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!
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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.
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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!
]]>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!"
To my knowledge, none of these are confirmed by Trader Joe's at this time.
]]>Teh funny is in the extended entry... enjoy!
]]> The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are the winners:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido : All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:
1. Coffee, n.. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph, v.. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men
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.
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(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 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.
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You're probably asking yourself, "What the !@#$ happened to this guy!?!" This site used to be full of ribs, steaks, and other porky goodness!
Trust me. These are good, too. We're trying to eat a bit healthier, and maybe, just maybe, I'll lose a few pounds in the process. A low-carb, Paleo-type diet seems to work best for me, but these are doing a nice job of serving double duty to fill the snack/dessert void in my daily meals. Only 2T of oil, and 1/2C of brown sugar for a dozen muffins, with some applesauce to make up the moisture and sweetness. I'm using whole wheat flour, rolled oats, and some milled flaxseed in the dry mix- still carby, but more low glycemic than a typical muffin.
They really are good. Between these, the bread I've been making, and some homemade granola, I'm doing more baking these days than I've done in years. Saves money, healthier, and WAY better than store bought stuff.
I'll be posting more meat stuff soon. Promise!
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I stumbled across a very Jetson-like contraption today at Inhabitat, which looks like a cool site, via a link from Hot Air. While geeky, cool, futuristic, and cutting edge, I'm not sure sure I'd ever want to eat anything out of version 1:
Cornucopias' printing process begins with an array of food canisters filled with the "cook's" foods of choice. After a meal selection has been made using the device's multi-touch translucent screen, users are able to see their meal being assembled while simultaneously manipulating real-time parameters, such as calories or carbohydrate content. Each ingredient is then piped into a mixer and then very precisely extruded, allowing for very exact and elaborate combinations of food.
I really do applaud the effort, the technology could lead to lots of cool things down the road, but I think I'll wait for version 15, or so.
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Someone really put a lot of time into this, thanks to Julie for sending it along! For a full-sized version that's zoomable, click the link.
]]>Way to take one for the team, Geekdad! Science marches on.
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"How many times have you wondered why the products you buy don't look as good in person as they do in TV ads?" said Russell Weiner, Domino's Pizza chief marketing officer. "That's because most of the time companies use artificial techniques to make their products look better than they do when served to you in person."
Domino's said the real food photos are part of its "transparency" campaign with customers, which kicked off last year with the introduction of an overhauled pizza in response to negative comments from its guests.
Their recent revamping of their product line is pretty good, though I still prefer my own...
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