Ode to Fry

Sweet Jebus Christ, I fucking love fried food. French fries, fried chicken, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, fried shrimp, egg rolls, etc., and so forth. What is the essence of fried food? I have seen the essence. I have tasted the essence. I have passed the essence and gone back for more tasty fried essence. The essence is the fried outer layer; the "skin" if you will.

The skin defies explanation. If you've never had it before, you cannot possibly understand. Any description would lead your mind astray and you would probably be disgusted. This is incorrect. However, if you have tried the skin (and if you are an American male, there is no doubt that you have and you are addicted) the mention of fry waters the mouth. Personally, if I hadn't just finished eating 25+ bufalo wings, I would need to cease writing this article and make a phone call (refer to Mr. Kinton's June 3rd Bro-Post). But, alas, my belly is full and my fry-sense satisfied. However, I'll attempt a description; golden, crispy, salty... umm... delicious... and so on.

I have no idea how they make fry. I understand that hot oil is involved, and some sort of batter, and a dipping action with a metal basket. This is all I know, this is all that I need to know. My relationship with fry is need-to-know (obviously) and this is beyond satisfactory. As far as I can tell, dipping battered food into hot oil coats the food in magical, fantastic stuff that elicits a supremely positive reaction from the taste buds.

After 3 or 4 minutes of exhaustive research, I've definitively concluded that there is no way to recreate deep-fat-fry technology within the confines of one's apartment (or parent's house). The best way to get at fried foods is to go to the source; the restaurant. This is optimal, despite all the effort it takes to move your body to the food-gettin'-place, the fry-skin is always at its absolute peak moments after exiting the hot-as-shit oil. Alternatives include ordering delivery from such fantastic establishments as AK's (should you be fortunate to be in the Roxbury-Mission Hill locale) or your best local chinese restaurant (undoubtedly Food Wall. more info on this to come in future posts). The main issue with fried food delivery is that with every passing minute, the fried food becomes soggier and soggier, grossifying its styrafoam container or making the paper bag container completely translucent. It's still very much edible and good, but the tasty-factor drops logorithmically with time. Thus, I prefer and recommend to our dear readers that fried food be enjoyed at its source.

Be warned though; eating fried foods at their peak tastiness can cause severe mouth-gullet burns for the unprepared। The best way to combat this is patience; eat all fried foods at their peak every time and your mouth will eventually develop a burn callous over the entire surface of the mouth and tongue that will protect from future burns. This takes time to develop, however. Some may take weeks, some months, others years, but rest assured that once your mouth has adapted to foods of temperature exceeding 400 degrees (Fahrenheit), nothing can stop you.

Delivery or DiGiorno?

Hunger is a bitch. Sure, food tastes good. Some food even tastes really good (hot pockets, hot dogs, and pretty much anything else with ‘hot’ in the name). Sometimes, however, increasingly violent pangs of hunger simply do not provide enough motivation to find adequate sustenance. Whether you are in bed, on the couch, or in any other room that is not the kitchen, it is often difficult to muster the energy required to achieve satiation. Even if you make it to the kitchen, it is more than likely that the long, grueling journey to the refrigerator will have rendered you physically incapable of opening a bag of marshmallows, let alone a mammoth refrigerator door. That’s some serious resistance (stay tuned for a future informational entry on how to utilize every-day household products for minimum resistance exercise to prevent complete muscular atrophy). Successfully prying the fridge door open, despite being a Herculean feat, is hardly the final obstacle. Further obstructing the potential hunger satisfaction is the fact that not every item in the refrigerator is prepared for immediate consumption. Other than fresh fruit (gross) and vegetables (super gross), most refrigerated items are housed in some kind of container. These containers must be opened and their contents often mixed with other items to be properly enjoyed. This process is difficult enough when you are already in the kitchen, but if you’re on the couch and immersed in a Deadliest Warrior marathon on Spike TV, it’s damn near impossible. If you can’t stand the hunger any longer and only five minutes remain before the climactic reenactment between the feudal Samurai and U.S. military sniper, there is only one solution: making someone else bring you food. As the poor soul in the hypothetical above is obviously unlikely to have a serious girlfriend, he would be unable to command a spouse to do his bidding. Even if the average Spike TV watcher somehow manages a romantic relationship, it is clear that the lack of respect for the bro-show watching boyfriend would preclude the already suffering girlfriend from stooping so low as to prepare food for this mongoloid. Enter delivery…

