Grip & Sip. Slow Your Roll. Extreme Relaxation: A guest column

Here's a guest column by Travis, the man who brought us the mystery sandwich.

This is a food blog, so I’m not going to waste your time ranting about the social and cultural consequences of glamorizing the recreational use of cough syrup. There are plenty of articles that do just that and I couldn’t care less if Lil’ Wayne openly drinks codeine. Provided he never tries to make another rock album, he can do whatever he wants (love you, Weezy).

Drank and Sippin Syrup are two relatively new products marketed as ‘the anti-Red Bull,’ a drink to calm and relax an increasingly stressed-out public. Suffering from a bit of anxiety myself, I was excited to find that 7-Eleven stores started carrying Drank. I bought a can on a particularly hungover Sunday morning a couple of months ago. The cashier warned me not to ‘drive on that stuff,’ but a visit to the parents was in order. My initial thought was that the taste was not unlike a light grape soda mixed with a little potpourri. Surprisingly good, actually.



I finished the can in a few minutes, not really considering the possible effects. By the time I arrived at the ‘rents I was overcome by a buzz similar to that of a waning weed high. I stared at the refrigerator at length before realizing the bottle of water I was looking for was right in front of me. I took a three-hour nap. The can promised 'extreme relaxation,' but I might refer to the effect as 'mild anesthesia.'

I’ve had Drank a few times since then. If you’re feeling stressed or looking for a good night’s sleep, it’s a nice occasional treat. I wouldn’t suggest drinking it every night, however, as one of its main ingredients is the same stuff your brain uses to tell your body when it’s nighttime. Probably don’t want to mess around with that too much.

In the other corner we have Sippin Syrup, a ‘beverage’ created in the same vein as Drank—same color, same philosophy, same inextricable link to cough syrup and southern rap. However, the discrepancy in quality between the two products is evident from the second you uncap the Syrup. I was blown away by the stench of bum wine as a good friend pleaded with me not to drink it. ‘IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE,’ I insisted. The night is a bit of a blur after that.



As I write this, a half-empty bottle sits on the table next to me, topped off with vague memories of headache and restlessness. Sippin Syrup tasted exactly how it smelled and it was only consumable small sips. It was more viscous than Drank. It didn’t make me any calmer and I’m pretty sure I forgot how to work the TV at some point.

I was given fair warning and ignored it. ‘Don’t drink that, it has to be full of arsenic. I want to vomit just thinking about it.’ Don’t repeat my mistake. If you want to experiment with these so-called relaxation beverages, make it Drank. Better yet, crush up a couple Benadryl in a glass of grape soda and achieve the same effect.

Russ has amazing lunches

What better way to return to Nate's Plate than by letting my friend Jordan do my work for me? I cannot escape Jordan. I met her while "interning" at Found Magazine. Then, she got a job across the street from the coffee shop I was known to frequent. Now, she works at the same fancy advertising agency as me. This means she also works with Russ, the man who brought us fried mung beans and sunberries. This makes Russ the most-featured man in Nate's Plate history. Jordan actually sits next to Russ and has noticed something about his lunches: They are amazing.

Dear Nate’s Plate readers,

I would like to tell you about Russ. He sits next to me and his lunches are amazing.

Sometimes I bring a sandwich. I feel rather proud of myself, because I made it. I put the condiment on the bread and it has at least two elements to it (a meat and a cheese). Sometimes, if it’s a ham sandwich, I will mix mayonnaise and Honeycup mustard. Then I feel like I am the greatest.

But this kind of satisfaction would never be enough for Russ, whose lunches come in at least three different containers. I asked him if he ever just eats a sandwich.

“On rare occasion, yeah,” he said. “Not often, though … I’m a huge fan of Zingerman’s sandwiches and that sort of stuff, but it’s hard to recreate that at home.”

Well la dee dah.

He claims that it’s because his dad bought some too-skinny bread when he was a kid and his sandwiches were always falling apart, but I don’t buy it.

I think that he just likes to rub it in my face that he gets to eat lunches like this one:


This lunch consists of homemade latkes, a delicious-looking homemade cookie bar of some sort, and a bean concoction that smells like a warm haven from the doldrums of winter.

