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Yesterday, I went to the Rite Aid to because I needed deodorant, but large colorful displays of candy bargains were extremely distracting! All the heart shape boxes of Valentine’s candy was at 50-75 percent off! I looked through the displays and was thoroughly bored at the selection — russell stover’s chocolates, whitman’s samplers, spongebob marshmallow suckers, etc… crumbs and flakes of chocolate and dirt lined the tray all the candy sat in.
My appetite now whet for candy, I wandered into the Easter candy aisle!! How new and exciting! I know this must be some sort of drug store trick where they display the cheap and old shitty candy on sale at the front of the store, and then the awesome new candy in the aisle right behind it, but I don’t care, it totally works, and I was fiending for a sugar fix, and I didn’t care why.
Easter candy is my favorite holiday candy–hollow chocolate crucifixes and white chocolate lambs aside, I mean, just walk down any Easter candy aisle and take it all in, how do you feel? I pretty much base my entire artistic color pallette on it. Oh yeah and all the egg shaped things, marshmallow things, jelly beanzz, beautiful plastic gift basket arrangements wrapped in celophane and ribbons. This holiday is about a dude who raises from the dead, the only other time this happens is with zombies; it is so dark and heavy — but look at its candy! It rulez!
Okay, after drooling down this seasonal aisle I stumbled upon this:
My reaction was “what.” This is edible Easter grass. It’s slogan which you can’t see on the bottom says “It’s Grass-tastic!” This looked very exciting to me, it had a real “big league chew” vibe to it. The bag, however, felt like it was filled with dry shredded paper. I didn’t care, it was a dollar.
Once I got home, I immediately opened it and ate some, and I was totally horrified and disappointed. It tasted like a shitty cross between communion wafers and strawberry Frankenberry cereal. It tasted bland. Very bland. Like paper. And totally fucked. Then I finally read the back of the bag:
Aspartame! Grosss! And look!! There is NO real sugar in this AT ALL!!!! This is like DIET Easter Grass!! It made me think, is there no rule in Germany about labeling things “DIET” if there is no real sugar in it?
Oh well, at least I also got these Whoppers mini Robin’s Eggs as well which satiated my candy fix. It also allowed me to create this very appropriate tableau!
Ha!!! Love, Thu
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I’m sure somebody somewhere has made a sandwich out of graham crackers, peanut butter, and vanilla ice cream at some point in time, but this was a “eureka” moment for me. So good that i immediately made another one as soon as I was done with the first.
In trying to give it a clever name that harkens back to its forefather the S’more, i have dubbed this boredom snack the S’Mo Williams, in honor of the All Star Cleveland Cavaliers point guard.
Go Cavs, and go snack.
What is “chipmeal” you might ask yourself? It is something very special. Lately, my boyfriend and I have been very into eating at a little Mexican place in Greenpoint called PAPACITO’S! I love their anjito pork chimichanga burrito and their chorizo tostadas and Danny B only orders one thing at this place : NACHOS. The great thing about the nachos at this place is, along with being topped with a wide array of fresh vegitalia and a good homemade salsa, the cheese on it is NACHO cheese, (the kind the comes from a can and stays a perfect velvety liquid forever), and a good amount of it as well. This cheese normally comes in cans like this:
There are various reasons why making nachos with this sort of cheese is superior to using fresh shredded jack/cheddar/whatever cheese. One main reason why shredded cheese SUX is that it tends to “glue” the chips together after the nachos are not warm anymore creating one big clumpy mess. How annoying. The AWESOME thing about nacho cheese sauce is, after awhile, the chips get soggy in a very beautiful and amazing way. Letover nachos start to become more and more analogous and homogenized, as some sort of chemical reaction occurs with the cheese sauce and the tortilla chips, creating a whole new food that I like to call “CHIPMEAL”. It’s like oatmeal, except nacho flavored.
Which leads me to “Prison Eggs,” one of the few dishes that Danny B actually cooks. It’s called “prison eggs” because it looks like caricatured version of what prison food might looks like. A more pretentious name for it might be “Aged Mexican and Egg Risotto, with Nacho Béchamel.” Looks and sounds very appetizing right?
