What I eat, apparently

Let’s be honest here. There are few problems in life that a nicely charred wiener wouldn’t fix. Especially a big fat wiener. And, it being July 5th, it’s about one day after the ideal time for such wieners.

And boy, are they some fat wieners!

I must confess, that as much of a cheap bastard as I am, I have ethical difficulties with being cheap when it comes to hot dogs and similar wieners. Well, ‘cheaper’, as the case may be. Generally, the cheapest you can go is a 10 pack of short little wieners. These will not only inevitably leave an extra 2+ inches at the end of your bun that is bun-only, but you’ll have 2 wieners left over after all the buns are gone. Were I really thrifty, I could hack those last 2 dogs into fourths, and place each piece in that 2 inch space at the end of the other 2 hot dogs on buns. But, that whole ‘effort and foresight’ thing just kind of eludes me sometimes. Also, there’s the fact that purchasing these measly wieners in 10 packs will only encourage the manufacturers to make more. This, the cheapest I go is the ‘bun length’ types in the 8 pack, and if I’m feeling saucy, I’ll straight up go for the bratwursts or Italian sausage.

And, to counterbalance the wiener situation, an often appropriate accompaniment is said to be the raw veggie tray:

(Ooh, it’s an action shot! It’s like you can feel that green thing getting dipped!)

I actually struggle with the concept of veggie tray as ‘appropriate accompaniment’. Mind you, it beats potato salad any day, but nonetheless, the majority of vegetables on such things are unacceptable. Raw broccoli? Raw carrots? Raw cauliflower?! I’ll happily down all the cherry tomatoes, mind you, and also nibble a bit on the celery and whatever peppers might be found. But there’s some things that are just not meant to be consumed raw. Or at all. I mean, cauliflower? Really.

And of course, an excellent counterpart to the veggie tray (and, by extension, an artery-clogging partner in crime with the hot dogs) is the massive pile of brownies. At the point of this photograph, they had diminished to the minor pile, which is why I defaulted to Über Closeup Time to achieve the proper effect.

These were mildly experimental, in that, while in the process of making said brownies, I was overtaken by a fit of hysterics and immediately threw in 10 caramel pieces. It worked out quite well, I think, assuming we define ‘quite well’ as ‘there were several times when one would bite into a brownie and find their jaws stuck together, but in a good way’. But then again, if there are brownies involved, is the concept of ‘bad way’ even possible?

It’s kinda rare for me to get decent closeup shots. Generally, I think my camera is bitter towards me. See, I used to have a different digital camera before my current one. I really liked it, I even hand-made it a camera case and everything. Then someone broke into my apartment and stole it (among other things). I mourned the loss of that camera greatly. That camera and I, we had forged a special relationship together, and to have it ripped so cruelly from me was not something I could readily handle.

Anyhow, after an appropriate mourning period, I decided it was time to get a new camera. I even upgraded to a better model. However, I think this camera has always known that I never completely got over my feelings towards the first camera. It’s a shame in a way, too, as this camera is definitely better (by some people’s standards of ‘better’ at least). I even bought it a shiny case and everything, and I give it as much affection as a person like me can possibly give a camera! Still, it serves me well, and has it’s bad days like any other piece of machinery. I need to give credit where it’s deserved.

In any case, here’s some cheesy pasta with basil:

I always attempt to make homemade pasta with cheese to combat the general unhealthiness of box pasta with cheese, but it tends to end up being greasier. This is due to me being all inspired to dump in as many cheeses as possible, and inevitably several of them are not inclined to melt very easily. Meaning that, inevitably, I’ll think adding butter and/or olive oil is a great idea. All of which still leads to delicious, but definitely not to healthy. Albeit, if you want to eat pasta and cheese, it’s probably best to chuck the whole ‘healthy’ thing pretty early on, anyhow.

The only thing better then chocolate is chocolate with chocolate. The only thing better then chocolate with chocolate is chocolate with chocolate and chocolate. The only thing better then chocolate with chocolate and chocolate is — Wait. This has the grand potential of becoming mindnumbing and repetitive. Or, as I prefer to say, repetetetitititive. It’s a word much more expressive of it’s real meaning. Kind of like how monotony should be pronounced with the same emphasis on each syllable.

