Fry me a River

When it comes to desserts, I am a great believer in two guiding principles:

1) If it can be dunked in chocolate, then dunk it.
2) If it can be deep-fried, then deep-fry it.  

I won't call these laws because they will vary depending on the dessert, the occasion, and a person's prevailing mood. As one must be discerning with an eye open to the prevailing artistic designs inherent within each culinary specimen (recognizing subtle strategic variations in plating arrangements) when formulating a plan for the godbite, so too I would recommend restraint and good judgement be practiced with regard to these two principles.

Disclaimer: blind devotion to one scheme with strident disregard to the great flux of variables will most certainly lead to disaster. 


That said, I don't believe I need to justify these suggestions.  What with the popularity of chocolate fondue and county fairs where they deep-fry just about anything that's edible (and even things that aren't. paula didn't heed my disclaimer. go figure. somehow i think people would eat tires if they were deep-fried), they seem rather obvious.  Nonetheless, these principles serve as the basis for one of my favorite times of the year.

Despite my brothers and I being between the ages of 22 and 19, every year we still ask my parents for Easter baskets.  (i hate to think what'll happen when we're actually supposed to act grown up, but that isn't now, we refuse to let it happen).  If we could, I'm sure we would ask them to hide the baskets around Penn's campus so that we could run around in our PJ's (do people even wear those anymore? it sounds so infantile - not that my description of myself right now is helping to combat that imagery) crazed and frothing at the mouth thinking of the sugar high we'll soon be on that is sure to carry us until midnight (as a conservative estimate).

But what is so exciting is what's in the Easter basket.  Forget the traditional candy, peeps (yuck. i don't want to get started on those. they are so gross), and fake grass.  These have...

...drum roll, please....

You read that label correctly.  And on the right is a chocolate covered Twinkie.

Two all-time favorites made even better.  If you can dunk it in chocolate, then dunk it.

These are SO good.  I look forward to them for so long every year, and they never last long enough. 

See, I always cut the Twinkie in half (most definitely not out of concern for calories. those thingies couldn't be farther from my mind) with the idea that I can make it last longer if I eat half one day and half the other.  Never ends up working out that way.

I usually attack these by biting off the bottom layer of chocolate and eating toward the ends.  That's because the chocolate shell is both thicker at the top (and there are sprinkles up there!!!!) rather than the bottom and there is greater chocolate coverage towards the rear.  Have to make sure that there is still cream in the last bite though.

For the Oreos....bite, chew, suck, let it melt in your mouth.  It's pretty impossible to mess eating them up.

And speaking of Oreos, that brings up principle #2.  Fried Oreos.

This past weekend was Spring Fling at Penn.  An event most significant to me because it means two things.  Free food and fried Oreos.  The Oreos aren't free though. Actually, they pretty much bankrupt your wallet.  It's okay because the stomach is a pretty good at negotiating, and it'll persuade the wallet that it's worth the investment. Bu, as good as they are, this year wasn't about fried Oreos.

Ever since a county fair several years ago when they were selling fried candy bars - only for me to decide not get them on, regret my decision, and return the following year to find out that they weren't being sold anymore - I've have had this great burden on my stomach (err...heart) to eat a fried candy bar (not the most epic of missions, but that's the gritty reality of truth).

This year turned out to be my lucky year.

Once in the proximity of the tent selling fried Oreos, a strange feeling passed over me.  I want a fried candy bar.  Maybe they are selling them this year.  I looked.  And there they were.  Right on the sign, "Fried Candy Bars ---- $5."  The whole thing might've been freaky if I wasn't so happy.

Photo courtesy of Kerry McLaughlin - so that I didn't smear grease & powdered sugar all over the camera.

Let me tell you, they were epic.  Assorted mini candy bars (Twix, MilkyWay, and 3 Musketeers) battered and deep-fried.  Imagine your favorite chocolate chip pancakes and multiply the taste by 10.  These were good.  And lest you ask, no, these aren't for sharing.  You can eat all six of them on your own.  I promise.

The only downside to all of this was that it made me rethink my two guiding principles of dessert - was I somehow not getting the full potential out of my desserts. 

What if --

What if I had a chocolate covered Twinkie or Oreo and deep-fried it?

Just Stupid Good

So here I am ensconced on some pretty awesome pictures for a blog, but with a vibe antithetical to the typical loquacious propensities customarily spurred on by such images.  Lest I am tempted to posit the remote happenstance that I might still manage to pull something off by interspersing a smattering of high-brow verbiage...

...I am reminded that it would require a lot of time spent searching the thesaurus.

