Archive for April, 2008
April 15th, 2008 - English Muffin Sandwiches
Up come the premium english muffins, again! Bacon and sausage, could it be any simpler? The bacon ones are pretty pathetic while the sausage muffins are the cat’s meow. Let’s see how they’re supposed to look.
Doesn’t that look handsome? Look at how perfectly crisp the bacon looks and how brown and wholesome the sausage appears. And the egg and cheese? Poifect.
This is what you actually get:
Well, the egg delivers as promised, but unfortunately all the moisture for the egg has been soaked up by the muffin and sausage. The cheese, on the other hand, gets everywhere and eventually melts to the paper towel. After that, it releases all its oil and hardens, chemically bonding with the paper fibers.
The bacon muffin didn’t fare as badly, but it did manage to attach itself to the paper towel at a couple of points.
Still, a good meal to be had.
April 15th, 2008 - Belly Flops
So as it turns out, Jelly Belly sells their mutant jelly beans under the name “Belly Flops.” You pretty much get a random selection, though. To be honest, some of them are quite nasty, I can’t help but wonder if I’m getting the undercooked vomit flavor or the Siamese booger twins. You have to be careful about which ones you eat and which ones you bin.
This handful contained a variety of weird flavors. The problem is you can’t really eat them together, as some of them don’t go well with each other (buttered popcorn and licorice do not a good combination make). After this bag is gone, I’m not going to avoid the variety bags for a while.
April 15th, 2008 - Cold Chicken Tortellini
Yup, cold. It’s even good cold!
It may not look so creamy, and it may look a little lumpy.. but with a pinch of salt, all is well.
April 14th, 2008 - Chicken Tortellini in White Sauce
I not only admire and crave chicken tortellini, but I sometimes do tortellini dances with the hopes the gods will rain down from above generous helpings of wonderous tortellini.
Doesn’t that look smashing?
April 14th, 2008 - Sour Gummi Worms
I loves me some sour gummi worms. I stopped by Winco today and picked me up a little sum sum.
One can only imagine this is what you get when god runs around aniquing defenseless worms while frying on acid.
April 13th, 2008 - Deciding What to Eat
I’m hungry.. let’s see what there is, shall we?
Do I want the rest of the beef stew? Hmm, nah.
Looking in the cupboard, I spy a box of powdery goodness.
It’s All Natural! 100% Pure & Simple, period.
It’s like a heavenly cloud of premium potato.
One tiny little packet contains 8 servings! Oh boy! I’m really looking forward to this.
Look at all those instructions! Plus, I’d have to make gravy on top of it. Meh. Let’s look for something simpler.
Chef to the rescue. There’s no denying the Chef and his timeless cuisines. Canned spaghetti really does hit the spot on those warm winter days.
They advertise quality right on the label!
Straight out of the can, it’s mouth watering. I wish I could eat it plain, but a little dose of radiation really does being its game to a higher level. Into the microwave for 6:00 minutes we go.
Ahh, spaghetti, just like mom used to make.
April 13th, 2008 - More Beef Stew
Getting back to the basics, and back to what’s left in the fridge, I’m going to have to go with some beef stew.
Mmmm.. doesn’t that look good? Let’s have a closer look.
On second thought, let’s not. No matter how tasty something is, it seldom ever looks good close up.
After a dash of salt, we’re ready to roll.
April 12th, 2008 - Double Jack: So Long
This is it, no more Jack in the Box for a while.
Sliced like a pizza, I’d have it no other way.
April 12th, 2008 - Clock skew
So I was working on my Linux box (ArchLinux x86_64) and I notice it’s 5:15 pm which struck me as odd because I could have sworn it was later. It turned out that my NTP server was no longer functioning and it wasn’t synchronizing the clock on a regular basis. How can a modern computer manage to accumulate 30 minutes of clock skew since it was last synchronized (this morning), I wondered.
