Brand Wars: Blizzard vs. McFlurry

It's time for Brand Wars again! Today we're pitting Dairy Queen's M&M Blizzard against McDonalds' M&M McFlurry.

Dairy Queen's claim to fame is the classic Dilly Bar, but a close second is their line of Blizzards.

McDonald's, on the other hand, is known more for their burgers and Big Mac than their diabetic comas in a cup.

Homemade Hummus for Humans

Sometimes you just need the sweet lovin' of some chickpeas at 3am, and I'm here to tell you that the night stocking crew at the grocery store does not take kindly to people pounding on the doors in their pajamas wailing for whipped beans.

Enter the mini food processor and hard-to-find tahini.

Thanks to these two marvelous components, we are able to concoct our very own hummus at 3am, in our jammies, without putting on shoes or getting arrested.

After you've rounded up your mini food processor and hard-to-find tahini, take stock of your kitchen.  Make sure you have the following:

1 can of chickpeas/garbanzo beans
1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 clove garlic (or semi-artificial garlic replacement)
Pinch of paprika

If you don't have all those things, pull on your bunny slippers and bang down the doors of the grocery store until they agree to send out paprika and lemons. For best results do this even if the store is open. Send me a copy of the security footage.

After they let you out of the holding cell, come home and whip up a batch of hummus. Make extra to share with your parole officer.*

Start by rinsing your chickpeas to remove any cooties and let them drain while you work on the rest of the ingredients.

Throw your tahini and lemon juice in the mini food processor. Process it until it's all thick and creamy. Do not mistake it for frosting. While hummus is one of the most delicious foods known to mankind, squished up sesame seeds have yet to be deemed an acceptable topping for chocolate cupcakes.

Once your lemon-kissed tahini (we's getting fancy up in here) is all creamy and fabulous, throw in your olive oil and garlic and salt and paprika. Blend some more.

When your mouth starts to water, add in half of your mostly-drained chickpeas and blend some more. When you can barely stand it anymore, add the rest of your chickpeas and blend again. If it's looking a little thick you can add some H2O.

After much blending, consume immediately. This does not leave time for fancy serving dishes or an array of cheeses. Say a quick thank you to the chickpea gods and dig in with some pretzels or crackers or veggies or fingers, whatever happens to be closest.

If you are feeling extra-patient, run some roasted red peppers (you can buy them in jars next to the pickles) through your food processor and mix those into the hummus for an transcendent snacking experience.

*The jury is still out on whether hummus points are as effective as brownie points, but it never hurts to try.

Monkey Bread and Easter Recap

On Saturday, per family tradition, I threw an Easter egg hunt for the boys--namely, my roommate and my little brother. I may have gone a little overboard in the hiding process.

At any rate, they found all the eggs and traded them in for Easter baskets.

The Easter baskets were demolished in all of about thirty seconds, and everything was awesome, so I made some monkey bread.

I'd never made monkey bread before. I will quite possibly never make monkey bread again.

Sure, it looks great from the front....

...but then you turn it around and the whole thing kind of falls apart. Literally.

I don't know what I did wrong. The recipe calls for a whopping five ingredients, one of which comes pre-made in the grocery store. Ought to be foolproof. But no, apparently not.

To soothe my defective monkey bread wounds, my roommate made a ginormous Easter dinner on Sunday.

That's an enormous plate of meatballs (because not all of us eat ham), mashed potatoes, secret recipe stuffing, and my favorite -- green beans and crackers. All this food is absolutely healthy, low carb, and most definitely does not contain a pound of butter.

Calories don't count in delicious.

Starburst Minis, Bad Eggs, and a Love Story

Once upon a time there was a Starburst....

....and another Starburst.

One day at a party when the one Starburst was a little bit tipsy and the other Starburst was a little bit lonely, they got together.

6 Different Ways to Dye Easter Eggs

Dudes! It's almost Easter! Set your bunny traps! (Did you know that once a year, on Easter Eve, the Easter Bunny lays a chocolate egg and if anyone catches him in the act they are granted three wishes? Well, now you do. Consider yourself educated.)