So I'll best be moving on.  <-- that's more like the typical grammar level I'm feeling right now.  The longest word is 6 letters and formed by smashing a suffix onto a four-letter word like I was the Large Hadron Collider (adding prefixes and suffixes is so much more exciting when it's phrased that way).

Onwards to things more worthy of your attention, like cookie dough.

Thrown in ice cream, or baked, or baked and then thrown in ice cream, or just eaten raw, it's pretty good - to make a dramatic understatement.  I've never realized it before, but the way I've always thought about cookie dough has always been so one-dimensional.  I would take it and eat it inside the box never thinking of the limitless possibilities available to it.  Cookie dough could only do one thing at a time and that was it.

Well, I lie.  There's always been cookie dough ice cream on cookies to make an ice cream cookie sandwich.  But even that is hardly revolutionary thinking.  It doesn't even require cookie dough ice cream.  Any will do.

But now, say you were to replace that ice cream with raw cookie dough. 

Yeah.  Has it registered yet?  Raw cookie dough between two baked cookies.  There isn't even a metaphor I can think of for it.  It's just stupid good. 

(the recipe for those who'd like)

For cookiage this serious, I had the uncontrollable urge to build a pyramid (it's best never to the strangeness of those urges or you'll begin to wonder about yourself).  Except it was more like a triangle.  But a pyramid would have been cool.  That's what I want to be buried in - a cookie pyramid,....not a triangle.  Actually, I'm rather like the Bermuda triangle of cookies.  They disappear if they get too close to me.  So I'm a cookie-eating triangle wanting to be buried in a cookie pyramid.  That's quality stuff right there.

 And a close-up for good measure.  Close-ups are always needed.  I wish I was as photogenic as it is.

I don't doubt that these things could actually be used as bricks for building a pyramid.  They are quite heavy.  You've got like four cookies worth of material there.  But because it's a sandwich, it only counts as one dessert.

That's why those food judges on the Food Network say presentation is everything.  It can make or break the dessert.
1 cookie sandwich = 1 dessert
2 cookies + filling on the side = 3 desserts (if not more)

 Such a solid dessert.  Chocolate cookies with chocolate chip cookie dough filling.  Fills the mouth like an explosion.  A good explosion.  An explosion where if your mouth could talk it'd say, "I just can't take this it's so good!" 

....oh...yeah....your mouth can talk.

Nom-noms...

...num-nums...

...and last but not least, yum-yums.

The 4 Elements of Deliciousness

I was feeling rogue.  Best beware when I'm feeling rogue.  Serious stuff goes down.

It's last semester senior year, and I felt like trying a foodtruck I hadn't visited yet.  Turns out that it was fairly easy.  I've drifted into a comfort zone, visited the same foodtrucks over and over - don't want to mess with a "real"-ly good thing.  But then I heard that the Philly foodtruckers were thinking of unionizing and hey, if they can do something crazy, then so can I!  You go foodtruckers; stick it to the government and park on whatever sidewalk you want!  Just so long as you're still willing to sell me something that tastes good and is absolutely horrible for my health, you've got my full 2000 recommended daily allowance caloric blessing.

So I've heard of this truck called Bui's a couple of times - it's got some awesome artery-clogging, fat-filled meals of happy contentedness. So last night (I'm trying to appear "normal" by saying I only thought about this the day before.  I'd actually planned this for a couple of days) I'm like, yeah, that's what I'm doing for lunch.

And, this morning, it just so happened that my path took my right along Bui's at 38th and Spruce.  No kidding, I was still at least 150fit away and I could smell the bacon cooking.  That's what mornings are supposed to smell like.

My heart started beating faster and my legs nearly pulled me to the truck window to eat "lunch" at 9am.  Somehow I resisted.  I'm not saying eating lunch at 9am is a bad thing.  It's just that when you've planned something for so long, it's important to stick to the plan and not throw in any crazy variables.

It was a smart move too.

Forget the 4 elements according to Classical thought.  This sandwich has the four elements of deliciousness: Egg, bacon, ham, and sausage.  Booyah!

(it also has cheese and a mysterious orange-y substance called "Bui sauce" - it tastes good, that's all that matters. i don't ask questions - but i couldn't include them in the metaphor cause that'd obviously mess it up, duh)

I had a hunch about this sandwich.  So, after some careful investigation, which really consisted of me sitting down and trying to think up something that I thought was clever (it's obvious that I have very low standards for myself and why I never discuss posts beforehand with people - partly because they'd be shot down pretty quickly and partly because I make it up as I go), I ascertained two possible reasons for why this foodtruck is named "Bui's."

