Category: Foodstuffs

Firstly, I have no idea why there is a “Le” in Le Burger Week. Presumably to make it seem fancier, but let’s be honest, it comes across as more pretentious than anything.

I had a total of five Le Burger Week burgers, which isn’t all that many, considering that Le Burger Week is actually a two-week-long affair now and there are hundreds -possibly even thousands (I didn’t count)- of entrees entries to choose from. I typically try three burgers a year, so five is way above average. I’d go for more, but since these are limited time burgs, you know darn well that they jack up the price on ’em. I can’t be taking out a second mortgage to afford more burgers!

That’s What Cheese Said

“Two grilled smash patties smothered in our house-made Red Ale Beer cheese sauce, topped with Candied Bacon, Crispy Fried onions & Pickles. All on a toasted Brioche Bun brushed with garlic butter topped with rock salt.”

This burg was… very, very good. Definitely up there on the scale of all the Le Burger Week burgers that I’ve tried. While there isn’t anything overly special about it, but that cheese sauce was to die for, and I also really appreciated the garlic butter on the bun. The fries, sadly, left a little bit to be desired. In the moment, I kinda wished I hadn’t bought them and had just made my own instead.

Terry’s thumbs-up is a little sideways, but rest assured that he approves.

Dr. Drake Ramoray

“A delicious Italian sausage and beef patty topped with tomato pancetta jam, lemon basil mayo, banana peppers, Monterey jack cheese, red onion, and field greens served on a brioche bun.”

I really hate to say this, but I was not crazy about this burgaroonie. The beef/sausage combo patty just didn’t work for me at all, and likely would have killed it no matter what the other toppings were. To make matters worse, I didn’t even taste the banana peppers, which sucks because usually they’re very flavourful and make everything better. At least it came with a nice, big pickle spear.

Squirtle is putting on a brave face, but he knows it’s not a great burg.

A Berry Berry Gouda Burger

“This burger is packed full of berry gouda things! Two handmade Smitty’s burger patties, topped with melted smoked gouda cheese, crispy blueberry bacon, and smothered in raspberry chipotle BBQ sauce. Finished with honey Sriracha aioli & crispy cajun onion tanglers.”

Look, I’m not going to lie here, this may be the absolute best cheeseburger that I’ve ever eaten. I don’t have a connoisseur’s palate, and I have no idea how to write about food, but just know that the combination of flavours on this burg worked. They worked hard. They put in a full eight-hour shift and then took on a few overtime hours to help make sure that the rest of the team hit their deadlines. I think the key must have been the raspberry chipotle sauce. I would like to get some for myself so I can put it on crackers and other things. Food things.

Pac-Man not only approves, but is strongly considering going back for another.

The Cows Were Vegan Burger

“Yo dawg, we heard you like beef, so we put some beef in your beef burger so you can eat some extra beef with your beef. Our braised beef burger is a delicious 100% beef 6oz patty perfectly seared, topped with slow cooked BBQ braised beef, with a couple hefty boy onion rings. Add on some smoked cheddar, miso infused mayo, and fresh made pico de gallo, and you’ve got a burger that’ll have you coming back for more, we guarantee it.”

While I enjoyed this burger, there wasn’t anything that really stood out about it. I remember when having onion rings on a burger was novel and exciting, but I think I may be a little desensitized to it at this point. Like, it’s still good, but it doesn’t get my coals burning, you know? What’s most interesting here is that this burger has a different name depending on where you look it up. The name listed above is from the Le Burger Week website, but on the DoorDash app, it’s simply called the “BBQ Chuck Burger”, which is much less creative. It caused me no end of confusion when I was doing the research to put this post together.

No amiibos were present for this burger, and were thus unavailable to provide an opinion.

The Golden Hour

“Double Smash Patty (2x 3oz All Beef Chuck) With Cheddar & Monterey Jack Cheese, Hickory Smoked Peppered Bacon, Jack Daniel’s Whiskey & Sugar Glazed Onions Sautéed In Garlic & Herb Butter, Thin Crispy Butter Frites, Baby Purple & Green Lettuce Mix, Vine Ripe Tomato, White Truffle Aioli & Black Garlic Aioli Sauces. Comes On A Custom Burnt Sugar Potato Bun!”

