Category: Foodstuffs

On the Subject of Taters

I slept in a little bit today, just enough that I had to axe something from my morning routine. It was breakfast. It’s always breakfast. Because I get a second chance at breakfast when I pass the Tim Horton’s between the bus stop and work.

It’s been a while since I’ve purchased food there, and as I bit into my hashbrown, I was delightfully surprised by how much it tasted like potatoes.

See, I’ve been getting breakfast from McDonald’s too often lately, and their hashbrowns basically just taste like butter and grease. I go for the coffee, and put up with the hashbrowns because said coffee is just so good.

So anyway, that’s my spiel for today. Tim Horton’s has a way better hashbrown than McDonald’s. It’s about all they’ve got going for ’em these days, but at least it’s something.

The Further Adventures of Ryan the Wannabe Chef

So I’m playing Ring Fit Adventure this morning, and I’m taking a moment to read through all the descriptions of the various food items that you can collect. Most of them are neat little trivia bits about each item, and I like learning things about foods. I get to caramel, and it says something along the lines of “a sweet confection made by boiling milk and sugar” and I’m like Hey! I can boil milk and sugar!

And that’s how I came to make my very own home-made caramel for the very first time.

As you can see, it’s not quite the right colour, and it came out a bit chunky. But it tasted really good! I put a bunch in my coffee and it was just like I was drinking an overpriced Starbucks beverage!

The thing I learned today, is that when you’re making something for the first time, you should probably follow a recipe and not just wing it. It turned out well enough, because I’ve made sauces before and have a general sense of how it goes down, but imagine how much better it could have been! Next time. Next time I’ll do it right.

Tim Horton’s Dream Donuts!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently gorged myself on three donuts in a single day. A single sitting, even! Despite all my recent efforts not to be, I am still a food monster at heart. I suppose it’s just not something that a person can get away from.

Just know that my gut took this trio of bullets for you, dear reader.

I made this “heroic sacrifice” in the name of being able to provide a timely (they’ve only been out for like two weeks as of today) review of all three of Tim Horton’s new Dream Donuts. While I don’t have any solid evidence to support this claim (and I’m not walking down the street to Tim’s), I assume that these fancy-looking new donuts are around for a limited time only. Hence why I didn’t have time to waste eating them all in a more reasonable timeframe. If they do turn out to be permanent additions… well that’s just egg on my face, then.

It’s important to note that I qualified the Dream Donuts as “fancy-looking”, because at least 70% of their appeal is in the marketing. I’m going to give you the big spoiler right here: these are stock-standard donuts with a little extra zazz added to get you to pay a premium for them. And people wonder why I have such a sour opinion of marketing in general.

Let’s start where I did: The Chocolate Truffle. This is literally just a double chocolate donut (which has been on the menu since the Stone Age), which is a chocolate cake donut with chocolate glaze. What makes this one cost a dollar more than the standard edition? There’s a floof of chocolate fudge icing in the hole now.

In the Chocolate Truffle’s defense… double chocolate is probably my favourite regular donut from Tim’s. None of them are very good, but at least this one has twice as much weak chocolate flavour, and I prefer the texture and density of a cake donut. The added fudge icing is also a nice little bonus, because it was actually packed with flavour and made the whole experience all that much better.

This is all said with the caveat that my Chocolate Truffle was not prepared as advertised. I only learned this after the fact, but this Dream Donut is supposed to be sliced lengthwise (like a bagel) and smeared with more chocolate frosting in-between (like a bagel). One one hand, I feel like this extra step in preparation would have more fully justified the premium price of the donut. On the other hand, I still had two more donuts to eat after this, so I’m okay with having missed out on all that extra sugar. So it was a flub and Tim’s should be rebuked for it, but it didn’t actually bother me personally.

Moving onto the Strawberry Confetti donut, we have what appears to be just another vanilla dip, but with the pink turned up to 11. Actually, that’s only partly true, because the vanilla icing is actually strawberry. The assorted varieties of sprinkles are very aesthetically pleasing to me, and that floof of icing in the middle is… well, I don’t feel strongly about it either way. I guess the donut would look incomplete without it.

