Keurig Mini and Brew Over Ice K-Cups

Now that the weather is humid, I sent my non-copyrighted Foodette Signal out into the sky, silently beckoning to companies and humans everywhere to please, assuage this shitty summer heat and help me out. The folks at Keurig heard me and from the sky, down came a Keurig Mini Brewer and an assortment of K-Cups. (I still maintain the opinion that "K-Cup" sounds like an off-brand plus sized version of the Diva Cup, but that's probably why I'm not in advertising.The Keurig Mini is small, small enough to wedge comfortably in between most of our appliances and has the added bonus of looking like a small robot dinosaur when opened. This effect is only enhanced with the silver paintjob and additional stickers I added to its exterior. So far, I liked it. It came with an instructional booklet with the detail of your average BMW user's manual. The machine was relatively easy to use, to the point where I simply tossed the booklet (gasp!) and started making a cup of iced tea.I was under the impression that the "brew over ice" function was an attachable piece to add on to the machine, much like a Leatherwood Hi-Lux M30 Red Dot sight or a bicycle horn, but it wasn't so much of an accessory as it was a concept and repackaged version of what the Keurig had before. The BOI Kups (Haaaaaa!) come in all sorts of flavors. I went ahead and prepared the Southern Sweet Tea. Oddly enough, despite the instructions and press releases that the cups are "specially blended" and proportioned for usage over ice, there is no indicator as to which setting or ideal amount of water I ought to use for them. I know that part of the concept of all-inclusive customization is to be able to freely adjust the amount of water you wish to use, but the formula tends to be somewhat murky as to when that should be lessened for the BOI function.
The water reservoir at the top of the machine is monochromatic with an incomprehensible detachable piece for determining how much water is in the machine. Being used to clear, easy-to-read dials on the side of the Mr. Coffee, I was thrown back by this accessory. It looked like something I'd have used in the Middle Ages as a rain gauge. And as a result of my blind guesswork and lack of inclination to pull out the measuring cups, I ended up with watery iced tea.
With a machine as specialized and focused on variety as this, the fuzzy detail in water measurement isn't a big deal if you drink coffee every day and have a specific mug that you use. You can easily just measure your water in that and then use it to brew the coffee. With the BOI, it tends to be a different story, as you then have to allocate for the amount of water you want to use, the water you're going to displace when you add the ice, and then the extra water you'll add from the ice, melted when the beverage brews. And the most realistic amount for a cup of iced tea, a 12 oz. glass with 4 ice cubes, is too large to fit underneath the dispenser. All smaller cups, like the one shown above, overflowed when I tried to brew with them. What gives? It seems like this isn't engineered for iced beverages at all. Not only have I still not found the ratio I desire in a cold drink, I'm now relegated to the couch at night because I keep mumbling about BOIs in my sleep.There is a silver lining to every Keurig, though. Keepitcoming Love, who was initially sworn against the Keurig, has found it immensely simple to use and appreciates the varied gear they sell to mix up your morning cup of joe. As for me, I'm going to have to keep tinkering with it to reach my ideal.Special thanks to the folks at Keurig's PR team for hooking me up with this gadget! They didn't pay me to write this, but I might have propositioned one or more of their coffee machines one drunken night. It's okay, the machines aren't on payroll.

Ninja Food - Blueberry Gummy

I got this pack of gummies from a box of assorted goods sent by the good people at J-List. In order to help possible ensure future samples of interesting Japanese snacks here’s a shameless plug for them. Everyone! Go to J-List and if you feel ever so inclined. They have all types of stuff from Japan (snacks, food, anime, games, books, and even porn) for the weeaboo in you! Damn it, ruined the plug already. If you are a weeaboo and would not mind paying extreme shipping prices to get something shipped to you from Japan, this site is probably for you. For the non-weeaboo people who actually go outside, just hit up your local Asian grocery store and save money like a boss.

Some of my actual belongings. Yeah, I'm a total badass.

