Author Archives: Erik
Cheat Codes: Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte
As mentioned in my last post about pumpkin pie spice, every October September August, millions of yuppies and idiots run to Starbucks forking over shit-tons of money for their limited time pumpkin spice lattes. It’s a tasty treat that you can only get for a few months at a time each year, and is pretty fun as far as coffee is concerned. And again, there seems to be a tremendous amount of novelty in the idea of pumpkin pie lattes, since they do taste so reminiscent of their namesake, that you might fool yourself into thinking the flavoring is some sort of complex concoction involving impossible spices mined from the furthest reaches of outer space and dehydrated pumpkin flakes created using factory-grade machinery. But like I said in our article about making your own pumpkin spice, it’s really just a handful of spices you probably already have on hand. There’s no pumpkin involved, unless you want to get really fancy.
Though hopefully not THIS fancy.
Pizza Lab #9: Three-Cheese Pesto Grilled 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.
I’m a big fan of Autumn, most of my friends know this. I recently went on about this in my pumpkin spice article. Despite this, September always was a bittersweet month, since Summer is still my favorite time of year no matter what. Halloween and pumpkins are nice, but IMO it’s not quite worth the loss of wearing nothing but t-shirts and driving with the windows down. So before the end of Summer, Meg and I wanted to do one last grilled pizza before temperatures dropped back into the 50s and 60s, making grilling your foods inappropriate and silly (unless of course you live in the south where it’s probably state-law to never go more than a month without igniting your barbecue). We grow lots of basil every summer, and thus make a lot of pesto each year. This combined with the fact that our last grilled pizza almost resembled a panino sandwich in texture made us realize we absolutely needed to make some sort of Tuscan pesto chicken panini inspired pizza. And while this was one of the more tame ideas for a Pizza Lab, it ended up being delicious to the point of borderline sexy.
Three-Cheese Pesto Grilled Pizza
Erik S. So this pizza was pretty okay I guess.
Meg A. Just okay?
Erik S. Sorry, that was a typo… So this pizza was OH MY GOD IT WAS SO OH MY GOD.
Meg A. Haha, that’s better. This pizza was indeed pretty magical. But we knew it was gonna be awesome from the beginning.
Erik S. Magical is a good way to describe it. Only pure magic could have produced such euphoria.
Meg A. Yeah, in our heads (and our noses) we had a pretty good inkling it was gonna be a sheer delight. It’s also probably the most decadent pizza we’ve made yet
Erik S. It’s interesting too considering it’s one of the least outlandish ones we’ve made too.
Meg A. True. It’s the most traditional-ish.
Erik S. Hm. Looking back at the photos is taking me back. Oh man… We need to relive that pizza some day. I’m feeling feelings.
Meg A. Do you need a minute? Don’t forget to lock your door…
Cheat Codes: Homemade Pumpkin Pie Spice
Everybody loves Fall. It’s got everything good about life all rolled into one season. Nice weather, cool scenery, fun holidays, and awesome food. That last part obviously being relevant to anyone possessing a sense of taste/smell. There’s a lot of fun flavors and culinary themes going on from September to November you don’t encounter for the rest of the year. Out of nowhere, it’s the 20th, and suddenly everything smells like cinnamon, and tastes like a pumpkin. I don’t know, I’m not a scientist, I don’t question it, it just happens.
“After countless hours of work we’ve finally concluded that this cinnamon smells EXACTLY like cinnamon.”
Pizza Lab #8: Chinese Food 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.
It’s one of the more unfortunate stereotypes in modern society that pizza is a fast food. The notion of fast food brings to mind images of maniacal corporations and mostly-plastic hamburgers which have about the same nutritional value on your body as a swift kick in the balls. Technically, fast food used to literally mean “fast” food; it was food prepared quickly, presented in a cheap, efficient fashion so as to be eaten on the run. While not all fast food is necessarily terrible and disgusting, the fast food everyone has come to know and love (and hate) is a bit of an anomaly in our civilization in how bad it is for you, and how gross it secretly is. Despite that, not all quickly-prepared food has to be awful. This brings me back to my original point, that pizza is often unfairly lumped into the same category as trashgarbage like the McRib or the Krispykreme Burger, just because it is technically a “fast food”. We all know pizza is serious business. There’s other foods that are considered fast foods, despite not really deserving the name. Our Americanized version of Chinese food is another perennial favorite of cheap slackers who don’t want to dine in, to have this dubious genre. But… what if… the two were combined into one thing?! Would time stop because of the deliciousness?! Would everyone stop eating every other source of food?!
Nah, it’s basically just a pizza crust with Sesame Chicken on it.
Chinese Food Pizza
Erik S. So looking back at our paperwork, here’s some of the comments: “Nothing special. Was too much work for just okay results. Gained nothing by being put on dough.” Those aren’t particularly positive…
Meg A. If i recall it started out okay, but then got meh as we went along.
Erik S. Yeah i think it began promising but didn’t pay off.
Meg A. Yeah…
Erik S. Hmm… what was the inspiration for this pizza anyway? Did we have anything more profound than just “pizza and chinese food are both delicious”?
Meg A. I think I originally thought of sweet and sour chicken pizza just because I’d been craving sweet and sour chicken, but we didn’t think that’d work. But we still wanted to try a chinese food pizza.
Erik S. Ah yeah, because of the flavor of sweet and sour. Though admittedly, the wannabe sesame chicken sauce I made wasn’t too compatible either. We should’ve just made sweet and sour. At least we could’ve satisfied your craving…
Snack Report: Knockoff Kinder Eggs
One of my favorite Youtube channels out there belongs to techie/comedian Stuart Ashens. When people ask me to describe what he does in videos, the best I can do is sum them up as “He’s this funny British dude who reviews terrible things.” The things in question are usually various gadgets, video games, and PC hardware, which while nerdy yes, I must indulge, however he also frequently does videos on food items as well. And I use the term food loosely, since they’re generally prepackaged items sold in the U.K. equivalent of dollar stores. While most of these focus on horror cuisine, once in a while Mr. Ashens will do reviews on genuinely nice items he found/had mailed to him.
America and Britain, the most beautiful form of unrequited love – hate relationship.
And yes, though it’s typically much funnier watching him ingest decade-old gummy snacks or canned mystery meats, and hear his grizzled, British wit in the commentary, the nicer foods sometimes are interesting and informative. Several months ago, I learned of Kinder Eggs through his reviews. These are chocolate eggs with a capsule inside, containing a small toy/prize. Aimed at children, but made by the ritzy, Italian confection company Ferrero, they’re a neat concept that I had never seen or heard of in my entire life.
Oh and they’re totally illegal in the United States.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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