Archive for the 'food' Category

Where’s the beef? Ask your mom.

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Anonymous Coworker
on January 25, 2008 @ 9:28 am
in food, nog, potty humor, sex, suhmuhmuh bitch and work
. 21 Comments

I accidentally ate beef yesterday.

To many of you, this means nothing. Let me clarify: I don’t eat beef because it gives me horrible, jet-propulsion equivalent diarrhea. Typically when people ask me why I don’t eat beef I tell them that it upsets my stomach. This is simply a polite way of saying that my ass becomes an uncontrollable anti-aircraft cannon of sound-barrier destroying feces.

Typically the next question is, “So are you a vegetarian?”. Of course not. Meat is delicious. Our teeth have evolved for shredding flesh as well as mashing grains. We’re omnivores. We’re supposed to eat meat. We’re supposed to eat grains. Not eating any grains is as dumb as not eating any meat. Not eating meat is like looking at a hundred-million years of evolution and going, “Oh yeah? Well, nyah nyah, I think I know better.” You don’t know better. You’re an idiot. Anyway, yeah, meat is delicious. I could think of no meal finer than a warm, soft, freshly-baked roll stuffed with bacon, sausages, and a pile of shredded steak slathered in melted cheese, deep-fried, wrapped in back-bacon, and then stuffed into a Christmas goose. That shit would be delicious.

“Ah ha! I can see you’re lying again. You just now said you would eat steak!” Yeah, of course I would eat steak, but in this case, I have to concede a point to all those uppity, holier-than-thou vegetarians and vegans out there: beef, as grown, prepared, and served in America is less hygienic than licking the underside of the toilet seat after I’ve eaten beef. I’ll let you take a second to figure that one out. Done? Great. Beef in the US is swimming with disease and crammed with hormones and antibiotics even before it ever reaches the slaughterhouse. Yes, crammed with both disease and disease-preventatives. Too much of both, in fact. That doesn’t mean that the beef isn’t delicious, it just means you shouldn’t eat it. I would love to eat beef again, but after spending a few months off of it, even just a little makes me horribly sick. I watched Supersize Me and read Fast Food Nation back to back a few years ago, and after a few months of going off beef, I’ve never been able to eat it again without the aforementioned shit-Pollocking of the nearest toilet.

Most of you, I realize, stuff your mouths with beef on a daily basis with no ill-effects, and I have no problem with what you do during your free time, but I was talking about cows, not wangs you perverts. And certainly not cow wangs.

Anyway, yeah, I don’t eat the stuff, so yesterday at the buffet when my chicken parmesan turned out to be veal parmesan I was faced with a tough decision: stop eating and haul ass to the nearest toilet, bucket, or dumpster; or use the opportunity to eat the bejesus out of some beef. Many of you will have already guessed that I chose the latter, but I still feel compelled to explain my reasoning.

I figured that my intestinal system was like a community yard sale. On most days, the yard sale was filled with the junk of the surrounding community, and the poor bastard who hosted the yard sale would have to keep all the junk in his garage until the next yard sale. And of course as the stuff sat in the garage it would slowly matriculate into the house, forever occupying some darkened corner until it was forcibly removed. But beef is like this giant catapult, and instead of the people filling the guy’s yard, they just fill the catapult, knowing that it will eventually go off and they won’t have to worry about any of their junk cluttering anyone’s garage ever again. Do you see what I’m getting at?

I went apeshit double-whammy bananas on the rest of the buffet. Fried chicken with gravy? Why the hell not? Four slices of pie? Don’t mind if I do. Taco salad? Sure, it’ll be gone in 20 minutes anyway. I was my own personal Roman orgy, minus the sex of course. And the vomiting. And the togas. And the violence. Okay, so I wasn’t really like a Roman orgy at all except that I stuffed myself silly on food I don’t normally eat because I knew that even if I consumed 5700 calories, there would only be about 400 left in my system once the beef hit my large intestine.

Almost like clockwork I felt my tailpipe about to go “Old Faithful” in the middle of the ninth hand-sized cookie I was using as a spoon for my third bowl of soft-serve ice cream. I full-on sprinted to the bathroom and made it just in time. Of course I caused quite a ruckus (geyser allegory is never used lightly), and passing half-chewed food is never fun, but I honestly only have one regret:

the buffet wasn’t serving eggnog.

More likely a tarp, though. Fewer leaks.