Honestly, there are so many different flavours here, it was hard to really tell anything apart, but MAN did they ever come together nicely! I would reckon that this is probably my second-favourite burgie of the year, edging out That’s What Cheese Said by just a little bit. As an interesting side note, the restaurant that I got this burger from serves nothing but this burger and fries, so it’s probably a ghost kitchen created entirely because some random dude really wanted to enter his burger idea in Le Burger Week. That or it’s a money laundering front or something.

Zelda also greatly enjoyed this burger, but her gloves were an absolute disaster afterward.

Autumn is just around the corner, and that means that food-selling companies everywhere are starting to roll out their pumpkin spice menus. Tim Horton’s is no exception, and they have a pretty huge assortment of seasonal goodies, most of which are in fact, pumpkin spiced.

The only thing I’ve tried is the pumpkin spice dream donut, and that’s probably the way it’s going to stay.

This is a pretty big departure from the usual “some combination of cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg” that usually comprises any kind of pumpkin spice flavouring. This donut has actual pumpkin seeds on it! Wild! And it’s quite delicious, but that’s not why I’m writing about it today.

Did you know that pumpkin seeds are edible? I didn’t! Every single jack-o-lantern prep I’ve ever been part of, or even just witnessed, had the seeds removed from the pumpkin and thrown in the trash. And, okay, maybe they’re edible but gross, so people just chuck ’em in the bin. But that’s not the case! They’re really friggin’ good! I don’t know if Tim’s has worked some kind of black magic on their seeds to make them as delicious as they are, but holy smokes I’ve never eaten a seed that satisfied my palate the may that those pumpkin seeds did. Pumpkin seeds are definitely something I’m going to be investigating further as a potential snack.

Also, I didn’t notice it before, but doesn’t that icing drizzle look like hot glue? Like, the fact that it’s not completely opaque is really weird to me. Or maybe it’s just a trick of the light, I don’t know.

Yesterday was a Pokémon GO “community day” event. It’s been lackluster for the last… two-and-a-half years due to the whole pandemic situation, but it looks like we’re back in business!

That is to say, I went out to properly “participate” in the event, and consumed far too much junk food along the way. Said junk food being the current slate of Tim Horton’s’s Dream Donuts. Have a gander!

Don’t worry, I didn’t eat all of the donut pictured above. I shared them. Or, more accurately, they were shared with me. I mean, I didn’t buy them. I’m past the donut-purchasing phase of my life.

Continue reading Revenge of Dream Donut

Preface: My favourite fruit is mango. My favourite general food is hamburgers. Rarely do they meet.

But then I got an ad for this monstrosity from Burger King in my mailbox:

So obviously, I had to rush out immediately and get myself one. And let me tell you, this sandwich does not disappoint!

Continue reading Long Live this King

I’ve been having an odd recurring dream lately. In the dream, I’ll be cooking, as I am wont to do, but something’s different. There’s a little, human-shaped shade there in the kitchen with me. It watches me. I impart my (admittedly limited) kitchen-based wisdom to it. Sometimes I let it help with simple tasks. This isn’t an especially obtuse dream; it might as well be slapping me in the face with it’s meaning. What puzzles me is why? Why now? Am I subconsciously unfulfilled in some way? Is it an age thing?

On the odd chance that you haven’t decoded it: clearly these dreams are suggesting that I was meant to become a professor of the culinary arts. Time to go back to school!

I bring this up because it’s time to share a food thing I made! Not because these dreams have been causing me some level of emotional anguish and I’ve been unwilling to speak to anyone about it directly. Definitely not that. No! I want to share with you the good word of pizzaman!

Continue reading A companion for cooking

Last year, I made it my mission to upload three videos every week. And I mostly held to that! Kinda fell apart in December, but you know how it is. Work was insane, I was spending what little creative energy I had on the 24 Days of Desire, holiday things were eating up a lot of free time.

I made no such promises to myself in 2022. Trying to create and edit that many videos was… a lot. Even when most of said videos were video game let’s plays and as such, overlapped with things I’d have been doing anyway. Moving forward, I’m just going to create video content when I feel like it. No more forcing myself to meet an imaginary quota and suck the fun out of it.

And so of course, what could possibly more video-worthy than a Batman-themed pizza?