Eating

There I was scrolling down the endless list of things that make me happy on the This Isn't Happiness site when this amazingly instructive series of photos hit me like a ton of bricks.  I've been doing it wrong my whole life.  I could have been enjoying frosting with every bite of my cupcake.  Now I just need to convince someone to bake me cupcakes.

Update: This is certainly weird but this post somehow showed up as posted on 9/1/12 instead of as a draft to be published once I finished pulling together a few more of food related notes from around the innerwebs on the last week of September which is when I found the link above.  I'm sure it wasn't operator error.  In any event, here is a little more food related goodness I found online.

http://www.candywrapperarchive.com - used candy bar wrappers turn from trash to items of historic value if you give them 70 years.  I enjoyed looking at a Butterfinger bar wrapper from the 1930s that advertises it as costing only one penny.

Continuing the food theme, here is another from This Isn't Happiness that caught my eye.

Basket weave the bacon as buzz feed suggests in your BLT like this:

It looks like you have to bake your bacon

to make this one work

Playing with Concrete

Concrete You Eat Off Of

At first glance, I really like the look of these concrete dinnerware pieces from Ivanka Concrete Works.

The food on them, not so much

I imagine that once they have developed too many oil spots from your cooking,

you can use them as stepping stones outside

What concerns me about these is the possibility of what they might do to my teeth.  I remember going on a field trip as part of my public school education in Southern California.  During the trip, I learned about Native American people who would process the staple of their diet by grinding acorns against large rocks in the American Southwest.  These people were effectively using a mortar and pestle system in which one large rock would eventually become pock marked with dozens of holes that served as pestles.  These large rocks can still be seen sprinkled all over the landscape in California.  What stuck with me about this was the revelation that the small bits of stone ground off from the rocks during the grinding process would, over many years, wear down the teeth of the Native American people of the Southwest to nubs.  I worry that the same process of slowly grinding down my teeth might occur when I scrape a metal spoon against these concrete bowls, use a steak knife to cut through a T-bone and inevitably score the concrete plate beneath, etc.

Is that guacamole with a sliver of sour cream in it?

Ohh, I wanna put a chip in that!

While I worry slightly about what eating regularly from these dishes might do to my teeth, we all have to eat and drink from something.  I'm sure I've ingested my share of minute amounts of plastic, porcelain, wood, metal and other materials transferred to my mouth from the dishes I've eaten from and the cups I've drank from during my years on this earth.  But as long as I'm not drinking water delivered to me in pipes made of lead (I'm looking at you Ancient Rome) I probably won't wind up as mad as Carroll's Hatter.

How is a raven like a writing desk?

Also, I like the looks of these concrete bowls from Port Living Co., which come with cork bottoms and an air tight canister lid:

Finally a Place for Your Pepper Collection

To my eyes it appears that the manufacturer has really mastered the art of pouring and setting concrete because these look smooth and I don't think you can get concrete much smaller without adding a support structure like wire mesh inside.

What I don't like is the price on these containers.  The $75 they want to charge for these could buy me a lot of air tight plastic food containers.

TL:DR: You can check out some kitchen things made out of concrete. 

Food and Drink in 2012

It would be good to eat a little bit better in 2012.

Homegrown Basil

As those of you who have been following this blog for awhile know, in the later part of 2011 I planted basil seeds.  You can relive all the excitement, including a picture of a terracotta pot with dirt in it, here if you like.

My hope was that the basil I planted would result in fresh basil to add to the pasta I cook this year.

 Not so Much

Unfortunately, my attempt to grow basil failed miserably.  I did learn that if you're going to borrow top soil in Southern California where nothing grows without fancy store bought dirt that contains nutrients you will never find here otherwise, you should borrow the top soil from a place where things actually grow.  You should not borrow top soil from a place that has been recently landscaped and filled with store bought dirt that does not actually have anything growing in it.  Now I know.

If I was really cool, I'd probably set myself up with some kind of hydroponic system to grow green things like the people in this photo from the WindowFarms site.

A White Guy with a 'Fro Knows Something About Hydroponic Gardening.

Go Figure.

