Bacon Soda

Got a special taste test for you this evening.  While browsing Rocket Fizz in Valencia, CA, The World According to Rich decided it would be fun to do a vlog testing a few of the hundreds of peculiar sodas that dawn their walls.  Here's what happened:

Cock Cola - as the only "normal" soda of the bunch, this one should have been the best since it's basically just cola.  But it was flat and boring.  The funny name is all it had going for it.

Martian Poop - I expected this one to be fruity and sweet.  Instead it was moderately fruity and tart.  Tasted kind of like a Jones Soda with the aftertaste of a tennis ball that had been mauled on by a rhino's butt. 

Cucumber Soda - this one was nasty.  Potent smell and a really terrible taste.  What's interesting is that I've seen people with drinks that have cucumber slices floating in them.  So I actually had expectations for this one going in that it may taste like something not horrible.  But I was wrong.  Oh so wrong.

Pumpkin Pie Soda - just weird.  Tasted like pumpkin.  Not much else to say.

Bacon Soda - rancid.  Really powerful smell and a repulsive taste.  It's almost as if someone drained a pan of bacon fat and carbonated it.  

The thing is, though, none of these blew us out of the water from any end of the spectrum.  They obviously didn't taste good but they weren't "holy crap I gotta puke" disgusting also.  

So if you wanna puke - check out the bacon soda. 

Thanks for reading!

Good Ole Junk

You know the drill:

The big lumber leading off

An Emma Watson act-alike on Facebook trashed this photo.  I'm not quite sure what that means.

Transition Plate

This was supposed to be a dessert plate but I kept piling stuff on, so it wound up being a second giant Transition Plate

The real dessert plate with a bunch of fake sugary things

Seriously, this NEVER gets old!

Mobile Blog

Note: Well now, it appears that none of my SWF files are loading properly.  Now I need to figure out why.  Thank you, Blogger.

Note 2: I've fixed the problem.  I'm guessing the links to the SWF's were all switched around when the servers were updating.  All Flash files should be working as normal.

Just a quick note here - Blogger finally made it easy to to change the interface of the blog as it's seen on mobile devices.  Maybe it's been there all along but I never knew about it.  But now the blog looks specially simplistic and cool if you're accessing it on your phone.  I was never excited about having to go through the fifty miles of code to figure out why it looked funny on mobile devices and thankfully now I don't have to.

The whole interface of Blogger has changed, so maybe there's some new stuff here to play with.  Maybe they've finally fixed the thumbnail issue or finally added on a photo rotation tool.  Or maybe they've finally acknowledged Greg's Gourmet as an elite powerhouse in blogging and will feature the site's name sandwiched between the Search and Image tabs on Google's homepage!

Enjoy the week.

Third Time's the Charm

First of all, a happy birthday to my most excellent friend, Josh!

It's become an annual tradition to celebrate Josh's birthday dinner at Outback Steakhouse. Last year he was in Japan so obviously we couldn't do it, but the two years prior I left feeling very unsatisfied.  The first year I ordered their Outback Special which is their signature piece of steak but it was really, really mediocre.  The next year I ordered a bacon cheeseburger - and that was really, really mediocre.  I mean, how does that happen?

But last night was a little different.  Ordered the Ribeye (I'm being told that ribeye is actually two words but I'm taking a stand and making it one) and it did the trick.  Really tasty and perfectly cooked:

It's dark in those steakhouses and my camera doesn't have a flash, so I had to slightly adjust the lighting.

I was surprised by how filling the ribeye was.  I was debating over whether I should try their Outback Special again but get a bigger cut at the same price.  Overall this was the better choice and it was very tasty.  Josh had like a 20 ounce porterhouse.  That thing was massive.

Here's a salad even though I know no one cares about that

It's funny with all this new legislation forcing restaurants to have healthier menus.  I remember a couple years back the steak would come with two sides of your choice, so naturally I went with fries and mashed potatoes.  I know - I'm horrible.  But now they force down soup or salad and only give you one side.  Blah.

This is a bundtlet from Nothing Bundt Cakes - it's a pun. Bone Crusher told me about these things so I finally got to check them out and they're really, really good.  Rich and sweet and filling.  Highly recommend. 

Happy birthday to Josh!

Thanks for reading!

