Bobby Flay is a Total Douchebag

I've said it for years. Bobby Flay is a douchebag. Fuck him. Fuck his shows.

Bobby Flay mixing a cocktail with roofies in it. Total douchebag.

Bobby Flay is a high school dropout who took up Southwestern cuisine as his specialty. That's right, Southwestern, the easiest of all cuisines because nothing fucking grows in the desert. It's all 5 ingredients. The same 5 ingredients. Big fucking accomplishment mastering Southwestern cuisine, you douchebag.

So he gets involved with the Food Network. Oh shit you have to be a skilled chef to get a cooking show right? Not if you're Bobby Flay. His cooking show is all about grilling. Yep, the easiest cooking method there is. Just throw shit on the grill and maybe turn it once while drinking your beer. Done. You're a grillmaster.

But then suddenly Bobby Flay became Master of Everything Ever. Between Throwdown! with Bobby Flay and Beat Bobby Flay, he is determined to beat you at your life's work. He swoops into town, goes to a local joint that is supposed to be the best at something, then decided the owner is shit and he can beat them with no effort at the thing they've spent their entire career doing. Fuck you, Bobby Flay. That is a tremendously douchebag concept for a show or two.

Ever been to Bobby's Douchbag Burger Palace? He's so much of a douchebag, there is no vegetarian option. Even Five Guys will make you a grilled cheese (i. e. a burger without the meat). But no, fuck you if you don't eat meat. Have a salad, that's all you eat anyway.

Fuck Bobby Flay.

Review: Taco Bell's Breakfast Crunchwrap Supreme

My Taco Bell is about 30% as clean-looking as this one.

No, I don't know what compelled me to forego edible breakfast-type food and instead go to Taco Bell, but should the same phenomenon happen to you, you should know what you're in for.

First of all, walking into a Taco Bell at 7:30AM feels like those scenes in The Walking Dead where they are scavenging for supplies by going into a long-deserted store. It's silent, but there are definitely unseen, unheard zombies lurking in the back.

Taco Bell is eerily quiet in the mornings. No other people were in the, ahem, dining room other than myself. There did not appear to be anyone in the back cooking, either. It was just empty. There was a guy pulled up to the Drive Thru window with a dead, blank look in his eye. Has he been gassed? Is the Taco Bell crew tied up in the back somewhere, disemboweled by a late night customer because they forgot to change the Baja Blast syrup?

At this point, I admitted to myself this was a mistake. Taco Bell for breakfast. And I wasn't even hungover.

As I turned to leave, an employee appeared and said she'd be right with me. Well now if I leave, things will just be awkward. And I will still be hungry. So I order. "A.M. Crunchwrap with Bacon." How far have we sunken as a society that this is something one human can say to another human?

Other employees have appeared, but the cashier is the one to fold breakfast food into a tortilla for me. It was shaped like a hexagonal football. It definitely looked Crunchwrap-ish, though. Just lopsided. Food in bag in hand, I disappeared into the night morning.

The regular (P.M.?) Crunchwrap was designed to be eaten one-handed in the car, so that is naturally what I did with my A.M. Crunchwrap. Functionally, it was a success.

Photo by Mike Mozart. He knows my pain. By why on earth did he get the sausage one? There was a bacon one, dude!

Inside this thing, there is a hashbrown, eggs, crumbled bacon, cheese, and some tasty orangish flavorgoo. The pocket of unmelted shredded cheese in the corner was an unwelcome surprise. The hashbrown had probably been warm at one point this morning. Bacon is tasty. I need to buy myself some orangeish flavorgoo at the grocery store. I finished it off in a couple miles. It was fine. It was exactly what I expected it to be: depressing.

Then it begins. Your body know what you did. You went to Taco Bell. Worse, you went to Taco Bell in the morning. And you aren't even hungover. Approximately 20 minutes after finishing the Crunchwrap, the nausea sets in. Not real nausea, though. You know real nausea. This was the "something's not right" feeling where you think you're going to throw up, but this isn't what it feels like right before you throw up. It's fake nausea.

Further down the system, there are rumblings. How is this possible? It's been a half hour! Food can't travel that fast! Maybe your colon knows it's got a lot of work to do soon, so we'd better clear some space. The next 20 minutes were ones I wish I had back. But afterwards, I was strangely satisfied. Like a good sneeze.

The quasi-nausea still remains. And I don't even feel like having a second breakfast this morning like I usually do. There are still rumblings somehow. I'm empty inside as far as I can tell. I fear the next 24 hours as my moment of weakness this morning causes my digestive tract to continue to become a shadow of its former self.

