Tabasco gets a fancy ad?

Don't get me wrong, Tabasco is delicious and makes a lot of things (like food) better. Even taste better! But I noticed our usual Adsense adverts are replaced with Tabasco's Twitter feed. And yet it still says "Ads by Google" on the thing, so either Adsense is becoming more targeted or Evan struck a deal with the hot sauce masterminds. Does this mean we get paid more?

Anyway, it just seems so... appropriate. Also probably meta, somehow.

Edit: I guess it's just regular old boring Adsense ads if you're viewing a single post. I was almost hoping I could see a twitter feed on our blog on every page!

Getting Back On Track

By the way, when the NASA scientists made their list of the top movies least likely to happen, I think they forgot about Battlefield Earth. Something tells me that's less likely to happen than 2012. Gigli got better reviews than this film.

Anyway, as you may or may not know I'm back in Pullman, fending off bears and classwork alike. And you guys made 7 posts in just 3 days? Now I feel like a slacker. I feel like I should be obliged to make a usual column of sorts. You know, classic YNTE's, or game reviews, or the "at least one crazy food item per month" sort of thing.

But this is a Democracy Evanocracy, so I think everyone Evan should get a say strike fear into my heart into what I should do regularly. So what would you guys like to see? Me ranting? Finding Google image searches? Incoherent rabble? Being able to have the right to edit posts again? There's so much potential, and so many directions you could push me towards.

Don't worry though, I'll finally get back into semi-regular posting as usual. Even if this one kinda felt like a big recap post of sorts. The Gauntlet shall be conquered once again this year.

It's Vegas, Baby!

So I returned home from Vegas yesterday, and subsequently passed out after the irritating flight home. Since my first name is the latest in the alphabet compared to the rest of my family, I get the pleasure of always getting an aisle seat, and I can't just take a nap on the plane 'cause people are constantly running into my arm on account of their tiny bladders. Consequently I didn't end up joining Umi and Evan in their Left 4 Dead game.

In any case, I thought I'd share the luxurious minibar my room came stocked with... wait, there was no mini bar, just this:

I certainly do enjoy my water, but not $7 for that. Hell, for $2 more I could run downstairs and get 3 bottles of Coke for that! But I digress. I was going to share the amazing meals I was going to have, but they were all pretty standard. So instead, enjoy these advertisements heavily laden with innuendo, starting from least to most obscure.

Anyway, this'll be the last post before my last post of the year. Cryptic!

Half-Baked

What circumstances could possibly call for half of a pie that a full pie could not fully vouch for? Safeway, you crazy.

Mine goes to 11

I'm talking about, of course, my stove, which was probably designed by Spinal Tap.

As you can see, it goes from lo-2-3....9-10-hi. The only logical conclusion is that this one goes to 11. It's one hotter.

Matt is a Slacker

So at first I was like "damn, I don't have an idea for the last post of the month on YNTE."

Then I was like "damn, I didn't post pictures on any of my blog posts this month."

I'll make it up to you all with a corgi being adorable.

And then Evan's future wallet became slightly lighter.

Epic Quest: The Skinwich

Today my girlfriend let me know that I would be on my own for dinner. She would be gone, meaning I could eat WHATEVER I WANTED. This was a mistake.

I decided I wanted to have a Skinwich.

Sure, it's fake. KFC doesn't really serve the Skinwich, and for good reason. It could very well kill a man. But they do sell other food items containing all the ingredients. This was my in. If they wouldn't sell me one, I'd just make one on my own.

So I hatched a plan. I'd buy a "Doublicious Burger" for the bun, cheese, and bacon. And I'd buy 4 chicken breasts to pull the skin off of. This posed two problems:

1) KFC is expensive, and the whole experiment cost me upwards of 15 dollars.
2) It also, however yielded far more food than I anticipated. If you attempt this, be sure to have a friend ride in the car with you when you go to the store, lest you get some judgemental looks from the employees.
The "Doublicious" did not yield as much cheese or bacon as I had hoped, but we were past the point of no return, as I certainly wasn't about to drive all the way back to KFC to spend MORE money. It's basically a single layer of cheese, a single layer of bacon, and a single piece of chicken. The only thing "double" is the buns, and two is the generally accepted minimum amount of buns a sandwich should have.
I had selected breasts because I assumed I would be able to peel off a big piece of skin, but that didn't turn out to be the case, either. It kind of flaked off in rather small chunks which I stacked up in a pile. If I were to do this again, I'd choose a cheaper piece of chicken, since it all will turn out the same. Two breasts worth on this pile.
I then pulled the chicken off the bun, because hey, this is a SKIN-ONLY sandwich. Unfortunately, some of the cheese (which was already at a premium) had melted to the chicken, so that piece also had to be skinned.
I then piled yet another breast's worth of skins onto the bun.
Then I put the two halves together and voila! Skinwich.
And yes, I actually ate it. In front of a mirror, so there would be proof.

