A Hilarious Recipe for Easy Beets

If you know me, you know that I enjoy beets. But long before I realized how much I loved beets, I loved puns. And once, way back when, I decided that one day I would come up with a recipe for something I could call “Block Rockin’ Beets.” Today’s the day!

You’ll need:
• Two cans of canned beets
• olive oil
• freshly ground pepper
• some thyme
• Kosher salt
• a baking sheet

Instructions:
1. Open the cans and drain the beets into a strainer. Be careful if you have a white sink, as I do.
2. Dump the beets onto a baking sheet. Pour some olive oil on them.
3. Sprinkle on some salt, pepper, and thyme.
4. Mix it all together with your hands or a utensil so that they are somewhat evenly coated. Spread the beets out so that there’s as much beet surface area touching the sheet as possible.
5. Bake at 350 degrees until they achieve the desired amount of crusty roastedness. Try and flip them once about halfway through. I usually leave them in for at least 40 minutes.
6. Enjoy!

Cupcake kebabs

Cupcake kebabs? Cupcake kebabs.

Food humor, with a side of sacrilege

I saw something on a car today that is even funnier than God Is My Quahog:

Stop & Shop and the Single Girl

This is everything I bought when I stopped at the grocery store today.

I think the only other things I could have purchased that would have screamed "I AM A HOUSEHOLD CONSISTING OF ONE 32-YEAR-OLD FEMALE AND HER CAT" any louder were a pint of Ben & Jerry's and a copy of People.

Seen In Providence

Best bumper sticker ever:
GOD IS MY QUAHOG

No sign of these available for purchase anywhere. Just this:So I think I will need to make my own.

The Cape

Went to Cape Cod with two of my best girlfriends from college. We had a great time: lots of laughs, great weather, fun times, etc. Also ate some good food. Highlights:

- We had a nice spread of tapas for dinner on a Saturday night. A ton of food, actually. This place, Embargo, was fun and the food good. Drawbacks: they had a bunch of TVs (for me, ordinarily a plus), but after a while they changed the one TV that was showing Olympics coverage to the Red Sox. Also they forgot to take one of the stickers off one of the apples in our pitcher of sangria.

- One of my friends recently went to Wisconsin. I had asked her, if she wouldn't mind, to consider bringing me back a Cheese Head. She obliged, but with a much more awesome Cheese Head that I had imagined. I think the packaging says it all.

High Times

The local civic club of which I am a member sponsored an event Friday night for which I was required to bake a massive amount of dessert. I chose my go-to favorite: Brownie Bites. You take a box of brownie mix (I used four boxes, for a total of 80 Bites), follow the directions for "cake-like brownies," (usually means add one more egg), and pour the mix into mini-muffin tins.

So this time, I bought a different brand (store brands both times. They work great, as long as you don't overcook them.) But it was after a long day at work on Thursday, and I guess I was anxious to get it done. So I didn't read the box too carefully. I thought it was a little weird when it said to add three tablespoons of flour to the mix to make cake-like brownies. But hey, I figured, it all works out pretty good because I don't have enough eggs if I'm supposed to add three eggs to each box. It's a different brand, right, so maybe that's why?

My big genius move is to mix each box of mix up separately, then pour the mix into a big Ziploc bag till I have all four mixed up and ready to go. Then I cut a hole in the corner of the bag and use it like a pastry bag to fill up the muffins. It saves time on transferring the mix to the tiny tins and on cleanup, too -- works out great.

Once I'm done mixing the brownies and put the first batch in the oven (with the Ziploc bag securely in a bowl in the fridge, hole-side up, so it doesn't all leak out), I set about licking the bowl (and the extra that I didn't scrape out so I could eat it.) Mmm, tasty ... and thicker, more fudgey and delicious than usual.

Now, I like to read as I eat. The nearest thing to me is -- what else? -- the brownie mix box. And then I see it: "High-altitude directions (3,500-6,500 feet) ..."

Whoops. I think they ended up coming out none the worse for wear. They were definitely better than the ones I overcooked for this same event last year. These brownies actually looked really nice, with crackley tops. Fortunately the event on Friday was such a success that there were no brownies left over for me to try. But the mix in the bowl tasted awesome.

Early Bird Special

One more post from Florida.

So there's this pizza place my cousin heard about, this one that has an old organ in it. From the 1920s. This place is supposed to have really good pizza. And oh yeah. It's in Florida.

I'm not sure which part of all of that didn't give us a clue that we were going to be the youngest people there. By a LOT.

It's called (warning: organ music ahead) Roaring 20's, "Pizza and Pipes." We figured we would go there for dinner one day since we were in the area. After doing some outlet shopping and visiting an actual old plantation (sugar), we figured we'd just get there early and wait. So we pull in, and not only is there a line (see above), but I look to the right and see a bunch of people still waiting in their cars. Look to the left -- same thing. They don't open until 5 p.m. Did I mention the photo above was taken at 4:32 p.m.? And that was after I composed myself enough to take out my camera.

All in all, it was pretty cool. Good pizza; cheap, cold beer; and awesome ambience. Yes, there's an organ, and a guy who plays it. (And yes, he played "Take Me Out To The Ballgame.") Yes, there are souvenirs (CDs, postcards, and even rulers). So it now replaces Dish as my current "I should bring this idea home with me and open one of these" dining experiences from Florida.

And yes, we did get hit on as we left the restaurant. There was still a line out the door, and we walked out, one frisky old gent called out to us, "Hey, leaving so soon?!"

Happy Easter

We like obnoxious food, apparently

A lot of these are about food:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/

I'm Lovin It

When a girl who's 1/16 Irish is deciding what to eat for dinner on St. Patrick's Day, what does she choose?

Why, a Shamrock Shake from McDonald's, of course!

I have loved these things since I was a little kid. One year, when I was probably 10, I poured Shamrock Shake into Dixie cups and froze them to savor out of season. It worked. So awesome.



Back in June, I had a minty-chocolate shake at McDonald's. An entry in Wikipedia tells me this was called the "Minty Mudbath" shake and was a promotion in conjunction with the movie "Shrek the Third." (uh, because it's green, I guess. No word on whether Shrek actually tastes minty or chocolatey.) It was merely OK.

A couple of years ago, though, while licking Vanilla Mint ChapStick off of my lips, I figured out that Shamrock Shakes were really just vanilla milkshakes with green dye and mint flavor added. It was kind of disappointing, but also really liberating. It almost makes me not want to freeze some.

The Wikipedia entry also says that Shamrock Shakes are available year-round in Ireland, but I am not sure if this is bad reporting based on a 1997 report: "Sinn Fein Leaders Demand Year-Round Shamrock Shake Availability."

Screw-top wines: Not just for breakfast anymore

Funny story. At a birthday dinner with three of my dearest friends, we ordered a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. The waiter brings it out and asks who wants to taste it. I say "Me, but it's not like it's going to be corked or anything, ha ha."

Get it? Because New Zealand wines are generally screw-topped? Ha ha ha!

Of course, he didn't know that I know about the Screwcap Initiative. He thought I was just making a comment like "ha, screw tops are only for the cheap, crappy stuff."

So, for those of you who think screw tops are only for Boone's Farm, think again. As I like to say (and I really have said this, to the embarrassment of my companion): Why do we rely on 13th-century technology when it comes to sealing our wine?