Overall I give it a 7/10.

Somebody Buy a Ruler for Wegmans

Wegmans subs are made of awesome. In fact, that's the only ingredient. They taste like they were made by a unicorn riding an elephant down a river of magma while a marching band plays John Philip Sousa tunes using only cannons and guitars.

I bought a "3.5 inch" Wegmans sub a while ago. While it was delicious (and just like all those things I said up there), I couldn't help but notice it didn't seem like 3.5 inches of pure awesome on white bread. I got out the only thing I had on me with a consistent length: a dollar bill, which as you know is 2.61 by 6.14 inches. 

This sub was not even 3 inches. Someone owe me a half-inch of awesome. Now that I've typed that I immediately regret it. Carry on.

Keebler Shat on My Childhood Dreams

It's a well-known fact that the butter-cookie-exterior-and-chocolate-fudge-interior E. L. Fudge cookies are Mankind's Greatest Achievement. Everything about them is perfect, right down to the consistency of both the cookie and the fudge creme, as well as the relative stickiness of the creme. The cookies are such a work of art that it is very easy to separate the top half of the cookie, remove the fudge creme, and make your own de facto double stuf-style cookie. Or as I call it, valhalla.

One day, the folks at Keebler (a subsidiary of Kellogg's) got a wild hair up their collective ass, and clearly in a fit of jealousy against Nabisco's Oreos (a subsidiary of Kraft), decided to steal the idea of Double Stuf-ing E. L. Fudges. If you told 10-year-old me that one day I would be eating double stuf E. L. Fudges, I would have kicked you in the shins for making up impossible shit that's too good to be true.

Now, it works on Oreos because here's the Double Stuf recipe (SPOILER ALERT!): Same cookie, twice the Stuf. Somehow, Keebler couldn't crack this code. Right off the bat, you can tell Keebler fucked it up. Behold:

That's not some forced perspective shit I'm pulling here. The original cookie (left) is far larger than the double stuf (right). And the double stuf (or DS, as I shall type it henceforce -- same initials as dog shit) cookie part is the wrong color. Perhaps the extra stuf in the DS will make up for it.

Why is the stuf on the DS so shiny? Why was it deposited onto the cookie differently? One taste and all is revealed: the new stuf tastes like someone took a waxy shit in my mouth. And there's not way on Odin's Midgård that there is twice the stuf on the DS than on the original. The cookie is ruined, too. It tastes a cheap knock-off Vienna Finger. It's dry, it crumbles all over the place, and doesn't taste good on its own. (Real Vienna Fingers are fine, but not when you're trying to eat a goddamned E. L. Fudge.) This cookie doesn't even taste good if you eat both the cookie and stuf together. More like double fail.

Keebler, please change the name of these cookies to "Not E. L. Fudge and Not Double Stuf: Smaller, Crumbier, Shittier"

Keebler needs to get this abomination off the market. And if they even think of fucking with the regular E. L. Fudge recipes, 10-year-old me is going to come kick the shit out of them.

Please note that "Stuf" is only capitalized when referring to Oreo-related Stuf. The E. L. Fudge double stuf stuf is not delicious and therefore does not deserve the capital letter.

Lengua

So, I was in San Diego (which may or may not have been why I was flying over El Paso) and had the joy of eating at Tacos El Gordo. Now, if you ever eat anywhere that claims it's an authentic Mexican place, I want you to find the first waiter you see, punch him in the throat, and spit in his eye, because they are fucking liars.

Tacos El Gordo IS authentic. Basically, you order at a counter to guys who probably don't speak English. What do you order? Tacos, goddamnit! They are about half the size of Taco Bell tacos on a corn tortilla or two (but they're not crunchy). They cut of whatever meat you choose and add (usually 2) predetermined toppings, depending on what you ordered. Each one is more amazing than the last. I had a pork one, a chorizo one, and a steak one.

When I went back up to get more, I decided to go for broke and got the beef tongue taco. It. Was. Amazing. It tasted kind of like flank steak, but fell apart as you ate it because they had cooked it for probably upwards of 17 hours. I was the only white guy in the place to get it. I highly recommend it.

Bacon Toothpaste

There's a great site called It's All About the Bacon. It has daily updates containing all the bacon-related culture you could ever need.

But I don't really understand this one:

It's just not that far-fetched considering you can already get bacon floss and bacon toothpicks.