From the moment I looked at the package, I knew that this strange Japanese pack of candy and I were destined to meet. After gathering and reflecting upon a few random possessions from my room, I had a strange feeling that the well dressed Ninja business man on the cover was an omen of things to come. I felt that I was looking at a future caricature of my future self as depicted by Japanese candy executives. I now think I have a great future goal to work towards. Instead of being a special agent in the FBI working to stop white collar crimes such as tax evasion or corporate embezzling I now am planning to become a ninja accountant, yup a ninja accountant.

I took that strange package to my Japanese roommate for a translation which only resulted in “Ninja Food – Blueberry”. The candies themselves looked like beans made of candy. There was probably only 15 in the package, just enough for a small candy snack break. There is no time is the life of a ninja accountant to stop and have a large amount of candy when there are statement of cash flows to complete in the shadow of darkness.

These candies tasted pretty accurately of blueberry. It didn’t taste too artificial but one could also easily tell it was a good replication. There was a thick layer of candy covering over a hard gummy center. The outer covering was a good hard candy covering, somewhat like a yogurt covered raisin, but with candy. The blueberry taste was rather heavy in the outer candy coating but tapered off when you got to the gummy center. The center was just a very chewy slightly blueberry flavored hard gummy. The gummy center was a lot harder and had semi-leather like texture compared to regular gummies that one would get.

This candy would have been better if the whole thing was just made of candy and did not have a gummy center. The gummy center was a piece of leathery disappointment after a relatively good blueberry candy. The gummy center also did not have enough taste to compensate for the leather texture.

Hershey's Air Delight Aerated Milk Chocolate

Okay, call my bullshit on this but I personally see aerated chocolate as the snake oil equivalent in the candy variety traveling medicine show. I mean, the very idea is roughly as useful as Scotch-flavored condoms. Hershey's put out an aerated chocolate bar with an asinine name to follow in the footsteps of their ever-exotic cousin, the Aero bar, and here is the result.

The USA seems to have abandoned the Twilight craze and swept itself up in the aerated chocolate bar fad. Completely untrue, but what Milton Hershey's non-existent grandkids and CEO's don't know is that the Aero bar does serve a functional purpose in the British world. After all, because we all know that British people are bad-toothed and batshit insane (Editor's note: Redacted the link to Foodette's ex's Facebook page. Also, wait. I am the fucking editor. This is awesome.) Aero simply plays on that bad dentistry history from the heyday of the Industrial Revolution by offering a softer, gentle, less snappy version of the chocolate we all knew and loved. It's a phenomenal way, much like whipped cream cheese and whipped candy bars, to stuff less product into the container and sell the very air you're whipping into it in the first place and overcharge the customer.

I'm quite sure you don't need too much of an explanation for this. This is a standard Hershey bar with a severely underdeveloped cocoa flavor. Yes, it's thicker to hold all the precious air and it has less squares because of that, but it's still the same crumbly, overly sweet, sugar throat burning creamy flavor that we all know and mildly tolerate. Does the air provide a sensation? Not really. If you chew it quickly, it crumbles off in small pieces that suggest that the bar is of a low quality until you remember that this was intentional. Each square is just a hair too large to comfortably fit in the mouth and suck on (LOL here) and the air isn't really distinguishable until the square eventually collapses in on itself and melts to regular, boring chocolate. I don't feel any airy, bubbly textures or specifically unique texture to this bar at all.

As a result of witchcraft, this bar is more expensive and less weighty than a Hershey bar. It's more of a pointless buy than the $19,000 Hammacher Schlemmer seven-person bike and is just a disappointment for all faux British wannabes and real British ex-pats. Just buy a regular Hershey bar, melt it, and fart in it before it sets. This is the American confectionery equivalent of Engrish. We cannot live up to the hype of the Aero bar. (Note: I love my British readers, by the way. I just hate the Air Delight more.)

Avocado Week: Salad

Shrimp taco salad is so easy to prepare and so hard to fuck up. This was a particularly zesty recipe, with lime zested beans, chili-garlic rice, guacamole, paprika sour cream, and plenty of shrimp and salsa verde on top. Good Mexican food is so damned filling and so cheap. It might be one of the most satisfying cuisines I can cook.

