We interrupt your normal scheduled program to bring you this update...

I know that I literally just posted, but this is too good to save for another time. I checked in with one of my favorite lazy time blogs, Candy Addict, and found this great post on Edible Jewelry.

No, I'm not talking about those silly candy necklaces made out of chalky little discs. I'm talking real, chocolate and gold, wearable and edible art.

They claim to be tested in the Miami heat and are melt-proof. It's an interesting concept, and one that combines my love of jewelry and food. I'm not sure that it's worth spending $85 on a conversation piece, but maybe if you have extra cash lying around and you attend some swanky parties, it might be for you. Once the jewelry has been devoured the jeweler will replace it will pearls or other stones for an additional fee.

Check out their website: http://wendymahr.com/?p=574 What do you think?

Tales of Broccoli, Stir Fry Sauce and Double Dinner

As I write this, I am consuming a beautiful stir-fry, which came about as part of my cooking bonanza this evening. The tofu I bought last week has been sitting in my fridge taunting me while I have been refusing to eat it because I wasn't in the mood. By some strange departure from my normal behavior, I also bought broccoli on that same shopping trip and I have been stoically refusing to eat that as well. It's not that I dislike broccoli really, more that given a choice of vegetables, it would never rank anywhere near the top of my list. That said, it does make a nice stir fry, which is why I bought it. That and the fact that I figured a little variation in vegetables wouldn't hurt me.

So here I am this evening, freshly showered from the gym and I still really don't want to eat the tofu, but I also don't want it to go bad. I peruse the fridge and freezer, and although I'd been thinking that I'd eat the fi,sh from my freezer, I happened upon my leftover pasta from last night. Great. It's nice and simple and I can throw in a tomato maybe or maybe some of the giant batch of collards that I cooked a few days before. But then I take out the Parmesan cheese and start thinking about my mom's classic pasta with broccoli and garlic. Once I've got the broccoli out though it seems silly not to cook all of it, so I opted to make stir fry and the pasta at the same time. I tend to cook a lot at a time and then let myself be lazy the other days. I couldn't decide which one to eat tonight but I figured whichever was left could be lunch tomorrow.

The pasta became pasta with garlic, oil and tomato while the stir fry started out more as a steamed broccoli, carrot, and mushroom dish which morphed more into a "fry" with the addition of onions and oil and the stir fry sauce. I bought this sauce specifically to drown broccoli in, because if there's one thing broccoli is good for, it's soaking up yummy asian sauces. Everything cooked pretty quickly, but because I had turned my steamed dish into a fried dish, there was a lot of water and my veggies ( and tofu) are swimming a bit more than maybe they should be. Still, it's pretty delicious and the stir fry sauce tasted fabulous. I chose the sauce because it seemed to have the right thickness and not too obscenely many calories or too much salt. All those sauces have tons of salt but this was a tad lower than some.

The pasta also turned out great, although I ultimately decided I'd be more excited about eating it tomorrow at lunch than I would be about eating stir fry.

And so here they are .... I really need better lighting in my kitchen.
Pasta...


And stir-fry!
And now time to clean up :(

Guilty Pleasures Review

Today I discovered the Starbucks has a new Frappuccino flavor that they released for the summer. Last summer it was toffee mocha and now the new flavor is Mocha Coconut. At first this didn't have much appeal to me. I have mixed feelings about coconut, and like most people who complain about coconut, I agree that the texture is definitely a problem on many occasions. Still, an almond joy or a macaroon is nice on occasion and the flavor is not bad.

I decided to sample the Frappuccino since it was a hot day. My first impression after, where's my chocolate syrup and coconut flakes like the picture, was WOAH COCONUT! It's very strong. It's basically like drinking an almond joy. The chocolate is certainly there, although the coffee aspect is questionable I think. It's a bit of a nice change from the usual flavors and it feel kind of summery but I'm not sure it's something I'd want to drink all that often. It does manage to get the coconut flavor without the texture issues though. As far as looks go, it's basically what you would expect as far as a mocha color. I had whipped cream on top but none of the pretty toppings. This is what mine looked like:

Notice how it differs from the official picture.

