No tomatoes, please

Ok, so, obviously, the web site’s been lacking as of late. But my new year’s resolution is to work on it a lot and make it super awesome, starting with the design yaaay! My brother and I are working on a design, so the web site might be down at certain points while we figure crap out. But anywho, I shall see you again in 2008 with lovely new design and even more awesome stuff, including the beginning of the point of this entire web site. A project that has been 20 years in the making. An epic project that will be super awesome. Yaaay. So, seriously, please come back. See ya later!

“Can’t pay my telephone bills, can’t pay my automo-bills…” Ahhh Destiny’s Child. All before everyone started caring about Beyonce and she started dating Jay-Z and her mother made her wear her horrible clothes so she could live out her vicarious dreams of being a fashion designer.

But when you realize what this post is actually about, you will groan, because yes, I love puns and other things that are not really funny but I find hilarious. Thank you Bryan Reed for ruining me. Anyhow, in order to celebrate Boxing Day, that lovely, pointless British day-after-Christmas tradition, I made a trifle. Ok, that’s a lie. I made it yesterday, and no one here freakin knows what one is. But British people make them for Boxing Day. Which is the day after Christmas. They also eat yorkshire puddings and the leftovers of their giant standing rib roasts and other generally disgusting British things. But trifle is generally non-disgusting. Actually, it’s generally pretty freakin awesome. Except for that one Rachel made on friends that she accidentally put the beef and peas and carrots in because the recipes got stuck together and hilarity ensued! That’s where you know a trifle from.

I make it every year, and insist on making it from scratch, including the freakin whipped cream. My mother is confounded by my insistence on doing things the hard way. I get it from my dad. But hey, in the end, it totally tastes better.

Anywho, a trifle basically consists of cake, fruit, jam and custard all layered in a trifle dish (yes, there are dishes specifically made for this dessert. And we have one. Kill me.) Also another reason Americans would be confounded by this dish is that custard only exists as something eaten regularly in Britain and probably Australia or something because they do everything England does. It isn’t the thick, set kind in creme brulee or panna cotta, but it’s a kind of sauce that’s basically like thin pudding. Also the base for custard-based ice creams. A custard is basically anything with milk and eggs that is thickened by the heating and cooking of the eggs. The custard I make for this is creme anglaise (recipe follows), and it’s freakin delicious. Or you could do what my mother suggests and use vanilla pudding. If you’re a terrible person.

I used to do homemade pound cake and put orange zest in it, but my mom made me start buying the pre-made sour cream pound cake from the store, and it’s a lot easier, mostly because it’s baked in a round ring pan and the slices go much easier in the round trifle dish. Also the fruit of choice for this trifle is raspberries, although you can use any kind of berries or soft fruit that would kinda get all mushy and meld in with the rest of the ingredients. Also, for the jam portion, I melt seedless raspberry jam (Polaner’s yeeeah) and brush it on the cake layers.

So, what you do is layer cake slices on the bottom of the dish and brush it with the melted jam:

Traditionally, some liquor is supposed to be doused on the cake before the jam in order to fully wet it so it can better meld with the rest of the layers, but it generally tastes too strong for me, plus I don’t want no dang mushy cake. It’s unamerican. In the past though, I did use Grand Marnier, which is an orange liqueur to go with the orange pound cake and add a sweetness to the sharp flavor of the raspberries. So after the cake, brush on liberal amounts of the melted jam, enough to wet the cake. Then drizzle on the custard in a lovely manner:

Then put a good amount of raspberries:

Then repeat. I like to kinda mash each layer down once I get the cake on, before I put on the next layer of jam so that it compacts all the ingredients together. So just repeat until you reach the top. I generally get a good three layers in. Then cover the top completely in whipped cream, add some more fresh berries or fruit as garnish, and voila! You have a lovely trifle that is way easier than its lavish appearance would have people believe. Also, it does have to sit a while so it can get all amalgamated and delicious. And seriously, holy crap. Not tryin’ to toot my own horn here, but it’s super delicious and everyone thinks you’re a total stud for making a giant dessert. Yum.

*Addendum: that was a lie about the creme anglaise recipe following. It’s slightly involved, and I don’t feel like typing it all out. Plus you’ll never make it. If you’re curious, just google it or something.

Oh geeze, a pun! A French pun, nonetheless. I hope Vosges doesn’t sue me. Oh well. (If you’re confused as to who or what Vosges is, it’s a chocolate company responsible for terrible slights against humanity such as this). Anywho, after eating dinner at a friend’s house and having some rich chocolate Ovaltine, I found myself contemplating my loathing for that delicious yuletide drink, hot chocolate. Then I became addicted to the hot chocolate at Starbucks (which I somehow ended up with one day after I asked the woman working there what had caffeine in it but wasn’t coffee. I was too tired to argue.). I realized that I liked the hot chocolate from Starbucks because a.) it is made with milk instead of water gross (I ask for whole milk. They judge me.), and b.) it’s got that lovely kind of bitter aftertaste of non-milk chocolate that I love.

