Salad

  The other week I was in the mood for a salad. I don't usually make salads, mostly because they aren't microwaveable. I didn't have any of the ingredients so I went to the store and bought the following:

1. Macaroni & Cheese
2. Bacon

   It was great. I should make salads more often.

  It was a large salad, so I had some leftovers the next day. I added some green, non-meat, based product to it.

  This was also delicious.

Sandwich

  I made this sandwich a while back and was too lazy to upload the picture to my computer. I also don't really care about this blog. The sandwich has wheat bread, barbecue sauce, cheese, bacon (of course), six pieces of five-cheese ravioli, and a big chocolate chip cookie. I can't believe I ate the whole thing.

Tots

  In keeping with my theme to blog about things I eat, I present to you some tater tots I cooked the other night. Tater tots by themselves are somewhat boring, which is why I cooked them in a spiral. You might be thinking that I arranged them in the shape of an Ulam Spiral or a Fibonacci Spiral. If so, you are wrong. It's just a spiral of tater tots to make my otherwise boring existence that much nerdier.

  Next are a couple of microwaveable beef and bean burritos.

  If you are waiting for some interesting commentary about microwavable burritos, there is none. I was just sitting downstairs and wondering, "What is the most boring and lazy food I can prepare for myself?" Burritos.

Dieting

  I think I am going to just start blogging about food I eat.

  This first entry is a fine cuisine of fried cheese, also known as cheese sticks. It was consumed at the Roadhouse Grill in Ellensburg, WA. The cheese sticks were delicious, as is all fried cheese, but the presentation was amazing. What is that, a sushi plate? Very awesome.

  The next delicious item I would like to share with you is a double layer chocolate cake I made. If I was smart, which I am not, I would have documented the process. I started with a firm foundation brownies. In the middle is a layer of caramel. The top layer is just regular, boring, chocolate cake. I somehow wound up with two different types of chocolate frosting, so one is on the top and the other on the sides. I topped it off by shredding a Hershy's chocolate bar on top. I'm actually surprised that I, and all those who partook of this indulgence, are still alive. I'm sure it took a few years off of our lives, but it was oh so tasty. (Note: if you ever dare to dump a jar of caramel in your cake, be sure to concave the top of the bottom layer inward. Otherwise the caramel just leaks out and makes a gooey dipping sauce.)

 

  My amazing friend introduced me to a tasty snack of vanilla wafers and frosting. Weeks later I was at work and was really hungry. Like much of fat America, I work at a computer and did not really have the time to frost little vanilla wafers so I bought a box of strawberry pop-tarts and vanilla frosting. I then made a frosting sandwich using the pop tarts as the bread. Like everything I make, it was awesome.

  Finally, here is a picture of a cherry coke I drank a few weeks ago. I guess it's not the most exciting way to end this blog. But if you look in the back, you can see a little container of chocolate chips I brought in to snack on.

Scarf

I found this picture at an apparel store earlier tonight.

Except for the scarf, it has nothing to do with clothing.

("real good" is where bacon comes from.)

Nachos

For the Superbowl I opened up my wallet and prepared some super nacho dip.

The first ingredient, as in most of my experimental cooking, was a pack of bacon. I weaved it, placed it in a metal bowl, and baked it for a while. Being a man, I didn't time it. I just stuck it in the oven and eyed it every five minutes.

While the bacon was baking, I diced up another pack of bacon and cooked it up.

Once the bacon weave was done baking, I took it out and placed it in a clean bowl. (I drained all the grease out first.) The idea was that the bacon strips at the bottom were an edible prize, like the prize at the bottom of a cereal box. Just imagine, strips of bacon covered in all the runoff goo. Yummy.)

While the first pound of bacon was baking, and the second was cooking, I started heating up two cans of chili and two cans of cheese. (Yes, cans of cheese. I think you're supposed to use it for Broccoli Cheese soup or something, but I've never used it for anything except nachos and my regular glass of melted cheese in the morning.) Once it was warmed up and sufficiently gooey, I dumped it onto the bacon base.

Next, I added a giant container of sour cream.

I then added some decorative jalapenos and diced onions to the top.

Finally, like all good meals, I added the cooked pile of diced bacon to the center.

I lucked out with the bowl. It was the perfect size. The first few bites were nothing but chips covered in sour cream, but once we were able to dig down a couple of layers and everything started blending together, it was pretty darn good.

If you're curious, the bacon was 1740 calories, the chili was 1080 calories, and the cheese was 500 calories, for a grand total of 3320 calories. I ate about half of it and guests ate the other half. I intended to add some guacamole to it, but I forgot to buy it and I'm way too lazy to make my own guac.

There are some leftovers upstairs in my fridge, so tomorrow for breakfast I'm going to add some fried eggs and syrup on top of it.