Gourmet Word Search

Here's a little nugget I programmed this week. I call it: Food Finder! Pretty delicious word search of epic portions, just find the words in the jumble (left, right, up, down, backwards, diagonal) and click and drag to highlight them.

Note: May not work on certain mobile devices. Also click here to download the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.

Written with ActionScript 3.0 in Adobe Flash CS5.5. 

Happy playing!

Happy Passover!

Friday marked the start of Passover. Last year I actually forgot to take pictures of the food prior to eating it. Pretty dumb, I know. What kind of scam am I running here? But this year, my friends, I came through. For the most part:

Ok, I lied about taking picture since this is the only one of the meal I have. But here's what my dad, the Talented Stephen Baldwin, had on his plate which, in some bizarre twist of fate, looks exactly like mine:

We got some chicken here, meatballs as first cooked by my great grandmother who lived to be 102, matzo stuffing (I refuse to call it dressing), and potatoes. Good stuff. 

And just for good measure again, the dessert:

Thanks to the Bone Crusher for traveling halfway around the world to get the GOOD fruit slices. 

Happy Passover and Happy Easter!

Boston Fruit Slices Part II

Happy Passover! I'll have a post dedicated to this most excellent holiday soon, but I wanted to talk about something else this evening: fruit slices. Last week I wrote about a disgusting candy I bought at CVS called Boston Fruit Slices. Thankfully, the Bone Crusher sought out and found the quality stuff of what I was talking about and provided me with not one, but TWO boxes:

Oh yeah!

I was so excited that I ate one before taking the picture

The fruit slices with these chocolate-gel fruity o-thingies for Passover dessert

I seriously feel like these fruit slices fought off some horrible virus that was living in my stomach since I ate those gelled pieces of crap last week. Many special thanks to Bone Crusher for hunting them down. 

Happy Passover and Happy Easter!

Thanks for reading!

My First Pizza

Last month I wrote a post about my Birthday Binge which included gifts from my family of a pizza stone, pizza peel, and a cookbook. As I've said many times before, one of my favorite things is pretending that I know how to cook. Now I think it's time to actually turn myself into someone who really knows their way around the kitchen.

So the other day, with the help of my mother since I needed a seasoned veteran in the kitchen, we attempted to make a pizza. Day 1 was a failure because the yeast wouldn't rise. Tried it like four times - wouldn't work. The next day tried it another four times. Eventually it did rise, but what the hell? Might be something in the San Diego water that yeast doesn't like. Oh well. Anyway, mixed the yeast with the flour, made the dough, rolled it out, and came up with this:

I call this "Hip to Be Square"

On the stone, ready to go

Yeah, it came out a little dark, but it tasted pretty good. I think next time it'll need a minute or two less in the oven and a little more seasoning on top. But for a first time this tasted pretty good. I look forward to more.

Thank you family for the most wonderful inspiration gift! I love you!

Thanks for reading!

Best Meal of the Year Part III

So I'm trying a few new things with Greg's Gourmet. First, I'm going to be posting shorter blogs more often rather than doing two longer ones per week. By doing this I think I can post a variety of entertaining content while also making it more personal. Posting these bi-weekly long blogs wasn't doing it for me anymore.

Anyway, I know I say this all the time, but I've got another candidate for possibly the best meal of the year. I've already explained the Best Meal of the Year and even the Second Best Meal of the Year. The thing with those two, however, is that they take a long time to prepare and they're holidays. This meal...a little more informal:

Oh baby, yes!

What we've got here is the ultimate in fast food freshness: a whopping 4x4 with animal style fries from In-N-Out. I've never actually ordered this combo before and probably won't do it again for a while, but on this particular day I decided what the hell. Both items are on their "not so secret" menu and are chocked full of empty calories, fat, and awesomeness. Maybe one piece of cheese too many on the burger, but with a 4x4 that's what you get. Oh yeah, and this is what I was considering for lunch on my birthday. If this had happened I would have certainly gotten sick later that night. 

I really enjoy In-N-Out. The menu is simple, the food is good and fresh, and the customer service is second to none in the fast food industry. The only thing that gripes me is that regardless of what time you go, you're gonna be playing Battle Royale just to get a table. That's always bugged me. Josh in Macedonia is a seasoned expert in scoping out tables while we wait for our food and slides in once the previous customers leave. Still - I don't believe in that kind of chaos in restaurants. Maybe constructing smaller restaurants is how they keep their prices down?

