this is still quite layered......

It tasted very green. I mean, it was kind of minty, but it was mainly GREEN. It even tasted kind of familiar, probably like some luminous foodstuff from my eighties childhood, before such bright colours were frowned upon. I drank an inch or so of the shamrock shake over the course of about 45 minutes and then gave up. I even had a jetlagged visitor who I attempted to palm the rest off onto. She agreed that it tasted green and managed about two slurps before saying it was just too sugary. This was a person that hadn't sleep properly for over 24 hours and badly needed energy. So instead of Shamrock shakes we ate Chipotle chips and some nutritious, very green, but not luminous at all (fortunately) guacamole.

Alarmed face! A least the milkshake nearly matches my cardigan?

Shamrock shakes are a seasonal St. Patrick's day McDonalds thing, which were available nationwide for the first time in 2012. I imagine they were always available in Boston though. Unusually, for a luminous minty foodstuff, I do not recommend them. Sorry. With any luck they won't cross the pond.

PS Here is the official McDonalds Shamrock Shake page - but hurry, it'll be gone soon! I don't think I'll miss it.

Beacon Hill. For the 1%. And Brave Explorers at the weekend.

The only time I stayed in Boston proper, I stayed at the John Jeffries House, which is a strange hotel. It used to be nurses' accommodation for MGH and now houses a combination of MIT and other Boston visitors and people who are staying there because it is right by the hospital. This means when you check in you have to answer a lot of medication and general health questions, particularly about ear, nose and throat complaints. However, I thoroughly recommend it, for several reasons:

1. They get the Weather channel

2. Free breakfast in the morning and free coffee all day.

3. It's right by the river (and not expensive by Boston/Cambridge standards)

4. It is on Charles Street, the fanciest of all the Boston streets, in the fanciest of all Boston neighbourhoods, Beacon Hill. Every dog looks expensive and all the signs that hang from shops are black and gold.

A few weeks ago I went for a mosey back to my old stomping ground. The weather was good, in stark contrast to earlier in the week, so I walked from where I live, over the Charles (pretty views) and along Charles Street to Boston Common. It was a good day. 

Charles Street has the business with my absolute favourite name in Boston.

Sorry about my finger being in the photo. I was on my way to meet a friend when I took this and keep forgetting to take another, better, one. 

Oh yes. BosTAN.

It is also has a most excellent cupcake shop - Curly cakes - which does delicious cupcakes in many forms. Most notably in Vegan and Gluten free forms on particular days of the week (Vegan on Thursday and Sunday, GF on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday from the looks of the sign below). They are many people-friendly cupcakes. 

Vegan chocolate mint cake is all gone! Snarfle snarfle. 

It also has Beacon Hill Chocolates, which I'm sure will sell delicious wares, but I like it because of this sign:

It's my new philosophy - "Chocolate is sunshine on a cloudy day". Mmmmm. This is particularly relevant to those of you in the UK, you made need to buy more chocolate.

When you've had a relaxing mosey along Charles Street, you can pop across the common and watch a film at the Boston Common Loews. It is a notable cinema because it has many, many, many screens, a giant popcorn box over the concessions stand and a place where you can dispense butter onto your own popcorn (in the US the question is not "sweet or salted?" with popcorn, but "buttered?"). So naturally I ended my walk down lovely, elegant Charles street with a saccharine film and an even more saccharine white cherry icee. 

Just say no. White cherry icees are much worse than a coke icee, and that was bad.

Maybe next time I will skip the icee, unless they have blue raspberry flavour. I love blue raspberry.

Farewell donuts

I am giving up, or at least severely cutting back on the Dunkin' Donuts. Mainly because they are bad for my waistline, my wallet and my midmorning mood (Hello, Sugar crash!). So having decided to give up the donuts on anything but a special occasion (e.g. fancy white kreme filled heart shaped Valentine's donuts), my only reason for going to Dunkin' Donuts was to buy my nice iced coffee morning treat. However, I was basically unable to go into Dunkin' Donuts to get an iced coffee and not buy a donut or two. They have those big signs that you get in fast food joints advertising "combos" (1 bagel and a coffee $4!, 2 donuts and a coffee, $3.50!). I think I have spent too much time playing/watching people play computer games as when I see words like "combo" I kind of feel like I get more points when I get the combo. Even though clearly Dunkin' Donuts is the winner, as they get my coins, not the other way around.

Given that I do not have the will power to go to Dunkin' Donuts and just buy a coffee I needed to find a way to satisfy my need for caffeine in the morning. I have a nice pink cafetière that I use to make hot coffee on very cold days, but I tend to prefer iced coffee first thing in the morning. So I bought a special iced coffee making french press from Bodum. I like it, it's purple. I'll explain how it works properly at some later point, but the important point here is that I no longer have any excuse to go to Dunkin' Donuts (except for when there might be special edition donuts, like around St. Patrick's Day!). Thank you for the memories Dunkin'....

America runs on Dunkin'

Bye donuts... I'll miss you!

At least I have Lucky Charms and Smorz cereal at home. And Ice Cream Shoppe Pop Tarts!

Note the homemade ice coffee on the left! Victory is mine!

What are you drinkin'? Not Dunkin' anymore. I should go back and buy some coffee for brewing there. Everyone who works in there was very friendly to me, I really appreciated it when I first arrived and I would show up at Dunkin' really early in the morning because of the jetlag!