But here's the real surprise: IT WAS SUPER TASTY. I ate the whole thing, and then ate much of the leftover bits and had myself a tasty good time. It was better than the sum of its parts. I know the whole thing was just a joke, but they joked their way into a tasty sandwich.

Would I do it again? Probably not. It required a larger investment of both effort and money than I had hoped, and while it was probably better than anything else on the menu, not by enough to justify the cost. Probably.

Although, I'm going to say it here (and you should take this as a personal challenge): the Skinwich is worth eating at least once.

Just don't eat two, or your heart will explode.

Gotcha!

This is the part where I pretend to say that I fooled you to get you out of the house and into a KFC, but secretly I didn't do my sleuthing to see that it was fake, as it was from a reputable (kinda) site that I browse frequently (Geekologie).

But! That doesn't mean we can't make one by buying the proper things at a KFC to make one. Are you man enough to make your own skinwitch? It's like making a taco burger at Jack in the Box, except instead of putting a taco on a hamburger, it involves ripping the skin off of 5 chicken breasts and putting it on a bun with cheese and bacon. Totally doable!

If you thought the Double Down was bad...

KFC, which announced the idea of the Double Down on April Fool's Day and actually went through with it, has another new product that they are releasing: The Skinwitch. For those times that you want KFC and yet you'd rather have bacon than chicken. It may be a bit hard to tell from the picture, but basically you have layers of KFC-style chicken skin layered with cheese and bacon. Now that fried outer crust on the chicken is good, but I don't know about you, but I'd like to have some of that chicken, too.

But regardless, I will probably have to go and try one anyway and accelerate that heart attack that's going to happen someday.

Laziness strikes again!

Yes, it's another one of those times of year, where summer classes end, prompting you to be lazy, and fall classes begin, prompting you to also be lazy. In effect it looks like I may be cutting it close to this month as well. But, I have something up my sleeve...

Something that is both food and beast.

Something... fearsome.

It is Beartato. Relevant!

Anyway, gotta get back to work.

Post Number 3! Classic YNTE!

Man I am cutting it close this month. So I will adorn this page with a classic YNTE for old time's sake. And then do 2 posts tomorrow and be ok.

Also the post title rhymed. I thought that was worth some sort of artistic merit.

Eye on the prize

Well, considering it's been nearly a month since my last posting, and no more poking at Tom for not posting and considering that content, you may have come to the conclusion that I ran out of ideas. Not so!

So I present to you: a list of things $50 could have bought Tom that I might eventually buy instead:

-12.5 boxes of Captain Crunch (25.33 if Dissmores has them for 2 for $3 again)

-50 cans of Chef Boyardee Beefaroni

-a year's supply of Ramen noodles

-3.125 Pink Programmable Coffee Pots

-5.5556 movie tickets (but only 1.7623423 if you add in the price of popcorn and a drink)

-100 grab bags full of comic books

-Probably a copy of Starcraft II, which comes out tomorrow.

And on that note, first post of the month. Looks like Evan has a bit of catching up to do as well.

Brilliant!

Since everyone loves bacon, and since everyone is also collectively and also probably statistically significantly (and quite possibly enumerably) lazy, someone has invented the microwave bacon cooker. You drape the bacon over the top and the grease drips down the the bottom, and you have bacon in minutes.

I'll take eight!

E3 is here, and so are Portal 2 details

If you ever played the first Portal, then there's no doubt that you'd be looking to get a sequel fix. Well, looks like it's coming next year.



It'll be for Xbox360, PS3, and PC and has a few new testing elements. How is this relevant to a blog about food? There are two food-related items! Here are some of them in greater detail:

• Excursion Funnels are part of an investigation into how well test subjects can solve problems while traveling through a churning tunnel of liquid asbestos. Results so far have been highly informative: they cannot. ("Asbestos is Harmless" is a registered trademark of Aperture Science dba Aperture Laboratories Copyright 1998 All Rights Reserved)
  
  
• Aerial Faith Plates are part of a larger trust experiment designed to help the Enrichment Center discover whether the capacity for trust is effected by being catipulted into space. (Aerial Faith Plates exert 50,000 foot-pounds of force. "Faith Plate" is a registered trademark of Aperture Science dba Aperture Laboratories Copyright 1998 All Rights Reserved)
  
  
• Thermal Discouragement Beam is confidential. If permission to look at the diagram has been granted, please do so now, unless the box labeled "DO NOT LOOK AT DIAGRAM" on the "Diagrams Forms Sanction" form you should have received from your supervisors is checked, in which case you should remain at your workstation not looking at the diagram until such time as you are instructed by your supervisor to discontinue not looking at it. ("Thermal Discouragement" is a registered trademark of Aperture Science dba Aperture Laboratories Copyright 1998 All Rights Reserved)
  
