Little Debbie's Epic Fail

After a lifetime of love and sugar, I think Little Debbie and I are breaking up, and she only has herself and her incompetent test kitchen employees to blame. What brought Little Debbie and I to this low place? What could make me turn my back on decades of Swiss Cake Rolls, Peanut Butter Bars, Zebra Cakes, and the occasional Spirit of America patriotic snack cake?

Little Debbie's Nutty Bar Cheesecake.

I saw the recipe for this on a box of Nutty Bars at least six months ago, and have been waiting for the right occasion to use it. As fat as I am, I haven't reached the point where I make myself a cheesecake surrounded in lunch cakes to eat at home, so I needed a social or a party or something, and my friends Elizabeth and Ben obliged by hosting a Superbowl gathering this weekened. Filled with wild excitement at the thought of finally making the Nutty Bar Cheesecake, I carefully compiled a grocery list and went to the store for the 24 Nutty Bars the recipe calls for. Fortunately for me, and I'm certain entirely coincidentally, the "family size" box of Nutty Bars happens to contain exactly 24.

Twelve of them, according to the recipe, need to be crushed in a blender:



This did not work.

The bars on the bottom got chopped, but the ones on the top wouldn't move, so I had to keep shutting the blender off, crushing them down with a spoon, blending, and repeating. I probably should have done it in the food processor, which was my first thought, but I was trying to follow the recipe. I didn't blame the failure on my good friend Little Debbie, though, and instead decided that I had put too many Nutty Bars in the blender at once.

Once the crushing was done, I dumped the results into a bowl:



poured melted butter on top of them, and spread the results on the bottom of a ten inch springform pan.

Since the next part is the point where Little Debbie ruined our lives, I will quote directly from the recipe:

Press into bottom of a 12" spring form pan. Set aside. Unwrap remaining Nutty Bars. Cut in half. Line rim of pan with bars as shown above.

Let's look at this for a moment. The recipe calls for 24 Nutty Bars, and the first step is to unwrap and crush 12 of them. That means that the remaining bars, referenced above, should number 12. Cut in half, there would be 24 bar sections to line the rim of a twelve inch pan. Given that mine was only ten inches, logic would suggest that not only would 12 bars be adequate, but I should actually have a piece or two left over. This is what I told myself as I began to line the rim of the pan, eyeballing the results and thinking, "Hmmm... this doesn't look like enough bars." I convinced myself I was wrong because, you know, why would Little Debbie lie to me? Surely a national corporation giving out recipes on the boxes their product is sold in would try those recipes first, right?



What's wrong with that picture?

Could it be, oh, I don't know, that maybe there aren't enough Nutty Bars?

I was so mad for a second that I thought I might be having a stroke. A violent stream of curses escaped my mouth, a string of colorful invectives that disparaged the employees of the Little Debbie snack cake company, the existence of Nutty Bars in general, and Little Debbie herself, her parentage, and her extended family. Even worse, I got mad all over again when I remembered that I was using a pan that was too small. If I'd actually been using the one the recipe called for, the gap would be even wider. All I wanted was to make a nice, fattening, fun dessert for my friends' party, and now I had to leave the apartment to go back to the grocery store because Nutty Bars aren't the kind of thing that you happen to have on hand or can ring your neighbor's doorbell to ask for a cup of.

Go to hell, Little Debbie, and while you're there, learn some math. See, Little Debbie, the circumference of a circle is the diameter multiplied by Pi. In the case of the 12 inch spring form pan you told me to use, and rounding Pi to 3.14, you'd need 37.68 inches of Nutty Bars. If each Nutty Bar is about an inch wide, that would be about 19 Nutty Bars cut in half, not 12. That's seven inches worth of Nutty Bars difference, you evil smiling liar. Did you even try this recipe before giving it out to people? Did you?

I think not.

You disgust me, Little Debbie. Your ignorance, your ineptitude, your obvious disrespect for your customers and lack of professional ethics, all of it. Your Nutty Bar Cheesecake is impossible to execute according to the recipe you provided, and there's no excuse for that. Even though this was delicious:



I have lost all faith in you and your products. We're through.

Right after I eat the rest of the extra box I had to buy.

Not My Photography Project

I went out today to work on a photography project. I've been working on it for a couple of weeks now, and keep not being happy with the results, but I'm not giving up quite yet. In the meantime, though, I saw a whole bunch of other cool stuff today when I got cold and frustrated and decided to do my grocery shopping and go home.

First, I saw some railroad graffiti on my way past the back side of campus:



It was kind of hard not to see that while driving by, but when I got out to get the picture I also saw some smaller pictures on some of the train cars:



I don't really know what that picture means, but it interested me. Obviously someone was trying to tell some kind of story, but I can't decide if the spine of the drawing is a train track or a fish skeleton, and I can't read any of the words besides "lunar eclipse", so I'm not really sure what was going on there.