Basically, it is leftover Mexican food medley, (in this case it is a combo of Danny B’s leftover nachos and my leftover soyrizo rice and beans), fried with eggs. Once the eggs enter your frying pan, you are to STIR almost the entire time until the eggs are cooked. Danny B really likes to stir the shit out of things “to make sure it gets cooked all the way.” The eggs get super mushy in the rice creating a lovely sludge texture. Here I am enjoying my meal. It was really great actually! Thank you!
Love, Thu
A few weeks after my birthday, a couple of my friends came into town, Scotty and Derrick (AKA Mullet Chad, AKA Mungee, AKA Derrick witch, AKA Nu Metal Craig). They are in a really great metal band called SKELETONWITCH; Derrick plays drums, and Scotty plays guitar. They also brought their friend Andrew with them, who owns a super awesome record store in Athens Ohio called, Haffas. Of course they didn’t come all the way to Chicago just to see me; they had a busy schedule of friends and events lined up around the block. The first big ticket item on their list was seeing CRADLE OF FILTH on Friday night. The next morning I had an unexpected (but not unwanted) day off, so I caught up with them at Scotty’s sister Stacy and our pal Moustache Derrick’s place around 11. I was just in time to see them shake off their hangovers and hitch a ride with them to Kuma’s Corner. As with many of Chicago’s institutions I had NEVER heard of it. It’s a pretty unassuming place at first glance; some wood paneling and some tee shirts, some ink drawings of leather-clad-blood-soaked-biker-chicks, the menu written on a chalk board above the grill. One look at the menu though and the truth is revealed. Kuma’s has all kinds of standard bar stuff: sandwiches and fries, some ribs an obligatory salad, etc. BUT the real excitement is their Metal themed burgers. There’s the MOTORHEAD, THE LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR, the CLUTCH (which has almost nothing but cheese on it) and the JUDAS PREIST (which has walnuts, blue cheese, cranberries etc… and is the GAYEST item on the menu while still being a burger).They even had a monthly special called the “Bleepin’ Blago-wich” which is: a burger topped with American cheese, yellow mustard, fried baloney and served on two grilled cheese sandwiches made with wonder bread (the price was negotiable).
I opted for the SLAYER, which is: a ½ pound burger served on a bed of fries, topped with chili, andouille sausage, jalapenos, cherry peppers, mozzarella cheese, and anger.
Did I finish it? Yes. Did I eat anything else that day? Yes. A pile of collard greens…five hours later.
All in all, the burger was good, and true to the name a real slayer. They also have some great local brews on tap, the one thing they don’t have is a SKELETON-WICH. To that end I have included what I think should, if not be immediately added to the menu, be run as a special the next time they play in Chi-town… the list of ingredients; ½ pound burger, white American cheese, whole wheat bun, jalapenos, weed, yellow rice doused with sriracha, the ketchup-ed blood of a virgin, and the souls of all those who don’t WORSHIP THE WITCH, and served with a Shirley Temple…because these boyz are classy.
Who would do such a thing ? Imagine a tiny little bee crying giant size tears and you’ll be imagining me as I flew down the sidewalk and below me found this sorry sorry site. sniffle. poor pizza.
What would you do? I did what anyone should, and called in Thu Tran, she did not look happy.
She made this face!
Die pizza waster!
Mr. Bee reporting. Bzzz.
Have you ever eaten an EMU EGG? It’s totally weird!! I found these photos in my boyfriend’s iphoto library from a WHILE back ago when I fried my first EMU EGG. First of all, it is quite an exotic thing to behold. The shell is a beautiful dark emerald green color, and it has a strange yet friendly bumpy texture. It looks fake, but it’s real. Here is what an EMU looks like just to remind all of you, then you can imagine the EGG that I am holding in the photo above coming out of this amazing creature!!
