Author Archives: Erik
Cheat Codes: Homemade Fry Batter (For french fries, mac ‘n’ cheese bites, onion rings, and others!)
It seems to be a fact of life that everybody loves fried foods. Obviously, they’re not the healthiest choice of dining out there, but in fairness fried food at home isn’t the same beast as fried fast foods. Making your own treats at home in heated oil is generally okay since you’re using fresh vegetable or canola oil, it hasn’t been lying around all day, and is free of impurities. You can drain your foods more easily, making them less greasy and retaining less fat. In short, if you enjoy fried, salty snacks then you’re much better off making your own since your body will thank you for it later. Also not to mention, it just tastes better than the stale, greasy rubbish you’re more than likely to receive from dumpster stores like McDonalds which tend to include hilarious numbers of ingredients and ends up laced with artificial colors, flavors and borderline poison like phosphates. Seriously, their fries can last unscathed for literally years. Open a new tab, Google “McDonalds Fries are indestructible” (preferably with an empty stomach) and enjoy the show, lads.
They probably enjoyed the free publicity, symbolism aside. (French Fry Skull by Christopher Chiappa)
Christmas Cookie Roundup: Make Your Own Yoshi’s Cookies!
T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house, we’re all baking cookies, something something mouse. That was ham-fisted, yes, but I’m pressed for time to attend the annual Italian ritual of attempting to cook enough fish on one given night to cause mass extinction of several species. I hate fish, you see, as does Meg. So naturally we’re making a pizza tonight. Now if I may be ham-fistedly make a random segue…
Anyone remember that video game Yoshi’s Cookie? It was a puzzle game for older game consoles like Super Nintendo and the original Game Boy. It featured you playing as the Super Mario character, Yoshi (a green dinosaur that loves to eat), controlling a field of cookies in which you must line up different versions of the cookies in order for them to be cleared away.
Pizza Lab #12: Pumpkin Pie Pizza
Pizza Lab is a fun theoretical column in which Meg A. and Erik S. explore their innermost passion for baking and eating pizzas. It exists purely for the sake of experimenting in the kitchen. It may not necessarily be cost-effective everytime, so don’t try this at home kids.
Poor, poor Thanksgiving. It gets the shaft compared to many of the big holidays. While once a celebration of being humble and grateful for what you have in your life, regardless of any lifestyle or belief or faction, it has instead devolved into a tradition of cramming as much food down your throat as physically possible and then complaining about it later. It’s a shame considering it’s one of my favorite holidays due to the rustic nature and themes going on in its season. But unfortunately consumerism and merchandising companies have decided to rename Thanksgiving Day to Get Great Black Friday Deals With Doorbusters Savings Starting 5PM Thursday Day. For the rest of us who still love the message of the holiday, there’s still much joy to be had in all the various traditional, yummy foods that we partake in. As mentioned from time to time, Meg and I already did a Thanksgiving pizza earlier this year (in May for some reason), so if we wanted to do a timely Pizza Lab, we had to be creative. The product was another dessert pizza that fit well into the Thanksgiving season.
Erik: Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and Thanksgiving Pizza was definitely one of my favorites that we made. But why on Earth did we have to go and make it in May? Haha.
Meg: Yeah, that was kind of a bad call on our part. But we were young and excited about fun pizza choices. We weren’t thinking ahead.
Erik: Ah well. In the very least, it led to our latest experiment, Pumpkin Pie Pizza.
Meg: Yup! While we never originally intended our pizza labs to correspond to the occasions surrounding their creation, it kind of just happened naturally. In the summer we were in the mood for grilled pizza, in November we wanted pumpkin pie.
Erik: That doesn’t sound unintentional to me… Heh.
Meg: Well you know what I mean. When we started pizza lab it wasn’t like, “We must make a pizza that corresponds to its proper month.” Though if we had the original Thanksgiving pizza probably wouldn’t have been in April.
Erik: What a sad thought! To have been deprived of it until just now…
Meg: True. It’s for the best we made it when we did.
Cheat Codes: How To Microwave Bacon (And why it’s better that way)
Bacon is overrated. I’ve said it once before on here, and I’ll continue saying it until the day I am unable to eat food anymore. It doesn’t go great in your Frosted Flakes, it won’t cure cancer, it’s not this magical essence that the past decade of internet stupidity have built it up to be. For whatever reason people have selected this one tasty food out of literally thousands upon thousands of foodstuffs and to sloppily obsess over it for the rest of eternity. The salty snack has been thrust into and out of the limelight here and there, appearing in the odd recipe here and there, like cupcakes or other breakfast treats. But soon it got out of hand. Meals made almost entirely of bacon became a thing. Bacon novelty bandages were create. Bacon t-shirts. For some reason everything needed to be made of bacon and then somewhere around the year 2010 some asshole decided bacon-flavored lube was an idea, and it’s been downhill ever since. Do I hate bacon? No. I merely hate the culture and humor surrounding it. Nothing besides puppies wearing costumes deserves that amount of attention, and on top of that, it’s kinda bad for you. The former can’t be helped since idiots and the internet are things, but the latter can definitely be remedied somewhat.
To be fair, puppies and the internet are also things too.
Mashed Potatoes Made Simple and Easy. Or Fancy! (But still easy!)
Everyone knows I’m a pretty big opponent of pre-made foods. One of the more common ones is the longtime favorite mashed potatoes. Fluffy, savory delight made of cream and tender potatoes… yet most people make it out of a brownish dust that came out of a box, reassured mostly by the fact it features a picture of the state of Idaho on it. Our better judgment try and tell us no, for mashed potatoes are whipped, creamy goodness, and how could they come from a powder? But our laziness and gullibility force us to buy into the potato dust hype, since as we all know Idaho loves potatoes. They love potatoes.
“It makes greeeat lube.”
Instant mashed potatoes aren’t the worst thing in the world, and I will submit that they get the job done if you’re cooking en masse and don’t have the time to prepare the real deal. But unless you find yourself preparing a potato feast for 50+ people, you really don’t have much of an excuse, since homemade takes about 30 minutes, most of which time is just the potatoes boiling, and you not actually doing anything.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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