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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.
I ate these chips over a year ago!!! I even went thru the trouble of scanning the bags!! But the flavor is memorable!! I’ll never forget….
Grippo’s Hot Dill Pickle potato chips, I ate these chips in Cincinnati on a trip with Peter Van Hyning and Nick Pinkerton. Nick says these are native to the Cincinnati region, and I believe him. These are awesome. It’s about 50/50 powdered dill flavoring and flaming hot flavoring, but more on the Utz end of things, as opposed to Lay’s.
Herr’s Ketchup chips are my favorite chips right now. There is an awesome MSG aftertaste, which compliments the tomato powder very well. Eating too fast will give you an MSG buzz. Compliments beer and cheeseburgers. They also nailed the lycopene flavoring here as well.
Smith’s Bacon Flavour Fries are pretty amazing. First of all, it’s shaped like a Sun Chip, which I guess mimics the the wavy form of bacon. Secondly, the chips are processed like Pringles, except the potato texture is COARSE instead of smooth the way Pringles are. It gave the chips a Munchos quality without the bubbles. And the bacon flavoring is closer to Bacos than bacon. Oh, and when you buy a small bag, there are 6 chips in the bag!!
This happened June 26th, 2010. These photos have been sitting in my camera for a little while now, which is great because it was able to preserve this memory for me! So apparently according to these photos, I remembered that I hosted the Jell-o Mold Design Competition at the Gowanus Studio Space. I got to eat all the jell-o I ever wanted to eat, and there were some awesome ones and also some that looked really crazy! Jello is crazy because you can make it look and taste however you want, and what makes it jello is the fact that it is jiggly, and flavored, and molded. I had a great time!!!!
Here are a few that I ate there:
Apple pie, everything here was jello, even the crust. This contestant made velvet cake and the pink coconut donut as well. These tasted awesome, and I’m pretty sure they won the Flavor Award as well.
This sushi was made with agar agar. Someone always pulls out the agar agar at the jello competition, and nine times out of ten they are asian and they know what they are talking about. This sushi was fruity and refreshing without the horse hoof aftertaste.
Tiles. These were awesomely sugary.
I can’t lie, didn’t eat these oysters, which were oyster and beer flavored? I pussied out.
I didn’t eat these either.
There were a few people really into this Pill theme.
This is classic. These were surprisingly pleasurably bitter as well because of it setting in the rind.
These CUPS were made of JELLO.
Not sure….
I can’t remember what this tasted like!! It was weeks ago!!
I was a little psyched on these really crazy tray presentations.
And CORN!! hahaha!! This person probably wins the WTF award, with their corn light bulb chandelier. The jellos here were deliciously savory.
This was the GRAND PRIZE winner this year. These bloody virgin mary’s were actually very strong in Vodka flavor as well. The flavor is unforgettably a solidified well-crafted bloody mary.
More pills…
I was really psyched on this as well and would probably win second place in the WTF category. These are inspired by the boobtacular turd processing plant in Greenpoint!! The flavor was a very pleasant raspberry vanilla.
This is supposed to depict the recent oil spill disaster.
This depicts something really crazy.
These crafty contestants made a Tiffany Lamp. The metal part is gum paste.
These trophy heads were my second favorite next to the bloody mary’s in the flavor category. It’s pork flavored and beef flavored. They tasted just like refrigerated pho broth.
These were the cute ribbons the winners took home. Congratulations!!!
I ate these cookies the other day, they were so wild!! I bought them at the Asian Convenient store on 3rd Ave and 11th St. They were tiny crunchy chicken drumsticks, or rather a thin veneer of a breaded baked drumstick. Hollow in the middle. The flavor most closely resembles the exteriors of Totino’s Pizza Rolls. Seems a little absurd that “chicken in a biskit” crackers are not as literal as these.
FREE!!!
TUESDAY April 13th from 7-10 pm
Santos Party House
96 Lafayette Street, NYC
Special Performances by friends of Food Party:
This is Antonio Velotta, and he is so funny and amazing. He is a very talented hair artist who cuts my hair and the hair of many many others.