This is my lunch:


This lunch consists of Meijer generic goldfish-like crackers, sugar-free hot chocolate, and lip gloss. And that isn’t even the original hot chocolate; I reconstituted the dregs on the bottom by adding more hot water.

Look at him, sitting at his desk by the window, smugly enjoying his satisfying bean concoction (that was quite possibly cooked by his wife, who does yoga but is not a vegetarian (update 06/2010: she IS). GOD, is there anything in Russ’s life that isn’t perfect?):

My friend has crepes!

My colleague Euphenia, who comes to us from Hong Kong, is always showing up at work with delicious food she dreamed up herself, or found in some local restaurant I haven't even heard of. She used to work in our Chicago office, so it's fitting that she'd write a lil review about Icosium Kafe on Not For Tourists.

Check out her review. It might come in handy in the land where I first saw fixed-gear bikes and learned how uptight warehouse-party-throwing hipsters can really be!

The 7-11 Mutant Berry Slurpee: A guest post

On Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 10:12 p.m., my friend Mike "tweeted" about wanting to know why 7-11 would create a Slurpee flavor called "Mutant Berry." I suggested that he review it for Nate's Plate and he agreed. I quickly forgot about this until last Friday when he asked for my email address so he could send me his review. I assume he got to sample the frozen treat at work since he photographed it next to a fax machine and he doesn't seem to be the kind of guy who owns a fax machine. What we have here is more of a sneak preview about the consequences of this concoction, which happens to be neon orange -- a color unaffiliated with any berry having regular genetics. Also noteworthy is the fact that he would "never!!!!" drink it again.



Armageddon is upon us. Why in God's name is 7-11 selling a Slurpee flavor titled "Mutant Berry"?? In a world of "EXTREME" beverages at my disposal with contents like Guarana (which NO ONE knows what it is, but I thought it's what you call bat shit), why would someone want to "mutate" a berry? The title of said drink is, in fact, accurate; it is like no flavor known to the natural world. It is a pomegranate / cherry / lime fusion that I can only describe as "the end of the world ... in a cup." 20 ounces of a frosty beverage that would scare Moses himself right out of his sandals. This is not a good sign of things to come ...



Get on down to 7-11 and let me know what you think. -Nate

Burger King Burger Shots (A guest post from down Texas way)

One day my friend Matt, resident of Austin, Texas and finalist in the High School Lunch Memories Contest, sent me an "instant message" to tell me that he was surprised that I had not yet reviewed Burger King's Burger Shots. I replied that I was also surprised and I thought that he would also be a good man for the job. He agreed, so here you have it. By the way, this is Matt:


Living about a block away from a Burger King, and being without cable television, I first learned about BK Burgershots from the illustrious block letter marquee fixed underneath the Burger King sign. I initially envisioned some horrid burger-in-a-cup scenario; online research revealed these burgershots to be the far tamer threat of bite-size burgers. Burger King is no stranger to questionable names: witness the Angry Whopper or Croissan'wich. An infrequent fast-food consumer, I am nonetheless drawn in by all things gimmicky, and I knew I needed some of these tiny sandwiches.


Little Lady Laura and I stopped in for lunch today. I ordered a six-pack of burgershots and a four piece chicken tender, she ordered a whopper. We both got fittingly tiny plastic cups for water. The flat panel television was playing Disney's High School Musical, keeping up the theme of digestable, disposable flash-in-the-pan pop garbage. But here, I'm being too hard on the little guys.


They were perfectly adequate miniature representations of the standard BK burger: meat, cheese, two pickles, ketchup and mustard. The patties featured the ubiquitous grill-marks (I think Burger King would put char marks on the soda, if they could), belying the microwave prep I see every time I order here. One disturbing fact: the burgers are connected, joined at the patty, and the box encourages a "tear-and-share" method of dispersal, as if you and and a friend were only really hungry enough for 1 oz of meat a piece.