Published
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Anonymous Coworker
on January 14, 2008 @ 8:07 am
in Glen Burnie, Mrs. ACW, food, movies, nog and potty humor
. 10 Comments

What can be said about Stirring’s eggnog that hasn’t already been said about getting hit in the face with a warm sack of diarrhea?

eggnog

Actually, that’s a bad analogy. Stirring’s eggnog is like being told that you’re going to get the super-awesomest puppy that ever existed, when you instead end up with a dog that sexually assaults you.

Some back story: Mrs. ACW and I were doing some food shopping over the holidays and we opted to shop in a county with a higher-than-average tax bracket. The produce tends to be fresher, and the selection tends to be greater, and none of the cashiers are surly teenagers who lack the ability to add. The downside to all this is that the other shoppers have huge superiority complexes, entitlement issues, and feel that the world is owed to them, so they’ll frequently crash their carts into yours, fall down, and call triple A. Before you know what’s happening, you’ve been summoned to court to serve as a witness against yourself. Also, because these places tend to be whiter than a whitebread and mayonnaise sandwich, the “International Foods” aisle is typically Italian fare like spaghetti and pasta sauce. Occasionally you might find an old dusty box of taco shells that people keep buying to impress their house cleaner, and then returning the tacos after they fire the house cleaner. I imagine that most people in that area have owned those tacos for a day or two at least once. Suffice it to say, Mrs. ACW and I were not able to find the canned chipotle peppers on our list.

However, what they lack in diverse foods, they make up for in a new kind of eggnog. As we were wandering the aisles and gazing upon row after row of jarred peacock in truffle oil and ivory shavings, canned polar bear toes, and freeze-dried Irish babies, we came across the bottle of nog pictured above… and it cost $11. This makes it the most expensive nog purchase in my history of nogsumerism. Mrs. ACW looked at my joyful face, the price tag, and simply said, “That had better be some good fucking eggnog.” As you may have already surmised, it was not.

As soon as we got home I wanted to bust it open so I could try some, and since it was an eggnog cocktail concentrate, I would need to mix it with milk or liquor, sort of like the chai nog. So I mixed some up with some milk and took a sip… and it was weird. It tasted like the milk had gone bad or something. There was this weird biscotti-like taste to the nog. So I dumped in some bourbon… but that taste was still there. I dumped in even more bourbon and even more milk, but the horrible taste couldn’t be squelched. Mind you, the original recipe calls for 2 parts nog to 1 part milk OR liquor, and I was at about 4 parts milk AND bourbon to 1 part nog. It was like a party in my mouth and everybody had the trots.

For YOU people I went back and tried the filthy shit again before writing this post, and I was finally able to put my finger on what the taste was: licorice. It was like drinking eggnog through a straw made of black licorice. It’s absolutely repulsive, and I’m not sure what makes it taste that way, but when you can add so much booze and milk and the licorice flavor still comes through… well, I’d say we have a problem.

Then again, I also hate that shitty pre-liquored nog that you can buy, and I know lots of people who love it, so it might just be me in this case. Either way, I’ll never drink it again, and maybe it’ll save you about 11 bucks. And having to learn what it’s like to be hit in the face with a sack of warm diarrhea.

Until next year, thus ends the nog diaries. Like Sex in the City, but with less lactose intolerance.

Incidentally, eggnog made from Olympians is called Nogbrosia

Published
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Anonymous Coworker
on January 11, 2008 @ 10:57 am
in awesome, bitches, food, i am so fucking awesome, nog, potty humor and sex
. 6 Comments

Jeezy Creezy!* Sometimes I think YOU people are more obsessed with the nog than I am. You people are all like, “Hey, why don’t you blog about eggnog?” or “Hey, maybe some nog-blogging would make you feel better.” or “You should have an eggnog enema and tell us about it while I try to type with one hand.” Seriously. You need to relax about the nog. What are you going to do when the nogbloggery ceases for the next 10 months? Worse still, what are you going to do when I shutter the site? I can see it now… I’ll log in to check the gmail account every few weeks and it’ll be full of messages like, “Hey, just thinking that you might want to come back to blog about this horrible eggnog I found that’s made with platypus eggs.” or “Hey, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to try to drink a gallon of eggnog without throwing up and then throw up and then post the whole thing on Youtube.” or “Hey, still waiting one-handed for that eggnog enema you cocktease.”