He recently celebrated his 30th birthday at the McDonald’s at Time Square.
When he was 14 years old back in the nineties, he made these really wild videos with his little sister Cristina. Recently, I offered to edit them down for him for youtube. Here are a few:::
This last one is Antonio pretending to be Lorena Bobbitt. NSFW!! Play at your own risk!!
The picture on top, I took at a Japanese mart in Vancouver, BC in Canada. These Beer Pretz were on sale for 49 cents because they were expired. I bought 2 boxes. They still tasted okay.
The picture on the bottom, I took in Seattle, WA at post-ally(??). It’s a wall covered in ABC gum. The ally smelled like old spit. It looked really incredible.
I met the doughnut shop of my dreams a couple weeks ago in Portland Oregon. It’s called Voodoo Doughnuts.
I went here late night one Wednesday with Chris Duffy to find bums, musicians, Scion reps, teens, all hanging out like a big cloud around the front of the shop.
Inside, it’s decorated like a big weird dougnut shrine, with a bunch of artifacts and fun crap. It’s pretty packed with crap. Also as we were waiting in line, some sort of drunk drama was unfolding before us as some girl waiting in line flirted with some dude who apparently was not her boyfriend, who stormed in seconds later to pull her out of the line. At the time that we went, this Voodoo Doughnut was staffed by very cute and pierced and punky black t-shirted teens.
The doughnut selection itself is every bratty 12 year old’s dream come true. Doughnuts here are topped with captain crunch, froot loops, cocoa puffs, dubble bubble gum, marshmallows, crispy bacon, etc… They are flavored by sprinkling various flavors of powdered kool-aid and tang and nestea on top, which is totally brilliant by the way. And they are variably shaped like giant penises, huge blunts, playfully tortured voodoo dolls, sloppy chunks, and of course like a doughnut. On their online menu, they definitely had once offered doughnuts glazed in pepto-bismal and nyquil.
The doughnut I went for that evening was the “GRAPE APE.” The secret ingredient here was definitely a thin layer of powdered grape kool-aid delicately coating the icing on top. This doughnut blew my mind. It tasted exactly how a grape doughnut would taste: sugary, yeasty, grape aftertaste. I’ll be coming back for more.
Here is a Nokia cell phone web blog video I am in. Features music by White Williams. The dinner I am making here is black cherry cola ribs, shrimp and peach spring rolls, fried dough dipped tofu with powdered sugar, and scallion buttered stove-burner-grilled corn. We ate this a couple weeks ago. I oven baked these ribs, and embarrassingly burned them a little! (I’m still so bad at oven-cooking, I admit it!!) Still decent ribs, if not jerkey-ish, which is totally acceptable to me. Check out our favorite hair artist extraordinaire, Antonio Velotta’s, amazing pose in the final still of the video. He blew dried my hair that day!!! He can do yours as well!
The guys who filmed this, Andrew Hinton, Daniel Trapp, and Josh Neale were pretty cool, really British, in their thirties, nice, handsome, really into eating different things, and hanging out. Check it out, it’s wild.
Dip it in fried dough!!
This was really the best. It was Jojo’s birthday this past week, and the theme of the party was doughnut burger, a dish made famous by the late Luther Vandross. Zena hosted the party in her yard, I brought over a huge bowl of batter ready to deep fry.
The dough was an Italian recipe consisting of:
- 1 1/4 cup flour
- 16oz ricotta cheese
- 3 eggs
- 3 tbs sugar
- 3 tsp baking powder
The measurements made a thick batter/wet dough. Adjust accordingly. Fry with the oil about 350. I used peanut oil.
I started trying to fry hot dog buns at the request of Zena. I only made one, but it looked very funny!! I put some dough in a zip loc bag and cut off the tip to make a 3/4 inch hole. Then I squeezed it out in the hot oil. It looked like a long fetus, or some sort of elongated fish, mainly because of the tail trailing off a the end. Funny!! We laughed.
