Category Archives: Confessions

If this is bad, I don’t want to be good.

Posted on May 13, 2009 | 2 Comments

Sometimes, the universe is subtle and coy. And other days, it literally hits you over the head and asks why you have your eyes closed.

I was walking home last night and had an insatiable craving for a grilled cheese sandwich. Now, I went on a grilled cheese kick about a month ago, where I couldn’t get enough of artisan sourdough, whole-grain mustard and a delicious mixture of Gruyere, Emmenthal and caraway Havarti.

Well.

Last night, I was craving a grilled cheese sandwich made of Wonderbread and Kraft Singles. Thankfully, the grocery store was closed. Another disaster averted.

And this afternoon on Ye Olde Twitter? @fizzpoptweet asked people to name their top guilty pleasures. Okay, universe, I get it. Guilty pleasures.

Read more about it in my post for Foodists.

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Chocolove toffee & almonds in milk chocolate

Posted on April 12, 2009 | 3 Comments

Chocolove was an exhibitor at the IACP last week, and generously donated a few samples for ye olde blog. I picked up a few more flavours here and there, since this Boulder-based company has its wares in most of the gourmet food shops here.

I’m going to take a brief interlude to tell you about the ritual that I used to have with my friend Sarah. We would rent girly movies and stockpile junk food. One of our favourites was Skor bites. They were balls of toffee (sugar and artificial vanilla flavouring) surrounded by cheap, mass-produced chocolate (sugar, hydrogenated soybean oil, caranuba wax). We would eat them until our bellies and teeth hurt equally.

Anyway, back to the present. I’m going to buck my usual dark chocolate snobbery and boldly say that Chocolove’s toffee & almonds in milk chocolate is sinfully delicious. The milk chocolate is just sweet enough without being cloying, and the crunchy toffee-almond bits remind me of a Skor bar. A Skor bar, all grown up.

Incidentally, I’ll be in Toronto this week to see some peeps – Sarah being one of them. It’s been a while since our last girly chocolate marathon, but I’ve stockpiled some Chocolove toffee bars, just in case.

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Traumatized by onion

Posted on March 3, 2009 | 2 Comments

When I was three or four, I ate raw onions. This is what my parents tell me, anyway. My mom would give me a peeled white onion and I would eat it like an apple. I must have been a pleasant kid to come home to at the end of a long workday.

I have no memory of this. But I do know that as an adult, I’m anti-onion. I will eat onions when they’re fully cooked, caramelized or hidden in soups as mirepoix. But don’t you dare try to feed me raw onion. I don’t care if it’s in the world’s most delicious fresh salsa, sliced thinly on top of smoked salmon, or diced on a hot dog. I won’t eat it. I must have exceeded my raw onion quota when I was a kid.

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Blast from the past

Posted on March 1, 2009 | 2 Comments

I’ve been re-reading entries from a dead blog, and found an entry on chocolate fondue. I wrote it in 2004, and I’m happy to report that I’ve come a long way. I hope you find it helpful.

How NOT to make chocolate fondue

Use milk chocolate. Do not look up a recipe in advance. Add coffee cream, not whipping cream. When it seizes into a giant ball of goo, try adding butter. Throw out butter because it smells like ass. Use margarine instead. Stir. Pour mixture into fondue pot and eat with fruit. Notice that mixture is separating into grainy gooey chocolate mess with oily sludge on top. Throw the mixture out and eat fruit by itself.

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Posted in Confessions, Homemade

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Death by Oreo cookie

Posted on February 22, 2009 | 5 Comments

Following an exciting but exhausting weekend, I’ve been laying low at my parents’ place. Three cheers for home cooking, my old bed, and bubble baths.

There are no fewer than four – four! – kinds of Oreos in the cupboard. There are original chocolate Oreos, Golden Vanilla Oreos, Chocolate Creme Oreos, and Oreo Cakesters.

Golden Vanilla Oreos have a white cookie instead of a chocolate cookie. To be fair, the cookies are slightly golden, but they have no discernable vanilla taste. Actually, the cookie just has a generically sweet taste, which is fleeting anyway. All you get is the creme filling.

Chocolate Creme Oreos are regular chocolate Oreos, but with – you guessed it – a chocolate centre. Of course, none of it actually tastes like chocolate.

Oreo Cakesters are the most revolting thing I’ve eaten in a long time. It tastes like two circles of industrial-strength chocolate cake (now with more calcium pyrophosphate!) held together with slimy white “filling” whose primary ingredient is probably petroleum by-product. It’s actually worse than Twinkie filling, if you can believe it. I almost want you to try it because it’s so brain-bustingly awful, but I don’t really want anyone else to experience the horror that is the Oreo Cakester.

Also, in a final food imposter hurrah, Oreo Cakesters are thoughtfully packaged in packs of two. Between the cardboard box, the foil wrapper, the plasticized cardboard that holds the Cakesters and the Cakesters themselves, I dare you to find something remotely edible.

Having said that, I’m holding myself back from the original chocolate Oreos. I think their secret ingredient is crack.

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