For reals, B, y’all need to relax. It can’t all be about nog all the time. You know how that one time somebody gave you that pointless thing, like the tea-cozy with the rooster on it? Or the Raggedy Anne doll? Or the towel with the watermelon slices on it? And you were like, “Oh, hey, yeah that’s cool, I guess,” and didn’t immediately shit on it/in it and then set it on fire? And then for every Christmas, birthday, anniversary, going away present, high-school graduation, and bar mitzvah you got another thing with a rooster on it, or Raggedy Anne, or watermelon slices? And then when people come over to your house they’re like, “Whoa you must really be into roosters/Raggedy Anne/watermelon.” And the situation is thusly compounded and becomes exponentially worse as everyone you know continues to give you this shit in which you were only mildly interested in the first place? And your house is just filling with this shit and you can’t throw any of it away because people keep giving it to you and it’s impolite to throw away gifts? And with each birthday you’re torn between making a wish on the candles that you could travel back in time and piss in the face of the first person who ever gave you that shit or wishing that a giant bear would burst through the door at that moment and maul the bejeezus out of you so you won’t have to open one more gift with roosters/Raggedy Anne/watermelon? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Well, just apply that to me and nog… and you’d be totally fucking wrong. I want to drink nog ALL year. That’s why I freeze a bottle of it so I can drink it in July, or for my birthday in September. Nothing quenches a hot, summer thirst like a thick, creamy beverage made from milk and eggs. Gatorade is for bitches. Eggnog is for Olympians.

eggnog frozen

As you can see here my freezer nog is comfortably nestled between the Italian Ice and the mystery container of spaghetti sauce that could potentially be from when I lived with Kmart.

In fact, as you can see in this picture:

eggnog frozen 2

the freezer nog has already reached it’s full, bloated, frozen potential, and is testing the limits of it’s quart-sized plastic prison.

So you psycho nog-loving wannabes, you’ll never be able to hang with me until you’ve reached my paramount of obsession, my apotheosis of nog-suckling greatness. At this point to even come CLOSE to loving nog as much as me, I’d pretty much have to catch you balls deep in a carton of nog, and though many of you are perverted beyond psychological help, I still don’t think you like nog THAT much. Suckers.

So yeah, I have one more nog post for you until I ingest the summernog, and then that’s it. For you people I will break my tradition of not blogging on the weekends and write something up so it’ll be there on Monday when I’m out of the office. I hope you’re happy.

*Skip to 4:30 if you don’t immediately get that.

The secret ingredient is love. (Love = 12 grams of fat per serving)

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Anonymous Coworker
on December 20, 2007 @ 9:53 am
in food, money, people are idiots and work
. 16 Comments

Every year for work I make cookies for people. It’s a cheap and easy way of saying, “I recognize my societal requirement to give you a gift at this time of year, but I don’t like you enough to get you anything different than I got for the other twenty people in this office, and I also don’t care about you enough to pay more than a few cents for a gift, so here is a plastic bag with some cookies in it.” The best part is that people go wild over these fucking cookies. I give them cookies and they’re like, “Cookies? COOKIES!!!!” It’s bizarre.

Part of this might be due to a small misconception fostered by me at some point a few years ago when I originally distributed these cookies. Someone was eating the cookies while most of the office was sitting around chatting and that person said, “I know you like to be healthy, are these cookies low fat?” And I laughed a little and said, “Oh, yeah. They’re totally fat free.” which is probably one of the worst lies I’ve ever told because the cookies have visible chocolates chips in them and an extremely buttery flavor. Then I realized they were being serious, and I’ve never taken the opportunity to correct their misunderstanding.

These cookies are made with butter flavored Crisco. Pure lard. Fat. These cookies are made with fat. They’re not even as healthy as cookies made with huge globs of fresh creamery butter. Any idiot can look at these cookies and see that they are crammed with fat. By touching these cookies it becomes clear that the primary ingredient is artery-clogging deliciousness. One bite of these cookies and your guts go, “Holy shit, these cookies are fattier than a baby pool full of bacon grease.” And yet people continue to praise the deliciousness of my fat free cookies. They keep asking for the recipe, but I refuse to tell them under the guise of it being a secret family recipe. A secret family recipe that you can find on the side of the Crisco container. I’m thinking maybe I should sell these cookies and call them, “Cookies for people who want to eat cookies and think they’re eating healthy because they’re too stupid to realize that cookies are never good for you and should probably be consumed in moderation rather than strapped to your face like a holiday feedbag.” The printing costs would be killer though.

