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Uncategorized

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies with Maple Cinnamon Glaze

The recipe that this article points to no longer exists, but there’s an equally good recipe for Maple Bacon Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies here!

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies with Maple Cinnamon Glaze

“Muffin”, the author of the blog Ooh, You Tasty Little Things… (a blog that since has been closed), wrote:

This whole thing started the other night when my husband and I were having a conversation about what foods could and could not be made better with the addition of bacon.

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies with Maple Cinnamon Glaze

You can see the end result of said conversation in the photos that accompany her article, Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies with Maple Cinnamon Glaze, some of which are reproduced here.

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies with Maple Cinnamon Glaze

She says they taste good — and why not? She’s not the only person who’s mixed bacon and chocolate: consider the bacon chocolate bar created by Vosges, the gourmet chocolatier and heartily recommended by none other than supersexy celebrity chef Nigella Lawson.

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies with Maple Cinnamon Glaze

Luckily for those of us with brave culinary spirits, “Muffin” published the recipe for the cookies and the glaze. Who wants to try making a batch of these with me over the Chrismukkah break?

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Uncategorized

Poster of the Day

Rich Silverstein of Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners (the people behind the “Got Milk?” ad campaign) put together a series of posters that summarize the current U.S. Administration quite nicely — there’s one made up solely of names, one made up of events and the one below, made up of slogans that you should find both familiar and ruefully laughable:

“Haven’t We Had Enough?” poster from The Huffington Post
Click the image to see it at full size on its original page.
Found via my friend Miss Fipi Lele.

For more, see this article at The Huffington Post: Posterizing the Modern GOP.

Categories
funny It Happened to Me

Christmas and Crablice

Christmas gifts under the tree

I’ve picked up a number of new readers in the past couple of months, so I thought I’d showcase this little seasonal blast from the past. It’s an entry from 2002 titled The Best Christmas Present Ever, a tale of Christmas, crablice, friendship and the true spirit of Christmas. Be advised that the story has swearing and — as you might expect — crablice.

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Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Province Forces Popular Local Butcher Out of Business After 46 Years

Karl’s Butcher and Grocery logo

John Bowker of the Roncesvalles Village branch of the indie record store She Said Boom! informed me about this unfair development in Roncesvalles Village:

Today, the Toronto Star spent hours interviewing staff and customers at Karl’s Butchers and Grocery (105 Roncesvalles), which has sold fresh sausages on our street for 46 years. Karl’s has been forced out of business by the province.

In October, the provincial government decided to enforce a harsh, literal interpretation of the 2001 Food and Safety Quality Act. The Province took Karl’s out of the Yellow/Green inspection system operated by the City (where they passed every inspection), and placed it under provincial regulations. According to these regulations, Karl’s is now considered a “manufacturing plant,” because it makes its own sausages. These sausages, which have helped make Roncesvalles famous, are prepared fresh in the store, unlike most sausages which are packaged and shipped from centralized plants.

Under the regulations, Karl’s is forced to pretend it is like some mass-production facility, forced to conform to a massive list of regulations that make little sense for a small, local business – even one dealing with raw meat. The province must even test the water every week, as if they were some rural factory taking water in from a local well. The province is simply incapable of distinguishing between a local butcher and a factory slaughterhouse, and a part of Roncesvalles is being destroyed as a result.

According to Walter Jarzabek of Karl’s, they decided they could not fight the province, and so they decided to close just before Christmas. A lot of local residents are upset. We should be too.

Unless the province can show how a local butcher like Karl’s poses a threat to public health, they should find a way to distinguish a business like Karl’s from the large factory slaughterhouses that are the Act’s intended target. Just because a sausage comes from a box out of a truck does not make it healthier, and it certainly doesn’t make it tastier. The public should have the choice to buy fresh sausages from a trusted and responsible butcher like Karl’s.

Categories
Geek

Here Comes Another Bubble

[This was cross-posted to Global Nerdy.]

Here Comes Another Bubble, which my fellow TSOT developer Adam showed me, is a song about the current “Web 2.0” bubble set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “laundry list” song about world events that took place during his lifetime, We Didn’t Start the Fire. Here’s the video for the song — I like the infographic that shows that Facebook’s valuation ($15 billion) is really close to that of the Ford Motor Company ($16.8 billion):

Categories
funny

Pleased to Meet You

Cat, meet Crawfish:

Cat “shaking hands” with a crawfish.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

If you need more “Cat meets Crawfish” action, this YouTube video should help:

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Uncategorized

How Do I Look? (Or: Paintings from “Understanding Human Behavior”)

Miss Fipi Lele sent me a couple of scans from a 1974 book titled Understanding Human Behavior: An Illustrated Guide to Successful Human Relationships, whose cover clearly marks it as a book from that era…

Cover of “Understanding Human Behavior” (1974)
The book should come with an explanation titled “Understanding this book’s cover”.

Here’s a painting in the book depicting the many ways a businessman is perceived, depending on the circumstances and who’s doing the perceiving (I added annotations):

Painting from “Understaning Human Behavior” depicting five ways a business is perceived
When I first saw this painting, I thought of the version in the upper left-hand corner as sober and all the others as varying degrees of drunk.

Here’s the text that accompanies the painting:

These five characters are studies of human personality, portraits of the many kinds of people we can be in a variety of situations. At the bottom is a man as he really is, but the other four figures circling around him show him in entirely different lights. Beginning at the lower left is the way his secretary sees him with a lecherous grin. That noble manly visage is how he imagines himself and the bland, unprepossessing creature is his wife’s perception. Last, downtrodden and ineffectual, is how he feels after confronting his boss.

Another set of paintings depict the different ways a husband a wife are perceived. Here’s the wife:

Paintings from “Understanding Human Behavior” depicting the different ways a wife is perceived
Desperate Housewives, summed in four paintings.

Here’s the husband:

Paintings from “Understanding Human Behavior” depicting the different ways a husband is perceived
Mid-life crisis in 3…2…1…

The best and most succinct review of the book comes from one “Bob” who says: “It’s more like a handbook on how to live a life of quiet desperation. With a few pictures of boobs in it.” Based on that, I might pick up this book if I ever stumble across it at a used bookstore.