Gumbo Shop's First Facebook Ad

Ok so there are quite a few sites with how-tos about setting up a facebook ad... this one in particular is a little dated but is extremely detailed:

http://subliminalpixels.com/facebook/how-to-set-up-and-track-facebook-ads/

Rather than go into the mechanics of setting up an ad in general, I'm just going to talk about some of the rationale behind the very first ad created for the Gumbo Shop.

I'm actually pretty glad that it took me forever to write this post, because now there's a really interesting article discussing what people look at when presented with a Business / Brand page.

http://mashable.com/2011/12/14/eyetracking-facebook-brand-pages/#38865CocaCola-Visual-Attention-Level

My main takeaway from this article is that you need pictures and you need some decently compelling posts on your wall.  My goal for the very first ad is to get people to interact with your page, regardless of how populated it is.  Therefore, they'll populate the page and later on, people who WILL make their decisions based on the how populated the page is, will see a page with Likes, Posts, and Post Responses.

So what demographic will have people who not only know of the Gumbo Shop, but are the likely people who enjoy the place and will click that "like" button without a second though?

At first I thought of the regulars - people who work in the vicinity of the Gumbo Shop and come on a weekly basis.  The absolutely easiest way, of course, is to simply have a little sign at the restaurant "Like us on Facebook!" or something silly like that.  However, in terms of filtering on Facebook, the biggest problems with that were the following:

• Will have to get a listing of all the businesses in the area: even a decent representation would be pretty hard.  There aren't that many ginormous employers in that area where picking a couple will be good enough.
• Not that many people actually post where they work on Facebook anyway.

The next group of people that came to mind were people in St. Louis who likely sought out places like the Gumbo Shop: people who lived in states where Cajun food is much more prevalent.  Unfortunately, Facebook doesn't have a filter for "where people used to live," so education was the next best thing.

All the LSU guys I know in STL are Lawyers...

So after doing a quick Wikipedia lookup of  colleges where Cajun food is more prevalent, I went with pretty much all the Gulf States between Texas and Florida.  As for the ad, itself, I simply wanted to convey "Hey, remember the Gumbo Shop? We have a Facebook page now."  For that, I put up a pic of Gumbo Shop's logo and took my favorite Yelp quote on the place:

So I felt that this accomplished a couple things:

• Identify the Gumbo Shop.  Duh.
• Show a picture of yummy Gumbo.  The people this is aimed at, I'm assuming, have already had gumbo before.
• Point out that there's a positive review on Yelp.com by an (awesome) Lisa C.

Ok.  Now all that's left is to set a budget and maximum bid for clicks.  This means that every single time someone clicks on the ad and visits the Facebook page, I will be charged however much the bidding went down.  I don't really know how the mechanics all work, but essentially, the higher you place your maximum bid, the more likely your ad will be shown.  When there are many advertisers going after the same demographic you are, the more expensive this will likely to be.  I have recently found out that Women who are in a Relationship are quite expensive... but that's another post.

Self Explanatory.
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/lifeexplained.jpg

At first, I set a daily budget of $3 and let Facebook have its way with my max bids.  In the end, I feel that this isn't the way to go.  I personally don't think that Facebook really does have a decent way of figuring out how to "maximize" the value of your clicks and it doesn't take any other input for your goals.  For example, your bidding and budgeting strategy can vary quite a bit if you goal was to get as many impressions (total times an ad is displayed) as possible in one month, as opposed to ensuring that you can get the best bang for the buck with at least so many impressions a day.

Also, the daily budget idea is a bit silly.  This severely limits how often your ad is going to be shown, as once that budget is hit, your ad won't be shown for the rest of the day.  Sometimes, on a Facebook heavy day (when people are home for the holidays, for example), you're going to hit that budget limit pretty quickly and then your ad will be pulled.  That's just pretty lame.  That, coupled with Facebook's relatively high automatic bidding, you're paying more for people to click on your ads while limiting how often your ad will be displayed.

So here're some of the metrics in the first month of that ad.

A "Social Impression" means that this ad was shown 1003 times where the target has a Facebook Friend who "likes" the Gumbo Shop.  Initially I was pretty satisfied with the results of this... with some fiddling we go through September's results...

WHOA what just happened... numbers are WAY higher for some crazy reason and yet my (yet undisclosed) costs were practically the same.  What the heck happened?  (aside from that fact that these screen shots are from Google Docs and Excel, respectively?)

Well... hopefully it won't take me more than a month to post the next post to explain some of that crap.

Angle of Attack

Starting out with a fresh Facebook page, you want as many fans as quickly as possible.  The easiest way to get that is let people who visit the Gumbo Shop to know that you, indeed, do have a Facebook page and that they should Like it to keep up-to-date on the goings on at their favorite restaurant ever.  These people are likeliest to not only Like the page, but actually maintain that interaction with the page.

But what about the people who don't already go to the Gumbo Shop on a semi-regular basis?  On the vast Internets, there are plenty of opportunities for one to come across your business online.

Search Engines
There are different ways you can try to ensure that your business shows up for a given search.  At the very least, however, you should be ensuring that the information is up-to-date and spend some time to add some media such as pics.  These guys are increasingly conglomerating more data from other websites as well to try to give as much information to people as possible.  Therefore, checking out search results for your business will show you what other sites people may come across as they're searching more generic terms like "Cajun" or "Fried Catfish."

Business Listing Websites
Speaking of websites that people may come across before they hit your business's website or Facebook page, there is a plethora of websites that index data from databases and allow users to update data and provide whatever information may be applicable to a business.  For restaurants in particular, there is an insane amount of Menu sites (SinglePlatform being a more recent one), review sites, or just meta sites collecting all that stuff together.

http://www.penny-arcade.com

Probably the biggest monster out there is Yelp.com.  They get so much traffic, they are almost sure to be the first couple hits if someone is searching for a particular item, or in the Gumbo Shop's case, a dish like "Blackened Catfish" in the St. Louis area.  Not only that, many people go straight to sites like Yelp or Urbanspoon without even bothering with the search engines.  These sites help people make conclusions whether they are going to check out a restaurant on their data alone, without even bothering to visit your website or Facebook page.  

Same with the search engines, keeping this data up-to-date is the least you should do.  Going all out on Yelp.com, however, means putting your own personal self out there to interact with those pesky Yelpers, but that's another post.

Online Advertising
Finally, what is perhaps the most obvious, is online advertising.  According to emarketer.com, Google has an almost 50% market share, where Facebook has below 10%.  So what would make one choose to advertise on Facebook than on Google?

http://www.the-cynic.com

To be honest, it takes far less effort to advertise on Facebook than on Google.  With Facebook, you create an ad, filter out some demographics because people put almost all their likes/dislikes/hopes/dreams on Facebook, and just fling it out there.  Google involves trying to figure out the actual behavior of the people you're going after and, on top of that, you actually need to do some photo-editing unless you're perfectly content with a plain text ad, and let's be honest, text isn't usually what draws you to an ad.

NEXT TIME, I'll finally talk about the thoughts that went into putting up my first Facebook Ad for the Gumbo Shop and talk about its performance.

Not-So-Random Gripe: Inaccurate Data on the Internets

Ok so while I was writing up the yet-to-be-finished post, I soon realized that a crap load of them menu websites are pretty much throwing in the towel and turned to this service called "SinglePlatform."

Now that's great because there's nothing more annoying than ensuring that things are updated on multiple websites, but I do have to gripe about the inaccurate menu that Single Platform did for the website:

Ok so the page is pretty blurry, but it's the same freaking menu for two restaurants, one being the Gumbo Shop in St. Louis and the other being ONE of the Gumbo Shops in New Orleans.  I'm sure this service is new and all, but at least have the quality control to simply say "we don't have the data for this restaurant."  It's understandable if you bought bad data from them business listing services (they really do suck), but I'm making an uninformed conclusion that this involves some silly assumption likely done by some code doing a massive data dump that matched a menu with said restaurant.

This is probably one of the most annoying things about Web 2.0 sites in general, as it's created a complacency of "we'll put up inaccurate stuff and the people will correct it" bullcrap.

Facebook Users are PIGS!