Strawberry Confetti is my personal favourite of the Dream Donut trio, mostly because it’s the most pleasing to look at. Since Tim’s entire catalog of donuts is pretty bland as far as flavour goes, aesthetic appeal is really what you’re buying them for. I did enjoy that the icing was strawberry-tinged, which also adds some points. Though I’m docking it the same number of points because this should have been filled with strawberry jam as well, but that’s not the case. Huge missed opportunity there.

Lastly, and most definitely leastly is the Dulce de Leche. Already I’m not a fan of this, because how am I supposed to like something that I cannot pronounce? Here we have a typical filled donut from Tim’s: yeast donut with sugar sprinkled on the outside, and a glob of goo in the middle. Dulce de Leche changes it up by making it cinnamon sugar on the outside, then adding the signature floof of icing on top.

Aside: To anyone who knows things about food: What is the icing glob on top called? I don’t have a hot clue, so I’ve been calling it a floof, but I’m sure there’s a real word for it. I would really like to know the official term, even though I’ll surely forget it within a matter of minutes.

Back in topic: Dulce de Leche is no good. You would think that the cinnamon sugar would win me over, since it basically turns this otherwise boring donut into a ginormous mini-donut. And it is almost exactly that (it’s not a cake donut, so…) for the first couple bites! But then you hit the floof, and it tastes weird. Then you hit the mysterious glob in the middle, and it tastes even weirder. And the two weird flavours combine their powers to just completely overwhelm the pleasant cinnamon sugar and ruin the donut completely. Sad face.

Because I had no idea what “dulce de leche” means or even what flavour it was supposed to have, I actually did a tiny amount of research on this one. Dulce de leche, in fact, is sweetened and boiled milk. It’s supposed to be reminiscent of caramel, but not actually caramel. Well, no more wondering why it was so underwhelming.

It’s probably obvious to you by this point, but I really wouldn’t recommend hustling down to your local Horton’s to get you somma these. While they’re jazzed up a bit more than usual, they’re still just Tim Horton’s donuts, and thus not really worth spending money on. If you really need to buy one, I’d say the Strawberry Confetti is the way to go. I’m also saying that from the perspective of someone who really likes how explosively pink it is, and would rather keep one around as a decoration than actually eat the thing.

Ryan’s Big Weekend Adventure!

You know what I didn’t do over last weekend? Study enough.

“Well duh” you all say.

What I did do, however, was all sorts of other things. I want to write about them briefly.

Saturday I got a haircut. There’s a story there, but it’s probably fairly embarrassing for a party who is not me, which makes me feel like I ought not to tell it. So I won’t. Sorry for the tease.

After breakfast I did some coursework for a while. Good old responsible me. I took a break after a couple hours to go visit with my grandparents. They gave me several tins of baking and couple jars of soup. Nice! There’s another mildly embarrassing story here that I don’t think I’m entitled to tell to the internet at large. Aren’t you upset that I’ve gotten so considerate in my old age?

I went back home to do some more book learning, which lasted about an hour. All in all, I made it through about a quarter of the homework questions assigned in a cumulative three hours. That’s not great. I hate school and cannot wait for it to be done forever.

Over the course of the weekend, I “snuck in” just enough video games time to finish playing the Squaresoft PS1 classic, Threads of Fate. You’ve probably never heard of this game, because Squaresoft put out like a billion RPGs on the PS1, so a few of them had to fall through the cracks.

Threads of Fate is an alright game. It’s a dual-protagonist game, and the plot isn’t the most creative, but it’s fun. One character has you working towards world domination, while the other is searching for a way to revive his friend. The characters are mostly archetypes, but they have big personalities and a really good script, so I ended up liking most of them quite a lot. Also the soundtrack is darn good, and the graphics are top-tier for a 3D game on the original Playstation.

However! The gameplay is… questionable. The controls, physics, and hit detection are all just a little bit off. This makes any precision-platforming sections much harder (and frustrating) than they ought to be. Combat is mostly a non-issue, but several bosses are stupidly hard until you figure out the right rhythm to beating them. Overall, it’s not a game that needs a remaster so much as a tune-up.

I also frittered away a whole three hours on Pokémon GO on Sunday, as it was January’s Community Day. Got a whole stable full of shiny Piplups, and that’s really about all. While I was out, I also got to try all of the fancy new “dream donuts” that Tim Horton’s is currently selling. I’ll type up a full thing about them (probably), but the TLDR is that they were not so good that I was able to justify having eaten three donuts in a single sitting. Oink oink.

