I have been eating like a pregnant woman

I ate like a pregnant woman yesterday and the day before.

Sunday was a real throwback to my college days: I dusted my house and ate a late lunch consisting of a salad, picante chicken Ramen noodles, and some more deep-fried peanuts. I felt nauseous and had a headache. Then, for dinner, I had pizza, bread sticks, and two more salads. And I felt better.

Yesterday (Monday), I had a garlic bagel on my way to the office, some Andy Capp's Hot Fries at around 10 am, a Kashi Tuscan Veggie Bake for lunch, then a "hungry size" bag of pretzels, then a snickers bar. Dinner was Morningstar Farms simulated buffalo wings, followed by two leftover pancakes from Saturday morning. I felt nauseous and had a headache. Then I went to the grocery store and only bought healthy snacks for the rest of the week, like carrots, celery and roasted red chili pepper hummus.

This is why I didn't review the top-secret Canadian Doritos I recently picked up in Toronto.

This is a picture of a small piece of double-chocolate cheesecake with some gold flakes on it. It was served to me on a train from Toronto to Windsor, Ontario.



Sorry.

Homebrewing adventures: Pale chocolatey stout part three -- Bottling day!

I have to confess something. Last week, when I wrote that I was never going to write about homebrewing on a Tuesday, I was lying. I have a bunch of really good excuses too! Plus, I got an email yesterday saying something sure to stimulate the arteries was shipped to my house and it will definitely make up for this.

But what's more important is that 49 bottles of pale kinda chocolatey stout are now carbonating in bottles in a basement in Redford, Michigan. The best part is that the beer smells like Count Chocula. A non-carbonated room-temperature taste test indicates a mild chocolatey, sort of creamy flavor with very little hop bitterness. If our calculations are right, it's around 6% alcohol. Oh and we're probably going to call it Count Chocustout.

Sanitize your bottles (no twist-offs!), bottling bucket, racking cane, bottling wand, etc. Properly sanitizing everything is a huge pain in the ass and wastes tons of our precious time takes patience and is a very important step!


Syphon the beer from the carboy into the bottling bucket, which in our case is the "deluxe" fermenter. See how much beer you can spill on the floor.


Here's the bottling wand. It has a flimsy valve in the bottom that likes to stick, giving you more opportunities to spill beer on the floor. It's also nice because your hands will smell like beer for about 12 hours after you use this.


The bottling wand in action. Pretty exciting. Leave 1.5 inches or so of air at the top of the bottle when filling it.


Cap your bottles with this device that looks sort of like a Snood character with long arms. Make sure that you've sanitized your caps and you have more caps available than bottles in case some of them get messed up.


Take a little sample while you're at it.


Look for a review of my own beer in the coming weeks.

Fan art! Wacky Wednesday bonus edition.

Upon reading Nate's Plate for the first time, Tom, my office's design director, found himself inspired. And probably hungry. Then, this happened:

Thanks, Tom! To my thousands of loyal readers, feel free to send me more pictures of personified food.

On the divine pleasures of the chocolate pastry

There are times in our lives when we owe a little treat to ourselves and this morning was one of those times.

I had to wake up at an unreasonable hour today to get to work extra early. I typically need about two hours before I can eat in the morning, but when I wake up early, I am hungry right away. As I piloted my Saturn (soon to be for sale) across Oakland County, I realized I only had one choice for breakfast: To stop at the local Panera for a chocolate pastry.



Here is the seldom-seen underside. This may look like the profile of the worst hamburger imaginable, but no. That brown is pure chocolate stock. And look -- It's giving you a slight, coy, "c'mere" grin.

"Put me in your mouth," it says.

I popped this baby in the microwave for 12 seconds so it was warm but instantly consumable and I was briefly transported to a world far far away from writing about Dodge's NASCAR endeavors.

The chocolate pastry takes the extreme boredom of croissant consumption and inverts it using a chocolate rod. You owe one to yourself.