Wal-Mart's Definition of Juice

Wal-Mart apparently thinks a product containing 0% juice still counts as juice.

Then again, what would you expect from a company that claims it lowers prices while actually raising them?

(Please ignore the fact that I was in a Wal-Mart. I'm quite ashamed of it myself.)

A Day's Worth of Food Entirely in Fry Form!

At Burger King, you can get an entire day's worth of food completely in French Fry form!

Let's say you stumble out of bed around 9:45 AM, leaving you just enough time to get to Burger King for breakfast. You can get a large order of French Toast Sticks - french toast in french fry form!

By the time you're done, you can get right back in line and order lunch: a large BK Chicken Fries and a large fries! Delicious! Of course, you will need BBQ and honey mustard to go with them.

When you're finished with you meal, you know that there just has to be something else you can eat in french fry form. Why, Funnel Cake Sticks are a perfect dessert!

If you can manage to get home and pass out for the rest of the day, you will have eaten 1 day's worth of food entirely in french fry form!

The nutrition facts for this delicious meal:

• 1930 calories
• 92g fat (138% DV)
• 18g saturated fat (90% DV)
• 0g trans fat
• 75mg cholesterol (25% DV)
• 237g carbs (76% DV)
• 71g sugar
• 41g protein
• 3700mg sodium (157% DV)

On a related note, Burger King's Menu and Nutrition page is pretty sweet.

Baby Carrots

I HATE BABY-CUT CARROTS.

Here are baby carrots:

Here are baby-cut carrots:

Note the difference: one is a wonderful creation of nature. The other is an OUTRIGHT LIE! They are simply cut from bigger carrots, and the cost is passed onto you! Next time you see baby-cut carrots, rip open the bag and strew them all over the vicinity! They shouldn't exist and no one should buy them!

I urge you to insist on calling them what they are. The bag even says "Baby Carrots" on it, but I and now you both know that they are in fact baby-cut carrots. Insist on correcting people about it from now on.

Buy REAL carrots please! They're cheaper too, even if you're stupid enough to buy bagged carrots. For example: baby-cut carrots cost $.22/oz, whereas real carrots (the smaller bag of them even!) cost $.83/lb. Yeah, it looks more expensive because the same bastards that create the baby-cut carrots have changed the units in the unit price. Baby cut carrots cost you $3.52/lb! That's more than FOUR TIMES the cost of actual carrots! (Source: www.safeway.com)

What's that? You don't want to go through the effort of peeling and cutting a real carrot? Well then maybe you should go to Burger King or something because you're obviously too lazy and worthless to be eating actual food.

So, if you find yourself buying baby-cut carrots, remember that I hate you.

Nuts

So we all know peanuts aren't nuts. But most of the other things you think are nuts aren't nuts, either.

A nut is "a simple dry fruit with one seed (rarely two) in which the ovary wall becomes very hard (stony or woody) at maturity, and where the seed remains attached or fused with the ovary wall."

Here are some actual nuts:

• chestnuts
• hazelnuts
• acorns 
• kola nuts (the extract of which is in Coca-Cola)
• pecans

Here are some things you think are nuts, but aren't:

• almonds
• cashews
• pistachios
• walnuts

These are all drupes, which are fruits in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. Other drupes are peaches, plums, cherries, and coconuts.

Just to further ruin your day, here are more things that aren't actually nuts:

• macadamias - actually follicles
• peanuts - actually legumes
• brazilnuts - actually seeds 

There. Think about that next time you get a can of mixed "nuts." For example, Planters Mixed Nuts contains peanuts, almonds, cashews, brazilnuts, hazelnuts, and pecans, or more simply, two nuts and a bunch of LIES!

...Why are you crying?

Mr. Boh

I'm fairly sure that Mr. Boh...



...lost his other eye in a bar fight with Julius Pringles...



...over the Utz Girl...


...but I think Mr. Boh won because....

The Rubix Cubewich

Whether this tastes horrid or not, it's genius!

from insanewiches.com

Food, Inc.

Official Trailer:


This movie is fantastic. It's loosely based on Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It does a fantastic job summarizing both books in 90 minutes. (By the way, go read those books.) Oh yeah, and both Pollan and Schlosser produced and appear in it.

The movie is divided into 3 major segments:

1. Factory Farming (Meat)
   
2. Intensive Farming (Grain)
   
3. The Evils of the Major Food Companies and Their Economic and Political Power

The film ends with tips on how to break the cycle and avoid being a part of the system that is slowly killing us all economically, environmentally, and medically.