After I was back in the car and continuing around the back side of campus, I noticed that the university gardens have installed a rusty truck:



I couldn't pull over and hustle into the gardens fast enough. I've acknowledged several times that I love decay, but I really can't explain why a rusting automotive carcass in a field is like catnip to me. If I was a moth, that would be the electric zapper light hanging on the corner of the deck.

On my way to the truck I noticed some new sculptures in the gardens: giant metal insects made of other metal objects. The propane tank bee is pretty cool:





but the mosquito has already fallen over:



The thing that really surprised me, though, was how enormous the grasshopper is:



There's nothing near it to give a sense of scale, but the grasshopper's head is the bucket (barrow?) of a wheelbarrow. I think the whole sculpture is a little larger than my car. I'm surprised by that because most of the art in the gardens is stuff along these lines:



Small, unobtrusive accent pieces. Even the larger ones have always been put near plant beds or groups of trees, so the sculpture never seems to be the focus, but that grasshopper is enormous. I think they'll have to put a rainforest around it to make it fade into the background, and look forward to seeing what happens with it when spring and summer roll around.

Once I got past the giant bugs, which were interesting but not my goal, I found the truck and rusty gas pump:



It's beautiful. There's a thin layer of algae on some of the glass:



and the truck bed is filled with dirt and planted, and the whole thing is rusty and busted and spectacular:







I can't wait to see it in the summer in bright sunlight with plants all around. The rusty truck installation might be my new favorite part of the gardens.

Take that, herb garden.

I looked around the rest of the gardens, but they're pretty muddy, and there's not really anything to see. Most of the beds are just dirt, and nothing has really budded yet. Winter has apparently also been a little rough on some of the sculptures, as one of the rabbits has lost his ears:



I'll stop by in a couple of weeks and see how things are looking, as we should start seeing a little green by then.

I took an alternative to my usual way home because I wanted to cut around some one lane construction that is really horrible on the weekend and because I saw this moon emblem on that street yesterday and wanted to go back and look at it more closely:



I couldn't stop to see it yesterday because Jeannie was driving and it was raining, but the bonus of stopping to see it today was that the place where I parked also had a sad sign:



and a tattoo parlor with bright murals on the walls:



All in all, it was a really good couple of hours, even if none of those things were the things I set out to get pictures of.

Tragic Mexican Hooters

I always thought that, outside of the Playboy Club, pretty much the saddest, most tragic and demeaning restaurant a woman could ever work in was Hooters.



Last night, though, I learned that there is somewhere even more depressing than Hooters: a Mexican-themed Hooters knockoff. What's worse is that it was my idea to go there, sort of.

Last week was my friend Kristin's birthday. I haven't really gotten to hang out with her since we experienced the holiday horror of mouthless Santa (who climbs down your chimney ominously humming, "Hmm! Hmmm! Hmmm!" since he can't make an O), but she was being a little slow in picking a destination so I called her on Tuesday to force her into picking.

"Maybe Korean," she mused, while I thought, "Maybe not."

"That's a possibility. I mean, we could hit Korean or go for pizza, or maybe Mexican. What's that new place that Amanda took Miss Sandy to? The Spicerack?"

"Mexican Hooters? That's an awesome idea! I want to go there, and no one ever wants to go with me!"

And so we chose Mexican Hooters for Kristin's birthday.

Now, I wasn't totally sure what to expect, as I've only been to regular Hooters a few times, and the only time I went to one sober was with my straight boyfriend (long story; don't ask) for lunch because he wanted wings. I remember the food as kind of on the crappy side, a lot of TV's with sports on, and a lot of girls in tight shirts and hotpants. My straight boyfriend thought this was awesome, for some reason, and I thought the soup tasted kind of like greasy chicken wings and there weren't enough dessert selections.

What I'm trying to say is that I set the expectation bar for Mexican Hooters pretty low, and it still somehow seemed tragic.

Jeannie and I got there before everyone else, arriving together because I was driving, and the first thing we noticed was the collection of barely dressed waitresses lounging at the bar in tiny half shirts, black miniskirts, and boots. The second thing we noticed was the hostess' (spice)rack. Her shirt was cinched so tightly I wanted to check the back for whalebones, and her (spice)rack was pushed so high and forward that she could have smothered herself by looking down. I immediately felt guilty for noticing, and I don't even like (spice)racks. Poor Jeannie looked kind of mortified, especially after we were seating and I noticed that the Spicerack Cantina has strategically low chairs.

They put your eyes right at (spice)rack height by default, so you have to make a conscious effort to find the waitress' face and speak to that instead. Maybe I've worked in the politically correct college campus environment for too long, or maybe I'm just embarassed because I'm not used to speaking to girls who are doing their best to be sexually objectified, but either way I again felt tremendously guilty every time I had to answer a question and think, "Look up! Up!" as I turned my head.