Guilty Pleasure number two came from a trip to the supermarket where there was a sale on Ben and Jerry's. They are so expensive that of course I have to buy them when they're on sale! 2 for $6.00! I like to taste new flavors and have some of the classics. I picked up Phish Food Froyo ( not as good as the full fat ice cream) and a new addition to the line called Bonnaroo Buzz. Bonnaroo Buzz is part of a collaboration between B& J's and the Bonnaroo music festival which is held every summer. A Bonnaroo Buzz tour was also launched in the Fall of last year.

I was intrigued by the flavor which is described as light coffee and malt ice cream with whiskey caramel swirls and English toffee pieces. Sounds good no? But what exactly is malt? I know there's malt whiskey, malt beer and malted milkshakes so that seemed like a good choice.

As it turns out, malt is a cereal grain that has been dried in a certain process, known as malting ( thanks wikipedia). Basically the grain is heated and then stopped from heating which turns it into a kind of sugar. From this you can produce malt syrup, which can be used to flavor things. Bottom line: yum.

The Bonnaroo Buzz was delicious! I'm a sucker for coffee ice cream to begin with, but add alcohol and some other good stuff and you've got a pretty awesome dessert. The base flavor definitely has a different taste than just coffee, although the coffee is strong. There's a bit of a malted milkball feel to it. The swirls just taste like caramel to me but maybe there's some whiskey in there. I'm a little disapointed that the crunch wasn't evenly distributed in my pint. There's a pretty big toffee chunk lodged in the container and not to many other ones I've seen so far. I'll let you know as the chunk spelunking continues! Until then, go buy some ice cream. It's nearly summer!

Cheeseboy!!

A few weekends ago I was in Boston, and I discovered an interesting chain called Cheeseboy. The one I visited was located in the bus/train station. It's a fast food place that sells grilled cheese and soups. Brilliant! Simple but brilliant. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? I'm not going to go out of my way to go get a sandwich I can easily make myself, however if you're in a place like an airport or train station it is fairly brilliant. Plus i's fairly hard for me to pass up a place with a slogan like "The best things in life are cheese." I couldn't agree more.

According to their website, Cheeseboy only has 3 locations- 2 in Boston and one in Milford Connecticut. Perhaps they will expand. They also have some pretty nifty Cheeseboy stickers.
Now as for the grilled cheese itself, it was decent, but not great. The menu is pretty simple. I got a classic with tomato and a cup of vegetable beef soup. The sandwich was a little more toasty than I would have liked. Too much brown, and although not burned, it was more crispy than I would have liked. Still, it's pretty hard to terribly ruin a grilled cheese unless you burn it, so it was still good. Execution could use a little work. The soup was pretty unsuccessful though. It was mostly greasy broth with just a bit of veggies. Overall maybe the place is a 3 out of 5 but I'd say that it probably varies by location and how busy they are. I still have a cool sticker though!

And Now for Something Completely Different...

Tired of reading recipes out of books, index cards, computer print outs and scribbled notes? Never fear! The Singing Recipe is here!

Yes, you did read that correctly. Black Balloon Publishing and a musical group called One Ring Zero have put together cd of sung recipes, including recipes from chef Mario Batali. You can hear some samples of the songs here.

I don't really know what the benefit of a singing recipe is, other than being a unique idea. The songs are kind of silly but its certainly out of the ordinary. The credit for this ridiculous find goes to my mom who emailed me the link and thought it might be blog- worthy.

I don't even know what else to say about these, except that it doesn't seem prctical as a method for cooking and it seems unlike that someone would want to repeatedly listen to lyrics like " season with salt and pepper and set in the refrigerator till ready to use." I mean, I could be wrong, maybe singing recipes will take off and become the next big thing. Maybe the Glee kids will get involved and do a dance number to "Maine Jonah Crab Claws with Yuzu Mayonnaise." Stranger things have happened.
Interestingly enough One Ring Zero actually has some really fascinating music.

I'm sorry I didn't accelerate to 70mph 2 seconds after the light turned green... oh wait, no I'm not

Really, there's no reason for you to honk the horn right after the light turns green. I PROMISE I can see it, without your help. I or someone next to me have been honked at several times recently because apparently you have to accelerate from zero to sixty in under one second.

Two tomatoes are running down the street, the one in front turns around and yells back to the other, "Ketchup!"

Alright so I need to Catch -up ( ketchup) because I have a bunch of things I've been wanting to write about and now I have my internet back permanently so I've got to start up again with what I have been accumulating in pictures etc.