So what makes a Facebook Page better (or at least, more interesting) than other tools to aid in the Consumer Relationship Cycle?  It is one of very few tools where a brand can interact with consumers along almost all fronts of the Cycle.  The one thing that Facebook doesn't do is provide e-commerce functionality, allowing you to actually buy stuff on the site, but it comes pretty freaking close.  On top of that, almost everything is free.

http://verydemotivational.memebase.com 

I like bullets to list things:

• Avenues of Market Awareness
• Ads / Sponsored Stories (the only thing that really costs money)
• People's interaction with the Brand's page typically gets reflected on their wall and other's News Feeds:  Likes, Shares, Recommendations
• Methods to sway the flocks towards your brand
• Media (Photos, Videos, Links to external sites like reviews and news articles)
• People's interaction with the Brand's page typically gets reflected on their wall and other's News Feeds:  Likes, Shares, Recommendations
• Continuous Interaction
• Feedback
• News in a relatively non-intrusive way (Facebook News Feed vs. E-mail Newsletter)
• People's interaction with the Brand's page typically gets reflected on their wall and other's News Feeds:  Likes, Shares, Recommendations

Promoting interaction with a brand's page is obviously the most important aspect of managing a Facebook Page.  However, you can't promote interaction if people aren't "liking" the page.  Getting people to visit, like, accept your news feed, and interact is an entire Consumer Relationship Cycle in and of itself.  You're practically selling a Blog (really?) to promote the Brand.  

So let's think about just who we are targeting in order to raise awareness of the Gumbo Shop Facebook Page.  Warning: The following may seem extremely obvious, but as I've found, you sometimes have to go over these as people tend to not explicitly think about them... because... well, they're obvious.

Neo Geo's Obviously Awesome
http://keithapicary.bandcamp.com/

People Who Already Know of the Gumbo Shop and Like the Place

It will be pretty easy to get these people to visit the page and yet they are by far the most important.  This is because they are most likely to enthusiastically (and sometimes, emphatically) promote your brand as they interact with the page.  The Gumbo Shop has a pretty large work-lunch following.  If you're starting out extremely early, these people would pretty much be made up of your friends.  The usual points of entry to the page would be through Facebook Check-Ins or the fact that you just told them to visit the page in person (or with a sign on your cash register).

People Who Only know of the Gumbo Shop, but Haven't Ever Visited...

...or maybe at some point a long time ago.  At least they're aware of this place.  This is where the page content can tip them over into actually visiting the Gumbo Shop.  

Have no clue that the Gumbo Shop existed...

Honestly, I consider this group of people to practically be in the same bucket as those who haven't ever visited or haven't been in a long time.  This is because the starting point of interaction is the same for both groups: ads or news feeds from other friends on Facebook.  Of course, people could stumble upon your page from a link on your Website and from there a slew of other sources.... buuuuut we'll get to that some other time.

Next time, we'll talk more of these "points of entry."  There are many, much like in Deus Ex... which I've seriously been neglecting, lately...

Wait, so What Do You Do, Again?

I guess before I get into the actual crap that I'm doing, I should talk about the actual and ideas behind them.  My main goal is to increase foot traffic to the Gumbo Shop to help them sell more food and make money.  One additional side effect is to get more consistent foot traffic throughout the year, which can lead to significant cost savings and headaches.

I can try to accomplish that in a couple ways:  I get more people to recognize the fact that there is such a Cajun place called the Gumbo Shop at Manchester and McKnight in Rock Hill, MO.  I convince them that the Gumbo Shop, is indeed, the place to be and a place for good eats.  Lastly, I remind them that the Gumbo Shop really is some place they should visit at least once a week.

Honestly, the ideal customer is me, who isn't too far from that depicted in this particular Oatmeal Comic.

Replace the Pizza with Fried Oysters

To take another look at this whole thing, I'm turning to consultant-esque diagrams that you'd see at business school classes or meetings where people are trying to sell you on the idea that giving them $500 an hour is actually a good idea.  This thing can be called a variety of things ranging from "purchase cycle," "Customer Engagement Cycle," to "Consumer Relationship Cycle."

In my search for just the right diagram, I realized two things.  Firstly, there are all sorts of different points of view and little details that yield a shit ton of very different looking diagrams, but are very similar in nature.  It all depends on what direction you want to tackle the problem from.  Secondly, not one of them had a picture of a dog.

Notice the lazy eye...

For the sake of the fact that I'm too lazy to do a detailed flow chart, just believe in the following.

• A customer starts out not even knowing that the Gumbo Shop exists and therefore, out of the cycle.
• The first state of interaction is "Awareness," having the Gumbo Shop be somewhere near the front of their minds.
• At any point in this cycle (I guess somewhere on the arrows), a customer can drop out and the interaction has to start all over again ("oh yeah... I forgot about that place...").  

So let's go through these boxes:  

• Awareness:  Obviously people won't go to the Gumbo Shop if they don't even know it exists.
• Consideration / Comparison:  If people in general are anything like me, choosing what to have for lunch is an epic struggle for an hour starting at 10am on a daily basis.  Something's got to point out just how the Gumbo Shop should be at the top of the list on a consistent basis.
• Purchase and Evaluation:  Eating at the Gumbo Shop.  This is grouped together as this is an event that's going on practically simultaneously.  This is largely out of my hands... or is it?

FEAST

• Continued Engagement:  Usually, you only have the previous experience at the restaurant to ensure whether another visit is going to happen anytime soon.  This is where Continued Engagement comes in and where it can get sort of confusing.  I attempt to remind people that it's been absolutely way too long since they've been to the Gumbo Shop amongst many other things.

All Over Again?  

So just how can I keep this endless cycle of violence going?  My use of Facebook is the core part of Continued Engagement and Facebook Ads is by far the most invested method of increasing awareness.  The next posts that I'll put up will likely bounce around from topic to topic in this cycle, especially as new observations crop up.  I'll be tagging those with the appropriate term.

I totally expect Nestle Purina to steal my doggy diagram...

Why Facebook?

Eat at Joe's!

... and by Joe's I mean the Gumbo Shop...

So one of my life-long dreams is to own and run a restaurant.  One of my favorite things is to share the joy of good eats with someone, be it from something that I cooked myself or from a simple introduction to a new restaurant.  Each year I've been doing parties that have essentially been operational logistic exercises with crawfish boils and meats on sticks.

Unfortunately, I'm missing a certain something...

"... a set of these."

I am a risk avoiding coward.  There was absolutely no way that I'm going to drop my job to pursue any sort of risky venture.  So instead of actively pursuing my lifelong dream, I decided to try to learn as much as possible about the business on the off-chance that I am absurdly wealthy and the risk is diminished as much as possible or until I grow a pair.

Enter the Gumbo Shop.

I figured I'd spend some of my spare time offering the minimal skills that I do have to one of my favorite restaurants in St. Louis to accomplish a couple things:

• See how my skills apply to the restaurant business
• Learn whatever I can from the good people at the Gumbo Shop
• Have an excuse to visit one of my favorite restaurants more often

So earlier in the year I helped them set up a simple website and Facebook page.  Along the way I've cooked crawfish for them on Saturdays while it was in season and did some catering orders, both pickup and on-site.  Most recently, I've been bumbling my way through Facebook Ads.

I figured I'd take the chance to write some of my observations and experiences down from Customer Relationship Management through Facebook to this day when I dumped a total of 60lbs of crawfish for 80 unusually well dressed people.  As I think on this now it will likely be chock full of unfounded assumptions and too much thought going into something that's pretty obvious.  Either way, I get to share my experiences, those who care get to have my experiences shared with them, and the Gumbo Shop now has yet another avenue of an online presence.

Next: What AM I Doing?

Baking Soda is the Shit.

That is all.

Cheeeeeeeeeese

 Kevin:  oh welp

man im looking up instructions to this apartment and my eye happened to fall on one part which was
"Turn right onto Cheesequake Road."

and i was just like...cheesequake road?

 me:  that's an awesome name

is it like this magical cheese place?

 Kevin:  i have no clue i wonder if it's even pronounced like that or it's some silly native american pronnounciation we don't know

like

chessequack or something

 me:  that would make sense

but Cheesequake is way more awesome

it makes me think of Rescue Rangers and how cheese always looked so delicious...

 Kevin:  mice cartoons made cheese

look amazing

just like...pooh cartoons made honey look amazing

 me:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARqOxtNIMJ0

Andy's Cheese Reality feat. David

 Sent at 8:58 AM on Tuesday

 Kevin:  haha i always wondered

"why would you drop a safe on someone then shoot suction cups?!"

 me:  hahahaha

 Sent at 9:01 AM on Tuesday

 Kevin:  pretty sure there wree sequences like that with anvils too

anvil falls -> suction cups or arrows

like no that's not how it should workkkkkkkk

you aim next to it!

What the fuck is Broccoli Raab?

To be honest this isn't a broccoli raab recipe... it's a recipe that you can fold broccoli raab into....

0.5 lb of linguine - Porcini linguine was pretty awesome for this...
1-2 bulbs of garlic - depending on how much you like garlic... peeled.
Shit ton of shrooms - trumpet, oyster, porcini, cremini, white, whatever your fancy... but get three kinds cuz it's just awesome that way. I'd say... 20-30 oz of it.

