Or are Oreo cookies nowadays made with much gooier creme filling than they used to be, and is this not expressly because they wanted to make Oreos easier to twist open so you can lick the creme? I mean, it used to be that maybe you could twist open maybe one in two Oreos, and the other one would break when you tried it because the creme filling was just that stuck to the cookies. Now, they just pop open with no trouble at all.

I’m sure I’m not imagining this. Nabisco are up to something. I bet it has something to do with fluoridation.

Every year the same goddamned thing happens. It is late November. I have to go to the supermarket for some perfectly minor reason (this time around it was English muffins). I go to the supermarket, and what are they selling?

President’s Choice Candy Cane Chocolate Fudge Crackle Ice Cream.

So naturally I buy two tubs of it.

It is only available for the holiday season, and I am thankful for this because if it was available year-round I would weigh 400 pounds and have a bad case of approaching death-ness. PCCCCFCIC is quite possibly the most perfect and wonderful ice cream of all time – numerous sweet elements converging to form a delicious and perfect sweet-tasting whole that nevertheless does not overwhelm you with pure sweetness in the way that, say, a fair number of over-the-top cheesecakes can manage.

And I know it’s terrible for you. (I mean, the fudge crackle parts are actually made from freaking palm oil.) But every year, I buy it and eat it, an unstoppable hunger vortex as regards this ice cream. Every year I say “this is the holiday season where I do not have to diet and work out extra hard in January to overcome,” and every year the PCCCCFCIC makes me a horrible, horrible liar.

…now I want a bowl of it. FUCK.

So I was going through a couple of drink-recipe websites and, on a whim, started looking to see if there were any superhero-themed cocktails. And yes, there are. However, the results are disappointing.

For example, the most common recipe for a Batman is grenadine and orange juice. Which, while cute (a nonalcholic cocktail for Batman, very “ginger ale pretending to be champagne”) fails the obvious test of getting drunk. Also, let’s be honest, Batman needs TWO drinks.

The Bruce Wayne: Should be a playboyish, manly cocktail, a la those drinks they keep making up for Bond films.
The Batman: Should be dark in colour and hit you like a freight train.

There are numerous drinks for “Superman,” most of which are shots and a few of which play off the red/blue colour scheme. This seems wrong. A Superman should be a down-homey old-school sort of mixed drink, like a screwdriver or Irish Coffee – something your granddad would drink when he wanted something mixed rather than just a beer or a tumbler of whiskey. But with a single exotic ingredient.

After that there are a paucity of drink options. There is nothing worth a damn called a “Spider-Man,” for example. No good “Iron Man.” (“Pick five bottles from the bar at random by pointing with your eyes closed. Pour half an ounce from each into a glass. Drink. Order six more.”) No “Hulk.” The only “Wolverine” sounds disgusting (two shots of Bacardi Limon dumped into a pint of lager).

There’s one “Green Lantern,” playing off the color with melon liquor, but it seems insufficient somehow. The only “Captain America” seems wrong (Southern Comfort, amaretto, cranberry juice and rum?). A “Wonder Woman” is… well, what you’d expect (a bunch of fruit juices and fruit liquors, seemingly selected at random). A “Joker” has a distinct lack of purple or green.

The only recipe for a Constantine has Zima in it, for fuck’s sake.

Occasionally you find one obviously not comic-inspired that works. A “Fire and Ice,” for example, is quite apropos (half and half of cinnamon schnapps and peppermint liqueur). The “Blue Devil” (Blue Caracao, obviously, with gin and lemon) works too. A “Black Widow” both looks and tastes appropriate (float Blavod black vodka on top of cranberry juice).

Note that not every superhero name works as a cocktail name. A “Donna Troy” would just be a sad, sad joke. In fact pretty much every character who’s ever been a Titan would be a sad, sad joke. If the superhero has “man,” “woman,” “boy,” or “girl” in their name, they’d better be goddamned iconic or nobody will ever order that drink because they will sound like an idiot. (So no Frog-man, Beast Boy or Saturn Girl, for starters.) Cocktail names should be memorable.

But come on, there should be drinks for all of the following, as they would sound right being said in a bar:

Phantom Stranger (far and away number one on the “should be a drink” list)
Oracle
Cyclops
Doctor Strange
Black Bolt
Haunted Tank
Ghost Rider
Shining Knight
Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing

UPDATE: John, in comments, writes

the Dr. Strange should be just a dry martini (gin and not vodka, I think) with an unusual garnish (a la a Gibson).