Bacon

The other day I was inspired to cook a bacon wrapped steak. Mostly because I occasionally enjoy a serving of bacon. I started by making a bacon weave to wrap the steak in.

I then seasoned the steak with a long held secret blend of herbs and spices (it was some store bought steak seasoning) and placed the steak on the bacon.

 
Next, I swaddled the steak with the bacon and placed it in a foil lined pan. I set the oven to broil and placed the monstrosity on the middle rack.

 

Note: On broil, bacon cooks really fast. After a few minutes, the bacon started smoking so I flipped it over so the other side could cook. I soon had to remove the bacon because it was turning black and the steak was still bloody and uncooked.

 

This was the final result after I added some mashed potatoes and french style green beans. It was edible, but not the best meal I've prepared.

If I've learned anything, and I haven't, it's that I'm still not a very good cook. At least the bacon turned out well, and that's all that really matters.

Work

Recently I've been reading a lot of year end blogs describing the amazing adventures and events that shaped your lives in 2010. I wanted to do something similar, but:

a.) I'm too lazy to write a year in review
b.) Nobody cares
c.) I can't remember
d.) It wasn't that eventful
e.) All of the above
The correct answer is "e."

So instead, I leave you with these pictures of interesting things I did at work this year while my computer was busy, or I was bored.

 After my co-worker went home, I decorated her desk with a bunch of stuff I found in a plastic bin. This included a few dozen army men, matchbox cars, and ramps. I think the story behind this was that a Nascar race was interrupted by a race war of different colored army men. The pile up of cars at the end was tragic. Many good drivers were lost.

This is a spreadsheet I worked on that describes how to maximize Oreo cream while minimizing Oreo cookie intake. I was inspired by the idea that you could combine two oreos to make a double-stuff, two double-stuffs to make an quadruple-stuff, and so on. The conclusion I came to was that in a box containing 45 Oreo cookies, you could make a single 32-stuff, one octo-stuff, one quadruple stuff, one single stuff, and have 88 outsides left over. I don't remember double checking the math, nor do I care to do so, but feel free to. I also don't remember trying to make such an epic cookie. I strongly encourage you to do so.

We had an internet outage one day, and with a job that depends on the internet, it was very boring. We found a stack of phone books in the hallway to entertain us. What you see here is one of them that I ripped in half with my bare hands.

Favorite Music - 2010

Personally, this is my most interesting blog entry of the year. I analyzed my iTunes and iPod listening habits of the past year in Excel. You probably won't find it nearly as interesting as I did. Here are the results.

Top Play Counts of 2010

Rank	Song/Artist	Play Count
10	Won't Back Down - Eminem	47
9	If I Can't Have You - Kelly Clarkson	48
8	So Bad - Eminem	48
7	Almost Famous - Eminem	49
6	25 To Life - Eminem	50
5	Cinderella Man - Eminem	57
4	Not Afraid - Eminem	61
3	Already Gone - Kelly Clarkson	62
2	Cry - Kelly Clarkson	62
1	My Life Would Suck Without You - Kelly Clarkson	64

  No surprises here. Interestingly though, My Life Would Suck Without You was my number two played song of 2009, with an almost identical number of plays.

Top Played Albums of 2010

(This counts how many times songs were played from specific albums, not the count of times an album was listened to in its entirety.)

Rank	Album/Artist	Play Count
10	My December - Kelly Clarkson	135
9	My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West	138
8	Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette	184
7	The Eminem Show - Eminem	236
6	Breakaway - Kelly Clarkson	255
5	Across the Universe - Soundtrack	263
4	LOVE - The Beatles	266
3	Life In Cartoon Motion - Mika	308
2	All I Ever Wanted - Kelly Clarkson	426
1	Recovery - Eminem	595

If Kanye hadn't released his album so late in the year, it would have been much higher. It will probably be the number two most played in 2011, right behind Kelly Clarkson's new cd. I was very surprised by Mika's Life In Cartoon Motion being ranked so high. I guess I never skip his songs.

Top Play Counts of 2010

(This counts how many times an artist's songs were played. So artists with a large catalog who were played a little, or artists with a small catalog that were played a lot should appear.)

Rank	Artist	Play Count
10	Lady Gaga	219
9	Kanye West	276
8	Britney Spears	280
7	Various (Across the Universe)	290
6	Fiona Apple	295
5	Mika	375
4	The White Stripes	485
3	The Beatles	751
2	Kelly Clarkson	963
1	Eminem	1267

Weird, I really don't remember listening to Eminem's back catalog that much. It must have happened between the releases of Relapse and Recovery. While Lady Gaga is at number 10, it should be noted that I only have seven of her songs, two of which were added very late in the year. Adjusting the totals, her other five songs had an average of 40 plays each, which is a statistically very high.

Well that's all. 2010, was a year dominated by Eminem and Kelly Clarkson.

Time to reset the play counts.