That damned broccoli raab. However much you feel like... I used all mine up in one go. Chopped... I tossed most of the stems into the compost.

half stick of butter

Half a pack of fresh Savory... uh... 2-3 tablespoons chopped?

1 tablespoon salt, Couple coarse grounds of pepper

Slice the mushrooms. It doesn't matter about being clean about it. I used the slicer attachment on the food processor.

Prepare 6 quarts of water to cook the linguine - start getting it to a boil.

Melt butter over medium heat in a large skillet. Toss in garlic and savory. Toss around a bit and then throw in all the mushrooms and broccoli raab. Season with salt and pepper and saute for a bit. With all those mushrooms, the liquid's going to start coming out and steam. Cover and bring to medium low.

Let simmer in its own juices for a while... a good half hour at least. Now's the time to cook the linguine. Cook for about half the recommended time.

With tongs, put the linquine in with the shroom mixture and fold in. If there isn't enough water, spoon in the pasta water. Cover and let sit in medium low heat for the remainder of the recommended cooking time. If it seems to be dry, spoon in more pasta water. Keep cooking until the noodles are at the texture you want it to be (the wife likes it more over done...).

Der Stroganoff

From America's Test Kitchen


Ingredients

3/4 lb of beef stew meat
1 lb pack of wide egg noodles
12 oz sliced mushrooms
1 medium chopped onion (it's under the mushrooms...)
1 can Chicken Broth
1 can Beef Broth
1 small pack (8oz?) sour cream
1/4 cup brandy (not pictured)
Salt, Pepper, cooking oil





Equipment: Wooden spoon, large skillet. A large skillet is key in that you won't have to brown the meat in batches.

Cut the beef stew chunks to a more uniform size. How small is up to you but the smaller you do the less you have to cook to get it tender. I cut them into about 1/2" cubes.

Pat beef dry with a paper towel and toss with a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large skillet on high. Dump the meat in and keep it on high. Ensure that the meat is getting to brown and not overcrowd and steam. Otherwise, you may want to brown the meat in batches. You want them brown bits on the pan for flavor. Remove the beef.

While still on high heat, dump the mushrooms and onions. Season with a bit of salt and pepper. This is more to draw out the liquids as the broths are salty enough. Cover for a couple minutes for them to steam themselves.

At this point there should be enough liquid to scrape up all the brown bits in the pan. Do so with a wooden spoon. Cook uncovered to let the liquid reduce out as the onions and mushrooms cook, about 10 minutes. Add brandy and let that cook out.

Dump in the broths and add the meat back in. Bring to a boil and simmer for about an hour. Prepare about a cup of warm water on the side.


Now it's time to add the noodles. Just dump the whole bag in. I don't really care about overcooked egg noodles so I think this method's just fine. Stir in to get as much noodles as you can in the liquid.

Let simmer covered for about 2 minutes and fold the top less cooked noodles in. Simmer for another 2 minutes. Repeat this process until the noodles are fully cooked. If you don't think you have enough water, add a bit of that warm water.

Remove from heat, stir in sour cream. Serve in the skillet.

Screw you, brussel sprouts rock.

Annnnd they're in season!

Salami, the kind you get whole and cut into chunks. Used some Volpi brand "rose" salami.

1/2 lb Brussel Sprouts
3 cloves chopped Garlic
1/4 Onion
2 tablespoons butter

Luckily, I had some clarified butter (damn you Byron for wanting so much damned butter!) so I used that. On medium high heat, sautee the onion until brown, added the salami until it was crispy. Removed.

Add the garlic and brussel sprouts, season with salt and pepper. When the brussel sprouts are a bit brown, add 1/4 cup water and reduce it down.

Anna won't even try the stuff....

Clams Recipes Synergies

Sooooooo... you know what I turn to when I'm all tired and stressed?

Clams.

Clams fucking rock.

Baked Stuffed Clams

1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
8 Cherrystone Clams
1 12oz pack of bacon, finely chopped.
At least 1/4 cup Freshly Grated Parmesan
Bread Crumbs
Chopped Italian Parsley
Some cooking wine (1/4 cup?)

Clams Oreganata

2 dozen littleneck clams
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1 teaspoon italian herbs
At least 2 tablespoons Freshly Grated Parmesan cheese
Chopped Italian Parsley
Bacon Grease

Render the Bacon:
Chop up the bacon and render in a large skillet over medium heat. Now's a good time to finish up your chopping/slicing/grating/cleaning up. Render until you have crispy bits and a good about of grease. About 10-15 minutes.

Saute the veges
Empty the grease into a small bowl. Turn the heat on high. Toss in the stuffed clams veges (not the parsley). Add some black pepper (NO SALT). Saute/Sweat until the shrooms and onions are cooked. Because there're a good amount of veges, they'll probably steam up and you can use that to deglaze the skillet. Otherwise as some water or cooking wine. Remove to a mixing bowl.

Cook the Cherrystones
Toss in the Cherrystone clams with the cooking wine. After about 3-5 minutes the clams should start to open up. Remove them as soon as they open.

Separate the clam shells and take out the meat. Rinse out the shells and place on a baking sheet. Chop up the meat and mix in with the stuffed clams mixture.

Cook the Littlenecks?
Now you're supposed to shuck these guys but after a couple attempts (I never bought a shucking knife, which my parents swear by) I figured you know what... I don't really care if it's overcooked and sometimes the clams that don't close while I'm cleaning them are actually alive and when (up until I cook them.). Soooo why not.

Toss into the same skillet, which should have a good amount of liquid from the wine and cherrystones, but this time over medium heat at a low boil. Again, remove the clams upon opening, even just a bit. Separate the shells.

Finishing up the Stuffed Clams
Add bread crumbs and cheese to the mixture so that everything's coated with cheese and bread crumbs. Add some parsley to taste. ASo now you have a good amount of clams liquor that's also deglazed the bacon bits in the pan. Slowly add the liquor to taste (add some, mix, taste.) Spoon the mixture into the shells.

In a preheated oven at 350 degrees, bake for 15 minutes.

Finishing up the Clams Oreganata
While the stuffed clams are baking, you can mix up the clams oreganata mixture, and mix in clams liquor and bacon grease to taste. In my mind, you can never have too much parmesan cheese in it so feel free to add more. So now you should have this paste that you can smear onto the half-shell clams. Place on a baking sheet.

When the baked clams are finished, take them out to cool and turn the oven to the broiler setting (or if you have one of them bottom broilers, I guess you can do this whenever you damned well please.) Wait about 3 minutes for the broiler to heat up and put in the clams on the top rack. Leaving the door slightly ajar, broil for about 1-2 minutes or until the clams are golden brown.

Serve both with some lemon.

St. Louis Restaurants have Shitty Eggplant Parm

So St. Louis Italian food is pretty weak. On top of that, they have some pretty shitty eggplant parm. So here's yet another thing that you should consider just making at home.

Really good eggplant parm is greasy crap with cheese and sauce. The fact that it's vegetarian's just a way to keep people happy.

Oh wait... this recipe was based off the "How to Cook Everything" book that the Lady supposedly bought for herself to learn how to cook food...

Ingredients:

2 Medium Eggplants
Flour
3 cups - shredded Cheese - I just get whatever "Italian Mix" is on sale. You can be all fancy and get mozzarella (for the inside) and parmesan (for the crusty topping) but I'm too cheap for that.
Fresh Basil

2 cups Tomato Sauce:
http://urbandrivel.blogspot.com/2007/10/marinara-sauce-americas-test-kitchen.html

Notice how this is sort of similar to the zuppa di clams recipe... it's no coincidence, folks.

Optional Super Robust Stuff
16oz sliced Mushrooms
Crushed Garlic (lots)

Slice the eggplant thin, like a 1/4 inch thing. You can trim some of the skin off but that's supposedly the healthy part. Salt both sides with coarse salt and drain in a colander for 30 minutes or so. Rinse and squeeze dry with a paper towel. (My mom was like don't throw the paper towel away! You can still use it! We did. :P)

Heat up olive oil in a large skillet/pan to medium heat. Dredge eggplant slices in flour and brown both sides, about 3-4 minutes a side. Drain on something (like those air dried paper towels from earlier... :P). Add black pepper as they cook (remember that the eggplant's already been pretty salted.)

Super unhealthy optional delicious thing to do:

So after going through all that eggplant, you now have a boat load of brown floury goodness. Hopefully, none of it is burnt... you can get rid of that. Toss in shrooms and garlic, season with salt and pepper, and saute. Set aside.

In a baking dish, spoon the sauce to just coat the bottom. Layer down eggplant, cheese, basil, shrooms, cheese, and repeat with the last being cheese. Don't let your structure touch the edges, pour the remaining sauce around the edges. Your thing won't be stuck to the pan that way.

