Category Archives: Food

Ape Tomatoes

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Kelson

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Links: Cloud Caps, Kahlua Cupcakes, Bizarre Comic Team-Ups, and the Anti-Vista

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Kelson

A couple of days ago I clicked on the StumbleUpon toolbar and landed on this incredible photo of lenticular clouds over Mt. Rainer at APOD. It was a bit unnerving, because that picture has been my desktop wallpaper for the past year or so! Good call, though.

Windows 7 is doing what Vista couldn’t: convincing people to replace Windows XP. The best quote in this ZDNet article: “Windows 7 is the Anti-Vista.”

The Straight Dope experiments with Kahlua cupcakes to determine two questions: How much alcohol is left in each cupcake? (Not much) Can you get drunk? (Not unless you eat so many cupcakes that you’ll be sick anyway.)

Some comics fan art. First, a realistic Darkwing Duck by Mike P. Mitchell. I suspect that if someone other than Disney owned the character, we’d be seeing a “live-action” movie that looked like this. Second, Comics Alliance collects a fantastic series of cover art for Great Comics That Never Happened – team-ups like the Justice League and the Wu-Tang Clan, or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen featuring 1980s icons like Mr. T, Doc Brown and MacGyver, or Hannah Zatanna, torn between the worlds of superheroes and magic, or a race between Superman, the Flash…and the Dukes of Hazzard.

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Comic-Con Coffee Quest

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Kelson

Coffee HaloThe first year we stayed in town for Comic-Con, we walked past an It’s a Grind coffee shop every morning on the way to the Little Italy trolley stop. Since then, we’ve always tried to fit in at least one visit to either that shop or the one Downtown across the street from Ralphs. (Sure, they’ve opened a store near home since then, but it’s sort of a tradition.)

I never quite made it this year, though I came close on Saturday before lunch.

I ended up walking by a coffee stand set up outside Lion Coffee. Two years ago, the site had been a Starbucks, before the chain started mass-closing their stores. (Now they’re only on every other corner.) Last year, Lion was in the process of converting this location, but hadn’t actually opened yet. Shrewdly, they had set up a table outside, selling coffee from urns and drinks from a cooler.

This year, they were open, but had set up a table around the corner to catch people walking by. It worked. They didn’t have any iced coffee outside, but the clerk handed me a dollar-off coupon for asking, and I ended up getting a really good iced mocha inside!

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Speaking Starbucks

Posted on July 3, 2010 by Kelson

A brief exchange at Starbucks:

Me: I’d like an iced chai, medium. I mean grande.
Barista: It’s OK, I speak both languages.

(At the hotel coffee shop during Westercon.)

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The Cheese Cupid

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Kelson

A flier picked up at Sprouts, all about how to find the perfect drink to go with cheese. There’s a website, too: CheeseCupid.com lets you start with either a type of drink or a type of cheese, and find its perfect mate.

They even have an iPhone app. 8-O

I guess the Cheese Information Center just wasn’t hitting the target.

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LOST Finale: DHARMA Initiative Cake and Pizza

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Kelson

Remember the Battlestar Galactica cake? For last night’s LOST finale, Katie made an authentic DHARMA Initiative chocolate cake, and pizzas with the Swan and Orchid logos.

The cake is chocolate, with homemade buttercream icing (vanilla for the background, chocolate for the design). The pizzas have an outer ring of sausage, with bell pepper strips for the I Ching. The Swan logo is cut from a bell pepper. The Orchid is cut from a tomato, and placed on the pizza after baking.

For more views, including in-progress pictures, close-ups, and making-of commentary, check out the LOST finale food photos on Flickr.

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I Don’t Think That’s Soda Bread

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Kelson

Grocery store sign: Irish Soda Bread. Above it: a cucumber.

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Spaceballs: The Beer

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Kelson

The latest seasonal beer at Oggi’s* is The Schwartz, a Belgian IPA. And just in case the “May the Schwartz Be With You” tagline wasn’t clear enough…well, check out the poster:

Sorry about the image quality. I wasn’t sampling the brew, it’s just the phone camera in low lighting.

*Oggi’s (pronounced OH-jeez) is a chain of pizza & brewery restaurants in Southern California, mostly in San Diego and Orange County.

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Central City Comic Con

Posted on April 17, 2010 by Kelson

Stopped for coffee on the way to Anaheim Comic Con. Yes, actually, I am wearing a Flash T-shirt. Why do you ask? #

Even better, the rest of the convention center was taken up by a coffee convention! (For the uninitiated: There’s a running gag in the current Flash relaunch about how much coffee people drink in Central City…especially Iris Allen.)

Follow-up: read my full convention report and check out my photos.

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Crystal Hot Sauce

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Kelson

Now, I realize this is simply a brand name, probably inspired by the “pure” part of the slogan…but I can’t help but be reminded of the brief fad for clear products in the early 1990s. Remember Crystal Pepsi? Of course you don’t.

Saturday Night Live summed up just how unappetizing this fad really was in two words: Crystal Gravy.

Thankfully, Crystal Hot Sauce is not clear (as you can see!), and actually tasted pretty good.

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