I was lucky enough to obtain this egg, leftover from our EGGISODE shoot from long ago. Our friend Alex Lombardo was able to find them for us at a WHOLE FOODS in Virginia, and brought them back to New York for us. He really rules. I felt pressure to make something amazing with this egg, but in the end, I just wanted to taste it without too many distractions from flavorful ingredients and extravagant techniques, so I simply FRIED the damn thing. Luckily, Danny B was around to document the whole thing!
Because the shell is very THICK, you have to SAW it to give it a start before your whap it and crack it open. I use this hacksaw with an all-purpose wood/metal Lenox blade.
Here is an animated gif of the egg being cracked into the frying pan:
Here is another gratuitous animated gif, fun with the egg shell.
I was VERY AMAZED by the egg white to egg yolk ratio!! VERY yolky. Totally weird.
I was bummed I broke the yolk, but the yolk was a noticeably lighter color, and the actual volume of the egg must have equaled about a dozen chicken eggs. I let the egg sit on the stove at a VERY low heat for quite a while to let it firm up. The SCARY PART was, as it cooked, it developed a FACE. Here is a short and poorly produced video of the EGG FACE::
In a feeble attempt to flip this egg over, I failed. Pretty miserably.
Here I am loosening the egg from the pan:
Then the FLIP!!
LOL!! All in all, this emu egg was kinda weird. The flavor was mild, and the texture was… (for lack of an appropriate descriptive adjective)…different from chicken eggs. It didn’t bubble the same way chicken eggs do. Around the edges, it bubbled in almost a foamy, yet crispy, manner. It almost seemed to have a lighter density than the eggs I know and love, but without actually being lighter. Basically, I can only describe it as being like an alien embryo(?).
I leave you with this weird egg claymation I made over 2 years ago. Have a nice day!! Love, Thu
Look what I ate today! It’s a falafel bacon cheese sandwich. The inspiration for this was the concept of a “Middle Eastern Burger,” which would basically be a cheeseburger, except with a falafel patty instead of a hamburger patty, and with basic burger toppings, like bacon, american cheese, tomato, and whatever. This was also made with my very first attempt at making my own falafel. I had some mixed results, but the overwhelming flavor was totally decent, and even delicious. So first I googled “falafel recipe” and the first thing that came up was this link:
http://mideastfood.about.com/od/maindishes/r/falafelrecipe.htm
I assumed that normally whatever is the first on the google list is the best. The recipe they gave me was this:
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hours, 45 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 cup dried chickpeas or 16 oz. can of chickpeas or garbanzo beans.
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 3 tablespoons of fresh parsley, chopped
- 1 teaspoon coriander
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 2 tablespoons flour
- Salt
- Pepper
- Oil for frying
Preparation:
Place dried chickpeas in a bowl, covering with cold water. Allow to soak overnight. Omit this step if using canned beans.
Drain chickpeas, and place in pan with fresh water, and bring to a boil.
Allow to boil for 5 minutes, then let simmer on low for about an hour.
Drain and allow to cool for 15 minutes.
Combine chickpeas, garlic, onion, coriander, cumin, salt and pepper (to taste) in medium bowl. Add flour.
Mash chickpeas, ensuring to mix ingredients together. You can also combine ingredients in a food processor. You want the result to be a thick paste.
Form the mixture into small balls, about the size of a ping pong ball. Slightly flatten.
Fry in 2 inches of oil at 350 degrees until golden brown (5-7 minutes).
Serve hot.
I used canned chickpeas because it was faster, and used a ton of fresh parsley, but didn’t have any coriander, and used a hand blender. My patties actually ended up a little muushy, which probably resulted from the amount of water absorbed in the canned chickpeas, and also the use of a mechanic blender made the texture very fine. To modify this recipe, I might add an extra tablespoon of flour and maybe muush the chickpeas by hand next time.
Here is what my paste looked like:
I used Polish rolls as the buns, because it was freshly and cheaply and closely available. I also used a horseradish apple sauce as a spread on the sandwich, which RULED. Also on the sandwich was a slice or pressed bacon lunch meat, one slice of American cheese, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, and…. hummus.
