Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Taco + Pie = Yum.
If I think of Mexico, chances are that I think of their best export: the taco. Views on the soft vs. hard vs. fajita (prounounced fah-hee-tah vs. pronounced fah-j-eye-tah will not be covered...) notwithstanding, tacos rock. They're meaty, spicy, cover most food groups (including salt) and are tasty. So when I was at Loblaws yesterday and I saw this Old El Paso "Soft Taco Bake", I was initially confused. "Tacos don't come in a pan," I thought, confused. But lo, I have been converted. This "taco pie" as it were, is really really really good. Basically it's just layers of tortilla with beef + the packaged seasoning mix + packaged cheese goo stacked on top of each other and then baked. Quite simply, this is amazing. My only caveats are that a) it tastes a lot like Hamburger Helper, and b) the cheese is basically that vaseline-y stuff that everyone knows Chris and I like on our nachos, but everyone else abhors. To work around this, I will attempt to make a "from scratch" taco pie. I'm gonna do basically the same thing, but use real cheese (with my handy dandy rotary cheese grater that grates cheese like a mofo but is a pain to clean without a dishwasher) and real spices. I am as of yet unsure as to which spices to use right now though. Possibly I'll check the 'net and see if there's anything worthwhile out there to spark my creativity. I'll likely end up dumping a bunch of money on spices that will never see the light of day, but whatever. To reiterate: try this taco pie now. Either make it yourself if you're on your own (it feeds about 2, provided you like it, plus it's easy to make. if you can handle the aforementioned hamburger helper, you can make taco pie) or get your mom to make it for you (provided she will ignore all the probably-not-so-good chemicals that are likely present in the cheese) if you don't.
On games, books and things.
On games, I have a couple of things to say. One, I really hope the Far Cry demo is worth it, because I'm trying to download it over BitTorrent and it's going dismally slow. Only about 500MB, but that's still a long time when it's only moving at 13Kb/s. Two, Zuma ate my soul. Seriously, I was playing this last week until the trial period ended, and after I uninstalled it I felt all weird. Kind of empty on the inside... Well, not really, but that game is far too good to be one of those Popcap games. It's like Bejewelled, only replace the jewels with a marble-snorting stone frog. You have to shoot the marbles at other marbles that are rolling towards the sun-god's mouth. I realize that might sound odd, but it's really deceptively fun. Also, it's not just me. Tycho over at Penny Arcade! was saying how good Zuma was a while ago, so if you trust him more than you trust me with regards to game taste, you can feel more easy about wanting to try it. Give it about 5 minutes, and if you're ever going to be hooked, you will be.
On books, on the other hand, I'm currently reading Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan. It's really quite interesting, provided you don't mind books that make you (GASP!) learn!!!. It chronicles the evolution of human intelligence, and consists of a lot of talk about what the brain does and how it came to do that. Some interesting things posed so far (I'm only less than halfway through):
- Dolphins might be able to "spell" in sonic shapes. It's theorized that the clicks and whistles they make and that we don't understand may be shaping out what the dolphin/whale is referring to with sound. So if a dolphin sees a shark on his sonar, he can tell other dolphins about the shark by making the same sonar pattern that a dolphin would see if they saw the shark. Like rebusses in sound or something.
- The condition the dude from Memento has actually exists. There has been specifically a patient who has said his life is like living a new day from next to next, as if in a fog. He can't remember anything at all though, as opposed to knowing everything up to the start of his condition. Another patient had brain damage and could neither smell nor feel pain. Apparantly he walked across the superheated metal deck of a cruise ship and had to be told that his feet were charring because he literally didn't notice.
- If you wonder why there aren't any intelligent non-human primates (ie. Bobo the super-genius chimpanzee), it's thought that we killed them. Not now, but back when there were still Neanderthals, Cro-magnon, Homo habilis and the like. I guess paleantological (sp??) evidence is showing that we might have killed them off in some form of natural selection.
Do not support Apple.
You might come to the conclusion that the Earth is several billion years old (and so spherical!) and that man might have actually evolved. I mean really!
Do people really believe this stuff? Full article.
Also, I don't know how many of you liked LEGO as a kid, but I really did. Which is why this site kicks so much ass. Almost every LEGO blueprint ever made, especially all the really tricky space ones. My personal favorite is the "Deep Freeze Defender" - an ice planet spaceship that had about a kajillion parts, had hidden components and could break apart and reform like Voltron or something. Friend of mine had it, but his Mom threw out the instructions and that was the end of it. Not anymore! Also, most of the plans let you search Ebay.com and other sites for that LEGO set, so if you feel all weepy and nostalgic and want to build the Space Police Space Snooper or the Ninja Fortress again, you can see if you can buy it for dirt cheap!
Lastly, check out this guy. He has a show on Food Network called "Good Eats" and it's really cool. Combination of pop culture, decent cooking, kitchen trivia and tasty food! Not for everyone, but I like it. If only I could afford his cookbook and his book on kitchen tools... ¶ 4:57 p.m.
