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So I impulsively bought some popsicle molds the other day. I had all this fruit in the fridge and on the shelves and in the freezer that I knew I was never going to eat, and I had already eaten pie 2 days in a row, and quite frankly, watching all this fruit just lay around was really stressing me out.
I had some bananas, some frozen blueberries, and a tray of strawberries. I was like, oh duh, I’ll just make these popsicles.
First I pureed the fruit with a hand blender. I drizzled a little sweetened condensed milk in with all the fruit.
For fun, I added some bee pollen in with the banana mix.
Is bee pollen good even for you? I wondered briefly.
This website says NO. If you have allergies, you can die, and if you’re trying to cure yourself from diseases, maybe try taking some medicine, instead of messing with this hippy shit.
This website says YES. The benefits being weight-loss, prostate care, PMS relief, better sex life, the list really goes on…
Who cares really, it’s really weird and tastes magical, and that’s good enough for me.
So, after everything was pureed, I loaded the popsicle molds and put them in the freezer.
And there they sat overnight.
This morning when I woke up, all I could think about was, oh boy! Time to eat a popsicle! I ran one of them under warm water…
And then I popped it out and ate the shit out of it!!
It was SO GOOD!! Especially because of the real fruit aspect of it. And the sweetened condensed milk flavor really saved it from being a boring fruit pop.
So after I finished my popsicle and washed out the mold, I looked back in the freezer and looked at the lonely spot where the popsicle I ate once was. I felt terrible for it for some reason, so I immediately filled the mold back up with something, anything that I could find, you know.
This Vitaminka juice is my jam!! Any variety! This kind is carrot, banana, and apple flavor. I filled up the popsicle mold with it and stuck it back in the freezer. After it froze I ate it. This is a good popsicle too! (Albeit, much healthier tasting.) Summer just got a lot more WINTY.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am a pretty timid baker. I’m terrible at measuring things, I don’t like to measure, I don’t have the patience to wait for things to rise, I mix things poorly, I set timers and forget about them, etc… But boy oh boy, do I love to eat pie!!
And then, Peter Van Hyning opened up my eyes to the world of ready made pie crusts. I’ve been using this kind:
Much to my happiness, all I had to do was:
- preheat the oven (I set mine at 400 because it runs a little hot, but I think the instructions call for 450)
- unroll one of these bad boys onto a pie tin
- load it up with some fruit (I used RHUBARB for this pie)
- sprinkle some sugar and flour on top
- unroll the second pie crust on top
- cut out a funny face:
- And then I baked it for 30-45 minutes.
- BOOM, you have a hot pie.
I ate the crap out of it!! And it was so good!
I made another pie yesterday with strawberries and bananas, and that also ruled. If I make enough of these pies, maybe one day I’ll stop being a pussy and make my own pie crust.
Whilst gathering snacks for my bike ride to the beach I came across this witchy bag of chips and could not pass them up!
This company called ZAPP’s from Louisiana seems pretty sweet. Check out their silly website: http://www.potatochips.com/
The explanation for the flavor is on the back of the bag. They claim an employee spilled all the flavor dust together, took a taste and voila! VOODOO! I’d like to think that the chips contain some secret witchy power. The flavor of these chips is SALT ‘n VINEGAR meets BBQ. It’s rather satisfying. Pretty sweet and sour. Also, I am pleased that ZAPP’s neither uses any really strange ingredients nor MSG! Plus, their phone number is 1-800-HOT-CHIP!!!
Survey says: BUY THESE CHIPS!
it’s not a long list, but this Kid Sister video is currently at the top. Big ups to Super Dawg!
On Sunday, Shawn and I had several hours free, and a unbelievably beautiful day on or hands so we decided to make the 30 minute drive to Whiting Indiana’s Pierogi Fest for some stuffed dough goodness. I have had my share of small town midwestern festival goodness, but was really in for a surprise when I stepped onto the main drag at perogi fest.
Meet Mr. Pierogi! The Whiting Indiana Pierogi Fest official Spokes-pastry.
No Shit.
Are you kidding me? This festival was out of control. And everyone was so happy! The perogi guy was running around high-fiving everyone, there was a guy dressed as a stuffed cabbage roll running a found being grumpy and hot…
Insanity. It was really A DREAM COME TRUE. I had never seen so many folks happy about pierogies and summer fun since the now defunct 185th street festival days back in Cleveland. The Whiting Pierogi fest has been on for 16 or so years and is 90% focused on Pierogi, and 10% focused on Polka. To that end, and to add to the ever growing list of costumed characters running amuck at the festival, there is even a lady named Polka- hontas who is the festival’s official polka ambassador/ mistress.
That being said, the reason we came here was pierogi. And we had a lot to pick from, and many many lines to wade through to get to them. Which was not nearly as bad as one would think,other than the occasional asshole with a stroller every one we encountered was happy and incredibly polite. I sneezed three times while i was there and EVERY SINGLE TIME someone said “bless you.” Impressive. We waded through the immense and incredibly polite crowd, and found at the far end of the fest Kasia’s pierogi booth selling pierogi for basically a buck a piece.
The selection was pretty standard, beef, beef and cheese, sausage, potato, bacon cheese and potato, spinach, cheese and jalapeno, sauerkraut, sauerkraut and mushroom… Shawn did a survey of seven. I did the same, but only the meatless options.
Pretty standard serving size, coupled with the ubiquitous condiment of choice.This stand also offered the classic applesauce and not so classic pico de gallo, but we decided to keep it classic and creamy.
All in all delicious. It’s pretty hard to fuck up a pierogi, and it’s equally hard to reinvent the pierogi, not without risking pretentiousness. I would say these did the genre proud, but no points for invention. But to be fair that is not the point here, the point is to eat starchy stuff and get down to polka, and that kind of stuff never goes out of style.
To end here’s a little video treat of the annual pierogi toss.