I asked Zena to see the hot dogs these fried dough buns were for, and to my surprise, they were spicy tofurkey sausage! How weird!! I decided to cut them into thirds and dip them in the batter and fry them. I still covered them in powdered sugar afterwards. THEY RULED SO HARD!!!!
Here are pics::
Also, here was a very dark moment at the party when Zena presents a pinata to our birthday boy Jojo, and his response.
And here was a fun moment when we are all whistling!!
A little bit of background on this; I’m actually a little late on posting this, they put this out a couple weeks ago, but about 2 months ago I g0t a phone call at around 1:00 AM on a weekday evening from a familiar voice I had not heard from in a long time. I looked at my phone and my caller ID said “CX KiDTRONiK” but actually, it was from Kiko the Dealer (or TchaKa DiallO) calling from his cellphone. The voice says to me, “Hey Thu, we are at Andrew’s house. We are making a music video right now. We would like you to be in it.”
And then he continues, “Can you bring over some eggs? We’re going to need those. You know, the song is “Beat it Up,” so we can beat some eggs.”
I was actually getting myself ready to lay in bed and play video games on my Nintendo DS. An hour later, I finally get up off my butt and mosey over. It’s only a short 5 block walk. Luckily, I still had 2 cartons of eggs sitting in the fridge, which actually came from our Food Party shoot from at least 4 months ago, which means the eggs used in this video, is at least that old. Notice Kiko eating the eggs, it is incredible and gross. I scrambled a lot of eggs that night. When CX attacked me with that egg beater, I cracked up so hard. I got to Andrew’s house around 2am and left around 430am. I walked home wet, clean and egg-free.
These guys are really amazing funny and crazy, and I love their music. Check them out live when you can, it is really fun. You can listen to it on Myspace. Here is one of their pictures::
Love, Thu
Hi guys! This weekend I found myself in Los Angeles again, for one day, and we stopped at the most charming little hot dog place before leaving for the airport to go to Lake Tahoe for a Yoga/Music Festival. Let me get back to talking about these hot dogs.
Actually before that, I can try to give you a little background on this place. Scheid and Chris Duffy breifly mentioned before we got here that this aparently had been a really hot spot for rowdy drunks to go to after attending punk and hardcore shows at nearby clubs. It was common catchphrase at some point after a rowdy show to say “see ya at oki dog’s”.
After some mild googling, I learned that the “oki dog” was invented by an Okinawan, named Sakai “Jimmy” Sueyoshi, who moved to America in the 70s, and eventually opened up a hot dog stand to make a dollar. It was open late and located near Hollywood nightclubs and featured a signature dish: a burrito filled with 2 hotdogs, pastrami, and chili cheese. This is exactly what you want when you are sweaty and wasted, right? He is so smart. You can read more about the history here.
Anyway, we went on a hot afternoon, for most of us including me, this was my first meal of the day, so it was a little intimidating. I love this menu so hard, because everything about it rules.
I went for the Oki Dog with a Pepsi, one of the more intense breakfasts I’ve ever had. The Oki Dog seriously looked at me in the face with its hotdog EYES and laughed at me with its pastrami LIPS as I bit into it. I looked at it back straight in its eyes, and it still intimidated me. I felt fear for one of the few times in my life at the fact that my food was looking back at me, staring me down like a champion heavyweight contender, and winning. It beat me, too. I only made it halfway through. I left with my head hanging down, defeated. I’ll be back for a rematch next chance I get.
Oh, and for one more dollar, you can get french fries comparable in quality and quantity to the ones from the Dirty O in Pittsburgh. Except krispier.
I liked this sign on the wall telling you what is in an Oki Dog. PS, you’re eating 3 variations of meat at once. Check out MUST tard. And the smily faces. And the creative spelling. And the penmanship of this sign totally belongs to someone who is constantly saying “Fuck Yeah!!” to himself in his head :
I realized in no other city do I enjoy hot dogs more than I do in Los Angeles. Not a nathan’s hot dog, a papaya dog, a hot dog from Steve’s in Cleveland, a coney from Skyline in Cincinatti, compare to these LA street dogs. The night before going to Oki Dog’s, before going to bed, I had a very sinful eating experience. I wandered around looking for snack around 230 am and saw a lady selling delicious hotdogs from a little push cart very similar to the ones I had outside of The Smell last year. These big dogs are grilled, wrapped in bacon, topped with grilled peppers and onions, and ketchup, mustard and MAYO!! I thanked her graciously and brought it back to my hotel room and ate it in bed.
