Category: Food & Cooking Humor
Tea Vs. Coffee
Posted by Amy Vansant in Food & Cooking Humor, Humor Blogs Tuesday, 2 August 2011 05:46 12 Comments
Kind of like Vampires vs. Werewolves, only slightly less stupid.*
Caffeine Level
When I drink coffee, the rush is like a punch in the mouth by pre-Buster Douglas Mike Tyson. When I drink tea, it’s like a slap in the face with an empty glove by a sissified Scarlet Pimpernel.
Taste & Variety
The bitter bite of coffee demands more attention than the mellow flavors of tea. But on the other hand, tea comes in many different styles and flavors, so we have to tip a cap to herbal when it comes to variety. I have a deep love of the bergamot flavor of Earl Grey. I have no idea what bergamot is, but I’m pretty sure they use it in Fruity Pebbles, too.
Ordering Out
Ordering coffee requires only a few words: Cream, Sugar, Black. Sure, you can order a Venti half-caf, half-foam, soy-latte, extra-hot, but if you do, there is a fairly good chance you take yourself way too seriously, and I’d appreciate it if you took your jittery little ass elsewhere . What’s next? Half-skin chicken breasts? Burger King says, “Have it your way.” Maybe next time ask for a half-must-half-ketch with 3mm thick pickles.
Thanks to tea’s endless flavor possibilities, ordering herbals can be even more difficult. Some establishments present diners with custom wooden tea cases, allowing them to peruse little aisles of teas. I have been offered the tea coffin before, and had to wildly giggle while choosing so nearby diners would understand I wasn’t Miss Fancy Tea and that didn’t expect my tea bags brought to me in a felt-lined box. My dueling pistols, yes. My tea, no.
Amy and Kara Play with Meat
Posted by Amy Vansant in Food & Cooking Humor, Humor Blogs, Published on Other Sites, Women's Humor Monday, 4 April 2011 10:01 2 Comments
First published in Skirt! Magazine.
I love pork. Sausages, bacon, pork chops, scrapple, pork cheeks, fat back – any and all of it. You know that game you play with your husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend where you give each other one impossible “freebee?” My husband took January Jones. I took Jimmy Dean.
I love freaking pork products.
So you can imagine my glee when I flipped through a copy of Saveur Magazine and stumbled upon a recipe for kielbasa from the Grammercy Tavern in New York City. I only bought the magazine because I thought it would make me look sophisticated and worldly to the checkout lady at Fresh Market. Little did I know I would find such an epiphany inside it’s glossy pages.
I could make my own sausage!
This hit me like a bolt from the blue, for five reasons:
- Being married to a Polish fellow, kielbasa is sort of thing.
- I love pork products.
- We came THIS close to going to Gramercy Tavern last time we were in New York City, opting at the last second to try 11 Madison (Fabulous! But here’s a tip: don’t go to Mario Batali’s Casa Mono for lunch beforehand, because the waiters at 11 Madison don’t like it when they dutifully bring you the fifth of seven courses and instead of oohing and aahing you laugh in their faces and ask them if they are insane.)
- For that trip we stayed at the Gramercy Hotel, which is our favorite in NYC so far, and that has the word “Gramercy” in it.
- I love pork products.
So, I thought I’d make kielbasa. I called in my friend Kara for backup, because she is who I immediately think of in times like these. Kara’s that kind of girl. You could be inspired by an article on how to give yourself an authentic prison tattoo using food dye and a sewing needle, and Kara will be at your doorstep 10 minutes later with a bottle of McCormick’s Blue Number 3 and fourteen different sizes of needles.
As it turns out, Kara has made sausage before, so she arrived with all the right sausage attachments for my Kitchen Aid Mixer. If you don’t know what a Kitchen Aid Mixer is, then clearly you’re much younger than me, or not married, because until 2005, it was a nationwide law that you receive a Kitchen Aid Mixer on your wedding day. Also in the rule book: putting that mixer in a prominent place in your kitchen, and then never looking at it again, except the once a year that you scoop a dusty dead fly out of the bowl.
I Give Up, Brio Tuscan Grille – Review
Posted by Amy Vansant in Food & Cooking Humor, Reviews, Recipes, Tips Tuesday, 3 August 2010 06:33 7 Comments
In Annapolis, Maryland’s new Towne Centre development (Really? Town with an e AND Center as Centre? WOW — that place must be REALLY posh!) they’ve opened up a Brio Tuscan Grille restaurant, a chain based out of Columbus, Ohio that claims eating within its walls is like an “Escape to Tuscany.” I’d have to agree, because the last time I was in Tuscany I had the misfortune of being led to some terrible tourist trap where I had the worst meal of my vacation. It was devastating to have your one meal in famous Tuscany ruined by your tour company, but on the bright side, now I can relive that crushing disappointment any time I want just by driving down the street.
Our local newspaper’s reviewers could eat out of a fly-infested dumpster and declare the experience “unique” and “protein-filled,” the other patrons “abuzz” with excitement - if they thought the dumpster’s owner might consider advertising - so I thought I’d type up a little unbiased review.
My husband Mike and I have gone to Brio maybe five or six times, because we love sitting on the open air patio when the weather is nice. They have some decent wine selections, which means we cleared the first barrier to entry for Mike. Nice. But finally, this weekend, we realized visiting Brio over and over is like going to a fast food joint thinking THIS is the time you’re not going to spend the rest of the day in the bathroom evacuating your bowels with the frightening speed only fryer grease can provide. You are setting yourself up for disappointment.
The first time we visited Brio, my husband had the lasagna. The portion was large enough to end hunger in Africa (though personally I would have used it to end hunger in America first, and then ordered a pasta dish, which I then could have used to end hunger in Africa). After eating for a while (and not making a dent) Mike asked me to try it, and though the sauce had a little zing to it, I had to admit for the most part it tasted like a frozen dinner from my childhood. I checked his plate for the little hockey puck brownie, which I remembered was the best part of that childhood meal, but they had stiffed him there. Bastards.