So, if we assume that, instead of logic and numbers, the world was actually comprised of stomachs and chocolate, then this would totally be functional:

$chocolate = chocolate; //This is totally a number. The chocolate number!
$moarchocolate = $chocolate;

for ($i = 1; $i <= stomachBloat(); $i++){
	$moarchocolate++;
	print 'The only thing better then ' . $chocolate . ' is '
. $moarchocolate . '.';
	$chocolate++;
}

This is the sort of bad php that most people have a hard time stomaching, but I find it quite appetizing! And to those whose brains have yet to fall out, I give thee this:

This is about 4 iterations or so into that aforementioned chocolate loop. Chocolate pie crust, plus chocolate pudding, plus chocolate whipped cream, plus chocolate ice cream (containing chocolate brownie chunks), topped with chocolate sauce. Thank Drew for this baby. Quite delightful, indeed!

Ever had daifuku? It’s magical. Little balls of dough gently cradling delightful globs of sweet bean paste. So I was inspired about a year or so and purchased a bag of red azuki beans (sweet beans of the Japanese dessertey variety), with stern intentions of making daifuku for myself.

A year later, I finally get around to doing something that was vaguely similar to my plan.

So, as I mentioned a little while back, I have a large bag of sweet rice. This, as also mentioned a little while back, is because the rice sitting right beside the actual sushi rice at the store would be good enough for sushi, since the sushi rice surely must have a good influence on it, right? I mean, why get sushi rice for sushi, that wouldn’t make any sense at all! Point being, I have a gigantic bag of sweet rice that I have been attempting to find uses for.

Thus, comes the Ogahi. It’s like a piece of daifuku flipped itself inside out, and then get all lumpy in the rice part (err, since daifuku uses rice flour rather then straight up rice).

So I dumped this bag of azuki beans in a pot with some water, and let them sit there for approximately 7836172 hours. Then boiled them for a little less then that, dumped some sugar in, squashed it up with a cup as for some godawful reason I am completely lacking in a potato masher, and the end product was this delightful pile of squish:

Then came the rice. Then came the getting my fingers all covered in gooey substances for the sake of deliciousness. Look, they’re facing off for a mighty battle!

Soon enough, all the rice balls had converted over to the Dark side:

By the way, these should in theory have been completely inappropriate! You know why? Ohagi is traditionally made for the spring and fall equinox. I’m about 3 months off here. Ah well, I got close to an equinox, right?

Anyhow, their ultimate destination was to be served at a baby shower where probably at least 1/2 of the people there thought they were either chocolate or meatballs. Definitely a big surprise to bite into one of them thinking that! Anyhow, they went over well enough with those who appreciate such Japanese tasties, and I got to take home the rest, which is also a bonus.

A final peaceful scene of restful Ogahi:

Hobbits and flowers and bean paste, oh my!

So there was this discussion about brownies going on, after having just baked a delightful batch of not quite chocolatey enough brownies. See, undercooked brownies are always superior to any other sort of brownies, as it is the only real way to guarantee that the brownies will be appropriately squishy. It’s not that no-gooey brownies are necessarily bad, you see, it’s simply a fact that gooey brownies are so overwhelmingly delicious that it’s practically a crime to purposely create non-gooey brownies.

But anyhow. If given a choice between ‘underdone’ and ‘overdone’, there’s a range of food that fall into each category in terms of maximum deliciousness:

Underdone
-Cookies (for similar reasons as brownies)
-Steak (not raw, mind you, but a little blood is quite endearing)
-Tuna (mm..seared tuna)
-Many types of seafood that are delicious raw, in fact

Overdone
-Marshmallows
-Hot Dogs (specifically campfire hot dogs, this also applies to the marshmallows. There’s just something about food charred in a fire that screams ‘delicious’)
-Pasta
-Rice
-Chicken (well, much of this is for health reasons, actually)

Hmm, can’t think of any more. Dang! Anyhow, these are the actual brownies that got made and eaten. Quite tasty!