People continue to think they’re fat free, and I’m not going to say anything about it, so they can indulge without feeling guilty, and I only make enough cookies for everybody to get 7 or 8 so it’s not exactly like I’m spooning Crisco directly into their faces. Though I would if I could convince them it was fat free.

Of nog and necrophilia

Published
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Anonymous Coworker
on December 19, 2007 @ 11:08 am
in food, horror, movies, necrophilia, nog, potty humor, sex, suhmuhmuh bitch, the worldwide information super-tubeterwebs and zombies
. 22 Comments

There’s a theory that holds a bit of popularity on these here intertubes, and it’s called the Uncanny Valley. If you’re familiar with this concept, please feel free to skip ahead to the third paragraph. If you’re not, I encourage you to read on, because my point hinges on this concept.

The uncanny valley is an explanation of human reaction to human-like objects, primarily robots. Common sense suggests that as robots begin to look more human, the more receptive we should be to those robots, giving them a more positive response. For example, an industrial car-building robot has a few human traits like dexterity and hinged-joints, so we have only a slightly positive response to it. On the other hand, a fully human-looking robot like the T-101, T-1000, or T-X from the Terminator movies each elicit a very positive response because of their humanness (as long as they aren’t trying to kill you, or turning their hands into swords or guns). So, between those two points we should see a straight line, right? Not exactly. At a certain point the robot begins to look human, but does not look human enough so we reject the robot with a negative response, much the same way we reject zombies, corpses, and fake-looking artificial limbs. Here’s a graphical representation of the uncanny valley, as well as a lot more science talk, if you’re interested in that type of thing. If you’re still having trouble grasping the concept, here’s a real-life example:

Orville Redenbacher was a purveyor of popcorn, and also acted as the face for his company in the commercials, as can be seen in this ad. He died in 1995.

Recently an ad agency decided to resurrect Mr. Redenbacher to help sell more popcorn for the Orville Redenbacher company. The horrendous result can be seen here. Despite the CGI being pretty damn good, almost everyone who has ever seen this commercial has been repulsed by it, which is why the ad was pulled in most markets shortly after it began to air. The CGI Redenbacher, or Deadenbacher as he is referred to on Wikipedia, is located somewhere in the uncanny valley; a zombie-like approximation of a once-living icon, close enough to do the job of selling popcorn, but not close enough for people to keep that popcorn down for very long. This is the also case with powdered nog.

powder nog 002

As you can see from the carton, the Aspen Mulling Company promises nothing more than “Egg Nog Mix” but their illustration suggests they’ve packaged something drinkable; a claim, I can assure you, that surpasses the vilest of lies, crafted by Satan’s lawyers in the deepest pits of flaming torment.

powder nog 005

I’ve included the directions here to illustrate the sheer paucity of verifiable claims. “Let stand two minutes to thicken” into disgusting undrinkable clot. “For a special treat, pour egg nog over fresh fruit.” I agree, just don’t use this eggnog. “Smoothies: Add 3 teaspoons per serving into blender.” and what else? Milk? Eggs? Diarrhea? “Bundt Cake: Add 2 tablespoons to your favorite recipe.” if you want to ruin it and make people hate you forever.

powder nog 009

See those little yellow-orange dots floating in the off-white mixture? Those are the parts of the mix that refused to integrate with the milk even after furious stirring. I could already tell that I was about to submit my innards to some horrible abuse, equivalent to internal punching from tonsils to tailpipe.

powder nog 010

Uggh. The first sip tasted like off-brand sugar-free vanilla pudding got knocked up by soy-nog and their baby was this screaming, head-spinning, chunk-spewing, demon-infested horror. That orange line is one of the first accumulations of unmixable nog powder that would eventually ring my glass.

powder nog 012

See that? It’s an empty nog glass; unmixable and probably undigestable nog powder clings to the bottom. For you people I drank this. For you. So you don’t wander into the store and think, “Hey maybe I should put some powder into some milk instead of putting powder up my nose for once,” take it home and DIE when you try to ingest something that was clearly invented for someone who loves nog as much as I do. For you people I drank the equivalent of the uncanny valley of eggnog. For you people I drank the metaphorical Deadenbacher. For you people I traveled to Hell’s gates, knocked on the door, and then yanked on the chain of the three-headed demon-dog that eats souls and salivates liquid-hot magma. And for you people I let that demon-dog hump my leg. I hope you’re happy.