The box/product appeared to be sponsored by Heinz Ketchup, apparently "the only ketchup fit for a king". The paragraph on the other side of the box stated that these mini burgers were "designed to move", though I'm not sure how much more handy or aerodynamic they are than a regular hamburger, especially with their siamese-twin attachment. As a comparison, I snuck a few bites of the Little Lady's Whopper while she was in the restroom, and the cornocupia of veggies, sauces, and more substantial meat beat the pants off the burgershots. They were never intended for this sort of competition, though, and for what they are they elicited a not-condescending "meh" from both the Lady and myself.

Again, perfectly adequate carbon copies of the standard hamburger. Not really enough of a taste sensation for me to order again, though I am keen to try the breakfast shots. What can I say? I'm a sucker for tiny hamburgers. One final note: these are not sliders. Sliders sometimes have greasier buns and "special" sauce, but they always have grilled onions, which were sadly missing from the burgershots. This is what separates them from White Castle or the immortal Bates Hamburgers of greater Wayne and Livonia.

The Back to Basics Egg ‘N Muffin Toaster: A guest column

Once upon a time during a scooter rally, I drunkenly walked my Vespa to my friends Amber and Other Nate’s house after the bar closed. I am normally one to retire early, but I was chasing a girl with the same destination so I felt that I could forego sleep for a bit. Regardless, I surely needed something to eat, as I always do after the bar, and Amber did not disappoint. She immediately fired up THE EGGWAVE – a magical device I had been hearing about for some time – and began dispensing delicious breakfast sandwiches to all of her guests at 3am. I could introduce all of the benefits of such a machine, but Amber (who runs http://skinnydudes.blogspot.com/, which features ME this week) covers all of them.

Would you trust this woman?


I sure hope not. She puts her dog in the mailbox for Christ’s sake. This blue eyed, dog abusing gal does have one thing right, though. She is Paula Deen of the Food Network and she’s latched on to quite possibly mankind’s greatest invention: The Back to Basics Egg ‘N Muffin Toaster.

First, The Back to Basics Egg ‘N Muffin Toaster has a horrible name. That shit is way too long. TBTBENMT is not a handy abbreviation. Inspired by this David Cross comedy bit my co-workers and I have dubbed this machine THE EGGWAVE and its delicious output is known as AN EGGWAVE. This is not to be confused with the established yet inferior product going by the same name. Stay with me here people, or I’ll sick Paula Deen on you.


If The Eggwave had been around when I was in college, there is a pretty good chance that I would have never graduated…or at least never graduated weighing less than 250lbs. I would have sat in my dorm room, quietly eating Eggwaves all day long. I would have been fat, but sweet Jesus, I would have been happy. Every college student must have an Eggwave. Actually, every person in the world must have an Eggwave. Jot that down on your Christmas list.

The Eggwave is also a completely unnecessary invention. One could easily make an egg sandwich without the aid of this contraption. However, the experience would not rule nearly as much as putting all of your fixins in one fancy robot, hitting a button, and commencing the twiddling of the thumbs for approximately 3 minutes while your most delectable breakfast sandwich cooks. You see, The Eggwave has some highly advanced technology going on inside of its robot body. It works very hard to ensure that all of your sandwich components are done at the SAME TIME. You can stop sweating bullets as you scramble to push the toaster button down at the precise moment while you’re cooking your egg, trying to time it so the egg is done at the same time as the toast, but always ALWAYS failing. The Eggwave knows your pain. It has thought about that shit already & has moved on to solving the current economic crisis. So no worries man, you are guaranteed to have the most enjoyable breakfast experience of your life – no effort required.

But maybe you don’t want an Eggwave for breakfast. Maybe you’re a fool and you think you’re too good for an incredibly delicious & personally perfected sandwich to kick-start your day. Well, I can almost guarantee that at 3am after you stumble and / or drunken drive home from the bar, an Eggwave is going to be the most delicious thing that you sink your teeth into. Never again will you be a victim to the tyranny of McDonalds and their fascist “No Breakfast after 10:30am” rules. An egg McMuffin – anytime you want it – only better than McDonalds because you can make it with REAL FOOD – not processed food product.

Here are my top 5 Eggwave fixins – in order of deliciousness.

