Food advertising pet peeve

I have always hated food items described with weird or needless adjectives, but that is just an attempt to make something more appealing, albeit in an odd and slightly annoying way. But there is a new trend that I just cannot get over: calling food items something that they're not. I'm not talking about "deconstructed" menu items, which seem to be all the rage on any televised cooking competition. That may be a little precious, but it at least makes some sort of sense, just presenting the ingredients in a new way. I'm talking about taking a defined food title that actually means something, and applying it to something else. Here are two examples.

#1. The Arby's "Roastburger." It is not a burger. It is a roast beef sandwich. Now, Arby's selling roast beef sandwiches makes all sorts of sense. Arby's selling a burger would also be fine. But Arby's selling a roast beef sandwich and calling it a burger is asinine. It is a sandwich comprised of slices of roast beef topped with things that often go on a burger. This is akin to selling a roast beef sandwich, splashing some salsa on it, and calling it a Roast Taco. No. Just stop.

#2. The Burger King Brunch "Mimosa." A mimosa is a delicious beverage mixing some sort of sparkling white wine, usually champagne, with orange juice. BK mixes OJ and Sprite. So, this is not unlike me mixing Hershey's syrup with seltzer and calling it a scotch and soda. Of course, if I did that, people would think that I was psychotic. Which this is.

The older I get, the more shit like this annoys me.

The List - #50 completed

#50. Make a pizza from scratch, including the dough.

I've never made pizza at home. I'm sure we did it a few times when I was a kid, but as an adult (or whatever I am now), I've just never seen the point in expending so much effort when you can just get someone to literally bring some right to your door. At least, that's how I felt before. But as I have learned more about cooking and have grown to appreciate the stuff I make myself, this seemed like a natural way to go. I got a pizza stone and a great trio of pizza-themed cookbooks for Father's Day so this was a great chance to put it all together and give it a shot.

I started with the sauce. I'm currently trying to eat really healthy food and drop a few more pounds, and obviously this is not a lifestyle that meshes well with pizza consumption. But I figured I would do what I could, so I opted to use a sauce recipe from The Biggest Loser family cookbook. I have made this once before and I really liked the taste, healthy or not. I made it again, although I didn't have the crushed red pepper that the recipe called for so I substituted ground cayenne pepper, which added a little extra spice that I enjoyed.Next up was the dough, and this was the only part of the equation that I was worried about. I'm not a baker. This makes no sense, because I love pretty much any baked good that I can get my paws on. But I have never learned how to do it, aside from following a pre-packaged mix or something similarly easy. But I picked a basic dough recipe from one of the pizza cook books and got down to it. It rose just like it was supposed to. I've worked in pizza places before, yet my dough-working skills are still a bit lacking. I did the best I could, or at least gave it a good shot as a total rookie. Pie number one was basically a simple margherita, with sauce, good mozzarella cheese, and basil. I don't think I got the dough pounded thin enough. It was very tasty, but the bottom crust was not at all crusty.For pizza number two, I went for pepperoni and shredded mozz. I intentionally wanted to keep things pretty simple this first time out and I was happy with the results. I think I got the dough in better shape on this second pie, and it was also really delicious. The outside crust was great, but the bottom was still not as crisp as I would like. I think I can get this better in future attempts. Overall, I give the experience a big thumbs up. It was fun to do, and the resulting pies were definitely better than any pizza delivery chain stuff. I will keep at this.

28 awesome things from 2008

There are always tons of "best of" lists right around New Year's Day. Here is one more. Instead of a Top 10, or a Top 100, or anything so rigid and structured, here are just 28 things from 2008 that were awesome. They are not comprehensive, and they are not in any order. But they are awesome.

• Season four of Lost, especially on Blu-Ray.
• The 2008 World Champion Boston Celtics.
• The Dark Knight, especially Heath Ledger's brilliant performance.
• Season three of Dexter.
• Metallica: Death Magnetic and LIVE at Alltel Arena.
• Dustin Pedroia: Sun Devil, Red Sock, and AL MVP.
• Iron Man.
• Tropic Thunder.
• The Robert Downey Jr. resurgence in general.
• Rock Band 2.
• My second straight Chatham Bluefish Diamond Mind baseball championship.
• Scream Queens on VH1.
• Terra Naomi's acoustic hair band covers.
• The fact that a new GNR album actually came out, and it's good.
• Friday Night Lights, and the fact that it is still on TV at all.
  