After all that, I ended Sunday evening the same way I always do: playing an hour of Rocksmith, then watching TV while I do my laundry. This week was devoted catching up on some AGDQ runs, while at the same time trying to fill out a little bit of my Pokédex in Pokémon Shield. I’m at 387 of 400. Almost there!

And that was my weekend. If you think I sound like an incredibly boring individual… you’re right! And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Unexpected Inspiration

You may or may not have noticed that despite it having been out for about a month and a half now, I haven’t said too much about Pokémon Shield. There are a few reasons for this, but it’s mostly because I don’t have all that much to say. It’s a stock-standard Pokémon game, but with a cool new multiplayer mode (Max Raid Battles) that is simultaneously the most enjoyable and frustrating part of the game.

What nobody saw coming, least of all myself, is that I would be inspired by this game to try out some new cooking ideas. Specifically: curry. I’ve never made curry before, and only ever eaten curry at white-ass chain restaurants. It’s not a thing that I have any experience with or knowledge about. But when the new Pokémon game included a mini-game where you cook and eat curry with your ‘mons, I decided that it was time to try out something new.

Now, let me note this: I’m not actually making my own curry sauce. I’m using pre-made jarred sauce from the store. Yes, it’s kind of a cop-out, but there’s no way I’m buying all the spices and other junk necessary to do it from scratch. So really, my way of doing it is just to take a curry sauce flavour and then throw in whatever I think might taste good/whatever I have on hand. But it’s worked out well!

My first curry was made of red curry with meatballs and bell pepper thrown in. It was a huge success! Delicious and almost the perfect level of spicy. The second dish was a little wilder: I used a mango curry sauce with chopped up potatoes and bell pepper, then topped it off with apple slices. This one was absolutely inspired by Pokémon’s “just throw in whatever” mentality when it comes to ingredients, and I have to say that it turned out magnificently! The sweetness of the apple was a great pairing with the spicy curry, and the potato was mostly just there as something to chew on.

My presentation still needs a little work (the apples did not want to sit nicely), but I think it’s coming along nicely. At least for a guy whose most elaborate dinner prep is boiling frozen vegetables. My next big goal is to figure out how to keep the rice from getting unreasonably sticky. When I make brown rice it always comes out fine, but this jasmine stuff? It’s like it’s made of glue. Maybe jasmine was a mistake and I should have gone with the basmati. I don’t know anything about rice. Research will be necessary.

So yeah. My life is enriched by knowing how to prepare another type of meal! The lesson here is: Don’t let anybody tell you that video games have no practical applications.

More Pop-Tarts than you can shake a toaster at

Yep. I’m still at it. Here’s the insider scoop though: I’ve only got three more of these left before my Pop-Tart supply runs dry. Then… I don’t know what happens then.

I put way too much time into this one for what the final product ended up being… It’s not the worst, but it took so much more time for me to figure out how to mash those very basic effects together. Didn’t help that apparently my computer is not meant for video editing? Once I popped in a second audio track it was just like “Nah, I don’t really feel like doing this.” Or maybe the old version of Camtasia that I’m working with is just trash. Also, why in the heck did Camtasia leave that weird green zoom frame in the video? That’s so stupid, but I couldn’t find any way to make it disappear.

What I’m taking away from all this is that if I want to continue to improve my videos, I’m going to need better equipment as much as I am knowledge on how to use it. So… don’t hold out hope.

Thanksgiving Food Coma

I didn’t do as much internet work over the long weekend as I should have. I did exactly the bare minimum, which was to upload a new episode of Ryan’s Pop-Tarts Review. To be fair, it is by far the most effort I’ve ever put into a Pop-Tart video.

Oh, and I also added in all of 2019’s Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up posts. Yes, I’ve been keeping track all this time. I would link to each one individually, but it’s each one from January to September and… who could really be bothered? Let’s be honest, that feature is 100% for me. If you’re really interested, there’s a “search by category” dropdown box on the left-side menu for a reason.

Later this week (probably): Another Spooktober 2019 review (though I do not guarantee a video version), and also I have the urge to write too many words about Monster Hunter World: Iceborne.