  
• Pneumatic Diversity Vent has a non-discriminatory entrance port where "Passive Monitoring" ensures objects in the vents are identified, but never judged. ("Diversity" is a registered trademark of Aperture Science dba Aperture Laboratories Copyright 1998 All Rights Reserved)
  
  
• Propulsion Gel, designed as a diet aid and marketed under the name "Propulsion Pudding," was a sweet, largely non-toxic liquid form of fiberglass insulation that increased the velocity of any food that followed it through the digestive tract, leaving the body no time to absorb calories. Propulsion Pudding was pulled from the shelves when it was discovered that digestion plays several crucial roles in the eating process, such as breaking food down into small, manageable chunks before it is violently expelled from the human body. ("Propulsion Gel" is a registered trademark of Aperture Science dba Aperture Laboratories Copyright 1998 All Rights Reserved)
  
  
• Repulsion Gel is the result Aperture's second attempt at a dietetic pudding substitute, a much sweeter, slightly less non-toxic form of fiberglass insulation that caused subsequently ingested food items to bounce off the lining of the dieter's distended stomach and out his or her mouth. (For various reasons, this was also pulled from the shelf. "Repulsion Gel" is a registered trademark of Aperture Science dba Aperture Laboratories Copyright 1998 All Rights Reserved)

Hit this link for some gameplay and stuff.

Happy Birthday Evan!

Happy birthday Evan! To commemorate this wonderous occasion, I am giving you a picture of a pizza, but it's actually a cake. I have no idea how it tastes though, I just googled pizza cake and this is what came up. It probably tastes like both.

Also, as an added gift, I am publicly remembering your birthday... in the past!

Cinco de No Contest

WELL... Taco Del Mar in Pullman didn't have the Cinco de Mayo 5 pound burrito challenge because somebody got sick last year. Thanks random person for ruining my chances this year! Here's a picture of me looking sad-faced that I could only get a REGULAR mondo burrito instead of the Cinco de Mayo one.

So instead, since I didn't want to break the bank -too- badly, I got 2 mondo burritos instead. Ate them both no problem.

But then I got home and looked up the Mondo Burrito, and it turns out those are only 24 oz apiece. So I ate only about 5/8ths of what a giant burrito would have been. I would have needed to eat 3.3333333333333333 burritos to match you guys. I'm thinking I could have managed the .333333333333333 part, but if I had to eat a whole other burrito, I may not have come out victorious. BUT I guess we shall never know... this year.

What's better than beer and bread combined?

Iunno.

In any case, we made beer bread 'cause we were bored. Recipe was pretty simple - 6 cups of flour, 6 tbsp baking powder, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tsp salt, 1 c butter, and a 22oz bottle of beer. (We used a Red Hook ESB I think). The reason it uses beer is a substitute for the yeast as a rising agent, and because someone thought it would be a good idea to put their beer in the batter. In any case, mix all together, bake for 30-45 mins in bread pan(s) at 375F, and eat fresh. Tastes almost like biscuits, would be good with jam or honey, or maybe even more butter!

In any case, delicious. It's simple, foolproof, and delicious.

Classic YNTE

Posting this because I have way too much stuff to do before the end of the month and I probably wouldn't have another chance to post.

In Blackjack you could double your money

...But in a KFC, a Double Down could double your chance for a heart attack. Above is a (pretty crappy) picture of a half-eaten Double Down sandwich they started selling. It was one of those things that they revealed on April 1, but then we found out it wasn't a joke. Of course, I had to try one. It required finding our way to the KFC Taco Bell in the next town over, which was a pain in the ass because Moscow sucks and doesn't have coherent roads.

So it's 2 pieces of boneless chicken acting as the bun and containing 2 pieces of bacon, 2 pieces of cheese, and ?? of mayo (I don't even know if it WAS mayo). Don't get me wrong, it was good... but the taste of the KFC chicken overpowered everything else. Honestly, if you were to just slap 2 pieces of chicken together and ate it, that's probably going to have the same taste as this, just fewer chances for heart attacks. Oh, and it was like $5. So you could have gotten 5 snackers instead of this, or 5 tacos.

Consensus: It's alright, but I probably wouldn't have got it if it weren't for content on a blog that's partially about eating. But, if you have $5, a KFC around and are immune to heart attacks, I guess it couldn't hurt to try.

Pie

It's Pi day happy pi day everyone! (It won't be as good as 3/14/15 9:26:53, but we'll still have fun if I have to make it fun somehow). Have some pi pie, although this picture that Google image search brought up looks like an ordinary pumpkin pie with a pi symbol on it. Where's my pi flavored pie, dammit?

...mmm, mathematical.

Also @Evan, not sure if I can make it to the the ECCC. We're in town, but the whole money thing kinda sucks right now. I'll trade you a pizza for a Totapoco t-shirt though.