gwax's rumblings

It turns out that I no longer dis­like lob­ster. In fact, I have moved on to rather enjoy­ing the taste of the lit­tle buggers.

Someone’s gone and invented Bacon Ice Cream. Details over at the apos­tro­pher. Sweet lord, bacon ice cream!

At home a while back I was talked into eat­ing an arti­choke and I actu­ally hap­pened to like the thing. Since then I hadn’t eaten another but, as the result of a good spring salad I had two days ago, I decided to eat some plant mat­ter today and while I was at the gro­cery store get­ting such neces­si­ties as Oreos, milk, ceral (Cracklin’ Oat Bran, oh yeah!), and such, one such item turned out to be an arti­choke. I cooked the thing as was pre­scribed by the Joy of Cooking and ate it with some melted but­ter. So yeah, arti­chokes are good, even in the opin­ion of a pri­mar­ily car­niv­o­rous per­son such as myself. Now for chips and dip.

Displayed promi­nantly on the Oreo pack­age in my freezer (more on this later) is the phrase “America’s Favorite Cookie”. Some peo­ple might con­sider this to be a fairly hefty claim but it turns out to be sta­tis­ti­cally jus­ti­fi­able, with Oreos sell­ing roughly 10 times as well as the next most pop­u­lar cookie. Quite frankly, I’m not sur­prised as I con­sider the Oreo to be the all around finest cookie on the mar­ket. We (Dan and I) have been try­ing to keep at least one pack­age of Oreos in our freezer at all times for quite a while and they’ve essen­tially become a sta­ple around here, with us going through approx­i­mately one pack­age every week or two.

Now, as to why we keep our Oreos in the freezer; they’re bet­ter that way. Keeping Oreos in the freezer makes them stay fresh a whole lot longer than if they aren’t kept in the freezer (even if you don’t keep them in a reseal­able pack­age). Also, frozen Oreos are a bit stiffer, harder and more solid, which I rather like.

So yeah, Oreos are great and the rest of America agrees. Also, if you look at some of the other sta­tis­tics, Nabisco has a stangle-hold on cook­ies and crack­ers in the US.

I just fin­ished the tapi­oca pud­ding that I made yes­ter­day and my opin­ion con­tin­ues to be that tapi­oca pud­ding is damned good.

I have reached a new culi­nary extreme (new low or new high) with my din­ner tonight. Tonight’s meal is a can of refried beans (heated) with shred­ded cheese and a Barq’s root beer. One might think it easy to call this a lowly meal but it took me 3 min­utes to make, cost less than $2, gave me my RDA of fiber, gave me about 30g of pro­tein and tasted pretty decent.

Ok, I guess a can of refried beans is not a culi­nary any­thing, it’s more of a hobo food. However, on my con­tin­ued bach­e­lor chow search, it’s a pretty decent com­po­nent option.

I went to McDonald’s with Max ear­lier today and we made a very inter­est­ing obser­va­tion: Value Meals are not the most cost effi­cient way to get food. Purchasing a dou­ble cheese­burger with large fries and large drink was $0.89 cheaper than pur­chas­ing a reg­u­lar Big and Tasty meal (the cheap­est of the value meals). I could have pur­chased a sec­ond dou­ble cheese­burger and still had it be much cheaper than any large value meal. I am also reminded of my recent meal at the Ashland, NH Burger King where Sam got three Rodeo Burgers, fries and a drink for less than my dou­ble bacon cheese­burger meal.

Henceforth, I shall no longer assume that a value meal is the cheap­est way for me to get what I want. It’s kind of sad because I can remem­ber when value meals actu­ally were a good value.

In con­tin­u­ing with my recent trend to cook stuff, I have come across a recipe for the best hot choco­late ever. I was drink­ing some ear­lier this evening and think­ing that I could under­stand the con­cept of death by choco­late. Without fur­ther ado, here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 cup Heavy Cream
• 8 – 10 oz. Dark/Bittersweet Chocolate (if you’re a philis­tine, like me, this is one and a half of those large bars of Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate)
• Some Milk (prefer­ably Whole Milk)

Now, here’s what you do. Break the choco­late into lots of lit­tle pieces. In a medium saucepan, over medium heat, bring the cream to a rolling boil. Once the cream begins to boil, turn off the heat and stir in the choco­late; keep stir­ring until the mix­ture is homoge­nous. This cream and choco­late mix­ture can be kept in tup­per­ware in the fridge for later. This mix­ture is your con­cen­trate from which to actu­ally make hot chocolate.

To pre­pare your hot choco­late, mix the con­cen­trate with milk in a one to one ratio and heat in a medium saucepan over medium heat. It’s so deca­dent and delicious.

If I get around to not being cheap, I might go over to the Godiva in the mall and get some really good choco­late, but that’s a later thing. Also, you can add a lit­tle bit of Kahlua for taste or fun.

Yesterday, the Liz and I went out for sushi at Kotobukiya and then went to a desser­t­erie in Harvard Square called Finale.

Liz and I both had the cheese­cake; she got the rec­om­mended wine and I had a flight of three ports.

Seeing as my poetic expe­ri­ence is very lim­ited, I doubt that I can craft words in a man­ner that will do jus­tice to the qual­ity to this dessert, but I will nonethe­less try. I began by eat­ing some of the berries which accom­pa­nied my cheese­cake to build my antic­i­pa­tion and then I took a small bite of the cheese­cake. Upon con­sum­ing my first nib­ble of cheese­cake, my palatte was engulfed in such splen­dor as to fill my very being. After the nib­ble of cheese­cake, I took a small sip of each of my three ports, which also left me a sense of won­der and awe. There was some sort of choco­late adorn­ment in the cheese­cake and upon tast­ing it, I had but one thought, “You must be kid­ding me.” Each bite of my cheese­cake and sip of my ports was as good as the pre­vi­ous. The glory of that dessert was such that I felt that my life had reached its apex.

I guess what I’m try­ing to say is that you absolutely must try the desserts at this restaurant.

Having set­tled into the bachelor’s life pretty solidly at this point I have recently dis­cov­ered a won­der­ful new food which I have decided to refer to as the Bachelor Burger. Here’s how it works; you start with cheap gro­cery store brand burger pat­ties (all beef) and you fry them up on a grid­dle, then you drop a nice slice of pep­per jack cheese on top (I’m using Cabot brand) and then drop it on a cheap gro­cery store brand bun. I don’t bother with condi­ments (not my style) but the cheap burger, cheap bun and good strong cheese makes for a really tasty and inex­pen­sive com­bi­na­tion. Such is the Bachelor Burger and it’s mighty good.