Bake in oven for 20-30 minutes. Mince some basil on top and serve with any of the remaining sauce.

When will I learn...

So whenever Stephen Chow comes up in conversation Anna has to bring up some Wei Xiao Bao movie that he's done that I've ignored for quite a while. Eventually I tracked it down (Called the Royal Tramp), downloaded it and watched it.

It was a pretty freaking stupid movie. Even for Stephen Chow.

DELETED.

It came up in conversation again. I said it was a dumb movie and I don't ever want to watch it again.

I'm downloading both movies right now...

Leg'o Lamb

Ancient Chow Recipe most likely derived from when Dad decided that he hates turkey for Thanksgiving

1 Boneless Leg'o Lamb
Good Seasons Italian Dressing Mix - 2 bags

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees f

Boneless leg'o lamb is usually netted. Take off the netting and pat the leg dry with a paper towel. Season with the mix all over and tie back up into its original form (one way is to take the netting off without cutting it and then reuse it.)

Stick a meat thermometer in the center of the roast.

Put the lamb on a roasting rack in the oven and bring the temperature down to 300 degrees. Roast until the meat temperature reaches 130 degrees for medium rare. Take out, but don't take the thermometer out. Let it rest for at least ten minutes with aluminum foil loosely covering it.

Slice and serve.

Zuppa di clams - redux

So after boat loads of iterations I've finally come to a recipe that I think will be THE recipe for clams from me - it's essentially using a tip from America's Test Kitchen for the tomato sauce:

24 Clams
1/4 cup red wine
12 olives (or more or less depending how much you like them)
3 tablespoons olive juice (the stuff the olives have been sitting in... I pretty much take as much juice as I can from the bottle so that there's still enough left to leave the rest of the olives submerged)
1 tablespoon capers (I didn't rinse these.)
1 28oz can whole tomatoes
1 Shallot - minced
2 cloves garlic - minced

Preparing the tomatoes - seed and strain the tomatoes and remove center green parts. Leaving too many seeds in there can make it bitter. Try to leave the tomato meat in as whole a piece as possible. Diced seeded tomatoes may work just as well but I didn't like the texture as much. Reserve about 1/2 cup of the tomato juice.

Big deep stainless steel skillet (or anything... just not nonstick.): sweat the shallots, garlic, and capers. No need for salt.

Turn the heat up to medium-high to high. Add the tomatoes. They should be strained enough so that they start leaving a fond (brown bits) on the skillet. After a tomatoes stop steaming up for a while, add the red wine to scrape up all the brown bits until the tomatoes are getting sticky.

Dump in the clams, olives, olive juice, and tomato juice. Cover.

Stir periodically to let clams open. It's done when all the clams are open. Serve with bread for dipping.

DONUT CRAWL

Tentative route for a donut crawl cuz yelp.com couldn't handle links with ampersands O_o:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=10602788046972978433,38.616931,-90.261886%3B11766214560119156495,38.604800,-90.263150%3B6943662351902346876,38.604920,-90.264470&saddr=Arsenal+St+%4038.604920,+-90.264470&daddr=World's+Fair+Doughnuts+%4038.616931,-90.261886+to:Eddie's+Southtown+Donuts+to:6525+Chippewa+St,+St+Louis,+MO+63109+(Donut+Drive-In)+to:Lubeley's+Bakery+%26+Deli+Inc+to:Donut+Stop+to:6935+S+Lindbergh+Blvd,+St+Louis,+MO+63125+(Krispy+Kreme+Doughnuts)+to:Arsenal+St+%4038.604800,+-90.263150&mra=ps&mrcr=0&sll=38.614993,-90.254145&sspn=0.050902,0.087204&ie=UTF8&ll=38.586552,-90.26041&spn=0.101844,0.174408&z=13

If the direct doesn't work, try cutting and pasting into your browser.

Original yelp thread: http://www.yelp.com/topic/saint-louis-time-to-take-this-offline

Bourne Ultimatum is a Platformer

RUN RUN!!!!

PUNCH PUNCH!!!!

JUUUUUUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Randomly ran into Simon and Jim at Dos Reales at 4:30pm. What are the odds of that.

Children of Men...

Awesome movie. Reminds of me THX 1138 for some reason... in terms of how the storytelling went.

Chicks and Robots

So transformers was ridiculously cheesy with a broken flow... but Transformers rocked. It saddened me that a lot of the Autobots except for Optimus and Bumblebee were pretty much pussies, but the Decepticons are much cooler anyway.

Soundwave totally stole the show.

Back with a vengeance

Macaroni and Ham Soup: My roommate in college used to make a heaping crap load of mac and chop up a huge thing of ham so there'd be individual bowls of mac, ham, and green onion. Roomies and neighbors would just spoon the individual ingredients into their bowls and season to taste. For people who would like measurements, here some some guesstimates for 3 servings.

Ingredients:
8oz uncooked macaroni
1 cup cubed ham
2 green onions, chopped
2 cans of chicken broth s
esame oil (about 1 tspn per serving) w
hite pepper

Cook the macaroni per instructions and heat the chicken broth (microwave or on stovetop... whatever). In a bowl, top the macaroni with ham, green onion and pour in chicken broth. Add white pepper to taste. Let sit to cool off for about a minute to let flavors meld.

Rack of Lamb

Recipe
Continental

2 frenched racks of lamb (they usually come in packs of 2)
1 pack of fresh mint (1/4 cup?)
1 pack of rosemary (1/4 cup again?)
Salt 2 tablespoons?
Pepper 1 tablespoon?
4 cloves garlic
1 cup Olive Oil

2 cups Madeira Wine (The cheap stuff is fine...)

Throw all spices/herbs into a blender/food processor and start blending into a paste, gradually adding the olive oil so that it forms a paste. Brush onto the lamb.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

Set pan on high heat and sear all 4 sides of the lamb and place on a roasting rack and stick one (through the small side) with a meat thermometer. Roast in oven until internal temp reaches 140 degrees... about 3-4 hours.

While roasting:
In the searing pan reduce whine on low heat until about a half cup is left, whisking the burnt yummies into the sauce. salt to taste. You can run it through a strainer to get the gunk out but they taste good :)

Remove from oven and transfer to a cutting board or someting and cover with tin foil and let sit for 15 minutes.

Cut and drizzle sauce over it.

Yay.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

ANNA'S MOVING TO ST. LOUIS!!!!!!

YOOSACKWEHIFF

I forget the actual acronym but it sounds like enough.

Been working lots of paid overtime.

Oh and the highlight of the moment is that Joan is visiting in Feb and insists on watching "Meet me in st. louis" when... we meet in st. louis. -_-

Alas... the things we do for friends...

Clams in Tomato Sauce

Recipe
Italian

2 Dozen Clams... any shellfish, really...
1 can of your favorite marinara sauce (Trader Joe's is awesome)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed.
2 shallots, chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
8 green stuffed olives (less or more depending on how much you like the stuff)
1/4 cup white cooking wine.
salt and pepper to taste

In the biggest/deepest sauce pan that you have, heat oil to medium heat. Saute shallots, garlic, olives, and capers until shallots and garlic brouwn. Add the clams , and cooking wine. When all the clams fully open, remove the clams and set aside. Add marinara sauce and stir. Cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in clams.

Serve with pasta or bread.

If you want an even more seafoody taste you can add clam juice.

Leading to this new theory

So there's this 40 year old guy at work with 3 kids. He's sitting at Happy Hour with my Coop and he's like...

"So who was that hot blonde chick you brought over to my house the other day? (in reference to his xmas party earlier)... noticed that tatoo she's got on her lower back... like a freaking BULLS EYE! My wife had one on her hip when she was younger... man... after three kids, it's a freaking BOUQUET."

Oh man... the people I know... This is a ridiculous contrast to say... talking about social issues at Kathy/Simon's party?

Roth 401k

Roth 401k

Gah I'm becoming my parents. But in all seriousness to all you kids out there, it's all about the slowly but surely as early as possible.

And all you people my age who are millionaires... screw you :P

S.P.L. after Seven Swords

Man, if I didn't see S.P.L. after Seven Swords, it would have sucked. Despite the fact that Sammo Hung AND Donnie Yen were in it, it was just plain stupid. But alas, it's pretty good compared to other HK movies.

But DAMN.

Seven Swords so sucked it. Worst HK movie EVER. Based on a Korean series that was yet another repackaged version of Seven Samurai. Man. Tsui Hark is melodramatic like nobody's business. And to top it all off, the fighting sucked. SPL fights were pretty sweet, but not often enough. If you're gonna give me crappy ass storylines and crappy ass character development, you'd better fill it with ridiculous fights!