As it turns out, the timer the kernel was using (TSC) wasn’t playing nice with multiple cores and ended up falling behind around 1.85 seconds every minute. Adding “notsc” to the kernel parameters in /boot/grub/menu.lst, causing the kernel to use another timer (HPET in my case), fixed the problem.
April 12th, 2008 - Sad Day
I’ve been doing this for nearly two weeks, and the inevitable happened. I forgot to take a picture.
This is an artist’s recreation of the plate in question. There were in fact egg sandwiches. One consisted of the fried variety and the other, scrambled.
April 11th, 2008 - Double Jack: Benji’s Revenge
I visited Jack in the Box for, hopefully, the last time in a while. I’m going to take a break from Jack foods for a while. I got a couple of Double Jacks for the road.
This one is for now…
This one goes in the fridge.
But that’s it, no more of these for a while.
April 11th, 2008 - Meatloaf Burgers
There wasn’t much meatloaf left, so I decided to slice it up thin, drop it into a bun, and smother it with cheese.
The result.. microwaved cheese sandwiches with a hint of loaf.
If that doesn’t make your mouth water, nothing will.
April 11th, 2008 - Skittles Bubble Gum
I’m not sure if candy qualifies to be entered, but this one was weird to me, so I thought I’d share.
Here’s the thing about Skittles, they don’t actually taste like anything other than.. well, Skittles. I’m sure they use some kind of “fruit” “flavor” in their secret formula, but what it amounts to is that the green Skittles taste like Green Skittles(TM) and the red Skittles taste like Red Skittles(TM). It is an invariable law of nature, skittles always taste like Skittles.
This gum has taught me a valuable lesson about Skittles. The secret of the rainbow taste is in the shell. Once that’s dissolved and gone away, the rest is pretty pointless, and to be honest, at least the candy version has enough sense to go away. This candy is so bad, the gum has completely lost its taste before it’s even gummified. Once the shell is gone, it’s like chewing on a wax tube filled with juice.
Shamelessly stolen from intrawebs:
Remember these?
April 10th, 2008 - Costco Egg Co-Muffin
Was that a play on McMuffin or Math Co-Processor? Meh.
Doesn’t that look yummy? I added some cheese, for good measure. There’s sausage under the cheese and egg, by the way.
Okay, maybe I overdid the cheese, just a tad. This is the bacon version of the breakfast sandwich. That still doesn’t explain why I’m eating it for dinner, does it?
April 10th, 2008 - Double Jack: Cold Styles
After not eating all day, I dug into the fridge and found the Double Jack I stashed away. Wunderbar!
These things really aren’t that bad when they’re fresh from the fridge.
April 9th, 2008 - Beef Stew
I likes me some meats and taters. No carrots for me, thanks.
Mmmmm.
April 9th, 2008 - Oh, Jack
Lunch time!
I made one of these for later.
April 8th, 2008 - Meatloaf
I’ve always liked meatloaf. It’s like hamburger, but it’s not. It’s what hamburger would have been if it’d been invented by an insane alchemist. There are few others foods that can actually be improved by adding some paper products to the mix (see baozi).
It’s like heavenly slices of meat toast.
April 8th, 2008 - Cheeseburger Dogs
I’m at a Pilots and I’m looking for some road food, what do my eyes happen upon? 2-for-1 bun fillers!
Yeah.
I, uh.. yeah.
Once you get past the diseased stool appearance, you can begin to look at their inner beauty. Cheeseburgers in hot dog form! Well, not real cheeseburgers, it’s more along the lines of ground chuck thrown in a grinder (again) with some stale cheddar, pressed into logs, flash fried for 45 seconds, frozen, then sold to a convenience stores. These convenience stores then take the frozen product and put them on those magical rollers under the hot lamp in order to defrost them. After 3 or 4 days under the lamp 24/7, they either bin the leftovers or do some sort of 2-for-1 sale.
They really weren’t as bad as they look, really. Honest.