• Survivor and The Amazing Race still being fairly entertaining.
• Pretty much everything AJ McC does, including his hilarious exploding vocabulary.
• Sierra Mist Free Cranberry Splash. Try some with vodka and thank me later.
• ZaZa pizza in Little Rock. The huge high heat woodburning oven is the key.
• The fact that a new movie theatre (with an Imax screen) opened right down the street, even if I don't get to go there as often as I'd like.
• That a guy who kind of rocks won American Idol.
• The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly.
• Tina Fey, both on 30 Rock and SNL.
• Van Halen LIVE at Alltel Arena.
• Catching my first Red Sox game in way too long, with a rooftop table under the Budwesier sign.
• Two Vegas trips, an AZ fire up, and a Cape Cod vacation (with the Boston trip in the middle of it).
• Lots of cool shows on the Food Network. Seriously.
• WiiFit.

And eight things that were not so awesome:

• 18-1. Still pisses me off.
• The ASU football season. An entirely different kind of letdown.
• The Sox losing game 7 of the ALCS when they clearly could have been champs again if just a couple of guys stayed healthy.
• Watching shitty teams flounder in the 2008 NFL playoffs while the superior Patriots sit at home. Sickening.
• The economy, including our old house still being on the market.
• The disgusting New York Yankees offseason spending spree.
  
• Heroes. Season one started great, and since then it's been pretty bad. And yet, I continue to watch.
• The complete tabloidization of the American media. Didn't CNN used to be a respected news outlet? Now they are People magazine with some news thrown in. Go ahead, check the website right now. What's on there? A video of Harrison Ford getting his chest waxed, apparently. And network news shows are just as bad. I cannot do it. I basically hate the news, now. I really do. Thankfully technology exists that lets me consume only what I want, for the most part. Okay. Rant over. I hope everyone has a great 2009.
  

Random Christmas Stuff

Best new holiday treat recipe I have discovered: Alton Brown's White Trash. Three different kinds of cereal, pretzels, mixed nuts, and M&Ms all drenched in white chocolate. I've never tried crack, but I doubt it is this addictive and evil.

My three favorite entries for Christmas music: Trans Siberian Orchesta, The Muppets with John Denver, and the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. Although I did pick up an 80s rock Christmas CD recently and it is pretty cheesetastic too.

Most underrated reindeer: Blitzen.

Random wrapping observation: I can wrap the heck out of anything relatively flat, like a DVD or a book. But if it gets wide, forget about it. Pretty soon I'll just start blaming those terrible wrapping jobs on A.J.

I think I like multicolored lights more now than I used to.

If I'm putting booze in egg nog, it's either bourbon or spiced rum.

When I was a kid, I could not possibly imagine how my dad, or anyone else, would not want to get up at the crack of dawn on Christmas day. I get it now. It's been a fun transition so far, and it will only get even cooler every year as A.J. gets older.

Random photo of the day

So not too long ago I was making dinner and opted for some Uncle Ben's microwaveable rice. It's actually really good, it's a nice change of pace from what I usually make, and it is ready in 90 seconds. Or, apparently, a little bit less. Here's what happened about 80 seconds in.

Now, I know that microwaves have different strengths, and sometimes things take different amounts of time to cook. But I had already made this EXACT rice in this microwave before without incident. So yeah...it's about as funny as things get when making your basic dinner side dish. It sounded like a frickin' gun went off in the kitchen, by the way. I think I might write a letter to Mr. Ben and attach the photo. Do you think he might give me some free rice?

Sunday schedule

How I think my Sunday will go:

Sleep in.

Get up, put on lucky Red Sox shorts. Itch playoff beard but refuse to do anything about it until after game 7.

Play with A.J.

Eat a bowl of cereal, probably Special K Chocolately Delight.

Catch a little bit of football pre-game shows.

Proceed to watch the Pats crush the Dolphins, normal problems in Miami be damned.

Eat leftovers or a sandwich for lunch, probably at halftime, when the Pats will already have a 21 point lead.

Pace around like a crazy person from roughly 4-7 PM after the Pats have won by 30.

7ish: make a Captain and Diet Coke to take the edge off of having to listen to Buck and McCarver.

7:23: Watch the Red Sox begin to deliver the coup de grace to the Tribe.

This is going to be a defining game for Dice-K. I'm seeing six strong innings, maybe even six scoreless. He could go more but Tito will turn it over to the pen and that's that. Papelbon wraps it up and dances on the field to the delight of the Fenway crowd.

Pretty nice little Sunday schedule.

Blog week, day one

I'm going to try to write a blog entry every day this week. I make no guarantees that they will be long, interesting, or good.

Here is what I ate on Saturday at the Arkansas State Fair:

One gyro
One corndog--regular size, not jumbo
Half a Diet Coke. Yeah, that's right. A Diet Coke with my corn dog.
A few bites of Beth's funnel cake.
A few sips of Beth's lemonade, which was really good and lemony.
A giant smoked turkey leg. A few bites at the fair, the rest at home. And then I took a nap.

Good stuff!