Eating Healthier in 2012

Some snack foods I enjoy which would be wise to eat more often include:

• Apples
• Bananas
• Carrots, hummus optional
• Celery with peanut butter
• Cucumber sliced and dipped in low-fat yogurt
• Edamame 
  
• Grapes
• Handful of almonds, cashews or peanuts
• Olives
• Pear, sliced
• Slice of cheese
• Strawberries
• Yogurt

Drinking in 2012

Those of us who have consumed our fair share of beer know that beer is awesome.  Not only does it taste good but it can add anywhere between 1/2 and 5 points on the standard 1 to 10 scale of rating potential mates based on their appearance.

Sadly, drinking beer it is not a good way to keep one's weight down.  Mixed drinks or straight booze on the rocks offer one an advantage in terms of being lower in calories while still serving as a transport vehicle to the land of intoxication.  I mention all of this because if you're going to drink, you should probably stick to just a couple of beers (always tough for me to do) or go with liquor.  If you're going to go with liquor, you should probably have ice involved in your drinking.  For less than $5 including shipping if you're hooked up with the Amazon Prime thing, you can get yourself this ice cube tray:

Arr, you going to enjoy your rum a little more 

when it comes with these swimming in it, matey?  Maybe.

TL;DR: Eating a little bit more healthy won't kill you.  Plus, a $5 ice cube tray that makes skull and crossbones shaped ice enticed me to shill for Amazon.

Food in 2012

Hungry as a Horse

Who uses a pasta measuring tool that looks like this?  Awesome people:

 

Just add Bertolli

Of course, owning something like this would only make sense if you have an audience for your pasta cooking.  I imagine I would use it once, put it in a drawer and rediscover it the next time I move.

Here is the link to the designer's webpage.

Dining Table

Once you've placed your cooked pasta on a plate, you need a place to eat it.  While a lot of people will go with something as simple as a table or their lap while sitting in front of the TV, people that are awesome enough to use a custom pasta portioning tool probably eat their meals off of something as cool as this dining table:

 

Honey, can you mow the table?

(Grumble, grumble) When the game is over (grumble, grumble) 

 Looks like it would be large enough for six diners

This table reminds me of the natural grass bed featured in the 2002 film Secretary.

 Why is the grass always greener on my neighbor's table?

All you need when you own this table is Hank Hill to handle the upkeep.  Or, more realistically, I think you would need either overhead lighting that simulates sunlight setup on a timer or wheels on the bottom of this to move it outdoors regularly.  Plus, you would need to think about watering.

Even the name that the desiger(s) who came up with this table chose to call this item, the picNYC table, is clever.

 

TL;DR: You'll find two well designed things that relate to food and dining in this post.  

Sausage Party!

Breakfast of Champions: The inexpensive tube of sausage you can buy at any grocery store can be cut hamburger wise, packaging and all, into circular patties to be cooked in a skillet.  Do remember to remove the packaging before placing the patties into the skillet.

This plus eggs over easy and toast is truly the breakfast of champions

Also, be sure to wash your hands and clean the knife and whatever surface you used to cut the tube of sausage into patties on well because raw sausage is filled with all kinds of disgusting germs and such.

Me when I first discovered this use for these tubes of sausage:

Correct number of fingers: check.  

Correct proportions: not so much.

With Google, Car Drives You:

Apparently, when you have tons of cash and a bunch of the most intelligent people on the planet working for your company, you work to make the technology imagined in science fiction a reality.  At least that seems to be what Google is doing because according to the beginning of this article from the New York Times Google is lobbying the state of Nevada to allow self-driving cars to travel on the roads.

I'm all for the idea as long as two conditions are met:  One, the car must not look like those from the surprisingly good JCVD movie, Time Cop:

Primer is the color of the future

Two, Google must do hours and hours of of testing on this self-driven car on some out of the way, testing facility or track miles and miles away from anyone that could possibly be injured or killed if there is a glitch with the prototype.  As we all know from Hollywood, robots tend to have a few minor glitches to work out when they are first created:

I read on a little further in the article to find out what specially designed, top-secret test track Google's engineers had devised to find that last year Google said that:

"it had test-driven robotic hybrid vehicles more than 140,000 miles on California roads — including Highway 1 between Los Angeles and San Francisco."

Holy balls, I lived in Los Angeles last year!  

TL;DR: I suggest buying inexpensive sausage in a tube, cutting it into patties and frying it up the next time you're hungry.  Also, Google hatches a plan to allow people to perform Google searches while we drive.