Author Archives: Erik
The Cereal Report: Peanut Butter Toast Crunch
One of the greater tragedies of the last decade was the loss of one of my favorite cereals, French Toast Crunch. It was still around at first, it just just wasn’t the same, having its formula changed drastically several years ago, and finally being discontinued since the new formula was shitty. Since then I was very skeptical towards any of the Toast Crunch cereals, sort of aloof and even somewhat protesting of them. That is, up until I read that General Mills was bringing back Peanut Butter Toast Crunch, which existed many years ago for a short period of time, and which I had never been able to try. Considering Meg and I love peanut butter enough to have covered it in Midnight Snack already, you can imagine my elation upon finding this bad boy in stores once again.
Does he really need to be pointing to the jar of peanut butter? We get the idea.
Food 101: How to Dredge Chicken
You’ll see a lot of recipes calling for you to “dredge” your meats prior to cooking them. Of course the word dredge brings to mind imagery of large industrial machines scooping out mud, garbage, and dead whales from the bottoms of harbors. Yes, that is what dredging technically is, but fortunately it has an alternate meaning in the cooking world.
“Thank God.” ~Every person who’s ever eaten chicken francaise.
Midnight Snack – Peanut Butter
Midnight Snack is a recurring column focusing on “food for couples” so to speak. Its discussion may hint towards the use of foods during romance and intimacy, and though it contains nothing sexually explicit, reader discretion is still advised. And by all means, DO try this at home, folks.
Let’s face it, I’m terrible with introductions. We all are. It’s the hardest part of any essay and the number one factor getting in the way of single people getting laid. So let me be blunt. This is Midnight Snack. It’s a column about using food in your love life. The best of both worlds. Just the right amount of wrong. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be a matter of flailing relationships, in the same vein as “Oh honey our routine is getting stale… I think you need to tie me to the bed and electrocute my nipples with a cattle prod.” Food utilized during sexytime can be a once in a while treat, not some sort of kinky changeup to reinvigorate what simply isn’t there. Many foods act as aphrodisiacs, bringing forth various types of mental states and chemical reactions in the body, which naturally causes you and your significant other to be in an amorous mood. Additionally, food is delicious and romance is bitchin’, so why the hell not combine the two?
Right then. Let’s talk peanut butter. It’s salty, creamy, and oh-so smooth (unless you’re eating crunchy peanut butter). The description alone automatically conjures up so many sexual innuendos, that I almost feel like I don’t even need to write anything more in this article. I can’t exactly start off with that paragraph, then say “We recommend spicing up your love life with peanut butter!” and call it a day. All you romantic foodies out there deserve better than that. So let’s dive right into it.
If only…
Guys, Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies Really Aren’t That Difficult
Let me take you back in time a bit. It’s the year 1950. Truman is President, your only fear is Communism, and everyone has a bar in their living room. It was a simpler time. Maybe not necessarily a better time, since my main segue here involves the classic stereotype of the kitchen housewife. Obviously women’s rights weren’t exactly at the forefront of society at the time, but one thing they did right back then were the old standby dessert favorite, chocolate chip cookies. You could always count on mom, apron and oven mitts in hand, to bake you a batch of these on any given day, on a whim, whenever the hell. They’re easy to make and the closest thing to pure comfort existing in a physical state.
Fast forward, and it’s the ’90s. Everybody skateboards and wears sunglasses, and Princess Diana died or something. Everyone is too radical and busy to make chocolate chip cookies anymore. By now, Pillsbury, Toll House, and other baked goods companies have had pre-made cookie dough batches on shelves for some time now. While certainly convenient at first, the taste and texture lacks any freshness, and overall just feels rather generic.
Annnd now it’s the ’10s. Most people are fat, and Toll House recently invented one of the laziest cooking products in history: pre-made, pre-portioned, pre-cut chocolate chip cookie dough. Everything is done. You literally drop them on a tray and bake them. They go from package to your stupid fat mouth in 10 minutes. Slackers everywhere rejoice, for some reason!
Yup, this all looks totally legit homestyle.
Pizza Lab #6: Pretzel 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.
One of my favorite tags here is the crazy crossovers tag. It’s reserved for the delightful results of worlds colliding.. Unsurprisingly, Pizza Lab uses this tag everytime just because that’s really the basic gist of the column, pizza crossovers with other foods. This edition is no different, but to me feels like a true crossover because of the nature of the experiment. Some of the previous labs have been great, but weren’t particularly outlandish with regards to the foods involved. Our Pretzel Pizza in this Pizza Lab saw two classic snack foods combine in a way we didn’t think possible. We changed things up a bit, and it felt pretty special as far as pizza experiments go. The results were certainly worth it (after a ton of work).
Pretzel Pizza
Erik S. So this was our second dessert pizza that we’ve done. It was, what do they call it? A labor of love. Or no, an enormous pain in the asshole. That’s the term I was thinking of.
Meg A. Haha yeah…
Erik S. But my God was it worth it.
Meg A. Indeed. I wish it hadn’t been so much work so we might actually make it again. I was sad when I finished the last piece because I knew more than likely it wouldn’t be made again.
Erik S. Well, never say never… but yeah, let’s never make it again, haha.
Meg A. In fairness, if we always made our own dough this pizza wouldn’t have seemed like that much more work. But we’re lazy, so yeah.
Erik S. Well, if we made our own dough, we also wouldn’t have made it through six Pizza Labs.
Meg A. This is true.
Erik S. There’s a reason we buy our dough from pizzerias.
Meg A. Yes, because we’d rather spend $3 on pre-made dough than 3 hours on making our own.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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