Men, this is a must know when preparing / packing lunch for the kids. Spread a thin layer of peanut butter on BOTH pieces of bread before adding a layer of jelly. This will prevent soggy bread and unwanted jelly leakage.
And, make sure to get yourself a reusable sandwich container. If your using a Zip Lock bag everyday for lunch you should punch yourself in the head. Twice.
Unconditional love for cilantro may manifest itself in this way: http://fuckyeahcilantro.tumblr.com/
And there might be images like this:
Have you seen this show--Man v. Food on the Travel Channel? This glutton, Adam Richman, travels the country profiling any food that is gluttonous, big, spicy, etc--while simultaneously taking part in any "pig out" challenges he comes across.
He ate a 72 oz. steak in under and hour (complete with salad, bread and baked potato), he attempted (and failed) to eat "The Sasquatch" burger, a 7.5-pound cheeseburger, he ate the "hottest" curry in the country (Phaal curry) and something called "Noodles from Hell" or something like that, which features the Ghost Chile (that sounds spooky). There was also some 35-inch pizza challenge. (As you may be able to tell, there was a Sunday marathon on the TV yesterday). Overall it is a sight to see, entertaining like a cross between a travel show and a bloody car crash--you just can't look away.
But, by far the most over-the-top thing I have ever heard of that Mr. Richman has eaten so far is the Double Bypass Burger he profiled at The Vortex Bar & Grill in Atlanta, GA. This burger is a heart attack in a bag (hence the name). It has an 8-ounce hamburger topped w/ three fried eggs, four pieces of cheese, six pieces of bacon, and get this, instead of a bun it is sandwiched in between 2 grilled cheese sandwiches. It may just be the most impressive and disgusting thing I have ever seen. Did I mention that it seems to come with a heaping portion of chili cheese tater tots? I think I got fatter just watching the show.
I know. I'm not telling you anything new or groundbreaking. But here's something ridiculous that I just don't understand (besides Spanish).
What exactly is the appeal of this frenzy of meat, this poultry and stuffing explosion. I don't get it. Someone had to come up with the idea. Someone had to say," You know, turkey is tasty, and I love duck, and chicken is finger-lickin', but what we really need to do is debone a chicken and a duck, cram each of the body cavities with stuffing, and proceed to stuff the chicken inside the duck and then take that whole mess and stuff it inside the already oversized turkey.
It's just a case of good ingredients gone wrong. I mean look at the utter mess of it. It looks like an accident scene.
I first heard of Turducken when once upon a time I was watching the Detroit Lions on the Thanksgiving game (back when they still had the Thanksgiving game--and it wasn't taken from them for ineptitude).
John Madden kept going on and on about Turducken and how scrumptuous it was. Is there anything else you need to know--if John Madn endorses you, you are probably obvious, sloppy, and a virtual trainwreck in need of a good telestrating.
Here's Frank Caliendo (a better Madden than Madden) summing it up perfectly:
The battle lines have been drawn regarding this buttery, breaded part of the holiday feast. It is the fattyest part of the meal, and the favorite for many. When I lived in the South they called it dressing, whether it was "stuffed" or not. So are they the exact same thing? Is it Stuffing or Dressing? Are we arguing semantics? Taste buds? Cooking methods? Let's examine the definitions:
** stuffing
Noun
1. a mixture of ingredients with which poultry or meat is stuffed before cooking
2. the material used to fill and give shape to soft toys, pillows, furniture, etc.; padding
(American Heritage)
** dressing
Noun
1. a sauce for food: salad dressing
2. US & Canada - same as stuffing (sense 1)
3. a covering for a wound
4. manure or fertilizer spread on land
5. a gluey material used for stiffening paper, textiles, etc.
(Collins Essential)
I know the definitions I found (one from American Heritage and the other from Collins Essential English Dictionary) state that the terminology is interchangeable, I think that couldn't be further from the truth. they are not the same thing at all. Now one may argue, "but what if they have the same ingredients?"--doesn't matter. Is there a difference between french fries and mashed potatoes? same ingeredients and yet McDonalds doesn't serve mashed potatoes with the super-sized #1 (maybe they should, come to think of it).
The cooking methods differ, thus changing the compositional make-up. Dressing is crisper, it has a crust, as it is baked in a casserole dish; stuffing is more moist, as it is cooked in the carcas of an animal--it is "stuffed" into the cavity. Still think it's a useless matter semantics? Ask your neighborhood vegitarian whether thay eat stuffing or dressing on Thanksgiving--I bet they'd like a clarification of the cooking methods.
Forget geography, what it ultimately comes down to is the vessel--if you choose CorningWare it's dressing; if you choose Body Cavity it's stuffing; and if you can get your kids to eat it, don't bogart the tips.
All dads need to know turkey parts. The photo below should help you answer the inevitable, "Dad, what's the red thing hanging from the turkey's neck?"
for Christmas lists. Actually, for Scarlett the season begins on December 26th. All year we are compiling her list of shit she wants. There's so much I can't keep up. And of course as Halloween rolls around the catalogs and commercials are ramped up to the max.
Scarlett's latest campaign is for the Easy Bake Oven.
Not only will she tell us she wants something, she will make her argument for its practicality/usage strategies. With the EBO its a matter of convenience. The pitch went like this.
Scarlett said, "I want that, Dad. Will you get it for me?"
"Put it on your list," I replied.
"I could put it in my bedroom," she said. "I could make cupcakes anytime I wanted."
"Umm," I began.
"Don't worry, I would never make them after my bedtime."
Now that's a relief.
I just don't know if the idea of an Easy Bake Oven in your bedroom is gluttonous or absurd or both. Probably both. Might as well buy her a FryDaddy to set up next to it--she could turn frozen burritos into chimichangas. After all, any thing worth eating is worth eating fried.
A shout out to the little woman for staying up/out way late. Over seven months pregnant and still tolerant. Just one more and we'll go... Promise...
I will shamelessly plug random products. I am not above it by any means. I mean, if I am going to let loose about products I think are useless (see: Swiffer, five-bladed $15 razors, Orange Juice with added Omega 3s, the McCain/Palin ticket) then I might as well tell you about the stuff I think these shills are coming up with that is actually worth a buck or two.
One of the my favorite things going right now is V8 Fusion, the fruit juice with like 10-million servings of veggies stowed away in it.
If your kids are like mine (or if you are), then they drink juice by the truckload. And if your kids are like my daughter, then you have an ever-shrinking list of foods that are acceptable to the tastebuds, next to none of which fall into food groups that are NOT the Congealed Group, the Fried Group, or the Choco-tastic.
But this juice rocks. Plain and simple.
It tastes good (as opposed to Juicy Juice’s Harvest Surprise fruit/veggie cocktail, in which the surprise must be sawdust), it comes in cool eye-catching packaging, there are a bunch of flavors (5 total: Peach Mango, Tropical Orange, Strawberry Banana, Blueberry Pomegranate, and Mixed Berry Acai or something like that), and most importantly my kids drink the shit out of it.