Turquoise is the best!

I know turquoise being my favourite colour isn't exactly news. But I emptied some bits from my handbag onto my bed yesterday, and I just had to arrange things in a slightly less higgledy piggledy way and take a picture. 

Let's look at the items in the picture. Centre: headphone case, headphones and headphone swirler. Then clockwise from 12 o'clock: eyeliner; iPod; mints; hand with turquoise nails, enamel ring and turquoise watch on wrist (my hand and wrist, obviously, look at the stubby fingers. Do not pity me, I can buy VAT free children's gloves); diary; sparkly ear muffs; "powermint" tictacs (bought for the colour). All items on top of the surprisingly polyester-y turquoise comforter, also chosen because of it's colour.

It is undeniable that I have a favourite colour, and turquoise-y teal-y blue is it. I suppose I actually have a favorite color now. When it came to choosing stuff for my new room I made most decisions based on colour, which how I ended up with dangerously unusable aqua oven gloves from Target, that now act as semi-heat proof mats. Please forgive the Photobooth. I look worried on this photo because it was taken to demonstrate how useless the oven gloves are as oven gloves (thanks for the safe British ones, lovely parents! They are far superior.)

I even have reusable turquoise decals all over my room. As well as all the other turquoise stuff. I would like to note that there are pink accents though, like my pillow, my laptop, and my french press.

At least the turquoise comforter is reversible - the other side is green. I never have the green side showing, even though my fabric softener leaked all over the blue side. I haven't figured out how to wash a comforter yet, but don't worry! It's not unhygienic because there is a sheet between me and the comforter. I had to wash my beautiful quilt here though, because I got dark chocolate mint m&ms all over it. Terrible times, but it's hard to stay mad at mint m&ms because:

a) Mint m&ms are the most delicious candy in the history of mankind. They make all other m&ms taste like dirt, because you know how good the mint ones are (coconut m&ms are particularly discouraged; dark chocolate, peanut butter or pretzel ones are just about tolerable. In a pinch). 

b) They come in such a pretty turquoise-y coloured packet.

PS I've decided that because I put some pictures of my room in this post, then you guys are the explorers. So even though this is just pictures of blue things that I own, it almost fits the premise of this whole blog thing. Maybe.

Hot fudge sundae ice cream shoppe pop tarts

I know that pictures of food bought in a supermarket and consumed in my room don't quite fit the premise of the blog, i.e. that blogging will force me to explore Boston. However, I propose that eating food which is so very colourful is a *type* of exploring. 

They contain 8 vitamins and minerals, so are clearly good for me. There's even a helpful graphic on the box drawing my attention to it, so it has to be a good fact. I find it really funny that they actually contain the same number of vitamins as the number of toaster pastries that you get in a packet. Even better, there are fewer vitamins and minerals in the pop tarts than there are added colours, of which there are 9 with names like Blue #2 Lake and one hopefully more natural one -  "Caramel Color". 

Let's look at what's actually in a pop tart in more detail.... I am worried I should have left this until I had finished the packet. The 8 vitamins and minerals (plus and one extra) that you get are (with RDA in brackets); Vitamin A (10%), Vitamin C (10%), Calcium (10%), Iron (10%), Thiamin (10%), Riboflavin (10%), Niacin (10%), Vitamin B6 (10%), and Folic acid (10%). Why are they all at 10%? What are the chances? Is it a rounding thing? Does the nutritional information just have to show everything to the nearest 10%? Also, note the swooshy white thing in the picture saying a pop tart is a good source of calcium. I find this surprising, as even if you eat 2 pop tarts for breakfast you only get 20% of your calcium. At least you also get 20% of your calorie allowance too, so you're not out of balance. In fact, if you only ate pop tarts for those 2000 calories you would get 100% of the previously listed vitamins and minerals! And 100% of your saturated fat allowance! You'd also need to buy another packet of pop tarts as they only contain 8 "toaster pastries". 

I sensibly only ate one of the crazy pop tarts. Although I did eat it for pudding and not for breakfast, so I probably lose some health points there (maybe lose some *more* health points, as I must already be down for just consuming pop tarts). Once it was out of the packet it was clear why there were so many colours on the ingredients list. 

I mean, look at the sprinkles! So neon. It was impossible to really take a picture of the insides, but they were pleasingly filled with a mild vanilla-ry cream like substance (probably a kreme) and not some kind of rainbow explosion. I am relieved that my dental insurance card has come now, because even though I don't intend to buy any more pop tarts I feel that 16 of these guys might do some damage. Strangely the box doesn't announce that 12g of sugar is 30% of my maximum sugar allowance. At least they have 10% of my daily calcium in them though, to fight the tooth decay.

Does instagram make it more palatable? You can pretend the colour comes from a hipster filter...

I mean, good grief! I must never eat pop tarts without also drinking a glass of milk and brushing my teeth sharpish. 

I wonder how long the packet will last? What do you think? 

As a guide, the Lucky Charms are now all gone, so pop tarts are the sweetest breakfast foodstuff available. But they are also a bit too sweet. And a bit nasty.

P.S. Do you like the way the MacBook makes a pretty pop tart background? It owes me after being so expensive this week. Stupid new battery.  

P.P.S. Soft kitty! Homesick is a type of being sick.