Ah wells.

New White Flight

This article talks about how some schools are becoming increasingly Asian and how parents, White and Asian alike, are getting worried.

Schools with more emphasis on Sciences and Math
Schools with less emphasis on Sports, which, I have to admit, is pretty important.
Schools with seemingly more academic competitiveness amongst students.

I dunno I guess parents do have a right to be worried about it. White parents are worried that the schools a too academically competitive. Asian parents are worried that their kids get too used to Asians always being around and will totally freak out if they end up in a place like... St. Louis :P

I do think, however, that parents have as much responsibility to "train" their kids for the outside world as much as their everyday social environment. And in all seriousness: If you have a kid who spends all his/her time with Asian kids and he/she doesn't know how to act around... non-Asian people... I dunno what to say... there's something odd there.

Also, the "White is Dumb" thing is pretty stupid. But then again, these are high school kids.

Wash U

I got into Wash U! Well... Boeing got me into Wash U!

So yeah I'll be taking night classes and stuff... pretend I'm a young'un.

Shrimp Cocktail

Topic: Recipe
Type: Continental

From Alton Brown's Good Eats

The thing about shrimp cocktail is that you need shrimp that has no preservatives in it. Usually these are sold in 5 pound blocks.

If you don't have a seafood place to buy shrimp with no preservatives and stuff, the Tiger shrimp at Sam's is pretty good, but you'll find one or two shrimp that aren't that great. The trick is to rinse the shrimp while defrosting so that when the ice melts, the preservatives don't soak into the meat, but once the ice is off, finish the defrosting in a colander in the fridge.

Anyways:

1 lb tiger shrimp with the shell on. Sam's sells them already de-veined.
2 Tablespoons salt
1/4 cup sugar
4 cups water
Some olive oil

Dissolve salt and sugar into water and cool the water with ice or in the freezer.
Brine the shrimp with the liquid for 30 minutes. If the water doesn't cover all of it, add more.

Preheat the broiler. Pat the shrimp dry and toss in olive oil. Broil for about 60 seconds on each side.

Chill immediately and serve with cocktail sauce.

My Uvula's freaking huge

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Chinese

Got the tonsils out.

Tongue and Uvula's swollen like nobody's business.

So anyways mom made me steamed egg which I absolutely love:

3 eggs
1 14oz can of chicken broth
1 shake of white pepper
1 green onion

In large bowl, beat the eggs, add the chicken broth, add pepper and green onion.

Steam for 10 minutes in a pot over water that is just boiling. The way to see if it's just boiling is, after you have the water in a rolling boil, change the heat to low, and gradually increase the heat until just starts to boil again. The shallower the pot, the better so that it's easy to get out unless you have one of those nifty lifter thingers. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Rather than a large bowl, you can spoon the mixture into ramekins and steam for 7 minutes.

JOAN

I have this friend named Joan. She's doing Teach for American now with 6th graders. She is also known as "Manisha's roommate." We both agree that if the other and Manisha were drowning, we would save Manisha.

Joan enjoys good food and likes Ice wine from Ithaca.

Joan went to UPenn.

Joan is from nearby Philadelphia.

Joan is Korean.

Joan enjoys different cultures.

Joan likes nature.

Joan likes long drives with the windows down.

Hanging out with Joan is cool.

Joan is somewhat of a romantic.



Joan doesn't like getting mentioned in blogs.

*Edit
Joan's AIM (10:08:06 PM): by the way allan
Joan's AIM (10:08:09 PM): you forgot to mention
Joan's AIM (10:08:30 PM): "when i first met joan, i thought to myself, 'she's not as hot as i thought she would be.' and then felt the need to tell her so."

Awesome Vietnamese at Lemon Grass

Topic: Restaurant
Cuisine: Vietnamese

It rocked. It was awesome... but I think we were really hungry too. :P

The pho was big on the cinnamon

The spring rolls were actually tasty

and the "chicken salad" was amazing.

But again... we were really hungry

Visitors and seeing more of St. Louis

So Vince and Byron came in and we spent an unusually large amount of time totally wasting money on carny games. Bastard light game at Ameristar... *shakes fist*

Ate lots. Drank lots of beer... and got to hear of Titi's taking Byron to the Vault without his being able to appreciate the... uh... view ;P

And holy crap, the City Museum in St. Louis is like the coolest thing ever. It is like the ultimate playground that we all dreamed of making an obstacle course of. You come to st. louis.... you're going there. No arguments.

You know it's funny how things change so much and it's definitely an awesome thing to get to talk with people and talk about the things that are going on in our lives. After college we've all dispersed around the country/world and have been experiencing all these different things that have been morphing us into whatever we'll become. Things have changed so much for all of us in the past couple months, let alone in the time it's been since many of us have graduated...mind boggling.

Don't be a stranger. :P

Garlic Cheese Bread

Because bread sizes differ you can't really put a measurement on the cheeses and oil. Eyeball it. If you have too much of oil or cheese, toss it in with a pasta dish.

1 french baguette sliced crosswise. If you can find any other hard crusted bread, that works as well. The thing is in st. louis that's the only hard crusted bread I can buy. If you like soft crusted breads... *shakes head* ah wells... Anna likes soft bread.

Parmesan, Gouda, and/or Asiago cheeses,shredded. All work on their own and they all work together. A good 8 ounces should do

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped.
1 teaspoon italian herbs

Heat oil in small saucepan on medium heat and brown garlic in oil. Remove from heat and add the italian herbs. This is so that the herbs won't get burnt.

Turn on Broiler.

Arrange bread on a non-stick pan sheet and spoon oil, with the garlic and herbs, onto the bread. One small spoonful for 2 slices of bread should do.

Sprinkle cheese on bread.

Put into broiler from 30 seconds to 1 minute. Keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn.

Future Aspirations

HengzhiZhong (9:30:53 PM): i am not that perverted
FrknCrzyAzn (9:31:38 PM): yeah you are
FrknCrzyAzn (9:31:40 PM): don't lie :P
FrknCrzyAzn (9:31:49 PM): speaking of which
FrknCrzyAzn (9:31:58 PM): I saw my future, today
FrknCrzyAzn (9:32:03 PM): so one of my coworkers
FrknCrzyAzn (9:32:05 PM): he's pretty old
FrknCrzyAzn (9:32:15 PM): and like they moved him down to a different area
FrknCrzyAzn (9:32:19 PM): and I was visiting him
FrknCrzyAzn (9:32:24 PM): and a hot girl walked by
FrknCrzyAzn (9:32:31 PM): and he had a devilish grin on his face
FrknCrzyAzn (9:32:41 PM): and he was like "yeah I like my spot... nice view."
FrknCrzyAzn (9:32:48 PM): holy crap that is so going to be me
FrknCrzyAzn (9:32:55 PM): cept hopefully I'll have an office and stuff.
HengzhiZhong (9:33:22 PM): you don't need to become that OLD to see that future
HengzhiZhong (9:33:29 PM): just give a few years
HengzhiZhong (9:33:32 PM): 5 at most
FrknCrzyAzn (9:36:05 PM): ehehehe
FrknCrzyAzn (9:36:07 PM): but yeah
FrknCrzyAzn (9:36:10 PM): that'll be me
FrknCrzyAzn (9:36:13 PM): but with an office
FrknCrzyAzn (9:36:18 PM): I have ambition :-D
HengzhiZhong (9:37:03 PM): make sure your office gets the view
HengzhiZhong (9:37:18 PM): maybe you should install a HUGE fan or something by the door
FrknCrzyAzn (9:38:45 PM): dude
FrknCrzyAzn (9:38:47 PM): GENIUS
HengzhiZhong (9:39:02 PM): *sighs
HengzhiZhong (9:39:09 PM): you are not very bright, are you
HengzhiZhong (9:39:21 PM): what do you need an office for, if you can't get a HUGE ass fan
FrknCrzyAzn (9:40:17 PM): indeed

Asian BBQ Chicken Skewers

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Chinese

Quick. Easy.

Chicken Thighs cut into strips
Skewers
Chinese BBQ (Sa Ca) Sauce


Hoisin Sauce

Marinate Chicken thighs in a 2:1 ratio of the Hoisin Sauce and Sa Ca sauce. There's no need for pre-mixing. Just eyeball some spoonfuls of Hoisin Sauce to the degree where you think all the chicken thighs would be just covered, then spoon in half the amount of sa ca sauce.

Let marinate for at least 2 hours.

Skewer and grill.

I didn't really have a good picture of the chicken skewers individually but they're the ones... in the middle right.

Big Trouble

Dude this is the new movie to watch on weekend afternoons on Comedy central.