Jeannie and I had a few minutes to look around while we waited for Bryan and Kristin to catch up, and that's when the real tragedy sunk in. The other tables at the Spicerack, except for the family seated next to us, were all men. They either sat in small, fratboyish trios and duos, or, somehow even more awful, alone. The loners seemed more awful because they were almost all older, and they all made no secret of ogling every waitress that walked past. I thought the guy sitting behind Kristin might have a heart attack when the waitresses all came over at once to sing her birthday song. His eyes were swinging back and forth like one of those kitty cat wall clocks where the tail goes one way and the eyes go the other.

The singing was later, of course. First, Kristin had to get there:



The Bryan had to listen in growing horror as Kristin explained that she somehow misread the email he sent offering to drive her because her apartment was on the way to his apartment and that way she could have a couple of drinks as him saying that he planned to get her drunk and take her back to his apartment:



Not only did she horribly misinterpret the email, but then she told three other people we work with that Bryan was planning to get her drunk and take her home with him before she reread it and figured out what he actually meant. Oddly enough, she answered back "Sure, that sounds great" before she figured out what he actually said. I'll leave that for the two of them to sort out.

In the interests of equal rights, Kristin and I also deliberately ogled the busboy:



It was to alleviate our guilt for staring at all the (spice)racks, and had nothing to do with his t-shirt being a size too small and way too tight across his pecs.

As I said earlier, though, the waitresses eventually come out and sing for your birthday:



They don't let you keep the sombrero, and they also sing the same birthday song that the waitresses at Chili's do. Not only that, but they didn't ask if anyone else wanted to order dessert, but just brought one brownie sundae with four spoons.

I found that to be the most tragic and offensive of all.

Walking in Knoxville

I went for a long walk for a couple of hours today, along the river and through town, and, of course, I brought my camera. It's an overcast day, and no one is around, but there's still a lot to see here and there.



























I didn't intend to walk quite so far, but it was a nice couple of hours.

Pop Quiz, Cupcake Edition

Pop quiz!



This is:

a) A snail
b) A butterfly, in profile, with one wing up
c) Not a specific animal; it's just cute
d) Shambling toward my apartment on stumpy, cupcake legs to eat my soul in the dead of night

Not Especially Quick

My parents bought me the "Top Chef" Quickfire cookbook for my birthday this year, and then got me a stockpot for Christmas, and I've been waiting to have a quiet day with no other plans so that I could use them.

Today was that day:



I decided that I was going to make Season 5 Cheftestant Jeff's Fennel-Apple Soup. Jeff made it for the quickfire challenge of "Reimagine a Recipe from the Top Chef Cookbook" (which my parents bought me for Christmas last year) that turned into the "Oh, Wait, Now Make That Recipe Into A Soup" challenge after Padma's buzz wore off or something. Everyone on the show seemed to like it, and they liked the fennel-apple salad that it started out as, so I assumed it would taste pretty good. I could get most of the ingredients at Kroger, except for the fennel.

Also, I had no idea what fennel looked like.

Whenever they show it on "Top Chef" or Food Network, somebody's already chopping up the fennel. They never show raw, unchopped up fennel, and it never occured to me to just google it. I knew that it was kind of like a big onion, and people talk about it having stalks and fronds like celery, so I had a vague idea. I know there's nothing like that at Kroger, so I figured I needed to go to one of the fancy grocery stores in town. Earthfare didn't have it, but the Fresh Market did, and I managed to get through both stores without being seduced by their ample and well stocked cheese cases. Take that, temptation!

Fennel in hand, I headed home to being cooking, or, more accurately, prepping for cooking. First I needed to peel and dice three apples, which gave me a perfect excuse to use my apple wedger.



All you do is push down.



I love that thing. All that was left was the peeling.

Once the apples were taken care of, I had this to contend with:



That's a bulb of fennel. It's like bringing home a houseplant and then hacking it to pieces. The cookbook assumes that I know all about fennel already, and tells me to just dice a cup of it, but wasn't really specific about which part to use. As I said above, the pieces that people are chopping up on television are always white, so I immediately chopped off all of the green pieces and then diced what was left.

After that I peeled and diced the shallots, which are like tiny, expensive onions:



Then it was time to mix the apples, shallots, fennel, and garlic together, and sweat them over low heat. Wait, what?

"Sweat the vegetables? What the hell does that mean?"

"Maybe you run on the treadmill for a couple minutes and then rub them all over you?"

"That can't possibly be right."

"Are you sure? Jeff had his shirt off every episode of Season 5. Maybe it was so he could rub vegetables on himself. All over his abs, and his torso, and then..."

"That cannot possibly be correct. If Jeff spent the season smearing himself with food, not only would I remember, I would have that season on DVD so that I could watch it over and over."

