24 Days of Desire (10): Abs

No, you didn’t read that wrong. Today’s topic is abs. As in “visibly tight abdominal muscles that women want to rub their faces up against.” Nobody ever said that this list was going to be exclusively for material objects what must be purchased.

Okay, to be fair, I don’t really want abs so much as I want for the abs-sence of my gut. It’s not even really that much of a gut, but it has re-inflated a little bit over the last year. I’ve been trying in vain to get it back down to 2020 levels, but I’ve developed some fairly bad eating habits this year that have been proving difficult to undo.

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A crunchier cup

I don’t eat a lot of candy any more. Because I’m an adult, you see. And when adults eat candy, they get fat. I don’t really want to be fat, or at least, I don’t want to be any fatter than I currently am. Ergo, the moratorium on candy.

That said, I was at 7-11 the other day to pick up chips, pop and a bar, and while I was there I saw something new! You know how seldom I see new candy? Almost never! Living in Canada sucks that way!

Reese’s Big Cups have been around for ages. Big Cups with Reese’s Pieces in them have been around for almost as long. But Big Cups with chips inside of them!? This I have never seen before! I was planning to buy a pack of Big Cups to satisfy the ‘bar’ portion of my checklist, but wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that they would also end up being the chips!

At first sight, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of these. Chips? Inside a Reese’s peanut butter cup? Madness! But actually… I works out really well. They’re honestly not that different from the Big Cups with Reese’s Pieces. It’s a Big Cup with a little bit of a crunchy texture inside. The chips are plain, and their saltiness is masked by the existing salt in the peanut butter.

I almost regret taking a picture of the mauled candy, as its innards look a little bit more sickly than a standard Big Cup. Then again, maybe it’s normal? When it comes to peanut butter cups of any description, they’re usually a one-bite affair for me. So I don’t really know. I just picture the insides of a peanut butter cup to be a little more vibrant and orangey. I could be absolutely wrong about that, though! What I do know, is that I absolutely cannot identify any chips within that mass.

The takeaway here is that I liked the Reese’s Big Cups With Potato Chips. It’s an unlikely ménage a trois, but it works. Will I buy them again? Probably not. I already went over how I rarely eat candy any more. This will be my one pack of Big Cups for 2021. But I would recommend that you go out and try them! Don’t make a special trip or anything, but if you’re, say, gassing up your vehicle and your sweet tooth starts to itch… these exist.

A most ironic donut review

It’s been a while since there was a post that doesn’t fall under the “you-know-what” category, so here, have a review of a Tim Horton’s donut that I speculated had become a permanent menu item, but in reality was pulled from the menu like the day after I filmed the review.

The worst part about it, is that since the donut in question was removed from the menu, I wasn’t able to find a clean promotional image of the thing for the thumbnail. And so my big, dumb face had to be plastered in there, instead of the usual cartoon Ryan that I like to have in the thumbnails. It bothers me so.

Everything’s better on a stick

Life is weird these days. I’m at home nearly 100% of the time now. I don’t see other human beings, except from the safety of my balcony. McDonald’s brought bagels back from beyond the grave.

And so, I play along by cooking weird things. The other night, I fancied grilled chicken and mango skewers.

Now, the typical thing to have done would have been chicken and pineapple kebabs. But the fact is that I don’t plan these things ahead of time. And also the other fact is that I almost never have pineapple on hand. However, I do always have at least one mango kicking around.

I can’t say that this was exactly a huge success. The mango was a little too ripe and got much too drippy and fall-aparty for my liking. Otherwise? Not half bad. I think that with a sturdier, more youthful mango, it would have been ratcheted all the way up to “pretty good.” Also I think a slightly under-ripened mango’s blend of sweet and sour would have complemented the chicken better than the overripe mango’s overwhelming sweetness.

Would I have it again? Yeah, but I think I’d have to think it through a little more. Add some onion, maybe red pepper. Oh, yeah, that sounds real good. Probably should learn how to marinate my chicken properly. And also get some fresher ingredients for said marinade. Both my olive oil and spices were a little… very old. And I had to throw out the lemon juice I was going to use because it had turned completely black. Such is the life of a bachelor who is just now teaching himself to cook things more complicated than Kraft Dinner.

Cultural Appropriation

I’ve yet to really write anything about Monster Hunter Rise, and that’s mostly because I’ve been keeping myself so busy playing Monster Hunter Rise. But there’s one thing about the newest entry in the MH series that I feel like I absolutely need to do a little spiel about.

An important part of every Monster Hunter game is eating before you go on a quest. You select a few ingredients, and a meal is whipped up that provides an increase to your stats and maybe some special buffs. Typically the meal is a cartoonishly huge plate of meat, fish, and veggies. MH Rise, being very strongly ninja-themed, replaces that “normal” meal with dango: a traditional Japanese rice snack.

While I’m sure I’ve seen dango somewhere else during the course my life (probably a different video game), I’ve never really known what it was called or what it was made of until MH Rise came along and made a huge deal out of it. Learning more about the snack from the game, and partially being persuaded by how every character is obsessed with the stuff, I felt like it was something that I had to try for myself.

Of course, I don’t live in Japan, so… I think you see where this is going.

Yes, that’s right. I made my own dango. And while they look just about perfect in the image above, rest assured that this was my third batch, and the first two didn’t come out anywhere near as well.

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