San Francisco and the Sis

Went to visit Carol (the sister) at San Francisco over the weekend and it was a quality weekend. She lives in the Marina(?) *map with arrow pointed at spot* area in San Fran and we biked across the Golden Gate to Sausalito *map* and had ice cream. *pic of blueberry cheesecake ice cream*

Example of me being me: I've been to Sausalito before and all I wanted to do was to have the exact same ice cream at the exact same ice cream place there. Didn't have to do ANYTHING else. And we didn't. We continued on to Tiburon *map*, bummed at a cafe *pic*, and road the ferry back to one of the piers.

*map of route taken*

Ate some decent food.

Met up with Manisha (*think awesome ass windows from pic post*) and had brunch...QUALITY SCONES... took her to Chinatown into butcher shops... (sorry, Manisha) and later cooked for Sis's friends. The friends were cool people.

But yeah got to spend time with the sis whom I don't see very much anymore so it was a pretty awesome time. Though I'm still freaking tired and my week is chock full of stuff... but alas.

Oh yeah kept forgetting to take pictures and I'm really too lazy to grab maps but you can picture it all in your minds.

Salsa

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Mexican

Made with Jim's tomatoes.

2 cups chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped red onion
1 jalapeno pepper... to know if you're buying a hot one give it a smell... you should be able to smell the spiciness.
1 lime
tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon kosher salt. if using regular salt go with a half teaspoon.
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
A small bunch of chopped cilatro leaves.
1 clove garlic.

Mix... let sit for half hour.

Pic Time

So... I wouldn't mind living here:

, but I live here

I used to live here

and before, here.

But when I think about it... this is STILL FREAKING AWESOME.

Damned sequels

I forget if I bitched about sequels lately but I'll bitch again. The Transporter was a pretty sweet movie. The eurotechnoesque hong kong movie with white people was amusing and violent. Obviously someone felt that a sequel was fitting but someone went up and said...

HEY. YUEN BIAO INFLUENCED THIS MOVIE A LOT SO LET'S MAKE THIS EVEN MORE LIKE A HONG KONG MOVIE! LET'S TURN THE COOL FRENCH DETECTIVE DUDE INTO A BUMBLING LOSER GUY REMINISCENT OF JACKIE CHAN'S UNCO!

Oh and they were obviously running out of budget towards the end of the movie with the shitty ass plane crash.

There was the everpresent lame ass melodramatic music.

Gah it was bad. Just plain bad. Not even in the so bad it's great sense. GRARG.

Mussels / Clams / Steamers Appetizer

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Continental

Kevin asked and I responded.

1 batch of your mollusks (about a dozen)
1/4 cup white cooking wine
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil.... or butter.

french bread for dipping

clean the mollusks under cold water with old toothbrush / scour thinger

heat a large pan to medium high heat... big enough so that the mussels don't stack... if you don't have one that big just use the widest thing you have that'll hold them all.

saute garlic in the oil a bit then put in the mollusks. pour in wine. cover.

these cook pretty fast so keep an eye on them for when they open. if they're stacked a bit stir them around so that the unopened ones on the bottom can open.

filter the juice if you think it's needed (if there's sand). Take 4 roasted garlic cloves and sautee with the juice. You can thicken this up a bit with some cornstarch or flour.

These are my friends

HengzhiZhong: You need to decorate the place!
frkncrzyazn: Buy me some paintings!
HengzhiZhong: you don't want to hang naked anime guys

Fried Dried Fish Pieces are NOT Clam Strips!

Red Robin:

Side Salad was actually not very good.
Burger was not that good.
Yeah and the Title Part.

Dude I don't think I'm going there for a long while.

Holy Crap

You know your manager's manager is bad ass when he grows FREAKING LEMON THYME in his back yard.

Rub of Bad Assness.

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Continental

BAD ASS RUB.

1/2 cup Paprika
3 Tblspn Kosher salt
1/4 Black Pepper (freshly ground is best)
2 Tblspn Dried Basil
3 Tblspn Garlic Powder
2 Tblspn Onion Powder
1 Tblspn Oregano
1 Tblspn Cayenne Pepper
2 Tblspn White Pepper
2 Tblspn Ground Thyme.

Taken from Rub Recipe website with less salt and oregano. let Cayenne Pepper too.

Rib Eye (medium rare)

16 oz Rib Eye.
8 Oz Mushrooms
Some Beer
A bit of Butter
Tablespoon Cooking Oil

Let the Rib Eye sit to room temp.
Rub on the meat (not ALL the rub... just enough to coat) on all sides.
Heat oil on medium heat. Sear one side of meat for 5 minutes. Second side for 3 minutes. Place on plate and cover.

Add the butter and mushrooms to pan with a pinch of salt. Stir to coat in oily goodness.
Add some beer to just cover up to half the mushrooms and reduce the liquid in the mushrooms til... just just a bit remains.

Pour on the steak.

EAT with the remaining beer :)

Green Chili Onion Dip

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Uh... Continental I guess?

Not as good as Anna's but I'm not allowed to make it. :P

8oz sour cream
1 Tablespoon Green Chili Powder (Can replace a teaspoon of Cayene Pepper instead)
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Small onion chopped.
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
Cracked Black Pepper
1 Teaspoon Garlic Powder
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar (don't worry if you don't have this.)

In small saucepan on medium heat stir onion in oil to coat the onion. Let sit until it starts caramelizing and stir occasionally until the onion pieces are brown. Let onion cool and stir in vinegar.

Mix the remaining ingredients together then stir in the onions. Serve with chips.

Ko Fusion, Champaign

A Better Miko with White Food.

BETRAYAL

Dude... when I walked into a place called "Rolly Polly Sandwiches," I was thinking fat sandwiches or something. Subs in particular. I was in a serious mood for an Italian sub.

BUT NO. IT'S A WRAPS PLACE.

Don't get me started on non-fresh wraps... damned preservative filled shit.

The meat sucked in my "italian wrap."

Wrap had that nasty aftertaste (the preservatives, damnit!)

So going to go to Jimmy Johns tomorrow.

Antipasta

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Italian

This is a relatively light pile of stuff that keeps well in the fridge. It's rather refreshing during the day and even better if you're a fan of olives.

12oz of Rainbow Rotini (or any other noodle that you think that would work)
1/4 lb salami, sliced
1/4 lb provolone cheese, sliced
1/2 cup olives (I usually put in crap loads more)
1/2 small onion, sliced (not rings)(it's really easy to put too much in)
2 roma tomatoes (seeded and slice lengthwise.)
3/4 cups italian dressing (I like the good seasons dressing)
Cracked black pepper to taste

Cook the pasta (you seasoned the boiling water with salt, right?)
Add all the stuff and combine. Everything is in slices because it's easier to eat things when things are the same size/shape. (Se-4 Xiang-1 Wei-4 Zi-1 Quan-2) Go Kevin's Mom for setting it straight that I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE ZI.

Let this sit for a couple hours. Overnight is even better. If you try it immediately it won't taste so flavorful. However if you're in a rush, add some more italian dressing and some salt.

Too... Many... PROVERBS!

Ghost in the Shell 2 is amazingly beautiful. If not for the story watch for the animation. Holy crap.

There were crap loads of scenes that seemed totally pointless to the movie but I guess they actually were vital in telling the audience just kind of world Ghost in the Shell sets itself in and allows us to view our own under a slightly different light.

Oh yeah and there was like a proverb to ponder every 5 minutes. It was sort of odd but it's just one of those Jap movies... what can you do.

Could totally watch this movie again. DVD worthy? I dunno. I'll have to watch the first one again.

Oh yeah and this isn't a total mindfuck as one would think. So go watch it :P

AMERICA

AMERICA! fuck YEAH! Coming again to save the motherfucking DAY YEAH.

Alright so I'm an immature bastard who's had that song stuck in his head all week. Holy crap such a bad movie in the most offensive sense.

Random pitch for Boeing: Boeing's having the X-45c full size model present at the premiere of STEALTH. Keep an eye out for it on Headline news or something because ALLAN is working on the TRAINER for that thing. So if it ever goes rogue it's Allan's fault. But in all seriousness... how silly is the premise. It's like:

if (struck by lightning)
{
go rogue and take shit out with a bad ass rotary rocket launcher.
}

I dunno I can see this movie taking a whole Asimov-esque twist.

Oh and kevin sent this video link which is pretty hot: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/nesvideos/movies.cgi?id=380
But it's a bitch to play so if you're nerdy check it out.

Once Upon a Time in the West

Dude. Still one of the best movies ever. EVER. Go watch it. If you're a fan of Kurosawa, westerns, or GOOD MOVIES, you'd like this movie. This is NOT for the ADD viewer. This movie is all about setting the scene. If you come to my place and if you haven't seen it yet, you're watching it.