Thanks to the impending holiday, I'm sure you've been concerned about your kitchen reeking of vinegar since St. Patrick's Day when it reeked of cabbage and green beer. It's a tradition, after all, to fill our houses with the scent of vinegar so we can decorate eggs from the dyes in the flat cardboard box at the grocery store which oh-so-thoughtfully ensures that all of everybody's eggs look exactly like all of everybody else's eggs.

Sure, you might be one of those fancy people who dips their eggs in two different dyes for some spiffy gradient action or maybe you go nuts with the white crayon before attempting to dye an egg red and having it turn out pink, but really, really, at the end of the day, your eggs look just like everybody else's eggs.

Worry no more! This Easter you and your eggs can stand out as the truly original and stupendous people you are (that's right, I said it, eggs are people too) with these six ideas for fresh new fun exciting egg decorating techniques that will set you apart from the masses and prove once and for all that you are a unique snowflake, damnit.

Idea #1: Kool-Aid Eggs

Save yourself some time and boil your eggs in Kool-Aid for one-and-done egg dyeing. Sure, all your eggs will be the same color, but that's okay, because they all started the same color, so making them look different would upset the status quo and lead to a lot of gang violence.

Idea #2: Glitter Glue Eggs

Make your eggs dazzle with glitter glue swirlies. And non-swirlies. And unidentifiable piles that may have originally been an attempt to draw a bunny. Your inner kindergartener will love this new style of egg decorating and you can use the leftover glitter glue to make some awesome temporary tattoos for you and your friends.

Idea #3: Sharpies

Screw dyeing altogether and test out your creativity with some hand-drawn egg designs. Feel free to turn your eggs into monsters, butterflies, or abstract (read: crappy) works of art using only markers. While you could also use the Sharpies in conjunction with your glitter glue tattoos, I recommend buying a paper bag to wear over your head before making such a long-term statement with your body art.

Idea #4: Stickers

Go ahead, embrace your slacker side. Instead of fussing with all those dyes and colors and high-effort decorating techniques, try stickers! Stickers come in a wide variety of designs, including flowers, bugs, racecars, and cartoon characters. I, however, chose to take a fancier approach and am currently waiting for my egg monocle to arrive from Amazon.

Idea #5: Blow Paint

Give your eggs a blow job this Easter! Dip straws in acrylic paint (or finger paint or house pant....watercolors not recommended), point them in the general direction of your eggs, and blow! Your eggs will be covered in lovely splatters and speckles in no time at all--you'll probably have energy leftover for an actual blowjob after!

Idea #5: Glowing Eggs

Now, I know you're all thinking I just bailed on the whole egg-making thing at this point, but you're wrong! (I did have to take a slight detour--if you know what I mean--after the previous batch of eggs, but I'm back now.) All you have to do for these eggs is cover them in a layer of glow-in-the-dark spray paint and then let them do their thang. As a bonus, you can save these eggs to light up your refrigerator should that little light bulb ever go out.

Disclaimer: I don't recommend actually eating any of these eggs (except maybe the Kool-Aid ones) and I accept no responsibility for any harm that comes to you or your loved ones due to you eating these eggs. However, if you get any unbelievable superpowers and you want to use them for good, that was totally my fault and part of my master plan. You can mail my check.

Happy Easter!

My Half Assed Cocktail: Raspberry Gin and Soda

Some days you really just need a drink.

Fortunately for us, now that the weather is warming up and the grass is turning green and the daffodils are blooming and other poetic crap like that, we can indulge in alcoholic beverages under the guise of "refreshment" and being "seasonable" instead of "today totally sucked and I'm going to drink until TurboTax is funny."

(By the way, that takes a lot of drinks.)

My "seasonable" spring drink at the moment is this raspberry gin and soda. It requires three ingredients. Raspberry syrup, gin, and seltzer. Or tonic water. Whichever you happen to have that isn't totally flat.

