Category: Food

“Hmmmmmm.. food!”

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Rapidfire Saturday…

Not much more than a bunch of links for today, but fear not… it’s all pretty cool stuff!

– This site has a handy World Cup calendar. It’s round, see, and it lets you quickly find matches based on the date, stadium, or team. If you’re at all interested in the matches (let me be honest, my own interest is quickly fading), then this calendar is for you:

World Cup calendar– Music festivals are a big business in the UK. As far as accommodations go, most festival goers have to make do with a tent and sleeping bag. But now Britain’s rich and influential can enjoy a Yurtel, a high-end tent with a king-sized bed, freshly cut flowers, and chocolates:

Yurtel– Speaking of the UK, a British company called Fredericks Dairies has not only come out with a fish and chips flavor of ice cream (and yes, it actually tastes like fish and chips), check out their presentation:

Fish and Chips ice creamCute! Although I like to say that I’d try anything once, I’m not sure fish and chips ice cream is for me. I’ll stick to Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Brittle ice cream for now (it’s a new flavor, and it’s realllllyy good!)

– And lastly, hipsters torn between buying “cool” vinyl records and “practical” compact discs can rejoice now that electronic/dance musician Jeff Mills has released a hybrid record\CD. You’ve gotta admit, it sure looks pretty cool:

Record\CD hybrid

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West Indies Hot Sauce

west_indies_sauce“West Indies” hot sauce, which is yellow in color and made with habanero peppers, is my all-time favorite style of hot sauce. It’s usually very spicy, but not in an “I’m only eating this to show off” kind of way, like Dave’s Insanity Sauce. It also has the best flavor of any hot sauce I’ve ever tried. Sure, Tabasco sauce is good, but it mostly tastes like peppers and vinegar. Sriracha is pretty tasty, but isn’t all that complex. West Indian style hot sauce, on the other hand, brings a lot of flavor to the table!

Lisa bought a giant habanero plant at Aldi a few weeks ago. It’s actually more like a “habanero bush”! So, with a surfeit of peppers, I decided to make some hot sauce myself!

Software:

15 habanero (Scotch bonnet) peppers
1 ripe mango, or a one large can of pineapple chunks
¼ cup packed brown sugar
1½ Tbs. curry powder
1 Tbs. cumin
1 Tbs. chili powder
½ tsp. sea salt
1 tsp black pepper
Pinch of tumeric
1 cup cheap yellow mustard
½ cup white vinegar
(Optional) Additional vinegar and\or pineapple juice

Continue reading “West Indies Hot Sauce”

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Poor Bobby!

Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox has been in baseball for almost 50 years. As you may know, Cox is planning to retire after this season, so senators Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia thought it would be nice to hold a party for him. Imagine their surprise when the caterer showed up with this:

Bobby Cocks

“Bobby Cocks”. Good job, folks!

Ya know, I can understand Shaquanda at Food Lion just not giving a damn, but you’d think that a professional caterer or independent baker would take thirty freakin’ seconds to verify the name of a guy who’s been in baseball since 1968, won the World Series, led his team to an unprecedented 14 consecutive division titles, been NL Manager of the Year three times, and holds the dubious MLB record of having been thrown out of 154 games.

Isakson’s staffers noted the error immediately, but there was not time for the cake to be “professionally” fixed. So one deft staffer cut slices out of the bottom row of the cake and deftly smeared the icing. Apparently Cox didn’t find out about it until yesterday, when the AJC ran an article about it.

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England Rocks!

See, here’s the thing…. England has an entire galaxy of potato chip flavors. Whereas American snackers seem to be stuck in a rut of [some type of cheese], [some kind of spicy], and [some kind of ‘regional’] chips, the UK rocks the potato chip flavors like no one’s business.

In fact, Walkers, the premier British potato chip maker, is rolling out a new line of 15 chip flavors in honor of the World Cup. Apparently, their website will be the home to the “Flavor Cup”, a contest structured similarly to the World Cup, to see which flavor comes out on top.

Here are a list of the countries and their delicious flavors:

Argentina: Flame grilled steak
Australia: BBQ kangaroo
Brazil: Salsa
England: Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding
France: Garlic baguette
Germany: Bratwurst
Ireland: Irish Stew
Italy: Spaghetti Bolognese
Japan: Teriyaki Chicken
Netherlands: Edam cheese
Scotland: Haggis
South Africa: Sweet Chutney
Spain: Chicken Paella
USA: Cheeseburger
Wales: Welsh Rarebit

Woooo, Lord… I wanna try them all! Well, mostly. I’ve never had haggis, although it’s supposed to be much better than its reputation here in the States. Don’t know how it’ll work on a chip, though. It’s the same with BBQ Kangaroo – I’ve actually had kangaroo on several occasions, and I don’t know how you’re supposed to tell the difference between kangaroo and beef on a potato chip (it’s like an American company offering “venison-flavored” chips… how could you tell, really??).

I’d kill to try the England chips, with the German, Welsh, Irish and Italian chips all tied at a close second, and the French and Dutch chips tied at a close third.

Anyone got a Walkers hook-up out there?

Also, Frito Lay owns Walkers now… any chance we could get some more interesting flavors here at home?

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Wednesday Randomness

– Heidi Montag has made a commercial about credit card protection. So yes – the girl made of plastic is telling you not to use plastic.

– You don’t smoke, so you thought it was great when states went after smokers by banning smoking in public places and increasing the price of cigarettes. Smokers tried to warn you that once the do-gooders were done with them, they’d turn to you. You ignored them. You laughed at them. “I don’t smoke or drink,” you said. “What can they come after me for?” And now the state of New York is considering a bill which would ban the use of salt at any restaurant in the state. Seriously.

