Cheese Review: Limburger Cheese
I’ve been told that there are people who, when they come into some extra money actually save it. Most people I know use the money to buy something fun and frivolous they otherwise would not have. We meanwhile spent this money on… stinky cheese.
Besides just our love of cheese, the idea for buying this cheese came from a discussion about how in old shows and cartoons like Looney Tunes Limburger cheese was always used as the quintessential smelly thing.
It’s apparently aged using the same bacteria culture that’s found on human skin to make b.o. and smelly feet. It’s even included on the list of Top 10 Stinky Cheeses in the World. We wondered, what does limburger cheese really smell like? Could it really smell that bad? If it did, why would people even eat it? The curiosity was eating away at us. Since Limburger isn’t the kind of cheese easily found in grocery stores, and local cheese stores around here sell mostly local cheeses, we ordered it from the internet.
Hey iGourmet, we’re giving you some free advertising…how about some free cheese?
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.”
Making Your Own McMuffin
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The problem of course is that it comes in the morning, and no one likes mornings. The fact that brunch and brinner (breakfast for dinner) are things is proof that people love breakfast foods, just not in the morning.
Generally in the mornings you tend to sleep as late as possible, then run out the door, neglecting breakfast and just grabbing something on the road on the way to your destination. Unfortunately, a lot of times “grabbing something on the road” means stopping at a place like McDonalds and getting something like an Egg McMuffin. Which is fine if you enjoy getting 87% of your daily cholesterol intake and 33% of your sodium intake down in your first meal of the day (you can see for yourself if you don’t believe me). Also, your eggs will look like a hockey puck.
I can practically feel the spongy texture of the eggs from here.
But what if I told you, you could make your own version of an Egg McMuffin (I call mine an Egg MegMuffin, but I realize that won’t work for people not named Meg) at home in under 10 minutes? Surely you have 10 minutes to spare right? It’ll be worth it, I promise.
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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