Hi everybody! It is still so freaking hot as HELL outside, and since HELL is affiliated with Satan, and Satan is affiliated with Evil, and Killing is Evil, and a lot of times when that happens, BLOOD is involved, I decided to make some SANGRIA tonight, and it is delightfully easy and refreshing! And when you make some, you can think about how it’s like, you know, you’re chugging blood, and that’s so cool.
Hey! It’s really easy, this is how I made mine. First, I got some fresh fruit:
Oranges, slice them thin or chop them into chunks!
These are Italian sugar plums! Do the same to these bad boys.
And strawberries! Slice these up as well.
To destroy some illusion, here’s a picture of me taking a picture of the strawberries.
Get some RED WINE! A red table wine is good! I was highly recommended this bottle at the liquor store by the nice store clerk. This is a very sweet Italian red wine. It is very delicious and so sugary and is as close to candy as red wine can get I think. The unicorn on the label is also a nice drawing.
And finally, my final ingredient is SPRITE!!!!
There are of course infinite variations on making Sangria, but this batch I made this evening was especially refreshing and chug-worthy.
I made myself a big glass of it and drank it alone and watched Home Alone 2 with my boyfriend. I put the chopped fruit on the bottom of the cup. Then a couple ice cubes on top of that. Then I poured on the red wine, enough so that the fruit and cubes were submerged, and then a nice good splash of sprite. Finally, I got some chopsticks and aggressively poked and mixed it around so that the fruit penetrated the liquid much better. Here is the cup that I am chugging right now:
Typically, you can add additional sugar to the mix, but the wine I got was already candy level sweetness. If you are looking to get wasted faster, you can add more booze to it as well, such as brandy or triple sec. Also, use whatever fruit you feel like. Other fruits that work well are nectarines, lemons, pineapples, apples, berries, peaches, honeydew could be rowdy, whatever.
I love sangria, because the first time my mom ever served me wine, I thought it was sangria. It was a fizzy red wine that was so refreshing and sugary. When I asked her what it was, she said it was MERLOT and MOUNTAIN DEW!!! It was WILD!!!
Here is a picture of my mom picking some greens from the family garden a couple weeks ago. She is so wonderful!
It is so HOT and HUMID today. WHAT A HOT JULY EVENING!! As a fun little refreshing treat, I made some fruit soup. It is very easy to prepare as you will see.
First, choose 3 exotic tropical fruits. Mine came in cans. I chose RAMBUTAN, LYCHEE, and JACKFRUIT. The bonus of fruit in cans is that it comes with a delicious fruit infused syrup, which is a great addition to the soup.
Get a large bowl, and dump the contents of the three cans into it, syrup and all. Put the bowl in the fridge to chill.
While that is chilling, I would like to introduce you to a very great thing. This is a small bag of multi-colored 5-minute tapioca pearls:
As you can see, it was $1.69. To prepare the tapioca, get a huge pot of water going and let it come to a boil. Empty the bag into the water and start gently stirring it around. They’re ready when they start to float.
Afterwards, I strained and ran it under some cold water, so that they are cold and not hot anymore.
So now, all you have to do is dump the cold pearls into your fruit bowl in the fridge, and THEN, you grab a can of coconut milk , shake it up, and open it with a can opener, and then dump THAT into the bowl as well. Give it a GOOD STIR!
And that’s it really. It’s really good. To serve, I ladled into rice bowls and added an ice cube or two to the soup. It makes it extra cold, and also, the soup is quite sweet and rich, so as the ice melts, the cold broth becomes extremely chuggable. Easy!!!
Thu Tran
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