We ate this salad after a day of running errands and it was honestly as good as any I've had in a restaurant. Fairly simple, too, with a layer of lime black beans, chili garlic rice, guacamole, paprika sour cream, and salsa verde marinated grilled shrimp with plenty of salsa slathered on top. It was only until later when I realized that not only had I forgotten the cheese, but that we didn't even need it in the first place.It's a recipe that orchestrates itself easily if you tackle the time-consuming elements, like the rice and beans, first and then prepare the cold toppings while those are cooking.In conclusion, here is our cat. She tried to jump on her cat tower while a potted plant was resting on top, miscalculated the distance, and got wedged in between the window and the cube because of her exceptionally rubenesque rear end. We laughed and took photos and posted them to PETA's Myspace and then we let her down. All was well and she ate shrimp off the counter.

White Castle Surf 'n' Turf Slider

Why did we decide to go to the Bronx at midnight? We'd never been to a White Castle, New York housing the last smattering New England has to offer. The GPS had attempted mutiny by directing us not to the gentle White Castle off 95, but the cramped location in the middle of the city. And with every check cash kiosk, boarded up Boys and Girls Club, and flashing ambulance we drove by, that question became more apparent in my mind. As we reached the kingdom itself, a building as compact as one of its burgers and open 24 hours a day, I wondered if this meal would be so good as to justify it as my last.

This was not the melting pot that Murray told us about! This was empty and sterile inside, with an atonal prison-esque buzzer to open and close the bathroom and a near shootout over the price of a Saver Sack. Dorothy was not in Kansas anymore, and we were certainly far afield of Connecticut. But here we were, and as we ordered through holes in the bullet-proof Plexiglass bubble separating us from our sliders, I peered over the menu, throwing caution, food poisoning, and health to the wind and ordering an item that allowed me to desperately cling to all that I knew and loved. That item was the Surf 'n' Turf Slider, an item debuting once in the 80's and last Valentine's Day, ensuring that no fish would go uncubed and no couple would go unsevered.

As Swagger and FF, whom I now considered my two large, hairy escorts, waited for their Crave Case, I chomped down on this burger. With eight layers of goo and a little over 500 calories in such a diminutive sandwich, it almost looked like the plodding, savory counterpart to a petit four. Needless to say, the Surf 'n' Turf is unfortunately, not a little chunk of lobster plopped atop one of the Castle's trademarked patties, despite my prayers to the gods for a little chevre. Calling it Surf 'n' Turf is like calling a concoction of Barefoot Chardonnay and Crystal Light a 1er Cru Bordeaux. It is far worse than that, consisting of three buns, three slices of cheese taking the place of edible glue, two beef patties, a handful of onions, the ominous fish stick square and no less than five packets of tartar sauce to lubricate it on its way down my gullet. The equivalent of a pre-Jamie Oliver 4th grade lunch with a slider garnish on top, or so I thought.

In reality, the burger tasted less offensive than it looked, despite being the gastronimical byproduct of two cows gang-raping a mermaid. The fish was tender and provided more of a textural irregularity than any particular flavor, which was good, because halfway through the slider, I remembered that I never really liked reconstituted fish patties. But it wasn't a terribly pungent flavor, just an added layer of grease alongside the standard squishy bun and squishy meat. The cheese was surprisingly gooey and salty. My main problem with this sandwich was that, like receiving a Wagyu beef steak and covering it in barbecue sauce, this slider was inexplicably coated with a blood-like sheen of ketchup, not only all over the burger and buns, but all over the side of the box as well. This really detracted from the allure of some of the more delicate flavors I was trying to place and placed it in the category of an average fast food burger with a sickly, weak tomato flavor. As much as I hate pickles, they'd have probably done some good here with their crispness and acidity.

There's no nice way to say it: this is the creepiest burger I could have ordered in the creepiest of settings. And the burgers are deceptively small. I saw myself easily pounding down ten, but after this wildcard and two regular sliders, I felt sick. Luckily, my mood was elevated and I regained hope for the reign blanc with the joy of watching FF and Swagger eat ten burgers apiece out of their modified briefcase a la Pulp Fiction and discover the joy of the jalapeno slider. After all, it wasn't really about the food, it was about the adventure. The rest was just a bonus. And that's the way we like it.