The cookbook was more helpful than my inner dialogue, and explained that "sweating" vegetables means cooking them on low heat in minimal fat in a covered pot so that their own liquid sweats out and they poach in it. It's a recommended technique for foods with a lot of water, like apples and fennel, and allows them to slowly cook without carmelizing. The cookbook didn't give any examples of minimal fat, so I sprayed the bottom of the stockpot with olive oil, dumped in the vegetables, and hoped for the best:



It worked really well. I stirred it a few times to make sure everything was cooking evenly and nothing was sticking to the bottom of the pot, and when everything was tender I added the wine:



(after I tasted it to make sure it hadn't gone bad; I've had that bottle for a while) and then later added the chicken stock:



When half the liquid had cooked off I lowered the heat, added the cream and the herbs, let it simmer until the top had bubbles, and then pureed the whole thing with my immersion blender. I didn't make the little blue cheese toasts to float in it like the recipe called for, but I think it turned out pretty well:



It tastes pretty good. When you first take a spoonfull it's sweet, but then there's an undertaste that cuts that which I guess is from the fennel, so when it finishes as you swallow it's actually kind of savory. It would pair up really well with the toasts I didn't make because the sharpness of the cheese would bring out that savory taste more and downplay the sweetness of the apples.

I'm just surprised it took so long. The recipe said it would only take an hour, and on the show quickfires are really short, but this took me almost two hours. Probably because I'm not a professional chef. And also because I spent too much of my cooking time fantasizing about Jeff smearing himself with food.

The Saddest Thing I Saw Today

There's a pawn shop in the same building as my new comic store:



I don't know a lot about pawn shops. When we lived at Fort Campbell there seemed to be hundreds of pawn shops outside the base, and my parents always told me that pawn shops were terrible, sad places and were also frequented by criminals and evil shopkeepers who gouged money from sad, broken people who had nowhere else to go and had to resort to selling everything they owned for a fraction of its value just to get by.

As I've gotten older, I've had slightly more exposure to pawn shops. I don't mean that I've actually been inside one or anything, but I've learned from a number of movies that a pawn shop is an excellent place to go if I need a handgun in a hurry, especially if I have an engagement ring to trade for it. I've also learned that if you visit one, it will almost always be at night, and it will most likely be raining.

All of this knowledge seems slightly at odds with what I've learned about the one by my comic store.

For one thing, it's never raining when I go there. I don't get comics if it's raining because some might leak into the bag and then the comics might get wet. (I get them in snow, though, because if it's snowing then I probably have a coat on, and I can stick the bag in my coat to protect it. I don't have a raincoat, so that doesn't happen, and I just wait until it's not raining anymore.) I suppose it's possible that the rain might suddenly start the minute I cross the pawn shop threshold, but that seems unlikely.

I've also learned that they close before dark. I've gotten into the habit of going to the comic store after work, since I'm already halfway there, and the pawn shop is always closed already. When I went during the day a few times, before I was fully into my new comic store routine, the pawn shop was open, so even though I don't know their exact hours I feel safe in saying they won't be open at night when desperate people show up needing to trade jewelry for guns.

While I cannot verify the character of the people who run the pawn shop based on my limited observation, and therefore prove or disprove the information indoctrinated by my parents, I have learned one other thing about them. They're not good at spelling:



Anyway, beyond those general observations, I don't give a lot of thought to the pawn shop next to the comic store, other than that their early closing time means that I can park in front of their store and not get hostile stares from the people who work at the Mexican bakery that's right next to the comic store and hate having non-customers park in front of their store. When I was pulling up today, though, I saw the most terrible thing in the pawn shop window:



Someone is pawning a prosthetic leg.

For a second I really felt like I might burst into tears. My overactive imagination immediately supplied a hungry, needy, one-legged person who was probably a war vet and having trouble finding work and difficulty sleeping from the traumatic stress flashbacks and needing to pay for expensive meds but getting screwed over by the VA and they were totally at the end of their rope and all they could do was walk to the pawn shop at night, in the rain, and offer up the last thing they had left: their prosthetic leg. The shop keeper, of course, recognized their desperation just by staring at their dark-circled sleepless eyes, and offered them an insultingly paltry sum for their prosthetic leg that they had no choice but to accept before staggering out into the rain soaked parking lot using the stick they left by the door because they also couldn't afford a crutch.

Then, as I was getting out of the car and feeling incredibly guilty spending money on comic books instead of giving it to one-legged war vets, I got a closer look at the prosthetic leg, and all of my sympathy was immediately replaced with cynical disdain:



Yeah, it's covered in UT Vols logos.

Is there nothing, literally nothing, that people in Tennessee won't paint orange and slap a T on? And who buys that? Who thinks, "I can walk again! But I wish I could somehow walk and show my team spirit..."

I don't even know why I'm surprised anymore.