For this super-complicated drink, you fill a glass--or mason jar, depending on which is more accessible and/or cleaner--with ice, pour an ounce of raspberry syrup on top, add a shot of gin, and fill the rest of the glass with the fizz of your choice.

I found my raspberry syrup at a local kitchen supply store, but if you can't find it, leave it out. Likewise, if you can't find tonic water or club soda or seltzer or sparkling water, leave that out too. Also, if you don't have gin, just dump some of whatever liquor you have on hand into some sort of drinking vessel with some ice cubes or frozen peas, swish it around, and chug. Works just as well.

Adjusted Net Income....hee hee hee....hic.

New Roof and a Ham Sandwich

My roommate and I reroofed our house this weekend.

Well, most of our house.

Okay, some of our house.

We got about 30% done over the course of two days.

Thanks to my entire weekend being spent on the roof, you're not getting a real blog post today.

Now, I really wish I could tell you I had the boys from K&B Construction Company over and that we dined on grilled cheese sandwiches and shish-ka-billy-bobs, but they had other engagements, so instead you get a picture of a ham sandwich and some lemonade.

(I fully intended to take a picture of this on my roof, but I didn't have the energy to make the sandwich yesterday, and today it's raining, so you get what you get.)

The good news is that regularly scheduled programing will return on Thursday, but until then, me and my sunburn will be over here watching more Home Improvement clips.

Poop Muffins

These don't taste like poop, I promise. They're actually quite delicious. They get their name because after you make them you will try to eat them all, all at once, and that will cause you to.....well, you know.

This recipe was originally posted by Janet Kalman Villada on AllRecipes.com, but I've been making it for a few years and have made a point of not telling any of my friends I stole the recipe off the internet so they think I'm super-fantabulous and creative. (This is a fully acceptable gameplan, as, clearly, I am not fantabulous enough to be considered super-fantabulous without a non-stolen poop muffin recipe.)

First thing you gotta do is round up your ingredients.

1 1/2 cups bran
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Toilet paper

Before we get started, let's talk about bran.

I'm sure you could use, like, actual bran, but ain't nobody got time for that. We use cereal. But not that All-Bran crap, because, yaknow, we want to crap not to eat crap. Instead we use bran flakes. But not the kind with raisins, because raisins are what happens to old grapes when they die, and that's disgusting. (Unless they're in oatmeal raisin cookies, which is the only acceptable use for dead grapes.) So grab yourself a box of cheap old-person cereal and let's get started.

Dump your cheap old-person cereal in a giant bowl and cover it in buttermilk. Try to trick your roommate into taking a great big whiff of buttermilk and then watch him gag. Do that for ten minutes while the cereal gets mushy.

If you get tired of messing with your roommate (and/or he gets tired of you messing with him and locks you out, which is also a possibility) you can beat together the oil, egg, brown sugar, and vanilla while you wait.

Once your cereal has become adequately mushy and glop-like...

...stir in the sugar mixture.

In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Add the flour mixture to the cereal-and-sugar glop and stir a little bit, but not too much.

(How's that specificity for you?)

Spoon your poop muffin batter into a muffin tin and bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes.

At this point your kitchen should start to fill with an undeniable scent, but before you go grab the matches (from underneath the macrame turtle....anybody???), I'd like to point out that it isn't the smell of poop, but of delectable baked goods.

When the muffins are doneish (stick a toothpick in the middle to check for doneishness--if it doesn't come out wet and gloopy, it's doneish) take them out of the oven and salivate while they cool.

Once the muffins have reached a non-scorching temperature, dig in. But maybe just start with one. You did buy toilet paper, right? Right?

Happy Pooping!

These muffins were caught chillin' at Eat Drink & Be Mary's Delicious Dish Tuesday Linkup. Go check out the lovely ladies and their less poopy recipes there!

These muffins were also featured by Alesha at Full Time Mama! Eeeee!