April 8th, 2008 - The Albertsons Sammich III: Sammich vs. Cellophane
Eating from the package things come in isn’t always the best idea, especially when it comes wrapped entirely in cellophane.
So I had this slice of heaven in my clutches, but then the sandwich fell below plastic level. There are only two things you can do at this point: peel (don’t google image search the word “peel,” btw) back the wrapper to reveal more sammich like a normal human being, or fish out the sandwichy goodness like you’re Dave Coulier at a Halloween party, bobbing for an apple filled with delicious crack rocks.
Fare thee well, sandwich.
April 7th, 2008 - The Albertsons Sammich II: The Return
Midnight snack time.
Well, it’s a little more than a midnight snack, but who’s counting? Actually, we were watching Hell’s Kitchen and watching them prepare and bin a barrage of food, I got hungry. Look at those portions! My, my.
April 7th, 2008 - Smartfood Popcorn
You know, I never thought I’d like pre-popped, packaged popcorn. It seems a bit cheap to pre-pop popcorn and sell it in packages, as the popping process makes it expand to several times its original volume, thus giving you the ability to sell relatively small amounts of corn for premium prices. Unirregardless, it was rather tasty.
If this doesn’t make me smart, I don’t know what will - after all, it has the word smart right on the friggin’ box!
It really doesn’t look all the impressive. It tastes good, however, and it does hold up with it’s cheese guarantee.. but still, I don’t agree with this popcorn on a moral level. Popcorn should not be pre-popped.
April 7th, 2008 - The Albertsons Sammich
I had a craving for the sandwich from Albertsons, but it turns out they’re pretty much sold out by midnight. A day later, they were in stock again, and it was not disappointing.
Now that’s what I call a sammich. I’m not entirely sure why, but the label claims this is a 28 oz sandwich. In reality, it’s much more massive than Safeway’s “32 oz” sandwich. So either Safeway is lying to me and pocketing the extra meats, or Albertsons is giving me the hookup, off the heezy.
Good god, that looks delish’. Even the crazy half-lettuce-half-parsley thing looks good.
Look at the helping of meat on that thing. Despite the appearance in the first picture, this monstrous thing isn’t entirely made up of turkey. There’s some roasted cattle in there, too.
Good times.
April 7th, 2008 - Chicken Strips
These were on sale, so I figured I’d give it a try.
Meh, the packaging makes them look better than they are. They claim to be MADE WITH WHITE MEAT, but all that means is they threw a little bit of that in the grinder with the rest of the slop.
Made with rib meat, definitely. Basically they’re typical rib meat-based nuggets pressed in strip form.
April 6th, 2008 - Landshire Smoke Ham & Cheese
The usual ham and cheese sammich.
Packaged.
It doesn’t quite end up as nice as the packaging suggests, but it’s nice.
April 6th, 2008 - Cold Chinese Food
Some leftovers.
A hodgepodge of what’s left.
April 5th, 2008 - More Chinese Food
And I’m hungry again. More chinese food.
It’s grrrreat.
April 5th, 2008 - Chinese Food
Chinese food, yum.
Something called Happy Family. Lots of random things thrown together.
Some sweet and sour chicken.. or maybe pork.
Potstickers. Not my favorite, but it’s good.
Plain ol’ white rice.
Sweet and sour pork.. or chicken. Chicken is the good one.
Some crab rangoons. They’re like deep fried tortillas stuffed with some kind of weird crab and sour cream filling.
Spring rolls. Part of the eggroll family.
I’m not really into the fortune cookies, but the soy sauce packets are good.
A nice plate of random stuffs.
A little more stuffs.
April 5th, 2008 - Turkey Sammich
More Wal-Mart food! This time a couple of small pieces of turkey sandwich. Mmmm, Wal-Mart turkey.
Luncheon meats never tasted so good.
Well, it has, but.. nevermind.
April 5th, 2008 - Chinese Chicken Vegetable Flavor
What’s more authentic than authentic chow mein? Ramen. Exactly. There’s nothing quite like ramen, smothered in some sort of strange peanut oil and liquid chow mein flavor sludge.