Now, I’m gonna drop a bomb here. I do not like chocolate. I don’t like chocolate cake, with or without chocolate frosting. I hate milk chocolate, unless it surrounds a nut of some sort. I do not wish for chocolate during my lady times, and I have never thought of adorning my life with shirts or bumper stickers like this or this. What. The. Hell. If a dude ever gave me chocolate for Valentine’s day, I would dump him. The only thing I like about chocolate is that little bittersweet aftertaste like in homemade brownie batter (which I love) and the hot chocolate at Starbucks. So, I figured it couldn’t be that hard to engineer something delicious and awesome, and not powdered and mixed with water.

Yup, that’s it. In a lovely Christmas glass. unfortunately, I miscalculated that whole displacement thing, so when I put the whipped cream on it, it kind of went everywhere. But it’s kinda hot in that messy Bon Appetit down-to-earth sorta way. Maybe. Anywho, so first I contemplated a liquid vehicle for my delicious ski lodge drink. I figured, hey, what’s better than whole milk? Half and half! Yaaay. So, yeah, I’m a glutton. But I figure, you’re only gonna have this like, once a year, so you might as well go all out with the lovely rich flavor of half-milk/half-cream. Mmmm.

So, what I did was take a pint/16 0z./2cups/a pound/half a quart/2 mugs full of half and half and throw it in a pot with 2 sticks of cinnamon and a teensy tiny pinch of cayenne pepper. Cayenne pepper you say? That’s spicy! What’s going on here? Well, yeah, you know, it’s what the Aztecs did. Or something. And, ya know, I think people should do more things the Aztecs did. Like drink from the hollowed-out heads of their enemies. But mostly the cayenne pepper in the chocolate. Why does it work? I dunno, but it’s really nice to have that latent tingling to balance out the sweetness of the chocolate.

So anywho, throw that on some medium heat to kinda steep for about 10 minutes, but don’t turn it up too high, because milk burns, and that crap’s no good in the hot chocolate. I usually make some whipped cream during this step, but, ya know, I like to do things the hard way so that’s a step you can skip. So, once the milk is nice and steamy, whisk in the chocolat. I use semi-sweet, but you can use whatever kinda chocolate you like, except not milk chocolate, obviously. I buy the big Ghirardelli baking bars and break those up. For this amount, I use half a 4 oz. bar of chocolate. So, whisk that in and add a capful of vanilla extract. Then just throw it in 2 mugs with one cinnamon stick in each mug. The last bit is a little surprise thing to throw in a little pinch of Sanka. It’s dehydrated instant decaf coffee, and the bitterness and richness really makes the richness of the chocolate stick out, and it just makes it that much rounder and fuller. Then just throw some whipped cream on top (ya know, if you feel like it), and you’ve got delicious drink for the holiday season. Almost as delicious as the buckets of alcohol you’ll be drinking with your family (or because of, depending on the family). Plus by the time you get to the bottom, it’s so delicious and spicy because of the cinnamon stick! Oh my god, I actually like hot chocolate now.

Since I recently bought a loaf of bread for the first time in, oh, 2 months? I’ve been eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches lately, and, ya know what? I freakin love and totally enjoy every one of them. The PB&J is such a simple, joyous experience. The easiest of all sandwiches, by far. Just open some jars. No condiments, or meat and cheese, or tomato or lettuce (if you’re into that kind of thing). No heating or anything special, except maybe excising the crusts if you’re feeling particularly motivated. Endless possibilities.

Since, as a general rule, I hate peanut butter (probably stemming from the horrid odor that would emit from my father after he ate it STRAIGHT OUT OF THE JAR. WITH A SPOON. I seriously gag just thinking about it), one would think that the PB&J would be out for me. My grandma used to counteract that by mixing the jelly with the peanut butter in a mug (always a mug, you need some good grip from the handle if you’re going to be stirring all that sticky peanut butter and jam) before spreading it on the bread. Which left a terrible mess for my mother, the dishwasher extraordinaire, later when she had to scrape dried peanut butter and jelly out of all of the mugs. Sorry!

But if you get enough jelly in there to counteract the flavor of the peanut butter, the best kind of alchemy happens. You end up with a really beautiful plum-colored paste that’s sweet and rich, with nary a trace of the too-rich nut flavor that made peanut butter completely unpalatable to me.

Though last year, while buying groceries to accompany the tiny fridge in my dorm room, I decided to buy some crunchy peanut butter. Why it had never even dawned on me as an option before baffled me. It’s not that my mother is unused to my ridiculous condiment demands. I can’t imagine how many discarded jars of mayonnaise have been left in the wake of my continuing search for a mayonnaise that I like that isn’t freakin Miracle Whip. And I totally love crunchy peanut butter any day of the week. It’s got the chunks of the peanuts which somehow counteract the actual peanut butter, and if I put a lot of jam on there, all you can taste is peanut chunks, which is so delicious I always have to make another one.

As far as jam goes, strawberry is good sometimes, but only the jelly. Preserves are terrible for a sandwich. Aside from the fact that they’re terrible to spread on bread, I mean, who wants freakin mushy strawberry bits on their sandwich? Ew. Same reason I hate strawberry ice cream. The minute you do something to try and preserve a strawberry past its lovely freshness it is completely ruined in flavor and texture. But take the juice and jellify it, and it’s delicious. A mystery of the universe. But alas, strawberry is second in my heart to a far more lovely colored and extraordinarily flavored gelled condiment.

