Happy New Year, everyone! Here's to a great 2011 for all of us.

Val was nice enough to send an email with this link- they're decadent and disgusting, yet I want them all. The winner was Applebee's Provolone-Stuffed Meatballs with Fettuccine; with a whopping 1,580 calories, 98 grams of fat, and 3,940 grams of sodium. Meet me there!

Merry Christmas from Julie, me and Desert Island Foods®.com! I hope you have a safe, relaxed and meaningful holiday. Whatever you celebrate, we wish you the very best. Once again we're hitting the road, with any luck the coming storm won't change our plans.

I hope you're using Survival Spice® on your turkey or ham this year! Please email me pictures of your Christmas culinary creations, if you'd like to share.

And I swear that I could eat it all. Eventually:

Thought I'd check in to wish everyone Happy Thanksgiving. I'm still on hiatus, but everything's fine here in the Midwest. I miss all the great comments, and having something to blog about.

Until I get ambitious again, have a wonderful holiday!

In honor of Shark Week, thought I'd post this. Thanks, Jerry, for sending it along!:

Two great white sharks swimming in the ocean spied survivors of a sunken ship. "Follow me son" the father shark said to the son shark and they swam to the mass of people.

"First we swim around them a few times with just the tip of our fins showing." And they did. "Well done, son! Now we swim around them a few times with all of our fins showing." And they did. "Now we eat everybody." And they did.

When they were both gorged, the son asked, "Dad, why didn't we just eat them all at first? Why did we swim around and around them?"

His wise father replied, "Because they taste better without the crap inside!"

Not to be one to spread rumors, but The Faster Times has an interesting look at who's providing some of the products under the Trader Joe's brand. Lots of high quality suppliers on the list, and despite rumors of the dubious quality of Poland Springs bottled water, it's my personal favorite.

To my knowledge, none of these are confirmed by Trader Joe's at this time.

I know, it's not Friday. It's not even close, but funny is funny, and these are funny. Thanks to Larry for sending this along.

Teh funny is in the extended entry... enjoy!

I actually agree with most of these, though a few are a bit unfair. Just because a chef does have fish that needs to get sold, it's not necessarily bad, he's just trying to move through his inventory. Prime rib becomes beef sandwiches, becomes beef vegetable soup, etc. Dovetailing your menu is a good thing...

If you tip on your ticket price after you've used your two for one coupon, and not on the full price, you're a weasel, plain and simple.

(Photo: In & Out's Double Double, which I miss horribly.)

I got an email from my old friend Chuck, and I'm still not sure if he was tormenting me, or trying to be supportive. The link he passed along was to a Serious Eats post that recently took on the challenge of recreating my favorite burger in the world, In & Out's Double Double.

I've eaten a multitude of these over the years, and while I really enjoy Steak & Shake's burgers, a Double Double with grilled onions just hits all the right notes for me. Looks like they did a great job with the attempt, and I hope the greasy glory that ultimately resulted was worth the effort!

It sounds counterintuitive, but an interesting article in the Times quantifies something I've noticed myself, that adding water to a beverage can, as opposed to 'watering it down', positively affect the final result:

"It seems silly, debating decimals," Mr. Hoffmann said, "but it makes a big difference to the flavor." A tablespoon of water more or less can shift the extracted solids by a perceptible amount. It also matters how the coffee solids are extracted. Mr. Hoffmann told me that concentrated brews are often made palatable by using a lot of coffee and reducing the brewing time or the temperature to extract only the easy-going portion of its flavor materials. The result is intense but one-dimensional. More fully extracting a smaller amount of gently roasted, high-quality coffee, as Mr. Hoffmann and a number of new-wave brewing advocates are doing, brings out its full range of tastes and aromas.

The story covers a number of alcoholic beverages, but I'm not sure I'm ready to start watering down my Bordeaux collection. I have been using about a third less coffee in my grinder for the last few years, and I've enjoyed the results.