Month: December 2013

Polar Seltzer Toasted Coconut Creme

I called my local Walmart today, despite warnings from my Duck Dynasty-fearing gayborhood watch. Walmart is not too receptive to speech-based communication, it appears. Someone dropped the phone while I was on hold and I spent a blissful thirty seconds listening to an upside-down, reedy version of the Talking Heads’ ‘The Overload’ before someone got on, breathed heavily, asked me if I spoke Spanish, and then told me to call back later. I’m still not sure if I was crossconnected to an old 1-900 hotline or if someone actually picked up the phone. I was looking for red velvet M&M’s. I didn’t find them. It’s two days after Christmas and they’re already pulling Valentine’s Day candy, but I’m still clinging to the millimeter of filthy snow we have on the ground and the newness of my gifts. I got a haircut, and it rendered me raving glad, as every sweep of the razor made me feel lighter on my feet. My new suits are being tailored. I’m determined to start the new year fairly well, even if I don’t end it with grace. I’m the Nancy Kerrigan of resolutions.DSC_7039 Continue reading “Polar Seltzer Toasted Coconut Creme”

A Christmas Snark

A Christmas Snark
All we wanted, we decided, was a television vacation. We bounced around ideas- Chinese takeout and American Psycho, a trip to a motel up north, camping. But we went to my mother’s house instead, sleeping two to a futon as Long Island Medium cawed us to sleep. It was a strange year. Television has changed. The ornaments are old and new. Grandma is gone. The food is the same- meatballs with lingonberry sauce, large, chilled shrimp glistening with lemon juice and zest. Baked beans and corn pudding. Cookies. Champagne. Around my fourth gin and tonic, things started to get real. The most persistent, most irritating part of Christmas has returned: the anonymous soloist.

Continue reading “A Christmas Snark”

Wendy’s Spicy Chipotle Jr. Cheeseburger

I hate Christmas shopping. Even though I’ve whittled down all but 20% of it to online shopping, leaving my neighbors constantly curious as to whether I’m in a drug cartel or the Make A Wish Foundation, it’s still an irksome chore. The expectations are too high. What do I want for Christmas? I want to feel genuine satisfaction, the kind that comes from inner peace and self-acceptance. So the Cinzia Rocca jacket and tub of popcorn isn’t going to cut it. But I bought gifts for people, anyway, braving the crowds of the BLEEP for the privilege of elbowing a pinch-faced woman in the chin for the last BLEEP on the shelf and waiting in line, only to make small talk with the cashier about specials on BLEEP. I forgot my mother reads this blog. Well, Mom, enjoy your BLEEP this year.DSC_7203 - Edited Continue reading “Wendy’s Spicy Chipotle Jr. Cheeseburger”

Spicy Week II: Eclectic

Yes, today was supposed to be XXX.

Yes, I know I’ve changed the order.

You do not know what my body has gone through in the last 24 hours.
If there is any poster child for body autonomy, it is me, right now, lacking autonomy from my own body.
Holy crap, I kid you not.

All that aside, I’ve decided to treat myself to the most exciting and diverse selection of the sauces before I subject various friends and family members to the insanely hot ones on my trip home tomorrow. Today won’t put me completely out of the woods- I’m trying sauces with ingredients from avocado to salted caramel, to top-notch political preferences to pumpkin. Whew.

Also, someone sent me a holster, which means that now that my first semester is officially done, I’ve spent every minute of the last 24 hours pretending to be Doc Holliday. I’m your huckleberry.

Sauce count: 18 (and five non-sauce goodies!)
Sauce total: 73 DSC_7102-001 Continue reading “Spicy Week II: Eclectic”

Spicy Week II: Hot

Day three of Spicy Week and I’m rediscovering what it means to introduce fiber, green vegetables, and daily exercise into my system. Funnily enough, this is also how I felt when I did the juice cleanse. Is hot sauce the next diet fad? You heard it here first. While supping on a sumptuous mixture of chia seeds, pecan-cranberry oatmeal, and peanut butter, please let me regale you with the legends and lore of the sauces boldly known as ‘hot.’DSC_7040-001 Continue reading “Spicy Week II: Hot”

Spicy Week II: Medium

We’re on a roll now, and are discovering exactly how many McNuggets two mid-sized women can eat before they reach a threshold that they can never return from. Answer: roughly seven. Yeah, we’re no Furious Petes. But we prevailed, and went to the gym, and took a hot soak, and now we’re on to Day II of Spicy Week II: The Medium. Hartford Medium. Medium-sized Appetites. There are no more puns.

I introduced the feature last night, and wanted to take some time today to tell you how our testing works. Taking a few notes from famed hot sauce critic Scott Roberts and the team at Chile Pepper magazine, we decided to divide the sauces into categories: mild, medium, hot, xxx, eclectic sauces and snacks, and fruit-based sauces, with an extra day at the end to rank the winners of each category and crown an overall winner of Spicy Week II.

We ranked the sauces using the website’s 0-10 rankings. For reference, 5 is the midway benchmark for rankings- average, run-of-the-mill hot sauce, like what you’d find at a restaurant next to the salt and pepper, and the ratings move up from there. We tried to explain our reasoning in each blurb, along with what we liked and didn’t like about each sauce.

Sauces tasted: 31
Sauce total: 55DSC_7001 Continue reading “Spicy Week II: Medium”