Avocado week: Beverage

Riding on our Limered-induced addiction to bubble tea, Keepitcoming and I decided to try our hand at copying the avocado boba that Joe and co. have been churning out.

Needless to say, our prototypes for an avococktail were trashed and the avocado boba wasn't quite the right texture, so we wound up making an avocado milkshake. Know ye, a judicious application of avocado will save you headaches later on from trying to slurp it out of the glass. The mixture gets extremely thick!

Wendy's Berry Almond Chicken Salad

Last night, Swagger, FF, and I took a jaunt in the jalopy so I could bribe them into eating some of the fast food world's newest offerings. I ended up eating this one myself, the new Berry Almond Chicken Salad from Wendy's along with their new Wild Berry Tea. The press release came in a scant three hours before I tried the salad, and boasted a plethora of things I love, including an exhaustive array of one specific component of the salad. Or so I thought. What with the recent mayonnaise-based chicken salad popularity in the Subway and Arby's markets, I expected a similar coup from their female counterpart with the advertising focused on the trendy acai and fruit additions, but it turned out to look like most of the salads on the commercial market today.

All of the components of this salad were represented differently than how I'd expected them to be. With an absurd $6.99 price tag, I inwardly groaned. Not because I'd also just bought Swagger twenty five spicy chicken nuggets, but because I'd never willingly spent so much on a vegetable based salad before. From the get-go, the salad distinctly separates itself into two categories: ingredients that work well together, and ingredients that just fall short.

This being the first day of the salad's nationwide debut, I was disappointed, but not surprised, that my local Wendy's employees got the chicken wrong. Instead of the grilled chicken, one of the spicy chicken fillets was diced up in the salad. Oddly enough, this combination worked. With the nutty creaminess from the parmesan, the chicken's spice was toned down and I found myself enjoying the different play of textures within each bite. The salad appears to give you your money's worth in the parmesan department. The entire upper third of my bowl was filled with curly parmesan slices. The berries, though obviously fresh and juicy, came few and far between with each bite. The blueberries erred toward the anemic side and ended up uselessly rolling into the nether regions of the bowl, but the strawberries were the real star of the show, providing less flavor than the more powerful proteins, but a sweetness that balanced the dish out. The lettuce, some pieces clearly leftover from crappy iceberg salads and others, leafy and earthy, brought it all together with an interesting textural distinction and vaguely healthy air.

Honestly, if the salad had just stopped at chicken, cheese, berries, and a little arugula on top, I'd have been happy right there. With the addition of more textural elements, like the raspberry-acai vinaigrette and the toasted almonds, the salad took an irritating spin toward the overloaded. Both the nuts and the sauce completely disappeared behind the wakes of the more powerful flavors. The sauce left a wet, acidic aftertaste behind and the nuts acted as though they weren't there at all. It bothered me that elements that definitely bumped the price and calorie level of the salad played no integral role in improving the flavor.

Overall, I was pleased that Wendy's, in attempting to go beyond the traditional constraints of limp, over-dressed fast food vegetal fare, provided a good prototype for its imitators, but could not find enough to enjoy about this salad that justified its price tag and uniqueness. In a fast food market, this is an anomaly, but for home cooks, Wendy's isn't reinventing the wheel.

Avocado Week: Appetizer

Avocado Week's massive delicious seven-course dinner kicks off with a few appetizers: tempura avocado, two ways. We're a big fan of doing it two ways here at Foodette Reviews. Ladies???? AM I RIGHT?The avocado was battered in a combination of tempura and white corn masa for a little extra crunch. We served it with homemade chips and SO MANY SAUCES. There might have been four. The first preparation had small chunks of fried avocado on chopsticks, dusted with chili powder and lime juice on top.

The second preparation was more involved, with spearing a frozen, perfectly round avocado half and frying it up. It made for a gorgeous presentation and was dubbed nature's first salsa bowl. It was a proud day.