Food delivery has ushered in a new age for humanity and has eliminated the last vestiges of the hunter/gatherer instinct in all who seek its service. Able to satisfy all hunger and quench all thirst with the least effort imaginable, food delivery has allowed the human race to focus on far more admirable pursuits, such as watching television or riding motorized scooters on city sidewalks. Ordering delivery is not merely a means to an end, however. It is an art form. For example, one must be aware of the best dishes a restaurant has to offer without ever setting foot in the restaurant itself. Moreover, the sharp delivery service user should possess extensive knowledge of price comparisons between restaurants, special offers, heavy traffic hours, and how many sides of honey mustard can be obtained without paying extra. The home setting also factors in. Only the most experienced orderers are able to predict a delivery driver’s speed or a pizza chef’s backlog of orders with any accuracy, so it is of primary importance to limit transaction time on the ordering end. This can be achieved a number of ways. One oft-encountered situation involves becoming hungry while playing video games. Here, it is important to maximize production and minimize waste. In order to make the best of the time available it is crucial to always have at least one hand on the controller. Relinquishing grip for even a moment wastes time and could cause you to miss crucial items, like health or ammo. Following this no-free-hands approach, the most logical method of ordering is the speakerphone. Reaching into a pocket or onto a table requires the use of one hand, but this is allowed as it is only temporary and the other hand is still firmly gripping the controller. The left hand is recommended for the reaching because the right hand is closer to the buttons on most standard controllers. Open the phone, press the speaker button, and hit redial (because you clearly ordered from the same place yesterday). Both hands can now be returned to the comfortable confines of the controller and an order can be placed. Memorization of your address and phone number is also highly recommended to streamline this process.

Another situation that would leave the world helpless without the blessing of delivery is faced when you are watching a movie and it looks like Ryan Phillippe is totally about to win the heart of the sexy, yet shy class nerd। The video game speakerphone method outlined above does not apply here for two reasons. The first reason is the noise factor. You might be watching Phillippe making his move and fall into a heated battle with the person on the phone about whether they can substitute jalapeno poppers for fries. The next minute, Freddie Prinze, Jr. is slow dancing with the hot nerdy chick and you have no idea what happened to Phillippe. The other reason for avoiding the phone is the 95% chance that you’re totally baked and couldn’t follow the plot of a Care Bears movie, let alone coherently order a buffalo bomb pizza and onion rings. Luckily for the stoner, and the restaurant employee on the other end of the phone line, food can be ordered for delivery online. This allows both free customization of the many items on a restaurant’s menu at the click of a mouse and full concentration on the inevitable slap-fight between Ryan and Freddie. You might have to pause the movie to get the food when it arrives, unless a roommate mistakenly thinks the door is for him, but this is a small price to pay for otherwise avoiding all contact with humans and refrigerators.

Death by Breakfast

Dear Jimmy Dean,
America called. It wants its predictable insulin levels back.

Sincerely,
American Diabetes Association of America

Proper Preservation Methods

"Great article in the times today about canning seasonal fruit and veggies at home. I'm dying to try it out; strawberries and artichokessound particularly appealing. Anyone with me?"

Above is an excerpt from our inferior sister site, Crows in the Kitchen. It is a terribly written piece and extremely dry but I was able to look past the obvious problems in syntax and lack of character development to pull out a useful topic for conversation on our blog; food preservation. It's important-- And, I'm not talking about preserving fresh fruits and vegetables here. That ish is easy. Jam some berries or fava beans in a mason jar and close that shit. Oh no, no, no, what I'm talking about here-- and guys out there, I know you're gonna wanna read this-- is what to do with those two extra slices of pizza or that recently opened bag of chips. Believe it or not, these are items that can be reused if taken care of properly.
There are two main methods of preservation that I'll go over today, refrigerating it and bagging it (note: you can also aluminum-foil-it, but that's advanced and is for another day.). Let's start with refrigerating it.

That last slice of pizza is sitting right in front of you, it's unwavering peperoni gaze staring you right in the grill. You want to eat it but you're too full, and on the other hand, you don't want to waste a specimen like that. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were some way that you could save that piece for some later date? Well, the answer, my friend, is refrigerating it. First, grab the lid of the box and close it, encasing the slice on all sides. Then, open up your fridge and try sliding the box in the remaining head room between the items on the top shelf and refrigerator's ceiling. This is valuable real estate. Doesn't work, you say? Try jamming the box harder, shuffling the condiments around if you have to, but be wary of the Frank's Red Hot that's resting precariously on the edge of the shelf. And, if that doesn't work, the next step is to drop down another shelf and try that (note: this is usually a shorter shelf, good for jam, cream cheese and items like that, so there might not be much head room). And, if that doesn't work, then drop down yet another shelf and jam (note: try not to spend any time reorganizing the items on the shelf as that will take way too much time.) After that attempt, a lot of people make the mistake of believing that their fridge is full-- not true. Try moving the bottom "crisper" drawers, which are reserved for fruits and vegetables but are more than likely empty or filled with decaying fruits and vegetables. Take them completely out and jam your pizza box in the empty "crisper" slot. Now at this point you have properly preserved your remaining slice and have the option to access it at any time you so choose. On to bagging.