We Three Things

Published
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Anonymous Coworker
on December 18, 2007 @ 10:41 am
in Glen Burnie, Mrs. ACW, awesome, beer, food, house, i am so fucking awesome, meta blogging, money, nog, people are idiots, potty humor and sex
. 13 Comments

1) Last year Mrs. ACW gave me a container of powdered eggnog mix for Christmas and to be honest, I’m a little scared to even try it. I thought I would be able to get up enough gumption yesterday, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Especially considering that the third direction is to “allow mixture to sit for a few minutes and thicken” (that’s what she said! ha! I’m hilarious) I’ve been particularly apprehensive. Even after having already come up with similes and metaphors relating to foamy reindeer ejaculate and elf orgies I still couldn’t bring myself to try the stuff. Or maybe that was part of the problem. Regardless, I’m going to attempt to try it at some point in the near future, and believe me, you’ll hear about it.

2) Last night I finally bought our Christmas tree. Last year I paid $20 for a tree that cost about $27. I didn’t haggle. I didn’t bargain. I just pointed to the tree I wanted and said, “I’ll give you 20 bucks for that one.” This year my success is debatable. Because of the drought, tree prices were a bit higher this year than last year. And by “a bit” I mean “ridiculously more expensive”. I saw quite a few trees that looked like our tree last year, the shabbiest of which cost about $50, and the one most like last years was going for about $78, and it was still no prize compared to some of the other trees on the lot. The nicest tree I saw went for about $150 bucks, which I guess is like buying a disposable ivory back-scratcher; nice to look at, but really completely pointless. I found two trees on the lot that were less than $40, which I figured was the upper limit of my bargaining range, and set about comparing them. The $37 tree was taller, but it was missing huge sections of branches, so I went with the shorter, chode-ier tree, even though that meant we’d have to put it up on some sort of small table. I found the saleswoman and told her I’d give her $20 for the tree. It was priced at $31.

“Well, I’d love to but that’s a blahblahwhatthefuckeverblah kind of tree, and people rarely pay less than full price for those.”

“I’ll give you twenty bucks.”

“I’m not sure I can go that low, but I can probably let you have it for 28.”

“I have a twenty dollar bill. It’s twenty or nothing.”

“Okay. $22.50. It’s as low as I can go.”

“I’m not sure you understand. All I have is a twenty. I can’t pay you any more than that. No one else is going to buy this tree. Do you want to make twenty bucks off it?”

She didn’t look like she was going to relent, but just at that second a whole gaggle of wide-eyed suckers wandered onto the lot, so seeing her chance to sell a blahblahsomefuckinkindoftreeblah to them for a hundred bucks, she took my twenty and left.

A guy came over to cut off the bottom and bag it in that plastic netting, but I told him not to worry about it, rolled my passenger side window down, and had him stuff it in there. Voila: a Christmas tree.

3) Today is our Holiday Party at work. I say Holiday Party because our boss is Jewish and the co-chairs of the planning committee are Jewish, Musilm, and Hindu. In fact, now that I think about it, the other three people on the committee are Non-denominational Christian, agnostic, and a non-affiliated spiritual zen Buddhism-type guy. Weird. Anyway, an email went around a few weeks ago about the gift-exchange at the party this year. It’s one of those events where people buy $10 worth of crap and then pass it around for a while until everyone is unhappy. Every year people hound me to participate, and every year I demurely turn them down. Finally my colleague, the non-denominational Christian, asked me why I don’t participate, and I decided to be completely honest. Why would I pay between $10 and $20, and spend the time to pick out something nice that just about everyone could enjoy, when I’m guaranteed to get crap in return? The gift exchange is nothing more than complicated, protracted boondoggle for me to pay $20 for something I don’t even want. That’s money I could be spending on beernog.

I’ve been scolded

Published
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Anonymous Coworker
on December 10, 2007 @ 2:48 pm
in Mrs. ACW, food, money, nog and sex
. 23 Comments

Let’s see, it’s December 10th and I haven’t nog-blogged a single time yet this month. Sure, I have four posts about nog so far this fall, including one post in October about pumpkin nog. And sure, even when not blogging about nog I’m still pretty much the greatest blog on the internet, so you’ve got that going for you. But Supa reminded me that all of that doesn’t matter when nog is on the line.

In a comment on the last post that I’m sure wasn’t intended to crush my soul and completely take the wind out of my sails, but did anyway, she upbraided me thusly:

Anyway. Came for nog, was disappointed.

