Must be your district/particular school I graduated HS in 2000. I took a great "Non-western culture" class in high school that essentially a critical thinking/philosophy course.

 

I was tryin' to stick my King Don in Suzy Q's Ring Ding.




But that Twinkie surprised me and shoved a Devil Dog up my Yodel so I ended up with a Chocolate Mousse Ring Ding and SnoBalls.







Not what I was expecting but still pretty sweet.

 

The thought of all of those packaged blobs of flour and sugar makes me feel ill.

And I am *not* a picky eater / carb-hater.

 

 

I loved 'em when I was 12, but that was a long time ago.

--Ian

 

I just looked up the ingredients in a Yodel. You think that flour would be the first ingredient, right? Nope, it's fifth. After Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Shortening, Sugar, Corn Syrup and High Fructose Corn Syrup.

I am *not* a junk-food ****. My kitchen contains cream-gravy mix, sweetened cereals, frozen pizza, several different jams and jellies, premade frozen meatballs, pasta, english muffins, packaged au-gratin potatos, and all sorts of other things which violate current-generation food fads.

But the thought of those bland, dry, sickly-sweet little packaged confections just turns my stomach. I'd rather eat a White Castle hamburger.

 

Actually, I wouldn't expect flour to be first, by weight there's a lot more sugar and fat in a decent cake than there is flour. Sugar has about three times the density of flour. For example, a cake I often make for my kids' birthdays is Alton Brown's chocolate fudge cake. It's in one of his books (I'm Just Here For More Food), rather than the show, but someone posted it online here:

Family Tree-Eats: Alton Brown's Fudge Cake

Between the cake and the frosting, there's:

10.75 oz flour
13.5 brown sugar + 10 oz powdered sugar
3 eggs (about 6 oz total, of which 4 is fat)
8 + 4 oz butter for a total of 12, of which about 9 is fat
4 oz whipping cream (about a third fat, so another 1.5 oz here)
8 oz sour cream (15% fat, so another 1 oz)
Roughly another 1 oz each of sugar and fat in the chocolate

Rounding, that's 11 oz of flour, 25 oz of sugar, 17 oz of fat. So the Yodels have more sugar in them (at least 3x the sugar as flour), but the proportions aren't off all that badly.

That said, even if the proportions are right I'd much rather eat a cake made with brown sugar, butter, eggs, and cream than one made from shortening and corn syrup.

--Ian

 

White Castle Slider:
Bun: Enriched Bleached Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Corn Syrup, Soybean Oil, Contains 2% Or Less of: Yeast, Salt, Wheat Gluten, Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil, Corn Starch, Calcium Stearoyl Lactylate, Oat Fiber, Corn Syrup Solids, Diacetyl Tartaric Acid, Esters of Mono-Diglycerides, Guar Gum, Monoglycerides, Calcium Sulfate, Sodium Alginate, Monocalcium Phosphate, Ammonium Sulfate, Ascorbic Acid, Potassium Iodate, Azodicarbonamide, Calcium Peroxide, L-Cysteine Hydrochloride, Enzymes. Hamburger: Beef, Water, Dried Onion, Salt, Pepper. Contains Wheat.

 

Shows you what I know about cake.

Chalky. That's the word I was looking for. Those packaged cakes somehow manage to be simultaneously sticky and chalky, which is quite a feat.

And plastickey. That's how I'd describe the protective outer shell.





See, at least a White Castle hamburger contains approximately what you'd expect it to contain.

And, I'll be honest, as gross as they are, they're actually pretty tasty in small doses. Not that I'd make a meal out of them on anything resembling a regular basis, but I'll admit to having wolfed down a few over the years.


Sidebar:

There's a White Castle on 1st Ave @ 103rd st here in Manhattan. That restaurant literally defines the southern geographical border of the ghetto which is East Harlem. I **** you not, as soon as you pass that restaurant you're immediately surrounded by public housing, hair weaves lying on the street, adults riding BMX bikes, etc.

 

when I was a teenager, a friend had a job at hostess and one day he brought me a shopping bag full of ding dong boxes. they freeze well and contrary to joe's immediate revulsion, they are tasty. as long as you don't think or read about them too much.

unrelated: I made a shitload of ragu alla bolognese the other night. I have been craving it for weeks. I somehow blame Richard Hammond. propcat to all who understand why that might be.






^^ that pot is about a foot tall and the sauce is about 1/3 of it deep. it was still boiling down but there is a LOT left.

also boiling off a full bottle of wine and standing over the vapors too long is... not wise with a hangover.

 

IB pic hosting fail.

In Bologna there is no Bolognese.

 

Can't blame IB for this one. Looks like he directly pasted a URL from Google+.

 

god dammit, google changed their photos urls and now it doesn't work right.

 

Is it better to have too much work rather than not enough?

We've been steadily busy for years, but all of a sudden a mad rush of jobs came in and I said yes to all of them.

Currently it's just myself and 1 guy fulltime, with 2 part time helpers. As of right now we have 6 jobs underway and I have 4 more to start next week. 2 of which are full houses and another one that's a 15' high retaining wall on the side of a cliff to support an infinity pool.

Hoping we can make it happen without dying in the process...

 

I thought The Visit was a good movie.

 

Arizona civilian group hunts for possible freeway gunman | Fox News

although not part of my daily commute, i drive the 10 often.

 

What's the best way to store / pickle automotive parts? Specifically a transmission and rear differential.

My car doesn't seem to want to kill it's 5 speed so i have a 6 speed sitting bell housing down(probably low or out of fluid, not sure) and a rear diff(full of fluid, never opened)(shrink wrapped in fact) on the ground in my garage (which is heated in winter).

What if anything else should i be doing with these two items to ensure they are healthy should i ever need to use them / sell them?

 

They are not safe in Detroit. Send them to me and I will store them in a nice warm, dry basement until I need them

 

I would recommend against storing a transmission bell housing down . I did this and ended up with a noisy input bearing . There was no oil in the transmission at the time but some grit found it's way to the low point (which was the bearing ) resulting in less than ideal situation when I eventually installed the transmission . Had I know or thought about it , I would have tried flushing the transmission with mineral spirits or something before I installed it .Fred B

 

I've been pretty absent for a while, but I have bought two BRG NA's;one for parts and one to keep. The keeper's pretty cool I guess. Now the turbo bug is back.






I just dumped a TON of pics/updates in my build thread.