Lemons

I saw this at Giant.

"Lemons. Perfect for orange juice."

I wonder what it said under the oranges.

Article: Christian Salt

Christian Salt (article 1) (article 2)

I was minding my own business in Google Reader, looking at headlines from The Onion when I saw "Christian Salt Introduced." I thought to myself, "how do those Onion writers do it? That's freakin' hilarious!!"

So, I clicked on the link... American Voices*? Oh, no! It's actual news!

*American Voices is a section where they take an actual news piece and ask what you think. The pictures of the 3 people never change, but their names, occupations, and quotes do.

What's the Deal with Christian Salt

So, some backwoods hick, who I'm sad to say is technically from Maryland, apparently sits on his fat ass all day (when he's not burning crosses I assume) watching the Food Network. He was fed up with TV chefs always telling you to use kosher salt! ...The only TV chef I can think of that demands kosher salt at all times is Alton Brown.

So, let me back up, he watches Good Eats all day, got fed up with Alton Brown kowtowing to the Jews, I guess, and said "I'm'un'a make me some JESUS salt!"

This new anti-Semetic salt will be blessed by an Episcopal priest (they're the cheapest, I bet). Wait, wait, wait. Things that are kosher aren't blessed by rabbis, as most people believe, but are prepared according to Jewish laws.

Each box of Nazi salt will be emblazoned with a red cross... you know, like the Knights Templar... who fought in the Crusades and killed Muslims, Jews, Slavs, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites, and more, just like Jesus wanted!

My biggest problem with this Christian Salt moron is that he obviously doesn't understand anything about kosher salt, much less about fostering religious tolerance.

A Brief History of Kosher Salt

All salt is kosher. Kosher (or Koshering) Salt is coarser than table salt. It is ideal for drawing blood out of meat in order to make the meat kosher. Since it's easier to pinch and portion, a lot of chefs prefer it. It's just a great, all-around salt (unless you're baking). Oh, yeah, and there are no additives.

The end.

Back to the Crazy Guy

No inventor of anti-Jew salt would be complete without a bunch of frightening, misinformed quotes:

"I said, 'What the heck's the matter with Christian salt?'"

Calm down there, Adolf. If you maybe tried actually cooking instead of just watching the shows, you'd know what's wrong with salt that isn't kosher salt. (Again, all salt is kosher.)

From the first article:
...A share of the proceeds will be donated to Christian charities, but neither [the manufacturer or the inventor] would specify a percentage.

1 is a percent! If you're calling it Christian Salt, shouldn't ALL the proceeds help the less forunate?

"This is about keeping Christianity in front of the public so that it doesn’t die. I want to keep Christianity on the table, in the household, however I can do it."

Right! Although I didn't know Christianity was dying. Yesterday I drove past 7 Christian churches and 1 mosque. No synagogues. Not bad for a dying religion I guess.

"There’s no antisemitism. I love Jesus Christ, and he was a Jew."

Um, wow. That's like saying you have a black friend. Yeah, that's pretty horrible.

The Worst Part About It All

No one, not the one-toothed anti-Semetic salt-inventing Grand Wizard, nor a single one of the journalists, went for the obvious "Does it come in pillars?" joke!

10 Healthiest "Fast Food" Places Article: Why news is stupid

10 Healthiest Fast Food Restaurants - from WBBM in Chicago

They are:

1. Pantera Bread


2. Jason's Deli


3. Au Bon Pain


4. Noodles and Company


5. Corner Bakery Café


6. Chipotle


7. Atlanta Bread


8. McDonald's


9. Einstein Bros.


10. Taco Del Mar

This article is all kinds of stupid. So, here we go:

First of all, Pan(t)era Bread, Jason's Deli, Au Bon Pain, Noodles and Company, Corner Bakery, Atlanta Bread, and possibly Einstein Bros, are all NOT fast food. They are what the soulless corporate restauranteurs call quick casual. When I worked at Pei Wei, they made a big deal to the cashiers that we identify the restaurant as quick casual and not fast food or even a casual restaurant. Fast food places are like McDonald's and Popeyes. You order at a counter, the food is not necessarily made-to-order, and there is no table service. And it's cheap. Casual dining is like TGI Friday's or Applebees (ugh). At casual restaurants, you sit down, there is a waiter (unless it's Chutzpah, then they just say there's a waiter), and you don't have to dress in a tuxedo and wipe your mouth with $100 bills. As the name implies, quick casual is the ground between fast food and casual. Some have some kind of table service. At Pei Wei, for instance, you order at a counter, then have a seat and your food comes to you. So it is with most of the places on their "fast food" list.