1) The owner's last name is Bui and the truck is, in fact, named after the owner.

Generic, traditional, not all that suspicious, but doubtful.  If it's not interesting, it's probably wrong (I could swear that's how Sherlock solves his cases).

The second, much more sinister, and, in my view, much more likely explanation (that was a lot of commas) is that this foodtruck is part of an underground, multi-national organization of foodtruckers bent on a evil plot - a plot they think everyone else would consider so absolutely far-fetch that we would fail to sense it even if provided a stark, blatant clue right under our very tongues.  And I, with my enhanced sensitivity to my gut instincts, have seen and tasted it.

2) It has something to do with buoys (you know those things that float out on the water and every little kid wants to take home even though he has no idea what they're supposed to be - don't tell me I was the only one who thought that way).  I don't know what exactly it has to do with that, but all I know if that Bui = buoy.  You can't argue with the evidence.  Possibly, they want to make us as fat as buoys.  Wouldn't surprise me.  But if all their food tastes this good, I'm down with helping them out.

After all, consider that this sandwich is called the Hangover Special.  I'm pretty sure it's because your stomach is hanging over your pants after eating it.

(imagery is more effective when it's true)

I really enjoyed this one.  Every single bite in fact.  Crunch on the outside, fat in the middle...yummers.

And that right there is the "Bui sauce" dripping down.  Had a nice, spicy kick to it.  Definitely an honorary bonus element.

Thought I'd switch up the godbite picture and do a godbite video.  It allows the necessary visualization of all the needed angles.  Feel free to slow it down and pause as needed.  Sometimes still imagery just doesn't cut it.  Maybe next I'll experiment with 3D.

"Do you have your eating buddy?"

I feel that growing up as an American boy, my favorite food naturally had to be pizza.  It seems to be an unwritten law.  Birthday parties, sports team outings, the Pizza Hut BookIt club - everything was celebrated with pizza.  And yet, we never grew tired of it.  Eventually we all get older and then wimp out and give in to peer pressure since it's expected that our tastes have to become more refined... 


Oh, I like Filet Mignon! or I like the chocolate truffle strawberry cheesecake layered with dark chocolate mousse, and so on and so on...

But I honestly think that we had it all right to begin with.  Deep in the back of our minds the thing we all desire, what we really want if we were completely honest with ourselves is a good, hearty pizza with a puffed, crunchy, chewy crust and topped with gobs of stringy mozzarella cheese.  Pepperoni, sausage, extra cheese, (vegetables I don't exactly approve of but do as you see fit), stuffed crust, etc.  They transform a pizza in a way almost akin to using helium to blow up balloons instead of using your own breath.  The effect is magical - the fun factor quadruples!

The pizza can be coal-oven fired, brick-oven fired - hey, it can even be fire-fired for all I care - or any other crazy cooking gimmick the baker wants to use.  Just so long as I get to walk into that pizzeria and fill my lungs with that heavenly air laden with the sweet ambrosia of pizza-ness.

Anyways, I've always had these expectations for what a pizza is permitted to be topped with.  Perhaps it because it's the same wherever one goes.  Or, almost everywhere.  This past week, I was introduced to the pizzas as Dock Street Brewery.  I was not prepared. (oh, and as a side-note, this pizza was "hardwood fired").

 This had "Fig jam mozzarella, Gorgonzola, apple smoked bacon, and fresh herbs."

And this one had "Parma prosciutto bacon, crushed tomatoes, mozzarella, fontina, Gruyere, Gorgonzola, and parmigiano."

I know the idea of exotic-sounding toppings violates all of our kid-rules about pizza toppings, but perhaps this is a way of  unifying those two disparate drives of "pizza-want" and the misguided need for the appearance of a refined palate. 

It was a horrible tease to put a quote from Finding Nemo in my title and not to refer to it until now.  But, Dude did put it best.

The buddy system is not to be underestimated.  Wonderful things come as a result of the buddy system.  Not only does it keep you from getting run over by cars when you're crossing the street in Kindergarten, but it also doubles the Per Event Tasting Opportunity (PETO; pronounced pea-toe) - it's a technical term.

Order different, then split.

I went about this in a rather methodical manner.  One piece of fig jam pizza, one slice of the other. It was an aesthetic call for which slice I wanted to finish on.

Always need to have crust in on the godbite, and since there's bacon, that has to be in there too.  That leaves two options, the bacon chunk in the middle of the slice close to the crust or the one on the bottom edge.