If only it actually looked like that. Notice the abundance of baby corn.
The baby corn is a lie. What you actually end up with is some sloppy ramen noodles, a small pack of freeze dried “veggies” (92% freeze dried celery), and a packet of 85% oil/15% artificial chow mein flavored sludge. All in all, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
April 5th, 2008 - Cold Pizza
Cold imitation Wal-Mart pizza at the mid of night..
It really wasn’t terribly bad, but it was no Dominos or Good Guys.
April 4th, 2008 - Landshire Double Cheeseburger
I love these things, they’re one of the best quick-fix snack foods on the planet.
Wal-mart really brings the goodness.
They put some sort of liquid smoke seasoning in these things to make them taste like they’re fresh off the laboratory grill. They always taste the same, which is quaint. Mmm.
April 4th, 2008 - Wal-mart 4-meat Pizza
When I think pizza, I think Wal-mart. Not quite, but it was available and I took it.
A slice-sized slice of pie, half-sliced into dual slices. In other words, two tiny ass slices of Wal-mart pizza. It had some sort of sausage on it, and I think pepperoni, but I couldn’t identify the other two meats. I tasted of brand new plastic.
I had some more, not because I liked it, but because I was intrigued by the weirdness of the taste. It actually doesn’t taste like pizza, which is the weird part of it all.
April 4th, 2008 - Pickle Pringles
And time for some pickle Pringles.
These Pringles were both pickly and extreme. How extreme? Ever taste a pickle? It was something like that, only it wasn’t a pickle, it was a potato. Well, it’s not really fully potato, it’s more of a deep fried potato sauce pureed with pickling solution and live brine. Either way, it was pickly. Went great with cheeseburger Pringles.
April 4th, 2008 - Cheeseburger Pringles
For a little pre-dinner snack, I’m going to try out some cheeseburger Pringles.
They really don’t taste that bad. It has a slight aftertaste of a McDonalds cheeseburger and fries.
April 4th, 2008 - Grilled Chicken and Beef and Cheese Piroshki
Breakfast today consists of a leftover piece of chicken and a beef and cheese piroshki. What a great combination.
Remarkably good chicken, though it wasn’t heated up.
Yet another great flavor of piroshki.
Crazy lump of dough with an unknown goodness inside.
Peering into the wonder that is the piroshki.
The closer I look, the less appetizing it looks.
The usual leavins, the grease stain.
A somewhat filling, greasy, and strangely compatible combination.
April 3rd, 2008 - Chicken and Rice
I’m not terribly hungry, so something simple is called for.
Grilled chicken and rice.
It was good, but not terribly filling.
April 3rd, 2008 - The Other Double Jack
Welp, time to wolf down the other Double Jack.
Unfortunately, this can’t be microwaved due to the mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomatoes. Regardless, it was teh gewd.
April 2nd, 2008 - Coffee
I’m debating whether or not I’ll be making entries on coffee. Either way, here it is.
It was delicious.
April 2nd, 2008 - The Double Jack
I rather like Jack in the Box, but I’m not too fond of how they really Jack up the prices for their premium burgers. My solution is to acquire a couple of their low-cost Jumbo Jacks, install the cheese add-on when I get home, then proceed to build a Double Jack. On this occasion, I made two, one for now and one for later.
Here we have our units.
By themselves, they look pretty pathetic. Certainly nowhere near as appetizing as the pictures.
A fully constructed Double Jack.
One for now and one for later, with a can of soda for reference.
And there we have it.
I’ve never understood why pictures like this bug people so much.
April 2nd, 2008 - Chicken, Rice and Cheese Piroshki
So I was at Grocery Outlet recently and picked up some piroshkis. They weren’t nearly as good as I thought they’d be.
Looks simple enough…
Maybe a little too simple.
Doesn’t that looks appealing?
April 1st, 2008 - Another Random Post
And another random post is made.