1. Bacon – obviously. Bacon rules. The Eggwave will not cook raw bacon or any other raw meats. The Eggwave is not magic. The Eggwave will, however, heat up any pre-cooked meats you put it its compartment. You can take 2 full sized pieces of bacon – break that shit up into 4 pieces, and count down the minutes until those 4 pieces and their egg, muffin & cheese friends are in your trap.
   
2. Swat Sauce from the Fly Trap in Ferndale – hot sauce is a requirement for my Eggwaves. The best I’ve found is from a wonderful diner in Fabulous Ferndale. Swat Sauce from the Fly Trap may have magic as one of their top ingredients. It is that good. Of course, you also need to pepper your Eggwave if you want it to be at its most delicious.
   
3. Croissants – Usually, I stick to the standard English Muffin (of which, I have to say that Bays is my favorite brand, followed by Pepperidge Farm 100% Whole Wheat English Muffins). But when I really want to reward myself I get a giant Croissant from Costco, set The Eggwave on the lowest toast setting (very important – for English muffins I crank it all the way up) and brace myself for the flaky, buttery goodness that I am about to experience. It’s my way of telling myself “Hey, way to not kick that homeless guy on the way to work today. You deserve something special”.
   
4. Morning Star Veggie Sausage – As disgusting as this is, I kind of love McDonalds sausage patties. It’s the only thing I kind of miss about not ever going to McDonald’s breakfast anymore. There’s something about the mystery spices in their meat product that I have yet to find in any frozen sausage I’ve tried. So until I rob a McDonalds at gunpoint and declare that "all of their sausage are belong to me," I’m sticking to Morning Star Veggie Sausage Patties as my “meat” of choice. The only problem with this is that the sausage does not cover the span of the egg sandwich. They cover more height than they do surface area – however, this problem is solved within a few chomps. The sausage smashes down, shifts, and never disappoints.
   
5. Provolone Cheese – I’ve tried several different cheeses, and provolone is pretty much the best. Always. On everything.
   

I could seriously go on. I dream of Eggwaves in my sleep. In my dreams, they have little wings and cartoon eyes. I jump on trampolines and bite them out of the sky. The Eggwave has made my life, and my dreams, better. Trust me. You want this kitchen gadget more than anything you’ve ever wanted in your life.

The mystery sandwich: A guest column

For the unfamiliar, Zingermans is a deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan where you can get a delicious sandwich for no less than $10. I have only had one of their sandwiches once. It was the best sandwich I have ever consumed, but I the interest from the small loan I took out to pay for it is killing me. Recently, my friend Travis proposed an ingenious plan: Write a guest entry about a FREE mystery sandwich from Zingermans. Here are the hummus-drenched fruits of his labor.

Pre-sandwich thoughts

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that my main motivation for writing this piece isn’t the fact that I’ll soon have a writing degree. I am not writing because I am trying to make this blog great, though this will almost certainly be a side effect of my presence here. My motivation, fair readers, is the prospect of getting to eat a very expensive sandwich for free.

I’ve often considered how great it must be to be a food critic. People hand you large sums of money to eat food and write about it. What a life! Granted, my food expertise extends only to those items you can order from inside a running vehicle, I’ve always thought I’d be a pretty good ‘food writer.’ Consider this a small manifestation of that dream. Or see it for what it is—a thinly veiled plot to get free food. Honestly,the last guest blogger spent, what, 89 cents writing his piece? A sandwich at Zingerman’s Delicatessen is like ten bucks. You think Nate foots the bill? Not a chance. Last time I got food with Nate, the cheap bastard found the one Taco Bell with a broken credit card machine and stuck everyone else with the bill. (Not my fault I can’t be troubled with petty cash – Nate).

