The Super Bowl menu

We do it up right at our house. Yesterday's menu for the Super Bowl party we hosted (everything was homemade!):

- buffalo wings with homemade bleu cheese dipping sauce
- honey mustard wings
- grilled turkey sliders with homemade buns
- macaroni and cheese
- vegetarian chili
- chips with homemade guacamole
- bacon-wrapped roasted figs
- barbecued jerk shrimp
- baked french fried and sweet potato fries
- Steelers-themed (yellow and black) almond cookies

Why we're fat

I can't say I'm a regular reader of "divine caroline: Life in your words" (mmm, Lifetime-y!), but I did find this nifty article illustrating just why our collective asses are so collectively fat. In a nutshell (or perhaps a Pringles can): portion sizes.


OK. I just noticed this article on that same site. Consider me intrigued... and horrified.

Photoshopping gone horribly wrong

Check out this little Photoshop fuck-up, courtesy of The Problem With Caring, a nifty little blog.

Carl's Jr. and Hardee's wants to kill you

I know we all love a little fast food once in a while. But whatever you do, don't ever fuck with the Carl's Jr. Double Six Dollar Burger. Check out this awesome sortable nutritional guide to fast food. Here's why the Double Six Dollar Burger got such a bad score:

Are you ready for this one? The Double Six Dollar Burger from Carl's Jr. contains an insane 1520 calories. That's not a typo. One sandwich contains more calories than some smaller females need... PER DAY. The 111 grams of fat isn't a typo either. That's more fat in one sandwich than most average sized men need per day. Carl's Jr. unfortunately does not provide the trans fat content of their foods, as I for one would have loved to have seen that number as well. Too bad.

America! Love it or leave it!

Before I die...

Before I die, I'd like to enjoy the following experiences:
- watch the following soccer matches: Boca Plate v. River Plate, Flamengo v. Fluminense, Lazio v. Roma and Rangers v. Celtic and most of all, Real Madrid v. Barcelona
- take train trips though the Canadian Rockies and Switzerland
- attend the Super Bowl (for the football, but mainly for the parties)
- visit Rio de Janeiro
- visit Hong Kong during the Chinese New Year
- fly in space
- be eating waffles at 3 a.m. at Waffle House after a night of heavy drinking and witness an argument between two Waffle House employees that results in one of them getting all stabby.

Keeping up with the NY Times readers

I routinely get enjoyment out of looking at which stories are listed on the "Most Read" index on the NY Times homepage. The relative interest in the various stories reveals a lot about the kind of people who read The Times: they come off looking like anxiety-riddled, over-protective, upper-middle-class parents. Top concerns include ANYTHING to do with college admissions or pre-school admissions, any trend story involving parenting, any trend story involving money and any trend story involving Expensive Things Other Upper Middle Class People Like Me Might Be Buying.

Today the Times' top read was a story about how children's picky eating habits might be inherited from their parents. The story angle itself wasn't toooooo obnoxious, but you have to love this little paragraph:

Over in New Jersey, the Bakers changed their November family vacation to accommodate Sasha, an 11-year-old so averse to fruits and vegetables that the smell of orange juice once made him faint. Instead of flying to Prague, Sasha’s parents decided to go to Barcelona, where they hope the food will be more to his liking.

So poor little Sasha had to spend his summer traipsing around Catalonia instead of Bohemia? For shame! What kind of maniacal, overbearing parents reschedule their entire summer trip because the spoiled brat doesn't like a cup of o.j.?

Taco me

Some people might find this crazy, but some of us have a strange addiction to tracking down the best tacos in town. Now that I'm in Atlanta, home to about a million more Mexican immigrants than Rhode Island, I plan to explore as many taquerias as possible.

That's also the mission behind the ingenious blog called The Burrito Bracket. A Chicago blogger is running a tournament of Mexican food (burritos, as well as tacos and tortas).

I particulary enjoyed his (or her) take on just what it is that makes a truly great taco: corn tortillas (NEVER flour!), quality meat and a mixture of ciltantro and onions (never tomatoes, lettuce, etc.). Amen.

Eating on $21 a week

Luckily this isn't the latest Rachel Ray show. It's actually a sort of "experiment" by two members of congress to spend only $21 per week on food. That's the amount the typical food stamp recipient has. And well, you can see from their blog that stretching $21 is NOT easy. Yikes.

Have another Triscuit

Over at a food blog called Ruhlman.com, Anthony Bourdain gives his opinion on the current state of the Food Network. (By the way, I really, really hate it when people chuckle and say "tell us what you really think" after someone gives their frank opinion. This phrase really bugs me.) Anyway, he mainly tears into the suits at the food channel for what he calls a "cynical" attempt to dumb down the programming. Bourdain is especially funny when he takes a few jabs at Rachael Ray (yes, I know, an easy target):

Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could--if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….”

Don't Eat Anything Your Great-Great-Grandmother Wouldn't Recognize as Food

Every once in a while a news article comes along that so thoroughly recasts the world around us that we're essentially not the same people once we've read it. It's certainly not an everyday occurrence, but most every serious reader has experienced this feeling at some point or another (for me, it's usually a New Yorker article).
Anyway, this week's New York Times magazine has a mind-blowing essay by Michael Pollan, the author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." The essay, "Unhappy Meals," argues that the Western diet has followed a disastrous philosophy of "nutritionism," that food science has been so thoroughly co-opted by industrial food producers that we can no longer make the distinction between actual food and food-like substances.
The essay's scope is wide and expansive, but he does offer a quick nine-point plan for reclaiming the traditional (and non-processed) diet that allowed human civilizations to thrive. My favorite bullet point is his first piece of advice:

1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.