If I think of Mexico, chances are that I think of their best export: the taco. Views on the soft vs. hard vs. fajita (prounounced fah-hee-tah vs. pronounced fah-j-eye-tah will not be covered...) notwithstanding, tacos rock. They're meaty, spicy, cover most food groups (including salt) and are tasty. So when I was at Loblaws yesterday and I saw this Old El Paso "Soft Taco Bake", I was initially confused. "Tacos don't come in a pan," I thought, confused. But lo, I have been converted. This "taco pie" as it were, is really really really good. Basically it's just layers of tortilla with beef + the packaged seasoning mix + packaged cheese goo stacked on top of each other and then baked. Quite simply, this is amazing. My only caveats are that a) it tastes a lot like Hamburger Helper, and b) the cheese is basically that vaseline-y stuff that everyone knows Chris and I like on our nachos, but everyone else abhors. To work around this, I will attempt to make a "from scratch" taco pie. I'm gonna do basically the same thing, but use real cheese (with my handy dandy rotary cheese grater that grates cheese like a mofo but is a pain to clean without a dishwasher) and real spices. I am as of yet unsure as to which spices to use right now though. Possibly I'll check the 'net and see if there's anything worthwhile out there to spark my creativity. I'll likely end up dumping a bunch of money on spices that will never see the light of day, but whatever. To reiterate: try this taco pie now. Either make it yourself if you're on your own (it feeds about 2, provided you like it, plus it's easy to make. if you can handle the aforementioned hamburger helper, you can make taco pie) or get your mom to make it for you (provided she will ignore all the probably-not-so-good chemicals that are likely present in the cheese) if you don't.
On games, books and things.
On games, I have a couple of things to say. One, I really hope the Far Cry demo is worth it, because I'm trying to download it over BitTorrent and it's going dismally slow. Only about 500MB, but that's still a long time when it's only moving at 13Kb/s. Two, Zuma ate my soul. Seriously, I was playing this last week until the trial period ended, and after I uninstalled it I felt all weird. Kind of empty on the inside... Well, not really, but that game is far too good to be one of those Popcap games. It's like Bejewelled, only replace the jewels with a marble-snorting stone frog. You have to shoot the marbles at other marbles that are rolling towards the sun-god's mouth. I realize that might sound odd, but it's really deceptively fun. Also, it's not just me. Tycho over at Penny Arcade! was saying how good Zuma was a while ago, so if you trust him more than you trust me with regards to game taste, you can feel more easy about wanting to try it. Give it about 5 minutes, and if you're ever going to be hooked, you will be.
On books, on the other hand, I'm currently reading Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan. It's really quite interesting, provided you don't mind books that make you (GASP!) learn!!!. It chronicles the evolution of human intelligence, and consists of a lot of talk about what the brain does and how it came to do that. Some interesting things posed so far (I'm only less than halfway through):
- Dolphins might be able to "spell" in sonic shapes. It's theorized that the clicks and whistles they make and that we don't understand may be shaping out what the dolphin/whale is referring to with sound. So if a dolphin sees a shark on his sonar, he can tell other dolphins about the shark by making the same sonar pattern that a dolphin would see if they saw the shark. Like rebusses in sound or something.
- The condition the dude from Memento has actually exists. There has been specifically a patient who has said his life is like living a new day from next to next, as if in a fog. He can't remember anything at all though, as opposed to knowing everything up to the start of his condition. Another patient had brain damage and could neither smell nor feel pain. Apparantly he walked across the superheated metal deck of a cruise ship and had to be told that his feet were charring because he literally didn't notice.
- If you wonder why there aren't any intelligent non-human primates (ie. Bobo the super-genius chimpanzee), it's thought that we killed them. Not now, but back when there were still Neanderthals, Cro-magnon, Homo habilis and the like. I guess paleantological (sp??) evidence is showing that we might have killed them off in some form of natural selection.
Do not support Apple.
You might come to the conclusion that the Earth is several billion years old (and so spherical!) and that man might have actually evolved. I mean really!
The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don't advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an "Open Source" license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, "lickable" buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism.
Do people really believe this stuff? Full article.
Also, I don't know how many of you liked LEGO as a kid, but I really did. Which is why this site kicks so much ass. Almost every LEGO blueprint ever made, especially all the really tricky space ones. My personal favorite is the "Deep Freeze Defender" - an ice planet spaceship that had about a kajillion parts, had hidden components and could break apart and reform like Voltron or something. Friend of mine had it, but his Mom threw out the instructions and that was the end of it. Not anymore! Also, most of the plans let you search Ebay.com and other sites for that LEGO set, so if you feel all weepy and nostalgic and want to build the Space Police Space Snooper or the Ninja Fortress again, you can see if you can buy it for dirt cheap!
Lastly, check out this guy. He has a show on Food Network called "Good Eats" and it's really cool. Combination of pop culture, decent cooking, kitchen trivia and tasty food! Not for everyone, but I like it. If only I could afford his cookbook and his book on kitchen tools... ¶ 4:57 p.m.