Batman builds a house for the needy at UIUC while watching anime and eating Dim Sum at Lu Lu's.

Batman Begins: BEST BATMAN MOVIE EVER. A Good movie? Eh.... it's pretty good :P It's obviously setting precedence for a sequel (durhur... "Begins") and it was pretty slow and needed to wrap up things quickly to avoid a movie that's way too long. Alas. But you really got to start worrying when you're thinking that you'd rather see a movie set up into 26 episodes ><

Habitat for Humanity: Good exercise. Learned some stuff. Did some good for decent people who deserve help who need a break. Got a warm fuzzy when being thanked by the lady getting the house... but was pretty damned tired afterwards. Would I do it again? Prob not. I'm a horrible bastard.

UIUC: Holy crap campus and campustown is shit loads better than it used to be. Damnit. Bully for my html skills.

Yakitate: Right now the anime that I anticipate the most for its next episode is Yakitate! Japan. How sad is that. I think I'm gonna try that bread recipe with Anna's rice cooker.

Dim Sum: Alas... crazy people who aren't used to eating funky chinese food and worry too much about prices... Cool people. Wrong lunch place to bring them to. Note to self: Stick to wings and beer.

Lu Lu's: The place where we had dim sum. QUALITY DIM SUM. Just don't go there with a group of five. You'll totally get shafted in the table wait and it'll be stuck in the corner where the waitresses can't see you. Will definitely go again if I can ever convince anyone else to go. They're supposed to have a lot of other good chinese dishes as well but you can tell it's trying to cater to the White folk with loads of pictures in the menu. A nice touch. They're supposed to have an "unwritten" menu that so many other places have as well.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Continental

Modified from the recipe by Christopher Desens.

This recipes makes a LOT of soup so be prepared for leftovers or make this for at least 4 people.

4 oz Butter
4 oz Yellow Onion, chopped.
5 cups water
1 bouillon cube (chicken or vege)
6 oz Finely Shredding Smoked Gouda. Regular Gouda works just as well.
4 oz diced Celery. Sometimes grocery stores sell celery sticks at like the salad bar.
4 oz. flour
2 cups heavy cream.
1 clove Minced Garlic
1/2 cup Madeira. This wine is a pretty good wine for cooking. It has a sort of woody rustic flavor. Good with cheese too.
1-2 Tbsp Chopped Fresh Thyme. Must be fresh or else it just doesn't taste as good.
6 oz Shitake Mushrooms sliced. If you get the ones from the Asian grocery store you can use the stems too so long as you cut them pretty finely.
Some shitake mushrooms for garnish. Usually just the leftover shrooms you have from when you bought them packaged.

1 tspn Salt.
Cracked black Pepper.


The Shitakes and the Thyme can be replaced with Portobellos and Parsley. Of course it's not the same but it tastes just as good and it's a hell lot cheaper and easier to find. Fresh Shitakes are best bought at asian grocery stores. Other "specialty" grocery stores tend to have pretty lame ass shrooms that are pretty dried out. I'm sure the Asian ones were set in water before packaged but at least they're not all bruised and crap. The Asian grocery stores sell them for a lot cheaper too.

Melt Butter in a large pot on medium heat.
When the butter starts to bubble add the garlic, celery, onion, and shrooms. Season with salt and saute until cooked. No need to brown the onion unless you like it like that.
Sprinkle flour while mixing to make a roux. Stir for about 5 minutes to coat all the ingredients and the roux has a relatively dark brownish grey color.
Stir in the bouillon, madeira, and thyme.
Add the water and then gradually stir in the cheese. Finally, stir in the cream.
After the cheese and cream has been added, be careful not to boil the soup or you're get some skin on top or stuff stuck at the bottom. If you're worried about bacteria and crap, before adding the cheese and cream, bring the soup to a boil. Then turn the heat down to a simmer and add the rest.

Use a hand blender to blend well and simmer until the it's a thick smooth consistency.

Saute the leftover sliced shrooms with a pinch of salt to taste and garnish the soup with a couple slices. Of course with vege bouillon it's vegetarian and it actually works. Stupid vegetarians. Here's your damned soup.

Jade Empire

Jade Empire. Awesome game. But what's happened to games with clear saves? I must have played through MGS 5 times and FFVI two times. Do you know how freaking long FFVI is to REPLAY? That's cuz they had clear saves. Anyone want to play Jade Empire with ALL fighting styles maxed out? That would be pretty sweet. It would be a lot easier with a clear save. Add SOMETHING to make it cooler to play it again. Keep all your styles? Keep any style that was maxed out? SOMETHING. GRA. I'll prob play this again if the 360 gives faster load times.

Yeah I don't know what to call this one.

FrknCrzyAzn (4:21:50 PM): k0w0y (4:20:53 PM): at least with girls bathroom, there is mostly pee that contaiminates the stall
k0w0y (4:21:02 PM): but you know it's all fecal bacteria in the guys
...
k0w0y (4:21:25 PM): oh, god
k0w0y (4:21:25 PM): ew


SibladeKO (4:23:00 PM): please stop sharing this conversation or i'll kill you

Good ole Spaghetti Sauce

Topic: Recipes
Cuisine: Italian

This is just put together so that Anna would have something to follow.

1 jar spaghetti sauce
1/2 lb of lean ground beef
1 small onion, chopped
2 cups mushrooms, chopped
1 tspn garlic powder
1 teaspoon italian herbs
1/4 tspn salt
cracked pepper
1 tblspn olive oil + 1 tblspn

mix garlic powder and at least 2 good grinds of pepper with meat.
In a small pot heat oil to medium high. Brown meat. Remove. Heat other tblspn of oil and saute the mushrooms and onion with salt. Cover to speed up the cooking process but later cook uncovered to let out the excess water. Add italian herbs and beef. Mix. Add the sauce. Let simmer for at least 30 minutes. You can further thicken with corn starch paste.

Chicken Marsala and Garlic Oil Bread

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Italian

The obligatory recipe. Taken from the back of the marsala wine bottle.

4 Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs
flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 portabello mushroom caps, sliced
1 cup marsala cooking wine
Chopped parsley
kosher salt and cracked black pepper
Half a lemon. Use the other half for water or something.
1 tablespoon cornstarch with water into a paste.

Slice chicken thighs along the center thinner section. Take each section, cover with seran, and pound flat with a mallet or flat side of a large knife. Pat dry with a dry paper towel. Season both sides of chicken with a pinch of salt and 1 crack of black pepper, or more cracks if you like pepper. Dredge the meat in flour.

In deep sauce pan, melt butter in olive oil in medium heat. Brown both sides of chicken, about 4 minutes on each side. Set aside. One good thing to do with them instead of setting them aside in paper towels is to put them on cooling racks on cookie sheets in the oven on warm heat.
Saute mushrooms, stir in wine. Cook away the alcohol. While the sauce is boiling stir in the cornstarch paste to thicken the sauce. Place chicken back into the sauce to make sure that each piece is well covered. On serving plate squeeze lemon over it and garnish with parsley.

You can add more marsala wine.... 1 cup or so with another tablespoon cornstarch into paste... for some pasta. Once coating the chicken in sauce remove chicken to serving plate and throw cooked pasta into the sauce... stir around and remove. Pour remaining sauce over chicken. You can use the other lemon half for the pasta.

Garlic Oil Bread

1/2 cup olive oil (light or extra virgin)
1 clove crushed garlic
1 tablespoon italian herbs

Warm oil in medium heat. Throw in garlic and herbs. Remove when garlic gets a little brown. You can use this as dipping oil OR...
Take a loaf of bread and slice it diagonally but not all the way so that it's still all connected. With the loaf on aluminum foil, spoon oil, herbs and all, into every other gap in the bread. Wrap up and throw into the oven at 300 degrees for 5 minutes.

Hot'n Sour Soup

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Chinese

Modified from a Ming Tsai recipe. Where the heck IS that guy?
*He just kicked Bobby Flay's ass in Iron Chef America :) Booya

1/2 lb julienned pork chop or other lean pork meat.
1 teaspoon sesame oil, + 1 teaspoon
1 teaspoon soy sauce, + 2 tablespoons
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Vege oil (1 tablespoon?)
3 dried chilies
1 tablespoon minced ginger
10 cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup julienned bamboo shoots
2 eggs beaten (or more if you like egg)
1/2 cup wood ear
1/2 cup lily flowers
2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with cold water to make a paste
3/4 cup chinese Black vinegar (If using something stronger like cider vinegar use 1/4 cup)
1 pack of silken tofu (uh... 3*4*2 block?) cut into cubes
chopped scallions
cilantro
salt, White pepper, black pepper

Most of these ingredients are decently easy to find. The not-so-easy ones would be the wood ear and the lily flowers. These may be available at the local Asian grocery store in the dried form. Of course, fresh is best. You can easily find bamboo shoots canned and already julienned.

