Foodin' With Lawblog: Dear Lawblog

Hi guys! I've gotten many requests for a general cooking advice column, so I'm totally swaggerjacking mtnsbeyondmtns. Does anyone have any specific problems with cooking that they would like me to answer? Stuff like "I ran out of vinegar? What can I use?" or "How do I keep my steak from drying out?" or even more general like, "How do I plan to cook for 8 people?" Whatever you want to know, I will do my best to answer. You can ask in the comments below or send me an email at thereallawblog (at) gmail (dot) com. Anonymous or otherwise is welcome!

Foodin' With Lawblog: Flavor!: Addendum

So, after I wrote all that shit last night I got inspired. #humblebrag. I put together this really awesome salad by using the rules of flavor balancing. This is the base:

2 cups pineapple, diced (approx. 1 small)
1 cup mango, diced (approx. 1 medium)
1 medium avocado, diced
1/3 lb. grape tomatoes, cut in half
2 Tbl lime juice
2 Tbl. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt (or to taste)

The neat thing is that it is technically a fruit salad, but is eaten as a savory component. So you can totally be that douchebag who's all, "Here's my play on fruit salad." and your guests/significant others go "Oh. Because tomatoes and avocados are technically fruits. Total lol, I'm sure."

You generally think of fruit salads as sweet, since they contain fruit, which is generally sweet (duh). By adding the lime juice and tomato an additional acidic component is introduced that cuts some of the sweetness. The addition of the salt also further cuts the sweetness and brings out the other flavors inherent in the fruits. Likewise the avocado adds a very slight sourness and, of course, the delicious unctuousness that avocado brings to everything.

I was having tacos last night, so to go with more of a mexican flavor profile I added 2 Tbl. chopped cilantro and 1 seeded and chopped jalapeño.

What's cool about this is that these flavors can work really well with other types of cuisines. For a more Vietnamese take, add the Mexican ingredients, but substitute fish sauce for the salt and add some chopped fresh mint as well. For an Indian take, substitute lemon for lime juice, cayenne for jalapeño, and maybe add a dash of garam masala. The possibilities are limitless! Not really. But generally, if you see overlap in ingredients between cuisines, you can usually be relatively successful by altering the external "flavoring" components to make a dish fit a particular type of ethnic flavor profile. As always, feel free to experiment and please let me know if you have any questions!

Foodin' With Lawblog: Flavor!

For this column we will be getting a little more “sciencey,” as we deal with flavor. More specifically: What is flavor? This guy knows what I’m talking about:



Nothing like some sweet-ass turntabling to get you pumped from some dry writing about food science! Before we continue, let me just give a brief shoutout to Cooking for Geeks, by Jeff Potter. It’s an awesome book that delves into the science of cooking, from basic concepts of taste and cooking methods to the super advanced molecular gastronomy (ugh) of places like wd-50, Alinea, El Bulli, and Richard Blais’ brain. Most of the science in this article comes from that book, so if that type of stuff intrigues you, I strongly recommend it. Moving on.org

Gums of Our Lives: Episode 16: Season 1 Finale

After the jump, the conclusion to Season 1 of "Gums of Our Lives"
“Let me repeat. Y’all are trespassin’.”
Mountains Beyond Mountains stared at the two women lying captive on the floor. “What do you have to say for yourselves?”
“We’re sorry?” Briadru4 shrugged. “It was not our intention to trespass on anyone’s property.”
“Then what you doin’ out in my woods and eatin’ my fruit baskets?”
“Again, we’re really sorry about that,” Briadru4 gestured her head to Thisismynightmare. “Some of us ignored warnings from other ones of us to not eat the food.”
“I don’t deal in hypotheticals, young lady. Tell me what went down.”
So Briadru4 told her the story of what “went down,” from drinking with the Super Exclusive Best Friends Club to the return of Teacherman to their capture by and subsequent escape from the Winbot, ending with their second incarceration by Mountains Beyond Mountains and her gang. The entire time, Mountains Beyond Mountains sat there, unmoving, occasionally interjecting with a question of clarification. When the story was finished she called over Fozzy the Chair and Dusky Panther. They conferred briefly and inaudibly before coming to what seemed to be a consensus.

Foodin' with Lawblog: Your 5 Favorites in recipes!