Avocado Week: Breakfast

It's Avocado Week and we're starting with breakfast, the first and arguably most badass meal of the day. Shove these tacos into your mouth with molten hot coffee and go blearily click around on reddit fifteen minutes before work.Components: Tortillas. Guacamole. Scrambled eggs. Peppered bacon. Crispy jalapenos.
And gratuitous amounts of hot sauce.
OM NOMS. So easy, even the Pioneer Woman could do it. Albeit with more butter, but still.
Tomorrow's avocado porn: Tempura battered avocado, two ways!

Davio's Northern Italian Steakhouse Frozen Philly Cheesesteak Spring Rolls

I didn't think it was possible to embarrass a country whose people, six or seven generations back, spawned the Jersey Shore cast members (with the ignoble exception of J-WOWW) but Davio's manages to do so. Here, we have Davio's Northern Italian Steakhouse Frozen Philly Cheesesteak Spring Rolls. As you may know, spring rolls, especially ones of the Philadelphia sandwich-based ilk, are a huge staple in Northern Italian Steakhouse cuisine, often known as "cazzatietta" by the locals, a colloquial term for "little bullshit." They are usually accompanied by other traditional Northern Italian Steakhouse favorites like crab cake sandwiches, Chicken McNuggets, and the leftover dregs of a discarded Mountain Dew.Davio's Philly Cheesesteak Egg Rolls seem to have a rather varied cult following, ranging from one supposed Michelin-rated thrill seeker's notion that these are the best things he's ever eaten, (suck it, Bouloud!) to others emphasizing the somewhat Applebee's-esque nature of the whole thing. Having no interest in driving to one of the restaurants, I picked these up while they were on sale at Stop and Shop, interestingly devoid of paper towels, bottled water, and duct tape. Northampton, where is your pride?!On the package, Davio's goes as far as to rhetorically ask me, "Yeah, they're Philly Cheesesteak Rolls. What are you going to do about it?" What indeed, Immanuel Kant? Allow me to utilize the categorical imperative and assume that, if I bought these, I must eat them. Doi. Davio's recommends no less than sixty thousand methods of preparation with a separate Amazon bestseller rated booklet sold separately, but I chose for the ever-reliable nuke and sear method while Keepitcoming was at hot yoga. I never fail to disappoint.The egg roll dough errs toward the thick side and tends to get gummy toward the middle, but the innards are plentiful and don't disintegrate in the cooking process. The filling can best be described as frozen cheeseburger dip or the gunk inside a White Castle cheeseburger as it is extremely rendered down when you prepare them, with the obvious replacement of the squishy bun with a crispy, greasy egg roll shell. I knew when I bought these that they wouldn't be "tender shaved steak with a blend of Italian cheeses," but I figured that I'd like them just the same. And in all honesty, I do, especially with a garnish of Italian Sir Kensington's Spiced Ketchup and Italian Salsa Verde. Despite that they are very small and not filling in the slightest and that the cheeses taste scarily identical to the flavor powder on Cheez Doodles, I think that if these were stripped of their pretension and restaurant-generated "reputation" they'd make a fantastic appetizer or party snack, but the price is so high at $6 for 6 rolls and $13 for 4 rolls at the restaurant that it's almost not worth the corners they cut. These would be just as easy to make on your own and you could probably make twice the yield for the same price.

Mama Mary's Soul Food, New Haven, CT

I don't know what you're doing to celebrate the return of Our Lord Jesus Christ in his much-hyped 2011 Rapture tour, but Swagger and I went into New Haven to toast one of our last three meals on earth with some soul food at Mama Mary's.
Mama Mary's Soul Food, predecesed by Sandra's, is a surprisingly upscale establishment on Whalley Avenue, a restaurant in muted earth tones and metals with quirky, blasphemous touches one notices mid-bite. Some are funky, like sitting in refurbished pews and taking menus out of the hymn book racks, and some a little strange, like the haphazard mismatched living room set tables to the right, where plush armchairs crowd each other around small bar tables, flanked by booth seats three feet away from the tables they are supposed to occupy. Michael Jackson, gospel, and soft R&B plays softly above as the fans whir and a steady stream of people filter in and out.