– Marion Cotillard shows us her beautiful French breasts in this Funny or Die video (no, it’s not what you think).

– A kid moves out of the house. His parents decide to sell some of the stuff he left behind on Craigslist. Hilarity ensues (link possibly NSFW).

– Walmart is rolling out a line of locally-grown produce to its stores. In a blind taste test, a bunch of pretentious, self-righteous food snobs found out, to their intense horror, that they often preferred Walmart’s (significantly cheaper) offerings to their beloved Whole Foods.

– Best idea ever?

ipod touch reward

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Thursday’s Random Stuff Post

– Ever wonder what life’s like for people who pirate Windows? Windows expert Ed Bott decided to “go underground” and see how pirated copies of Windows 7 actually work. The results are pretty interesting and worth a read, even if you’re not a tech person.

– Starting St. Patrick’s Day, Continental Airlines will offer flyers “a new option allowing you to purchase seat assignments for unreserved, Economy Class seats that feature extra legroom.” In other words, they’re going to start charging more for exit row seats.

– Speaking of St. Patrick’s Day, head over to this site to find a McDonald’s near you that offers Shamrock Shakes!

– The NFL has released their new conference logos, playoff logos, pre- and post-season logos, Super Bowl logos, and conference championship trophy designs. And they’re absolutely horrible. The new AFC logo, in particular, is pretty awful. What say you?

– Research in the academic journal Psychological Science shows that darkness increases dishonest behavior. It’s not just that darkness provides practical advantages (like “cover” for criminal activity); people genuinely think that the darkness can provide a measure of anonymity and invisibility… like a kid closing her eyes whilst hiding in a game of “Hide and Seek”.

– Lots of movie and TV stars get their starts in corporate training videos. Here’s a clip of Lost’s Michael Emerson… in a prison training video from 1992!

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Wednesday’s (Almost All British) Roundup

– Remember this post, where I talked about how I always seem to miss anniversaries on this site? Well, Monday was the 25th anniversary of the release of The Breakfast Club. Yes, I’m old.

– The BBC has sent more people to the 2010 Olympics than Great Britain sent athletes! For the record, there are 74 BBC employees covering 52 British athletes at the Vancouver games. Whether this is a commentary on the largess of the BBC or the woeful state of British sports is open to interpretation.

– Last week, Professor Phil Jones – the British scientist at the center of the “Climategate” scandal – flat out admitted that there has been no evidence of Global Warming since 1995. It’s interesting (to me) how this has been such a non-event in the American media, yet has been all over the British papers for months now. Admittedly, the scandal involves British researchers, but still… oh wait – this goes against liberal dogma, so of course the American media haven’t reported on it.

– Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, also known as “Pancake Day” in the rest of the English-speaking world. Similar to Mardi Gras, Pancake Day is a day when you’re supposed to use up all your rich ingredients – like butter, milk and eggs – before Ash Wednesday and Lent kicks in. Throughout England there is a tradition of holding “pancake races” on this day. At least as far back as 1445, people have run through the streets of English towns and villages holding a pan, in which they flipped a pancake as they ran. But not in St. Albans this year. Health and Safety officers (derisively referred to as “‘Elf n’ Safety” by many in the UK) banned running… during a footrace… because people might get hurt. Somehow, this tradition managed to survive at least 565 years without overzealous safety wonks making a mockery of it… but not now. It’s hard to believe that this is the same country that once ruled the largest empire in human history.

– An e. coli vaccine is now being tested on cows in the United States. If successful, the vaccine could reduce the overall presence of e. coli bacteria by 65-75%. And lest you think you’re safe because you’re a vegetarian, remember that recent e. coli outbreaks involved spinach, tomatoes, and green onions. I do not know if the vaccine would cut down on these outbreaks too (because cow manure was used to fertilize the vegetables) or not (because the e. coli came from another source).

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The Bizarre History of Cereal

One of the things that really attracted me to the Anglican church is their mellow approach to the minutiae of everyday life. In the Anglican worldview, most “things” aren’t inherently bad, but rather what’s bad is the way people apply those things to their lives. Thus, alcohol isn’t bad, but being a drunk is. Sex isn’t bad, but being promiscuous is. Red meat isn’t bad, but being a glutton is. This “middle of the road” philosophy kept a “militant vegetarian wing” or “teetotaler wing” from forming in the Anglican faith.

Other religions, of course, disagree. Seventh-Day Adventists, for example, discourage the use of alcohol or tobacco and promote vegetarianism. Strict Seventh-Day Adventists even shun caffeine drinks like coffee, tea and soda.

But there was one Seventh-Day Adventist who took it even further. This man thought that red meat and pork were literally evil, not just in the “it causes heart disease” sense, but in the “it’ll make you rape women” sense. And he also thought that most forms of sexual intercourse were evil, too… even between married couples! He especially hated masturbation, and felt that it caused urinary diseases, epilepsy, insanity and mental and physical debility in general, as well as uterine cancer in women and impotence and nocturnal emissions in men… and yes, even “reduced vision”.

Continue reading “The Bizarre History of Cereal”

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Yummy Cupcakes!

The Steelers season might be over, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t drool over the cupcakes at Coco’s Cupcake Café in Pittsburgh… specifically this cupcake:

Steelers Cupcake

That looks delicious! You should check out the other flavors of cupcakes this place makes – I’d kill for the recipes for the Banana Peanut Butter, Snickerdoodle and Chocolate Stout cupcakes!