Since, measuring from the outside of the slice, I always want the length of the crust and that of the cheese-covered portion to exist in what I like to call, The Golden Ratio of Pizza (that's for all you math people and engineers), I went for the bottom part.  The bacon serves as an approximate distance marker for the godbite, and it looks awesome.  But that's what the Golden Ratio does for you.  This is educated eating.

Sweet & Sour

First off, gotta say, those people at Dunkin Donuts has done a huge disservice to the sweet culinary confection from which they derive their name.  They have unfortunately popularized the donut while I, in the whole donut vs doughnut debate, staunchly plant my feet on the side of the doughnut.  It's not that I'm against donuts.  I love eating them just as much as doughnuts.  Give me a dozen of either and I'll be content.  But, doughnuts have so much more character and class (even flair for that matter).  The quick, 1-minute, instant, microwaved American meal is to the donut what a ritzy, upscale dinner with a glass of wine is to the doughnut.  If someone walked up to me on the street and ask if I wanted a donut or a doughnut, without a moment's hesitation I'd respond, "Give me the doughnut."

With that cleared up, let's continue.

So this was actually yesterday.  I was lazy and didn't post.  But lucky for you I make it up in a sweet two-for-one deal, actually a sweet and sour two-for-one deal.  You'll see.

Anyways, yesterday was Pi Day, and there's me sitting on my chair thinking, "How should I celebrate Pi Day?"  After all, any event that has its own day obviously has to be celebrated.  I didn't want to be cliche or boring so that ruled out eating a pie.  Instead, I just thought circle and rolled with it (get it? circles roll.  actually wheels roll, but they're circular.  give me a break. I thought it was funny).  And thus it was decided.  Doughnuts, or in this case donuts, it was.

My favorite donut is the chocolate coconut cake donut.  My second favorite is the glazed stick.  But, wouldn't you know, the Dunkin Donuts on Penn's campus doesn't have either (nor does campus have a Chick-fil-a.  that's another sore spot).  My third favorite is Boston Creme.  You gotta be kinda careful with those though.  Sometimes the person making them has absolutely zero idea what he's doing and he injects the creme all on one side of the donut leaving the other end as dry as the Sahara.  Instead, I chose the festive green icing for St. Paddy's Day (is that just the way people who can't talk say St. Patty's or are they two different things?) and the old favorite, glazed chocolate.

Would ya look at this?  Just look at this!

I love taking macro shots of food.  It makes the food seem so tall...and handsome....

...or rather, a giant skyscraper of a donut towering miles above my head.  I gaze upwards, dumbstruck, consumed with the thought, "It's all mine!"  And then I start eating.

Of course it completely defies logic that I would be able to fit a donut thousands of times larger than myself into my stomach, but the whole donut mansion/skyscraper thing is completely realistic.

So planning out the mode of approach.  It came down to size vs. beauty.  The bottom right with the double cross has some really nice texture and contour, almost a landscape look to it.  The intersection of the three lines just adds to the beauty.  The left side however, with the single cross and where it looks like somebody decided to sit, is most certainly wider and thus has more icing.  And, since I'm really here for the sugar, that's where I when.

That didn't mean I could resist taking a picture of the pretty side.

So we've gotten down to business and isolated the area of interest.

Just one issue remains.  There is far too much do in that do-nut (see? that would have made so much more sense if I had said "far too much dough in that dough-nut) compared to icing.

Now, it's chopped down to size.

 And like almost all icing covered desserts, it enters the mouth icing-side-down where it meets and happily unites with the tongue.  Just remember, in grade school they taught you about the different types of taste receptors and where they are on the tongue for a reason.  It's so you know where on your tongue you're suppose to put this baby for maximal enjoyment. 

And now for the sour.  So Logan, Casey, Andrew, and I go down to the dorm office this morning bright an early to get in line for subsidized movie tickets.  Gotta love house events.  We realize, "Hey, out of the twenty people in line, we're the only dudes."  Who'da thunk that we'd be the only guys interested in seeing The Hunger Games.  Really, it's basically a gladiator fight in the forest - that's what I'm hoping.  What I'm hoping it isn't is Twilight 2.0 since the last thing I want is to decide whether I'm on Team Muscles, Team Sparkles or some other Vertice of a Love Triangle Team.  Why can't I just be on my own team, Team Awesome.

But my mind was soothed when I saw these things in the candy basket.  I haven't seen Warheads in ages!  Probably non since middle school when the best thing to do with these was play "How many can you put in your mouth at once?"

Wouldn't these things be sweet weapons for the hunger games.  Here you go enemy-who's-trying-to-kill-me, have some candy - BAM - gotcha!  No godbite in those things.