The verb to "bag" can mean to take a bag less or naked item and physically place it in a bag, but that's not what I'm talking about here. And, although it is an effective preservation method as well, it's a little more advanced a method to get into in this tutorial. To bag is a level 2 preservation method as is aluminum-foiling-it. The bag verb that I'm talking about here is to take an existing bag and to seal it through crinkling, rolling or folding. This method is especially effective on potato chips but can also be used on corn chips, breakfast cereals, Teddy Grahams, Triscuits and a whole host of other dry/crispy items. Once the item is opened and you want to stop eating and not throw the rest of the bag out, you have to 'bag it up' again so it becomes reusable. Take the bag, holding it at the opening, and slowly roll the top down towards the bottom, folding it at least a couple of times (note: if you don't stop rolling once you have reached the remaining contents of the bag, you may end up with little tiny crushed half or even quarter chips that aren't even worth eating and will most likely just get trapped in between your couch cushions.) And that's it, you're ready to put your dry food item back in the pantry, unless of course, your bag is in some kind of box-like enclosure. In that case, you will need to add a step to the process and push the bag back down into the box-like thing and close the flaps, minding the tabs and slots. Now you can put that shit in the pantry.

I hope that you found this post helpful. These methods help me avoid multiple trips to the store per day and make me feel just a little greener. I hope they do the same for you.

Ranking Toothpaste: the world's most teethwhiteningest condiment

The other day, I experimented with a new kind of toothpaste, a gel. The Crest/Listerine Whitening Gel claims to be utopia in a bottle, the perfect balance between toothpaste and mouth wash. And that it may be but as far as I'm concerned, toothpaste and mouth wash are two separate and distinct entities never to be souped up into one. I was left with a rather dystopian feeling in my mouth and an unreasonable amount of residual plaque that I can only imagine plagued Harrison Ford's character in Blade Runner as he had to deal with while fighting probable androids and possible nonandroids. That's some hard shit to do with an organic glue stick in your mouth. Its tarter and gingivitis controlling abilities notwithstanding, those boys over at that Crest/Listerine outfit make a pretty tasty paste.

Believe it or not, toothpaste has only recently surfaced as an acceptable condiment/late night snack. For years, toothpaste was considered very plebeian. The bourgeois looked down its collective nose at peasants as they squeezed all possible dollops of sweet fluoride nourishment out of their collective tube, not unlike the way middle class Americans now sneer at lower-middle class fatties as they wait in line at Taco Bell, languorously waiting for their supreme burritos to squeezed out of tubes and for their sour cream to be ejaculated from caulk guns. No, it was not until the 80's that the stigma started to fade away. Enter Seth Rogan.

Seth is a pioneer albeit an unknowing pioneer-- and not in the movie industry, of course. He turned the non-toothpaste-eating world on end at sleep away camp on Lake George back in 1985. One fateful night, the 9-year-old Rogan, was lying awake in his bunk unable to drift into sweet sweet repose. Before curfew and prior to the campfire where he consumed only 4 s'mores (doublestuffed), Seth had only eaten a meagre 12 chicken nuggets (4 of which he procured from a small Jewish boy for his fruit cup) flanked by a side of mashed potatoes covered in what can only generously be described as a dollop of gravy. Needless to say, as he laid in bed, young Seth's belly was not satiated. Subsequently, he did something rather extraordinary that would shake the very foundation of the culinary world. He gingerly climbed out of his bunk and carefully opened up his trunk and removed his tube of Bubblegum Crest with sparkles, which his mother was kind enough to purchase for him after just a slight tantrum in the Walmart toiletries isle. He then worked way back into his bunk, under the cover of his lime-green Coleman sleeping bag and started to consume. Consume he did. All of it. It was so fucking good that the next day he shared his innovation with a friend of his with a similar build whose own mother often and kindly would call Rubenesque. He told a couple of other fat camp buddies who told some of their fat camp buddies, and you know how it goes. Toothpaste took off.

Now, thanks to Seth and his little fat camp friends, we have hundreds of flavors of toothpastes lining the shelves of our Wallgreens. Lemon lime, chocolate, vanilla, orange, purple, strawberry, anything you want at the squeeze of a tube. And what are we to make of this Ethan Allanesque toothpaste liberty? How do you choose the proper one? Which ones are fucking atrocious?

Last year Cornell University researchers came up with a scale to measure the tastiness of these fluoride treats, the Arm & Hammer/Colgate All Purpose Whitening scale. Arm & Hammer is a 1 and Colgate All Purpose Whitening is a perfect 10. Classic and delicate. Delicious. The following are some highlights and lowlights from the study:

Lows:

Mentadent (2)-- Not enough mint and too much fluoride. Also, it comes in a container with a pump.

That shit you get at the dentist (3)-- Terrible texture and overwhelming flavor. Flavor crystals stick around in your mouth way too long.

Highs

Crest Cheesecake Whitening (8)-- Very smooth and creamy. It just slides down the back of your throat. There are hints of lemon and little crust crumbs throughout. Wonderfully done.

Aquafresh Chili Cheese Dog Tarter Control (9)-- Meaty and a little spicy. It's everything you could ask for in a toothpaste. Tip: Add a little strip of Heinz Spicy Brown Cavity Protection, for a truly cum-in-your-pants-good brushing experience.

Enjoy and brush responsibly.