To stick with the theme, let's talk about Wendy's new natural cut fries with sea salt. Wendy's has been touting these fries like they are some sort of healthy miracle. They don't actually use the word healthy but the way they talk about them as being so natural you'd think they were trying to convince you they are healthy. Also sea salt!!! Not just any salt, but sea salt! Apparently this is amazing.

So, for educational purposes, and for my devoted readers, I decided to take the plunge and find out just how good these fries REALLY are.

They definitely have a potato taste, so that you can tell that you are eating a potato and not just mushed up something or other. The texture is more like potato and less like mush as well and having a few bits of skin on helps too. It isn't so much skin that its annoying though. They are more unique than the other fast food fries. These fries are certainly more potatoey than McDonalds and less battered than Burger King. As for the sea salt, I'm not sure that it's any particularly big deal. Overall I'd say its a pretty good fry if you want something that reminds you strongly of potato. I tend to think that Wendy's may be the least scary of the fast food burger joints, but that's more of an impression than actual fact, although everyone knows McDonald's is evil. I ate a bunch of fries without ketchup then added some ketchup for the second half to mix it up, which leads me into my ketchup review.

I tend to think organic things are good things, or at least potentially good things. I know that something being organic doesn't mean it's good for you, but it usually has a more wholesome feel. In this case though, Organic ketchup is a no-no. It had a rather unusual taste to it. I admit, I'm very picky about ketchup. I think anything other than Heinz is unacceptable. Usually other ketchups have that weird sweet taste to them, or something is just not right with the flavors.
Unfortunately, Heinz organic had a bit of that taste. It seemed a bit sweeter, which I don't really understand why since it should be made with the same ingredients, just that they are grown with no pesticides etc. I will admit that it grew on me a bit as I ate it and became accustomed to the taste, but it certainly wouldn't be my first choice. How very disappointing.

The Worst of the Worse

My frustration with Long Island drivers has been reaching an all-time high lately. I have never been incited to road rage as often as I have been in the past few days. Drivers are rude, impatient, angry, reckless, irreverent and just plain annoying. I may have just described myself.

If you’re a pedestrian, watch out because you will get squashed. I can’t even remember all the ridiculous things I have seen the last few days, but they generally concern drivers suddenly deciding they want to make a turn out of the blue, failing to signal ( except when they forget their blinker light is on and proceed to drive for 3 miles down the highway oblivious), cutting people off, weaving in and out of traffic, and especially, driving at obscene speeds. People also like to honk at you like it’s their job if you aren’t doing what they want you to do ie. turning on red, moving over, accelerating to 70mph half a second after a light turns green.

I think I’ve mentioned before that there seems to be no happy medium for driving speed. Either you are going recklessly fast or ridiculously slowly. It annoys me to no end when a driver decides to ride up behind me with a foot of space between us to tell me that I need to go faster. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about sending signals to other drivers to tell them they are going to slow; I do it all the time, but when I’m in the left lane already going considerably above the speed limit and you’re riding my tale because I’m not doing 80 or 85 then I have very limited sympathy. And especially when there’s another car in front of me or general traffic that would mean if your car got in front of me you’d get nowhere on the road. I enjoy watching these people try and pass me on the right and then get stuck behind a slow car. I generally will move over for someone who wants to go fast, but when the road doesn’t permit it then I won’t do something completely stupid just so you can pass me.

Merging is another killer. I’m amazed by the amount of people who won’t let me merge onto the highway or merge in situations where you really can’t come to a full stop. Yes, it might be slightly annoying for you, but if you either slow down or speed up then you can avoid having to deal with me at all, so don’t be rude and not let me in.

Now, the unfortunate situation I’ve seen lately is that by far the worst drivers are the police. I don’t favor bad mouthing law enforcement but there’s a reason that cops have a bad reputation sometimes. I’ve seen more examples of bad driving from cop cars probably than anyone else. The other day I saw a cop on the phone while driving!!! That is very very illegal in New York, but hey, if the law is doing it then why shouldn’t everyone else right? More annoying still are the cops who turn on their emergency lights to get through a traffic light and turn them off 2 seconds later. I’ve seen several cops use their lights to get through traffic. Unless traffic is at complete shutdown standstill, I’m pretty sure you can wait like the rest of the population.