So, now we have the list down to 3 places, McDonald's, Taco Del Mar, and Chipotle.

I guess I have nothing to really complain about Chipotle and Taco Del Mar, the latter of which I have never been to. Yeah, they do healthy-ish stuff I guess. Good work. Who cares?

Now finally we're at the elephant in the room: McDonald's. The article says:

Among the big burger-based chains, McDonald's is leading the way in overhauling its menu to offer more heart and waist-friendly fare. Take the Happy Meals, which you can order with a side of apple dippers (with low-fat caramel) instead of fries and low-fat milk or fruit juice instead of soda. And if you have to have fries, McDonald's are made in a healthy canola-blend oil and come in at just 230 calories for a small. The Grilled Chicken Classic sandwich and wraps are healthy choices, too (just skip the mayo or sauce). And our whole panel commends McDonald's for spelling out the nutritional information right on the back of its tray liners.

:deep breath:

I'm sure ANY fast food restaurant is fine IF YOU GET A KIDS MEAL. Especially if you eat FRUIT instead of FRIES. But it's okay because the fries cooked in healthy-ish oil. (Note the phrase canola-blend in the article.) Oh yeah and as long as you make adjustments you can eat the gilled chicken, too... JUST LIKE ANYWHERE ELSE. Oh and if all you have is a SNACK-SIZED ITEM it's healthy, too!

Oh and kudos for printing your nutritional info on the tray liners (not to mention on the bottom of the sandwich boxes and back of the fry containers). You know, by the time you see the nutritional info, IT'S TOO LATE! You've already ordered!

So, why did they put McDonald's on the list? To get people to go "holy fuck, read this article! It says McDonald's is healthy." And then you read the article. This is a common tactic with top ten-style "news" "articles." They will always put one more or less outrageous one in there to generate a buzz and get people to refer others to the article and talk about it.

Shit, it worked.

Well anyway, someone let me know when they find the other 7 healthy places. I have a few suggestions: Wendy's (if you get a kid's meal and don't finish it), Burger King (if you have them hold the mayo, cheese, and burger, and you don't finish your fries), KFC (you can't gain any calories if you've thrown it up, can you?), Quiznos (because subs are always healthy, right?)....

Chutzpah fucking sucks

There's a shitty "New York" "deli" near Tysons Corner on Rt. 7 called Chutzpah. For whatever dumbass fucking reason, several people I work with like it. I fucking hate it. The dining room is too fucking cold and the service is fucking terrible. The food is merely okay. It's definitely not worth the price, service, or agony of going there.

Today I was tricked into going. Again. So here's what happened this time:

1. First of all the place pretty much has no signs. It's back from Rt. 7 by about half a block. So I drove by it 3 times before we got there.
2. The parking spaces are too fucking small. It's Northern VA. Everyone drives bigass fucking SUVs. It took a while to find a space that wasn't between two SUVs that parked over the lines.
   
3. They had already seated the other 4 guys. When the 3 of us showed up, there were only two places set up at the table. So after I had to steal a chair from another table, I came and sat down. The waiter said "Can I get you anything?" I said, "How about a menu like everyone else?"
4. The waiter took our drink orders after getting me the menu that should've been there. He took mine twice because he wasn't fucking listening.
5. The menu says "ORDER BY NUMBER PLEASE." Only, there are no numbers. So I ordered a "number pastrami on rye."
6. We ate the small bowl of coleslaw and pickles by the time we had ordered. I finished my Coke. I asked for a refill.
7. 20 or so minutes pass with no sandwiches and no refills.
   
8. My sandwich came out. The top slice of bread had BLOOD on it. No refill yet. I was slurping the melted ice when he brought it.
   
9. I sent the sandwich back because it fucking had blood on it! Everyone else got refills except me, the person who originally asked for it. I asked again.
   
10. When the waiter brought my sandwich back out he slipped and almost went face first into the table behind me. Let this be a lesson: don't bleed on my sandwich and you won't die.
11. The new sandwich tasted fine, but not $7 fine. Maybe $4 fine.
12. Still no refill.
13. My stomach rumbled. I was apparently rejecting the food.
14. The bathroom was in the main office building this shithole was in.
15. When I returned to the table (which was a little while) everyone had paid except me of course and I still had no fucking refill.

FUCK. CHUTZPAH. I will never return.