Thanks for reading!

"Domino's CEO Patrick Doyle Sounds Like A Douche"

One of the most common Google searches that brings people to Greg's Gourmet is some variation of Domino's CEO J. Patrick Doyle being a douche, scumbag, and/or a jerk. This stems from a couple rants I did on the guy, such as including him in the "Top 5 Spokespersons I'd Like to Punch in the Face" as well as ripping his lame commercials in "Food Commercials That I Hate Volume II".  Well, Dirtbag Doyle is at it again with a new horrible Domino's ad.  Check it out:

"At a big company, new ideas don't usually come from the local store level." 

Woooowowowowowowow. If we needed any more proof that this cockroach is a condescending, useless prick who likes to roll around in dog doo-doo then that was it. Keep in mind, this is the joker who, in a commercial from last year, introduced a new item called "Tate's Chicken" and basically put the weight of the entire company, success or failure, on the shoulders of this one little nobody named Tate. And in the commercial Tate himself said he wasn't excited at all about this. If this Tate guy isn't excited about the new product that you're pitching then why the hell should anyone buy it?

Moving on: Bob LaRichie? Who the hell is this guy, a used car salesman? Why the flip is he appearing in a Domino's commercial, cited only as "Brian's Friend"? What does he have to do with anything?!?!?!

Then Lauryn, Brian's employee, says that Brian should be CEO of Domino's...and she wasn't kidding. That's some loyalty, huh, Patrick? I wonder why someone from the local store level, a friend of the dude with the new idea, would even consider recommending him for CEO over you. Maybe it's because, you know, you basically called all of your local store minions a bunch of uninspired idiots. 

"HURHURHURHURHURHURHno." HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. YOU'RE SO FUNNY, PATRICK. FOR A SECOND THERE I THOUGHT YOU WERE GONNA AGREE LOLOLOLOLOLOOOOOOOL!!!!1111

Seriously, what a scumbag. I love how no one in the commercials ever agrees with him on anything. There was that two medium pizzas for 10 dollars ad where the dude thought Dirtbag Doyle was crazy. Poor Tate probably had a meltdown after his commercial aired last year and here we have a couple of the "Lacking in Ideas" locals saying this Brian dude should replace Patrick as CEO. I couldn't agree more. 

I seriously can't stand this guy. I don't care if they're just commercials; he comes off like a total jerk in the box and approves of them going on the air. 

Little Caesar's FTW!

I Hate This Commercial

This piece of trash was put out by Jack in the Box. It first aired on Super Bowl Sunday and lately it seems like it's been airing more frequently.  Just watch this Titanic of a shipwreck:

Okay, let's go down the list of reasons why this commercial sucks bacon balls:

1. "It's not a girl. It's BACON!" How many seconds would it take you after your son says this before you stuff him into a box and ship him off to an insane asylum? 

2. What would you do if you're working at a jewelry store and you see this nutjob using a piece of bacon to help him pick out a ring? Would you stand there and smile or would you call in the FBI because a Ted Bundy copycat is on the loose? 

3. I love this. The chick at the florist's actually smiles while handing him the flowers, cause he and this strip of pig fat are just sooooooooo cute together. 

4. Not only is a big ceremony held for this goofball, but people actually show up?? He's got USHERS? What, are they secretly filming this with their phones so they can put it up on YouTube afterward? 

5.  "You may now eat the bride." Who didn't see that one coming? (looool) But seriously, that little innuendo was more predictable than Jennifer Lopez giving a standing ovation to each contestant on American Idol last week. 

6. That one shot of that pizza faced snot rocket sniffing the burger like Dahmer sniffing a dead corpse. Makes me seriously want to bash that guy's nose in with a grappling iron. "Oh bacon you're so beautiful." WHAM! 

Is this really the best that Jack in the Box could do? Especially for Super Bowl Sunday? Having this fruitcake marry a piece of pig fat? In what world is this funny, clever, or even remotely positive for marketing the company? Not that this really matters to me - I haven't been to Jack in the Box in a few years. Two of the last three times I've gone I've actually gotten sick, and the one time I didn't I wound up waiting in a drive-thru for 20 minutes because they were switching shifts and I guess when they switch shifts that means there's no one at the drive-thru? Yeah, I don't know either.

Anyway, I hate this commercial. Greatly dislike.