So, Thisismynightmare asked if people sent their 5 favorite foods, would I make a recipe using them? I said “sure." Keep in mind I do not have the time, money, or inclination to test all of these. These are things that I think would taste good if combined, prepared this way. Some of these recipes contained elements I’ve made before, but never combined quite in this way. That's basically a convoluted way of saying, "Don't blame me if these taste terrible." I don't think they will. In fact, I think they will be delicious. "When it comes to food, I am never wrong about anything." -Marcel and Lawblog. Without further ado, our first two recipes after the jump.

Gums of Our Lives: Season 1 recap

Don’t you hate it when you’re waiting for the season finale of a show but instead they do a recap episode? BOOM!

The story begins in the house of Thisismynightmare and The Narrator, the former of whom is unhappy in her marriage because the latter spends all of his time in his basement laboratory after he was dismissed from the University of Internet Science and Blog Technology. She decides to leave him for her eflirt, Just Desserts, at the urging of her therapist, Dr. Principal Enchman.

On the way out of the house she gets a phone call from her sister, Baby Friday, who informs her that her husband, Teacherman, was at the University when there was an explosion, and now she can’t find him. Thisismynightmare decides not to go to Just Desserts, but rather visit her sister. They go to the police station, where Detective Werttrew shows them the remains of Teacherman’s trademark tweed jacket. They are sad.

Meanwhile, in the basement laboratory, The Narrator is finishing work on his most diabolical creation yet: The Winbot. He goes to tell his wife, but finds her missing. In response he unleashes the Winbot to find and troll her.

Foodin' With Lawblog: 5 Favorites

I never really understood missionaries before. Why do they care about spreading the word of the lord? Why do they care if people convert? Now that I’ve gotten really into food, I totally get it. We, as people, want to share the experiences of things we love with as many people as possible, and we don’t understand it when people aren’t interested. “What do you mean you’ve never had chicken heart yakitori? It’sthe greatest thing in the world!” -Me. I feel this need compulsively. I hate picky eaters the way the bible-belt people hate atheists. It just doesn’t make sense to me. With that in mind, I decided to share my five favorite foods. This list is by no means complete. These are also not my favorite “dishes.” With the exception of one, these are all available to buy directly from your favorite grocery store or specialty food shop. If I were to commit a murder, be convicted (unlikely, because I watch so much CSI so I know HOW CRIMINALS THINK), and sentenced to death row, some combination of these items would be involved in my last meal. Note that I am not including main proteins, per se, but rather condiments and the like. I don’t have religion, but I have food, and if I can get one person to try one of these things that they otherwise wouldn’t have, I feel like I’ve done some good in the world.

1) Sriracha

Gums of Our Lives: Episode 15

This is the penultimate episode of Gums of Our Lives: Season 1

Blinking as the sunlight hit their eyes, Dr. Principal Enchman, Sergeant Duncan, and Agents Huckabeast and Cakeordeath emerged from the tunnel into a parking lot. If it weren’t for the rubble and debris covering them, you would have no idea that they were just in a giant explosion. Also their hair was singed. So actually you’d probably assume they were in an explosion. What I mean was that there was no smoke or anything coming from the exit. Because it was so far underground. But also the walls were so strong there was no internal damage to the building. In fact, they were over a block away from The Agency headquarters. How is this relevant? You’ll find out in a second.

Foodin' With Lawblog

So, for our first installment of Foodin’ With Lawblog, I thought it would be neato to go through some advice, both broad and specific, about cooking. A ten commandments, if you will. But more like ten strong suggestions. I’m not pushy like some people *cough* Moses *cough*.
But first: “Who are you and why should we listen to you?” Fair enough. I’m just a regular dude who really loves food and really loves cooking. I am not a professional food writer. I am not a chef. (Also, let me just first say something about the difference between chefs and cooks. A cook is someone who cooks. Durr. A chef is a leader of cooks. So, until you run a kitchen of cooks, you are not a chef.) These are just some things I’ve picked up whilst making and eating lots of food. Enjoy!
1) Get proficient with your knife.