I kind of just looked at the screen and went, “But… but… oh. Okay.” and then resolved to post about nog today in some sort of conciliatory gesture to correct past nog-related wrongs. So here you go, Supa, a nog post. I hope it does not disappoint.

During one of our frequent and unnecessary trips to Target to cram every cranny and nook of our home with cheap, plastic, disposable crap, I wandered away from Mrs. ACW (who was jabbering incessantly about how I tune her out or something like that), into the dairy section, as one is wont to do when one wanders aimlessly.

I came upon a dairy case that housed abortion after vile abortion of the unholiest products. Things that should never be mixed with something that comes out of a teat. Cherry-flavored milk? Pardon me while I vomit on the small child standing next to me. I would rather eat the Devil’s underpants. But, as luck would have it, at the end of that row of edible death was exactly what I was looking for: eggnog.

I was a little excited to see that it was Archer Farms branded eggnog because I’m pretty much in love with Archer Farms snack foods. I’d willfully stab a man to death for some of their flavored potato chips, and if it were legal in any state besides Wyoming, I’d quickly divorce Mrs. ACW and marry a bag of chips instead. But there’s no way I’m moving way the hell out to Wyoming just for some potato chips. Are we clear? Murder- enthusiastic yes. Moving- lethargic no.

So we get home and before Mrs. ACW can open the door I push her down on the ground, take the eggnog, and go inside. I think she came inside after that. Or not. Whatever, I don’t care. I had eggnog to drink. I poured myself a glass of the stuff (and have you noticed that when you’re pouring eggnog it’s impossible to pour it any way but silently? Eggnog doesn’t make the vulgar sloshing sounds so typical of other beverages. Oh no. Eggnog is like an outfit made of pure velor while drinks such as soda are all corduroys-and-vinyl-windbreaker-obscene. Eggnog is the ninja of beverages, and it will stab your taste buds with it’s nutmeg katana and you will be lucky if the ONLY thing you do is have an orgasm and relax your bowels.) and took a sip.

“That’s odd,” I thought, “this tastes… like Target.”

Now, I’ve never “tasted” Target. I’ve never gotten down on my hands and knees and licked the red and white linoleum tile. I’ve never tongue-kissed the endless displays of movies that cost $5.50. I’ve never orally ingested… well, that’s probably enough. That smell, though. You know that smell? The smell of row upon row of cheap plastic crap, industrial cleaning solutions, heavily recycled air, 75-pound dog-food bags, and those distinct-but-subtle notes of vacuum cleaner bags? That’s what Target nog tasted like.

Don’t get me wrong, the primary and overwhelming taste was of nog, but there was a background which tasted like Target itself, and that didn’t make me happy. No, that did not make me happy one bit. I finished the glass (it was nog, after all) and put the carton in the back of the fridge. I hoped to go back to it after a few days to find that it had mellowed somewhat and the undeniable taste of big-box commerce had dissipated. Alas, it was not to be.

Drinking Target nog is like drinking capitalism, distilled. For the most part it’s okay, but every now and then you get hints that what you’re consuming is the lowest common denominator of what it could possibly be without it being something totally different altogether. Get it? No? Let me put it simply:

Target nog almost tastes like Communism.

I haven’t even tasted it yet UPDATED

Published
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Anonymous Coworker
on November 26, 2007 @ 9:39 am
in Glen Burnie, Mrs. ACW, food, nog and suhmuhmuh bitch
. 13 Comments

UPDATE: It’s pretty good. Sort of the same as regular eggnog, but a little bit more like… uh… candy? I’m not sure how to describe it. When you drink it, it tastes more like a dessert than other nogs do. If you’re turned off by sweeter nogs, you’ll probably hate it. If you wish your eggnog tasted more like melted eggnog ice cream, this is a pretty close approximation.

Wednesday, or Thursday maybe, or possibly Friday or Saturday, Mrs. ACW and I went to the store to pick up some essentials for the upcoming holiday weekend. If you know me at all, you’ll know that “essentials” means bacon and eggnog. We bought some other crap too, like cat food and chips and nacho cheese, but the trip was pretty much all about the bacon and eggnog.

You may not have noticed, but I like to try as many eggnog products as I can get my hands on, and last week was no exception. In the dairy case with other eggnogs that I’ve had a million times before was a new brand that I’d never before seen.

“Axlerod eggnong?” Mrs. ACW said dubiously as I plunked the carton into the shopping cart.