This sounds almost exactly right to me, although there is an argument that the martini be a vodka one instead given that Strange, while urbane, is still American, and that’s always said “vodka” to me rather than “gin” (which has strong Brit connotations). Of course, taste should be the final definition, and if it is a vodka martini, the vodka should be really good vodka – I’d go with Chopin, but at a minimum Ketel One or Grey Goose, no Absolut or Stoli in a Dr. Strange, thank you very much.

As for the garnish? I’m going to say a thick slice of apple, which only gets used in appletinis (ugh). But I think it can complement a martini very nicely when there’s no sweet liqueur involved – a touch of sweetness and tartness to counterbalance the toughness and elegance of the martini is very Stephen Strange.

Also, calling vodka and Red Bull a “Deadpool” is brilliant. Keep it coming, folks.

UPDATE TWO: From email:

A Phantom Stranger needs to be a drink where one type of alcohol “ghosts” into the second – you know, seems to hang suspended within the first. But I don’t know how to do that.

Well, there’s two ways that I can think of to do that. The first way is to do the opposite of layering – for a layered shot or drink, you pour the heaviest component first, then the next heaviest, and so on. This prevents mixing. However, if you pour the lighter alcohol first and then pour in the heavier booze, it will plunge into the first. Ideally you want a second liquor only slightly heavier than your first, and a colored liquor being poured into a clear one.

The second way is to make a cloudy drink by taking something you don’t traditionally shake (such as a cream liqueur like Bailey’s or Amarula), making your recipe and shaking it. The cream liqueur will dissipate. However, this can just look gross rather than cool if you mix it wrong.

Both tricks require a reasonably experienced bartender, though. I can do the first, but not the second, so I am leaning towards the first method. Off to look at layering charts!

UPDATE THREE:

(suggested in email, and I’m pretty sure it works)

Phantom Stranger: Chilled cocktail glass. Pour 1 oz white Curacao into glass. Pour 1/2 oz white creme de cacao into the white Curacao, making sure not to smooth out the pour by bouncing it off the side of the glass or a demitasse spoon. Garnish with either an orange slice or a sliver of shaved chocolate. Serve immediately.

I do this meme mostly because I want to give a shout out to Andrew Wheeler’s excellent foodie blog, Very Good Taste. Wheeler and his cowriters are funny and intelligent and frequently make me hungry, so if you like food – and who doesn’t like food, other than anorexics – give it a looksee.

Anyhow: the VGT Omnivore’s Challenge.

continue reading "Rare Appearance Of Meme"

New York law requiring restaurants to publish calorie counts of all items come into effect – New Yorkers shocked by how many calories in their favorite foods.

On the rare occasions I eat at McDonald’s, I almost always get the same thing: two regular hamburgers and a medium fries.

It’s what I like at McDonald’s. The bigger hamburgers, I have discovered, after much consumption thereof and time spent actually tasting the food, are nasty and I do not like them. And large is just too much fries. (Note, of course, that I refer to Canadian portions, which are all about a size down when compared to American portions. The last time I was in an American McDonald’s, I ordered a medium Diet Coke and got this frigging vat of pop.)

On very rare occasions, when it is available, I will indulge in a McRib. However, since Loblaws introduced the President’s Choice BBQ Riblet (cheaper and better), these occasions have become even rarer.

But I have one fatal weakness when it comes to McDonald’s: whenever they introduce a new large sandwich, I feel compelled to try it. I am not sure why this is, since inevitably the same thing happens: the sandwich is terrible and leaves me feeling nauseated and gross for hours afterwards. The latest culprit is the Southwestern Chicken Sandwich, which was like a bag of ass sandwiched between two slickly slippery buns with hot sauce on top.

(Traditionally at this point a hippie shows up and tells you something about commercialism.)

Behold: a burger made from ground bacon.

Via Junkyard Clubhouse, I discovered this site filled with image captures from a 1979 church-group cookbook, and after having looked through the (really disgusting) recipes, I have a question.

A lot of the recipes seem to combine Jell-O and pineapple. But I thought pineapple was, like, the thing you couldn’t combine with Jell-O? Because of some acid or chemical or something in the pineapple that prevents gelatin from setting?

Am I wrong about this? Is this just erroneous conventional folk wisdom? Please inform me, people! This is rocking my world!

And I know they will want to know how to make salad bowls out of bacon.

Deep-fried Mars bars are A) very sweet and B) very VERY sticky.

It was an experience, and not a bad one either, but definitely not one I think I’ll repeat any time soon. I think there’s still some of it in the back of my mouth a day later after brushing my teeth twice. Seriously, it’s like the dessert equivalent of eating a bucket of tar.

EDIT TO ADD: Since people keep asking: the Duke of Gloucester, on Yonge south of Bloor.