Gums of Our Lives: Episode 14

This was the second time in the last two hours that Briadru4 and Thisismynightmare found themselves being forcibly taken to a destination that they had not intended to go to. In this instance they were being dragged along the ground in a large rope net; a considerable step down from the relatively luxurious rape van. Briadru4 began to take stock of the situation. They were most definitely trapped. Even if their captors stopped to take a rest they would still have the several hundred pound rope net to contend with, not to mention the fact that those aforementioned captors seemed remarkably comfortable with pulling two squirming women along the forest floor, even despite their handicap of having no opposable thumbs. Resigning herself to dealing with their situation when they reached their destination, she tried to wiggle herself into a comfortable wedge.

Gums of Our Lives: Episode 13

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

As the seconds counted down to their demise, Agent Cakeordeath couldn’t help but find the metronomic sound of their impending doom to be strangely hypnotic. She stared at the flashing red numbers, watching them change in rhythm.

“Snap out of it, Cake!”

Agent Huckabeast shook her out of her trance.

“We need a plan! Stat!”

“Oh, right. Uh. Let’s see…”

She began to go over the device.

“Ok, so, we have a dead man’s trigger with no reversies double tapsies, a pressure switch with extra doohickeys, and enough C4 to blow us into a brunoise.”

“What’s a brunoise?” Dr. Principal Enchman asked.

“It’s a cooking term. It means 1/8^th inch by 1/8^th inch dice.”

“Guys!” Agent Huckabeast interrupted. “We only have twenty-five seconds. We need to figure out something or we’re going to die!”

Agent Cakeordeath stood up.

“Well,” She began. “I can’t disarm it. Not in the time we have. Our only choice is to run.”

Gums of Our Lives: Episode 12

“So… do we have a plan?”

A Serious Monster was getting antsy. It had been several hours since she first made contact with the Hybrids, and all they had done up to this point was fiddle with dials and make horrible puns.

“Calm down, ok? We’re formulating a flan.” Facetaco said, glancing up from one of the computers.

“Mmmm. Delicious flan.” Polythene Pam piped up from behind a stack of equipment.

“Bleep Bloop flan plan.” R2D2 Esq. shimmied.

“Seriously. These puns are getting really annoying.” A Serious Monster angrily interjected.

“Sorry. We can’t help it,” Facetaco shrugged. “It’s a side effect of the hybridization process.”

Girl Philosopher nodded. “It’s markedly worse when we’re around other hybrids. Usually we can control it by ourselves. David Hume!”

A Serious Monster had to stifle her vomit.

“Hey. Be careful there, Retch Armstrong,” Facetaco called out.

“Yeah, Little Retchard” Polythene Pam chimed in.

“Bloop Blorp Puke Skywalker.”

We Be Trolling: Now available for download!

Due to popular demand, Steve & CT's #1 single is now available for download.

All profits will be donated to the "Restore Da Cake Eatur" fund.

Steve Winwood the rapper?

So, this morning I got an email from Steve Winwood. Apparently he and Chris Trash have been "in the lab with a pen and a pad trying to get this damn label off." Not really sure why he sent it to me. I guess because I'm the resident fake rap expert? Anyway, here it is, for your enjoyment.

Inside The Monsters Studio: Lawblog

We need to talk.

Now listen: I would LOVE to interview each and every one of you. I really would. But sometimes life doesn’t quite work out the way you want it to. So far, I’ve mostly (completely) interviewed regulars in the chat room, due to convenience. But I realize that not everybody can completely ignore their real-world responsibilities in order to come talk about wings and sitcoms all day. I REALIZE THIS. So if you DO want to be considered for an interview, shoot me a DM on Twitter. If you can’t guess my Twitter name, you get no interview. I’ll compile a list, and throw a dart at my monitor to decide each week’s subject.

This week, the dart landed right the hell on everybody’s favorite contest runner-up, Lawblog. Mr. Blog and I sat down over a cup of nothing and had a chat that could almost be classified as interesting. See for yourself:

Videogum name: Lawblog

Videogum avatar: Previously a cute bulldog, now Scott Baio in suspenders

Real name (optional): Dan Trash

Location: NYC

Favorite sitcom (excluding Arrested Development): Currently Community, all time The Simpsons (seasons 3-9)

Favorite wing flavor: Hot Buffalo, but really all wings

Karaoke song of choice: "Roll Out" by Ludacris and "Lightning Crashes" by Live

Worst movie you’ve ever seen: Eagle Eye

Q. Before we get started, I just want to clear something up: You DO know you’re only being interviewed because you gave me a shoutout in “We Monsters,” right?