You know that meme, “how it started/how it’s going”? I’m doing that today, but in text form!
Basically, I just want to take a quick look back at my “24 Days of Desire” feature and see how many of them have been fulfilled. It’s been almost a year now, I should have been able to get everything I wanted, right? Let’s see!
Day 1: Television – This was about me wanting to have cable, and if I recall correctly, it was specifically so I could watch the Chucky series. Well, I never got cable, because that would be stupid, and I still haven’t watched Chucky, because I don’t pirate TV shows or movies any more. Chucky is also on Paramount+, which has other things I want to watch, so I’m thinking about a subscription to that… But probably won’t bother.
Day 2: A better GPU – Ain’t got this. I’ve heard that prices are going down, but I haven’t bothered to look in many months. Besides, I only wanted it to beef up my Quest 2, so it’s right down at the bottom of my priority ladder.
Day 3: Star Wars sequels box set – I haven’t looked to see if this exists, and I don’t actually care enough to check. This was a filler episode, for sure.
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.
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!
There are a lot of things to say about the newest game in the Pokémon series, Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Alas, those things will likely have to be said by others, because I only want to talk about one very tiny aspect of the game today.
In this game, there is a character named Beni. He runs the Jubilife Village’s restaurant, and apparently makes a mean potato mochi. His potato mochi is so mean, in fact, that every time you complete a task in the story, your character and their friends go to the restaurant to celebrate and stuff themselves with it.
Being an uncultured North American hermit, I was completely unfamiliar with the concept of mochi before I started playing this game. I’d heard the word before, and I knew it was something you eat, but I didn’t really know what it was. I didn’t have a clue if it was traditionally made with potato, or if the potato variety was special. It was all a big mystery to me.
The image above is what sweet potato mochi is supposed to look like.
The image below is how my sweet potato mochi ended up looking.
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?
I know that I already did a Cap’n Crunch post, but it’s Xmas Eve and I wanted to do an entry that’s specifically related to the holiday(s). There honestly aren’t too many Xmas-related things that I want, so we’ll have to swallow our pride and go for the low-hanging fruit: seasonal cereal.
I guess there are a lot to choose from, when it comes to cereals that get a red-and-green-coloured rebrand ’round December. Or, at least, there’s a lot to choose from if you’re an American. I went looking for any sort of holiday-flavoured cereals against my better judgement (to stay out of stores because COVID) and found squat for my troubles.
For anyone out there who may be unawares, Cap’n Crunch is currently my favorite garbage cereal brand. Peanut Butter Crunch would be the winner for individual cereal, but realistically I’ll take whatever the Cap’n is offering. I also say “currently” because Fruity Pebbles used to have the top spot until just a few years ago, and I don’t know if, how or when my tastes will change moving forward.
All of that I a very roundabout way of saying: I really want to try the Cap’n Crunch pancake mix!