Earlier in this blog when I called these sandwiches “totally decent” I was really selling them short. They were actually VERY GOOD! BUT, I need to up my falafel game, for sure. Here I am with the Coker sisters enjoying these delicious sandwiches. Despite my miserable expressions, I am actually having quite a ball!
Afterwards, I fell into a food coma and enjoyed the latest ULINE catalogue!! The End!
Hi everybody!! This is Thu. Me and Danny B made some cookies a little bit ago that I dubbed “Lemon Devastators!!!” The recipe is quite simple. I simply took a Martha Stewart recipe for Lemon Poppyseed Cookies, and replaced the poppyseeds for about a quarter ounce of very finely mortared and pestled OREGANO. Oh yeah and food dye for fun!
Here is Martha’s Lemon Poppyseed Cookie recipe with my modifications:
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice, plus 3 1/2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest (2 to 3 lemons)
- 8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon poppy seeds, plus more for sprinkling
- 1/4 oz oregano, finely mortared and pestled (or chopped or food processed)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bring lemon juice to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium heat; cook until reduced by half. Add 1 stick butter; stir until melted. Add the oregano to the butter and allow it to simmer over a very low heat for an hour or two until the herb becomes very fragrant.
- Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Cream remaining stick butter and 1 cup sugar on medium speed in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix in egg and lemon butter. Mix until pale, about 3 minutes. Mix in vanilla and 2 teaspoons zest. Mix in flour mixture and poppy seeds.
- Stir together remaining 1/2 cup sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons zest. Roll spoonfuls of dough into 1 1/2-inch balls; roll them in sugar mixture. Place 2 inches apart on baking sheets. Press each with the flat end of a glass dipped in sugar mixture until 1/4 inch thick. Sprinkle with seeds.
- Bake until just browned around bottom edges, 10 to 11 minutes. Transfer to wire racks; let cool completely. Store in an airtight container up to 1 week.
The amount of oregano added a huge devastation element to the cookies, and also the herbal flavoring complimented the citrus-y lemon zest flavor VERY WELL!!
We “glued” the three colored cookies together with strawberry Nesquik syrup. These cookies RULED SO HARD.
The second cookies I had no involvement in, and was all Danny B in his state of devastation. I thought they were actually pretty terrible, but in a very hilarious way!! These cookies were inspired by “green screens.” This kind of green screen:
If you are confused as to how a green screen can EVER possibly inspire a cookie, you got me there. Here is Danny B making the cookies:
Okay, so the recipe for this if anyone is interested is VAGUELY this:
- butter
- flour
- sugar
- nesquik strawberry syrup
- egg
- a big squirt of high quality green food dye
Mix the above ingredients together in a way where you end up with a very thick paste. Then add more flour until you have a dough. Form into squares and roll in sugar. Bake at 375 until HARD. Roll in more sugar.
The End.
In theory, if you were filming someone eating these “green screen” cookies, you could theoretically “key out” what they are eating and replace it with whatever! These cookies were VERY dense due to the lack of any rising agents like baking soda or powder. BUT, the shape remained true and square as a result as well. I picked a cookie up and dropped it on the plate and it sounded like a bunch of rocks clanking together. Danny B of course ate every single one of these. Try it at home if you like!
Love,
Thu Tran
Mr. Bee Reporting!
Flying thru brooklyn in the snow today I noticed a sign hanging from the corner of a building. I thought wow! they can’t rip off the bad boy club and get away with it!
Something about the angry faces and the jagged lines, I think these two guys must be blood relatives. So I did a little searching and found this image of their mother…
Poopy logo contest. I declare a tie .
Flying away I had a tiny laugh and sipped on hot coffee to warm my little wings.
Hi Everybody, I would like to introduce you guys to our new blog contributor, Mr. Bee:
He is my very special friend. He has a lot of eating credentials. You can read more about him in the BLOG CONTRIBUTORS page. Look forward to his BLOGZZ. See ya!
Thu Tran
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