“Yeah. From the makers of yogurt and sour cream*, so you KNOW it’s going to be delicious.”

Mrs. ACW didn’t argue, she just shook her head and kept pushing the cart, and 6 pounds of bacon later we eventually found our way to the self-checkout. We typically opt for the self-checkout because a) we’re not idiots and the only problems we’ve ever had with the machines have been store related, and b) why interact with another human when you have the opportunity not to? I scanned through all the items while Mrs. ACW bagged, but when I got to the eggnog the machine balked and made irritated noises, then the light above the machine started flashing, signaling that I had broken the poor robot.

We weren’t in a hurry, but we weren’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of hanging out in the store for 10 minutes while some employee pulled their head out of their ass long enough to come over and reset the machine, so I set the nog aside and scanned the rest of our stuff, paid for it, and prepared to return the nog to the dairy case. It was unfortunately at that moment that an employee finally lumbered over to see what the problem was.

“What’s the problem?”

“This eggnog won’t scan, but it’s fine. I’m going to put it back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure what? I’m putting the eggnog back.”

“Are you sure you don’t want it?”

“Yeah. I already paid for everything else.”

“I can ring you up at the cashier station if you’d like.”

“Really, it’s okay. I’m putting the eggnog back.”

“Are you sure? It’s no trouble.”

And on and on ad nauseum. She was the most infuriatingly helpful person I’ve ever encountered at that store, and it took me by complete surprise. It turns out that some dunderhead had put the nog out before it had even been entered into their system, so she said she’d sell it to me for 2 bucks, which is a pretty good deal considering that the shittiest, month-old donkey-nog is typically at least $2.50.

By the time we got home I was so confused about the whole experience that I put the nog in the back of the fridge and forgot about it until now. When I taste it, I’ll be sure to let you know if it’s got chunks of cottage cheese floating in it.

*Just in case you don’t click that link, you should know that Axelrod doesn’t even list eggnog as one of its products, so I either have a counterfeit nog that will strike me blind, or they’re so embarrassed by their nog that they don’t like to advertise that they even make it. Both prospects make me very leery.

Worst pizza ever

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on November 20, 2007 @ 9:40 am
in Mrs. ACW, family and food
. 20 Comments

If you haven’t gathered from prior posts, my family is pretty much completely bonkers. They’re great, and I love them, don’t get me wrong, but like many people, when I turn and objectively look at my family like an outsider might, all I see is balls-outside-of-pants crazy.

For example, my family (and by “family” I mean my dad, mom, her parents, and her six brothers and sisters, their spouses, and their children (my 12 or 14 or 16 cousins or whatever), as well as the 3 or 4 great-grandchildren) is rabidly insistent on getting together. Memorial Day, Labor Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. These all require an event that commands no less than the total attendance of the entire extended family. Days like St. Patrick’s and Valentines have fallen by the wayside now that almost all of the cousins have gotten old enough to drink and bone their significant others. But every other holiday requires compulsory attendance. I guess we could opt to just not go to some of these events, but then you have hear about it until the next year. If I missed Thanksgiving, I’d be hounded about it until the next Thanksgiving. It’s ridiculous. In fact, the craziest part is that my relatives are only interested in having everyone in the same house. Once we’re all there most of them could really give a shit about the other people in the room. It’s really bizarre.

So now it should come as no surprise to you to learn that my nuclear family celebrates a pre-Thanksgiving every year on the weekend before Thanksgiving at my mother’s behest. This is a relatively new tradition, started once we were all old enough to drive and were invited to Thanksgivings of friends and girlfriends. Because my mother wouldn’t be able to see us ALL DAY on Thanksgiving, she had to get her extra time in with a pre-Thanksgiving. So now the three sons, wives in tow, dutifully participate in pre-Thanksgiving with my parents. My grandparents are usually there too, because: hey, why not?

We have this miniature Thanksgiving with all the same traditions, but with a much smaller crowd, and a much more skewed age distribution. There are six people between 25 and 30, four people between 59 and 90, and one person below 3. And of course we have to keep the 2-year-old entertained because she’s the only one that needs entertaining. Everyone else is not giving a shit that anyone else is there.

And we finally come to why I started writing this post in the first place. Saturday night found me sitting under a circular card table set up in the living room for four unlucky people to be exiled during dinner, playing “dishes” with my niece. “Dishes” primarily consists of taking all the play dishes in the “dishes” bag and dumping those play dishes all over the floor, refilling the bag, and repeating. I wasn’t going to have any of that bullshit, especially not from someone much smaller and stupider than me, so I used my superior intellect to convince my niece that we should be making food. We took cups, plates, and bowls of imaginary ingredients and dumped them into a tin, shook the empty tin, and then my niece delivered the “food” to someone else in the room.