Notes about rehydrating wood ears and lily flowers: Rehydrate in wood ears in warm water and lily flowers in boiling hot water. Every so often (20 minutes or so) change water (no need for boiling hot in the lilies the second+ time). Rehydrate for at least one hour.

Combine pork with teaspoon sesame oil, teaspoon soy and 2 tablespoons cornstarch and let sit for 30 minutes. In a pot on medium-high heat coat the bottom with oil and sear the pork. Set aside. Add chilies and ginger, stir. Add stock, sugar, bamboo, wood ear, and lilies. Bring to boil. While boiling, stir in the cornstarch paste to thicken. If you like your soup even more goopy add more paste :P While boiling again, drizzle in egg in a circular motion to make ribbons. Add vinegar, soy, sesame oil, pork, and tofu. Check for seasoning with any of the sauces.

When serving add cilantro, scallions, and pepper. Those fried chinese noodle things at Americanized chinese restaurants are awesome too, or you could just fry up some wonton skins.

This recipe can be easily modified to suit your tastes and you can add practically anything you want to it. The most important flavoring in this soup (aside from the vinegar and chiles) would have to be the pork. It just doesn't taste any good without it. Of course this recipe could be veganized but who would want that.

Yet another Spielberg WWII movie

And what do you know, Schindler's list is awesome. I can almost forgive Liam Neeson for being in Ethan Frome. Almost.

Sideways and Kung Fu Hustle

Sideways has Lowell from Wings and that other guy who's usually the annoying hostage who gets shot. Well... at least in the Negotiator. This movie has some amusingly funny moments but it's really a very soul searchingly depressing movie that shines some hope on all those severely depressed people who think that their lives are absolutely horrible. But like all other movies like this, it's all about "taking that first step." Whatever that means. It also makes me want to go out and buy some Pinot.

Stephen Chow made a movie almost exactly like all his other movies except with better special effects. There's a really funny Bruce Lee movie reference that makes you want to see Chuck Norris get his ass kicked. Again.

Samurai Champloo

Ridiculously silly at times and insanely serious at others. Reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop cept with a conclusive ending. BAD ASS.

Sweet. This just goes to show that U of I students and alumni get free lifetime web hosting. And it also shows a picture of me "peeing." o.O

Spare Ribs

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Continental

This one's taken from the Good Eats guy. I think it's under "who luvs ya baby back" at foodtv.com. I don't even know why I changed it... I think it was cuz I didn't have the cash to invest in spices... ah yes... the college life.

2 slabs of spare ribs.

Rub:
4 tablespoons brown sugar
liberal amounts of salt (or seasoned salt), garlic powder, rubbed thyme, cracked black pepper.
Liberal as in you're shaking the hell out of the shaker :P
Some cayenne pepper depending on how you like it.

Liquid:
1 cup white wine (cheap ass cooking wine... I used the asian stuff :P)
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce (or more if you like it )
2 tablespoons honey
2 cloves chopped garlic (you can never have too much so throw some more in for good measure.)

Preheat oven at 250 degrees.

I usually just have the ribs on heavy aluminum foil (shiny side down) and shake everything on it one ingredient at a time. I guess the proper way of doing it is mix everything together so that it's all blended then rubbing it on. wrap each slab in foil and let the ribs sit for a while (1-2 hours) in the fridge.
Pour liquid into the foil pouch thingers and braise in the oven for 2.5-3 hours. you can do it longer if you like your meat more erm.... pull offable.

Unwrap and grill them for that burnt flavor. You can take the braising liquid and reduce it and use that for a sauce. I like sweet baby ray's. If crazy vegetarians like that crap on white rice... it has to be good. apply the sauce while grilling.

Now you know why I get excited when spare ribs are on sale for less than 2 bucks a pound :P

Green Curry.... auuugggghhhh

Champaign was a pretty good food town. It's got some awesome mexican... some pretty good japanese... and some nice chinese food. It's got one of the best reubens too ;P.

But one thing that never failed to disappoint was Thai food. ONE place had some good stir fried food like pad thai (GOLDEN WOK) on the cheap but the one thing I enjoyed the most of thai food was green curry. Green curry sucked at all the thai places I tried in champaign. It was a sad time, indeed.

Now I live in a burb that mostly consists of chain restaurants with a small collection of really really nice restaurants (Bellagio? Ichiban? Spiros?). But the thing that pissed me off about the area was the asian food. But man... Thai Bur-ree has some nice food. They could definitely work on the service, but that green curry was by far the best green curry that I've had in the midwest. Granted, I haven't been to any Thai places in St. Louis proper.

Which leads to the question. Should I move closer to the city? More young people... more restaurants... closer to specialty grocery stores and farmers markets...

Gonna make a spreadsheet on this. But yeah Thai Bur-ree is the rocks. Shit I'm starting to type like Kevin.

Beef Soup

Stolen from Byron :P Just a bit different. All the ingredients are easy to get cept the beef paste may need some extra searching. The asian grocery store here has it so I'm happy. Obviously not as good as the beef noodle soup we all know and love but it's pretty damned good and cheap and easy to make.

1 pound beef soup bone with meat or any other relatively fatty beef with bone.
2 slices Ginger
Two things of green onion
2 cloves garlic
Any noodle you like. Flat asian ones (rice or bean) are good.
salt / pepper
1 tablespoon oil
2 quart water
1/2 cup cooking wine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
Two spoonfulls "gia vi nau pho" instant beef flavor paste.
Cilantro
More green onion.
Lime
Any chili sauce that you like.


Rub oil on meat (be sure to rub bones too) and season with salt and pepper. In a medium pot on medium/high heat brown both sides of the meat. When flipping to the other side of the meat throw in the green onion, garlic, and ginger onto the pot's surface. Add the cooking wine and soy sauce and let that sizzle for about 2 minutes. Add water and the beef paste. Bring to high heat to bring to a boil, then let simmer on low for at least 2 hours. This is so the meat practically falls into nice chunks when you're serving it.

Cook the noodles according to instructions. Serve soup with noodles, Cilantro, Lime, or anything else you enjoy with this type of soup. Serves 4-6 people. I think. :P

The Shoveler, Alec Baldwin, that chick from ER

The Cooler has the Shoveler from Mystery Men aka that Guy from Fargo as a severely depressed guy whose bad luck oozes out on other people and works in Baldwin's casino to "cool" the hot tables. He falls in love with the ER chick and his luck changes. I really don't know what to make of this movie. I really enjoyed it. It made me want to know what happened next and the acting was good. What's bothering me about this movie? I dunno. I'll prob watch more movies with the Shoveler and maybe actually know his real name.

Adaptation, The Upside of Anger, and Sin City

Charlie Kaufman does some crazy soul searching in this movie that makes you appreciate his crazy mind but also makes you wish you spent your time doing something else like watching anime... about BREAD.

I still don't forgive Joan Allen for being in Ethan Frome. Everyone who was in that movie should die horrible deaths in the rest of their films. Like that british guy who was qui gon. But alas... this was a pretty darned good movie... one that I can actually recommend to my coworkers for its... how do you say it... more mature nature. Mature as in senior mature... not boobies mature.

Now Sin City's got boobies. Lots of them. Definitely for people who like melodramatic eye candy... and violence. Lots of violence. Definitely a dvd worthy movie. But yeah I can understand how one can not appreciate it because it's definitely a guy's movie. Did I mention that it has lots of boobies?

Streetcar Named Desire

One cannot help but think of how severely fucked up this movie would have been if it were made today, regardless of the original play. Worth watching for its influence and for its milestone...ness. Oh yeah. that chick from gone with the wind is a whore.

7 days... 5 books

Holy crap go read "Storm Front" by Jim Butcher. NOW.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

An intriguing movie that makes you know that something's just not right from the start. You go through the whole thing expecting to get fucked over right at the very end. This movie plays through all the angles... phychoanalytic crap... fate.... fuck fate man... just go with what is cuz just sometimes what is that is right now if the best fucking thing you could possibly have. Don't fucking listen to what I'm saying just go watch the movie.

Ichiban

My favorite japanese place in the St. Louis Area. It's located behind the TGI Friday's on 270 and Olive. However, a crap load of their stuff reminds me of Korean food. The rolls are good, the udon is good. Everything's good :P That and it just simply looks good. Go there now!

Words of wisdom

Don't pick your nose and take a shit at the same time. There's a pretty damned good chance you can get a nose bleed.