McDonald’s foods as pizza toppings.

The horrific thing is that, even though I do valiantly try and usually manage to eat in a healthy manner, I found myself wondering what this would be like with A&W or Wendy’s.

This week, we feature refreshing kiwi juice. Kiwifruit (never just “kiwi”, as that is either a flightless bird or a New Zealander or both) are extremely rich in vitamin C, as well as having a great deal of vitamin A and E, a decent amount of potassium (nearly as much as a banana, by weight), and lots of flavinoid antioxidants. However, were you aware that the kiwifruit is native to China?

Indeed it is. The kiwifruit is a product of the pernicious Chinese subcontinent, and as such is one of the great unspoken advancers of Communism upon the world stage. Is it not appropriate that such a modest, proletarian-appearing fruit should be so dedicated to the overflow of the corporate bosses whose unspoken, silent control strangles the will of humanity like the puppetmaster’s strings wrapped around the neck of his marionette?

Important moments in recent kiwifruit history include:

– 1917. Five-year-old Harold “Kim” Philby drinks his first glass of kiwi juice.

– 1940. Ethel Rosenberg, looking for a delicious and healthy dessert for herself and her husband, purchases a small container of kiwi juice to serve alongside a small pineapple upside-down cake. The Rosenbergs greatly enjoy the juice, and fatefully decide to purchase more.

– 1959. The Great Leap Forward begins to fail dramatically, not least because of Lysenkoist planting techniques wherein plants were placed closer together than was healthy in the name of “solidarity.” The sole plant to flourish (although this was later covered up) – the kiwifruit. Indeed, the proliferation of kiwifruit would prove invaluable to Mao when advancing the Cultural Revolution a decade later, as he plied exhausted Chinese nationals with kiwi juice to whip them into socialistic fervour.

– 1968. Chinese spies plant fields of kiwifruit in North Vietnam and Cambodia. In response, Richard Nixon orders secret bombing runs against Cambodia in the hopes of destroying the Red-creating kiwi fields, to no avail. The United States abandons Vietnam within seven years, not least because of the proliferation of North Vietnamese juice bars.

– 1993. Boris Yeltsin, offered a tall glass of kiwi juice, spikes it with vodka at a ratio of 2 parts vodka to 1 part kiwi juice. The Red ideals of the kiwifruit are destroyed by the clear potato-based alcohol favored by Russian politicians and drunkards and drunkard politicians, and the final fall of the Soviet Socialist Republics begins.

In conclusion: Savor the delicious, healthy sweetness of kiwi juice at your own ideological peril.

This week, we feature delicious papaya juice. Papaya juice is, like most sweet juices, considered to be an aphrodisiac in certain parts of the world. It’s also excellent for tenderizing meat as a marinade, and of course papaya juice is a source of not only vitamin C and E but also beta-carotene. However, the most noteworthy aspect of papaya juice is its usefulness in dispatching of one’s enemy.

Consider your enemy. Regardless of whatever form your enemy might take – sneering mastermind, plucky young rebel, devious femme fatale, superintelligent woolly mammoth, what have you – papaya juice offers one thousand and one ways to end their threat.

Consider:

– You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. Papaya juice’s sweetness easily masks the flavour of the strychnine you have cunningly mixed into the juice.

– You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. “Aha,” they say, “I know about that whole strychnine trick.” They sweep the glass aside dramatically to make his point, sending it scattering across the table to break on the floor. While their hand is relatively distant from their person, pull out your gun and shoot them.

– You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. The sweetness overcomes them and they go from being a dangerous enemy to a fawning supplicant.

– You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. Then, the hidden assassin you have hired, who was cruelly beaten by papaya farmers as a youth, has a flashback to a particularly severe beating, goes mad with rage, and attacks the hated papaya juice drinker.

– You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. Then you point out that their entire species is extinct. The delicious drink combined with the crippling knowledge of their own mortality drives them into suicidal depression and they jump off a cliff. (WARNING: Only works on superintelligent woolly mammoths. Do not attempt this method on superintelligent dinosaurs, whose towering egotism leaves them typically immune to this tactic.)

– You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. Then they offer you a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. This is known as a “papaya standoff,” and to win here you must, through sheer willpower, make sure that your opponent drinks their papaya juice first.

– You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice, being sure to serve it alongside a piece of ripe papaya. The inherent vaginal imagery requires them to seek therapy. While not a total victory, this method is certainly useful as a delaying tactic.

There are as many ways to dispatch your enemy with papaya juice as there are stars under the sky. Its sweet power is limited only by your imagination.