The process wasn’t without problems though. When we were making pizza and I was dumping in the flour, oil, water, sauce, and cheese, I asked my niece what she wanted on the pizza.

“Cookies.”

Despite this being a repulsive and disgusting pizza topping, I obliged, “Okay, we’ll have cookie pizza. What else do you want?”

“Cookes.”

“Right. Yes. There are cookies on the pizza. What other toppings should we add?”

“Pizza.”

“(sigh) I’m pretty sure that you’re not quite clear on the concept here, so I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. Any other normal toppings?”

“Juice.”

“No. We’re not putting juice on pizza. That’s gross. And messy. We’ll just have your terrible cookie pizza with extra cookies.”

“Pizza!”

“Right, yes, pizza. If you can even call it that anymore.”

I sent my niece off to deliver the cookie pizza to some oblivious guinea pig who’d have to ingest the unpalatable slop. Moments later she returned, empty tin held out in her tiny hands. “More.”

I decided pizza was out of the question because of how badly she ruined it last time, so I suggested we make cookies instead. It seemed like that’s what she wanted to make anyway. I dutifully went about adding the imaginary flour, sugar, water, eggs, crisco, and chocolate chips. She had, in the meantime, found a small truck and was pushing it around my kitchen, basically violating every health department restriction in the process. Then she told me the truck wanted to watch what we were doing. She’s clearly insane, and now I had her stuck in my kitchen. What a nightmare. I put my attention back to my cookies lest she suggest that the truck needed to empty it’s diesel bladder into my gastronomic opus when I heard the voice of one of her parents, outside the confines of the tiny kitchen under the table.

“Are you making cookies down there?”

I looked at my niece, who was now pushing her truck through a flan I had set aside for dessert, turned my head toward the voice and said, “She’s not doing a goddamned thing! I’m doing all the work down here!”

They laughed, oh how they laughed, but I was the one laughing when I put the flan in the empty tin and sent it out to be eaten, delivered by a tiny malevolent sadist.

Emails with my brother

Published
by
Anonymous Coworker
on November 14, 2007 @ 10:50 am
in awesome, food, potty humor, the worldwide information super-tubeterwebs and word nerd
. 22 Comments

I wasn’t even going to post anything today, but then this one wrote itself.

ACW wrote:
The FDA says it’s fine for the meat industry to spray meat with carbon dioxide so that the red color of meat lasts longer, in some cases long past the shelf life of the meat. So how can you tell if the meat is bad or not? Buy it, take it home, open up the package and smell it. Thanks meat industry!
http://tinyurl.com/23qnpa

Mokie wrote:
Or, on the other hand:

“Since then, food retailers Giant, Safeway Inc and Tyson Foods Inc have stopped the practice.
On Tuesday, discount retailer Target Corp asked USDA for approval to add a warning to the label of meat that has been treated with carbon monoxide sold in its stores.”
So pretty much as long as you shop at a reputable store you’re going to continue to get decent beef.
Or you could just save all of that hassle and just buy organic.

ACW wrote:
I’m not shopping at Gunt or Slaveway.

Mokie wrote:
YOU ARE A GUNT

ACW wrote:
YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS A GUNT. FURTHER, I SUSPECT YOUR GUNT MAKES ITS OWN GRAVY AND YOU EAT THAT GRAVY SLATHERED OVER DEEP-FRIED BROWN SUGAR, THUS INCREASING THE SIZE OF YOUR GUNT AND SUBSEQUENT GUNT-GRAVY OUTPUT.

Mokie wrote:
YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS A GUNT AND IT IS NOT ME WHO IS THE GUNT. SAID GUNTITUDE AND GRAVYMAKING APPLIES STRICTLY TO YOURSELF AND NOT TO ME.

ACW wrote:
GUNTLY GRAVYSMITHING IS IN TOTALITY AND PERPETUITY WITHIN YOUR GUNTISH PURVIEW. AFOREMENTIONED GUNTITUDE BY YOU, HERETOFORE AND FORTHWITH REFERRED TO AS GUNTOSAURUS, CANNOT BE APPLIED TO ME.

ACW: 1
Guntosaurus: 0

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