Hands down every day forever and always I will always love blackberry jam. Do normal people even eat it ever? I dunno, they sell it, so I’ll take that as a yes. In fact, when it comes to purple jellies, this is what I’ve always eaten and loved. I guess I always thought it was grape, but somehow one day I realised it was not. I’m not sure I’ve ever even had grape jelly. Not that it even matters now. It will just pale horribly in comparison to my lovely blackberry jelly.

Man, I always remember even the tall, hexagonal little jars of Polaner All Fruit with the little gold caps that my British grandpa always had in the fridge. I somehow always thought it was so special. I don’t know if it was his taste for the blackberry jam that determined what we bought or not, but, for some reason, I always chalked it up to him being British and awesome that we were different with the blackberry jelly. It’s such a perfect, beautiful deep purple, especially when you spread it on the brown bread. And so sweet, but a teensy bit tart, and so perfect with butter all melted in the nooks and crannies of a toasted english muffin.

And as far as bread, I recall being enraged more than a few times at the fact that my mom refused to buy us white bread. I always wished for the far cooler crazy beautiful whiteness and lack of substantiality that my friends’ white bread provided. Then I ate it and was just angered that it stuck to the roof of my mouth with the insipid peanut butter. Now I love the wheat bread. Other than that time like, two years ago when I got ridiculous cravings for mayonnaise and ham sandwiches on white bread. I don’t even like ham. I’m still wtf-ing over that one.

Anywho, what are your PB&J preferences? Or has that gone the way of the beefaroni and been out of your food repertoire since you were 6? I’ll know you’re lying if you say that though, because everyone loves PB&J. Even people who hate peanut butter.

Holy crap, I was so nonplussed by this AWESOME news that I totally forgot to tell people about it! So, I ate this gigantic burrito earlier this year and wrote a truly kickass column about it. So also, there’s this contest called the Hearst contest for college journalism, and, not even gonna lie, it’s kind of a huge deal. And the journalism school has people enter the school’s contest, and they pick two pieces in each of six categories to send to the national contest. And I entered my column in the opinion/editorial category, and they picked it! And they sent it to nationals! And I get $50!!!! Woo hoo! So, here in all its amazing glory, is a reprinting of the Little Column That Could. It kinda makes me sad, because it’s pretty much the best thing I’ve ever written, and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to write someone as face-meltingly awesome ever again. I guess I’ll just have to eat totally disgusting things and write about it forever. Ok,

 I am 5 feet 4 inches tall and weigh in at a sprightly 125 pounds. Needless to say, I am a pretty small lady. So why the hell would I even think about trying to eat the 6-pound monster that is “El Gigante” at Bandido’s Mexican Cafe on East Franklin Street?

I had heard harrowing stories of others’ triumphs and failures (mostly failures) in eating this behemoth. It seemed to be the stuff of legends in Chapel Hill. I had to have a go at it.

“El Gigante” is a gargantuan burrito stuffed with rice, black beans, chicken and steak fajitas, and myriad other lovely Tex-Mex offerings. It’s made with two large tortillas and is so big that it hangs limply off of the edges of the oversize plate it’s served on.

Contrary to popular belief, you do not get the burrito for free if you finish it - just a T-shirt that says “I conquered El Gigante.”

The waiter, Paul, described it as “not a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

Oops.

Let me start off by saying that I had no delusions that I was even going to come close to finishing this thing. I would have lauded myself if I had even made it halfway.

But after I examined the wall of champions near the door, and talked to the waiter about the mythical burrito, my confidence got the best of me - I actually began to think I could finish it for a minute.

I would even eat the pieces of raw tomato in it. I could do it!

Then it came.

As my meal was being carried out, I could hear the waiter behind me remarking, “It feels like carrying an infant!,” just before he plopped it down unceremoniously in front of me.

I opened my eyes, and a wail of horror I recognized as my own voice escaped from my lips.

My eyes welled up uncontrollably with tears. Before me sat the single most horrifyingly large piece of food I’ve ever seen in person.

That was it. I had been beaten before I had even started.

The first few bites weren’t too bad, but once I hit the warm, steam-limp lettuce piled on top, I could barely stand to go further.

The taunts of my tablemates didn’t help. Their tiny cheese and mushroom quesadillas looked absolutely darling in comparison.

I longed for a tiny pile of unadulterated Mexican rice of my own. But alas, I had to press on.

I soon gave up on actually eating the whole thing and performed a swift autopsy-style Y-incision to expose the meat, rice and beans inside.

I shifted the food around on my plate in a vain attempt to find something edible, but my stomach had reached its capacity.

To give you an idea of just how much was left, the Styrofoam box containing the leftovers wouldn’t close, and I was left with a bag full of soggy tortilla and guacamole.

I felt disgusting. I felt violated. By a burrito.

I didn’t even care about the free T-shirt by the time I escaped.

They only come in XXL anyway.