Anyway, as I write this, I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the sandwich in question. For this column, I asked friend and fellow guest blogger Dan Smith to create a mystery sandwich for me to consume and write about. It is my job to guess the contents. There may be a scoring system …Who knows? Predictably, Dan didn’t come through, so his co-worker (and my roommate) Justin “Admiral” Nelson took up the task. There are just two criteria for this sandwich:

1. Must be vegetarian


2. Must be relatively palatable

The rest is left up to Mr. Nelson, who describes himself as “Your friendly neighborhood stoner.” This could be good or bad. I mean, who better to deliver a creative, flavorful masterpiece than a person with chronic munchies? On the other hand, he could just forget what he was supposed to do altogether and bring me a pound of bacon between two pieces of roast beef. He really does smoke that much weed. In fact, he called just now to see if I like spicy food. This should be very interesting. Also, I’m pretty sure the fact he called breaks the secrecy rule of the challenge, but I’d expect nothing less from a pot head of his caliber.

Analysis

Upon receiving the sandwich, I was fairly certain Justin had just wrapped a phone book in some Zingerman’s paper and doused it in sauce. It was so heavy … and sort of smelly. Fortunately, he hadn’t and my self-imposed I want to be really, really hungry when this sandwich gets here fasting was about to come to an end.

A cursory glance revealed what one would expect in a fancy vegetarian sandwich—tomato, spinach, onion, cheese, etc. Without much thought I dove right in. “Pretty tasty.” Second bite. “This is getting pretty spicy.” As I made my way though the sandwich, I began to wonder what the hell he did to the bread. It was toasted and reddish in color, so I assumed the heat was trapped in its toasted goodness. I really enjoy spicy food, and this was right at the boundary of what’s enjoyable and being a little too hot. Perhaps the heat didn’t mesh well with the rest of the sandwich, as I’ve never quite enjoyed the combination of raw mushrooms and fire before. All I can say is that something about the spiciness was unsettling. Moving on…

The cheese was phenomenal. I remember feeling intrigue at a friend (certified cheese expert, no less) telling me that a cheese exists that does not melt. This sandwich contained this wonderful cheese. (So did the infamous TACO SUB, apparently – Nate). It was a bit rubbery at first, but the flavor is more than good enough to allow this. I was told it’s called halloumi, but it tasted like an exceptionally thick, lukewarm chunk of mozzarella. That doesn’t sound incredibly appealing, but trust me. If I wore a monocle and drove an old-timey car I would eat halloumi everyday ($20/lb? Get out of here). The combination of the cheese and other ingredients somehow made for the perfect sandwich. It’s like all the imperfections I mentioned sort of banded together to give my tongue a giant rainbow hug.

All in all, I’d say the experience was a good one. While not eating until about 10PM sort of sucks, when you get a thirty-dollar (Justin’s estimate) sandwich out of the deal, it’s pretty worth it. Justin was supposed to reveal the contents of the sandwich to me after I ate and had a guess, but he never really got around to it. I guessed quite a few of the ingredients correctly based on sight, and I later learned the insane spiciness was the result of adding Clancy’s hot sauce to hummus. I guess the whole “I’m doing this for the free sandwich” thing came true, as I’ve never actually been told exactly what I ate. So long, suckers.

One man's take on the shrimp system: A guest column

Dear dedicated readers, I hate to repeat a subject so early on but my pal John Thornton has collected his thoughts on my shrimp system and on the joys of shrimp and white wine. I figured it's appropriate to share with you since he and I are once again off to Shrimp Lovers' Tuesday tonight. Here it is, unedited, in the words of the observer.

John Thornton on the shrimp system

It must've been about ought five or six when I was first introduced to Nate's shrimp system. I was a loud-mouthed young buck in those days, veins full of piss and vinegar, thought I knew everything there was to know about eating the various shellfish, including shrimp. Nasty Nate (as we called him those days) invited me to accompany him to "Shrimp Lovers Tuesday" at the local Red Lobster. Owing to my fondness for the Cheddar Bay Biscuits, I agreed.

What I witnessed next changed my dining self forever. When our shrimp arrived, I sat in awe and watched a seasoned master practice his craft. Nate's efficiency of dissecting the little crustaceans was marvelous. Each move of the fork methodical, not a single wasted slice of the knife. It was as if he was channeling Black Flag's "The First Four Years" into an eating system. It was easily the densest batch of jams I had ever seen.

This was my introduction to "Nate Rogers' Shrimp System." Each time I dine at Red Lobster, I use this system.

*Cue "Like a Rock" by Bob Seger*