The service, though painstakingly slow, is worth the shift from a hectic schedule to soul food time. Upon ordering, we were promptly served our respective drinks, a delicious homemade sweet tea and lemonade, and two thick slices of the most tender, fresh cornbread I have ever been privy to consume, the top half inch of it soaked in butter. When the Rapture comes, it would do you wise to wander around Mama Mary's. Remember, when the looting begins, the cornbread can be yours. This is a side dish that I would gladly come back for. Not only is it free, but it is laced with just a slight sweetness and a soft, moist crumble that falls apart at the slightest fork prod.With this as a small tease in mind, I expected nothing short of mind-blowing entrees and sides. We took a sweeping approach to their menu, taking advantage of the easily customizable dishes to order the maximum number of different items we could possibly sample. Swagger dove right into the scarier parts, ordering chitterlings with collard greens and candied yams and I opted for a more prosaic, yet blatantly Southern dish, fried catfish with macaroni and cheese and fried okra.The small plate, roughly the size of a small watermelon, was heaped with orbs of fried okra and a large pile of pasta. The star of the plate, the catfish, occupied a scant quarter of the plate, but was piled high. After sampling pieces of each dish, it was apparent that this was a restaurant where one would go for the chicken (or fish) but stay for the sides. The catfish wasn't particularly outstanding on its own, but with a few squirts of the well-loved Kurtz hot sauce, present at all tables, it was transformed into a vinegar-heavy, spicy fish with a delicate crunch and buttery, flaky texture.

Both sets of sides were even more sumptuous, the fried okra my new alternative for popcorn chicken. That was a flavorful snack, with a light batter that belied its weighty center, with a slight heat and a heavy crunch. This was the first time I'd ever eaten okra, and it was an absolutely perfect example. The vegetable inside was firm and fresh and needed no seasoning to eat, simply providing an earthy, salty flavor on its own. It stayed crispy for a few hours and made an excellent afternoon snack. The macaroni and cheese was regrettably unimpressive, with a cheese-heavy yet flavorless texture and a presence that seemed only to serve the purpose of filling rather than sating the palate. Wholly ignored by all.Swagger says, "I, on the other hand decided to go for a more exotic and possibly more authentic dish at Mama Mary’s. From the moment when I was essentially challenged by the menu by it saying “for a true Southerner”, I felt that it was my duty as a former Southerner to get the chitterlings or as I was taught to pronounce “chit’lins”. For the people who don’t know, chit’lins are pig intestine. The chit’lins at Mama Mary’s was absolutely delicious. They had the smarmy distinctive stink of what a good chit’lin should have. (Note from Foodette: They carry the pungent odor of boiled human skin.) It had a soft melt in your mouth texture with a little bit of chewiness. They were cooked in a spicy sauce with just the right amount of heat and flavor as to not overtake the natural taste of the chit’lins.

The sides I opted to get were the candied yams and collard greens. The collard greens were nothing too special but the candied yams were a whole different story. When biting into a piece of heaven that was the candied yam, I may have literally saw Jesus’s eyes. This type of sensation has only happened on one other occasion. The yams were cooked to a soft melt in your mouth softness in light cinnamon flavored syrup. I could probably eat these yams all day and every day. Candied is an understatement here. These were more like dessert yams, with a caramelized sauce and a fork-tender yield. They brought the ignoble tater to a beautiful place, where the starches were melted down to a pudding-like consistency, married to the very sugar molecules themselves. Just for the candied yams I would go back again. The candied yams and cornbread at Mama Mary’s are possibly the best things ever. (Note from Foodette: Swagger let me eat his last yam and now I must name my first born after him.)"

If the world ends, we'll probably be around until October 21st. After all, this blog is a sure sign of hell on earth and none of us are going up with Jesus, unless it's to slip him some whipped cream vodka for whatever heaven-tastic party he's planning up there. See you on the other side of the Rapture, folks. It's been a good run.