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What I ate last week. Ranked #182 in food podcasts in Mexico according to an email I just got.
NEWS & UPDATES
Thought about my relationship with sprinkles a little bit more and I’ve decided that I really wanna be in the vicinity of / around someone or nearby to someone who is enjoying a rainbow sprinkle dipped cone, but I don’t want to be tasked with eating it myself
How is nothing bundt cakes a national brand? I’ve never heard someone say that they wanted one or even liked one
Moosewood daily specials: roasted green tomato and onion turkish salad; or green tomato soup
Were Tic Tacs specially formulated to not melt in hot cars?
Customer service awards / shout outs: liquor barn and bluestone perennials
https://fridheimar.is/ “unique experience”; https://www.graikotturinn.is/english
SCENTS
Monday night 11pm: cold glass of ice water in a patriots glass at my grandparents house in the 90s
Scent: Anatole Lebreton Grimoire (Grim is right); I chose this perfumery because their bottles are simple and remind me of classic neutrogena bottles
Official description: https://www.anatolelebreton.com/en/index.php/parfum/grimoire/?srsltid=AfmBOoqgM-1a_AM-MKeTveejw0dofJScrPYCUsZ7W6C4YBJvVNh5qWhN
My blind review: Green, tropical, vanilla, dehydrated peanut powder, hummus, ripping the vent spews / tire whiskers off of a fresh set of car tires, ash tray, your coworker who smokes inside their car and home
INTERNET
Movies
Greasy Lake https://share.google/VAKCdJDMlfR2UGXVk
IG https://www.instagram.com/p/DclzDbjOLSt/?igsi=MXVsdWJ3dzczaGZxdw==
Office Hours
Did you know that the spaghett cocktail’s name comes from the character on Tim and Eric?
TIKTOK
Welcome cutlet https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP87uQV2e/
9/11 taco Mac https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8vCw1e1/
Shucking corn https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP87p12Ct/
Straight spoonfuls of olives www.tiktok.com/t/ZP879F7Vn/
More ways to use potatoes https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP879Gv23/
Turkish ravioli https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8797L6S/
Why leaveners listed as tsp https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8vBW8XF/
Plastic waste turned into protein cookies https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8vSN91k/
Squazza https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8vCoH5M/
Cheese ball truck crash people pulling over to grab them https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8vsCvHa/
Shocktarts; the candy from like 2000 to 2004. My dad got a giant box of them once and wouldn’t tell me where he got them and he kept them in the garage and it felt like I lived with a drug dealer. He also kept bulk bags of fire balls in his closet and his nesquik powder under his bed as a child. My mom kept a wholesale box of full size bags of skittles up on the top of the spice rack and doled them out so sparingly and carefully they they eventually went stale https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8vpnWYK/
Licking Jordan almonds and my mom got mad https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8vvtFQm/
August 24, 2026 (Monday)
8:30am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
9:30am: Two hard boiled eggs, made at home.
12pm: Back to Nature white cheddar cheezy crackers.
2:30pm: A black and white cookie, made at home.
6pm: Eggplant parmesan, made at home.
6:30pm: A black and white cookie.
NYT Perfect Black and White Cookies
Cookies
255g flour (225 ap, 30 cake)
1tsp baking powder
1/2tsp sea salt (3/4tsp diamond crystal kosher)
1/4tsp baking soda
1/3c milk, 1/3c sour cream (sub 2/3c buttermilk; Melissa said the only reason she didn’t use buttermilk like William Greenberg is because she never wants to buy a whole jug of buttermilk)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon lemon zest (I used a whole lemon worth)
¼ teaspoon almond extract
1 stick butter
200g sugar
2 eggs
Icing
300g 10x
1.5 tablespoons corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt
2.5 tablespoons cocoa powder
70g unsweetened chocolate (I only had salted dark chocolate which was wonderful)
Made 12 big cookies
Spooned the dough out into ¼ cup sized balls, like a drop cookie. Imperfect but they fix themselves out.
First tray of 6 spread out a lot; baked for 12 minutes at 375 or until springy in the center the edges just started to brown
Meanwhile second tray was in the freezer to firm up to try and alleviate the spread which helped significantly
Did half black and white, half new moon (they gotta do something with twilight)
THESE WERE GREAT. I highly recommend chilling the unbaked cookies on the sheet trays in the freezer for 15 minutes before baking to control spread. Huge difference between the two trays. Brian ate two.
Italian version with thin layer of jam under the frosting is such a good idea. jam, then freeze to harden, then glaze like we used to do with travel cakes at good ambler. Jaffa cake. Rainbow cookie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_white_cookie
Rocco’s on Bleeker and Leroy, near where I used to live
https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-real-history-of-black-and-white-cookies/
They do a layer of apricot, almond extract, and orange zest. According to some reviews their cookie itself is pretty bad
I’ve read theories that black and white and half moon spontaneously appeared in two different places at the same time based on an old German version. Could be, although Utica and the NYC area are not that far apart and I imagine it was super easy for someone to see a black and white cookie in one place and then travel back home to the other place and try to make their own version rooted in the same tradition
Spent the rest of the night thinking about them. Smaller version for family reunion? Or just double the batch? Raspberry jam layer? Lemon juice in white icing for punch? Do lemon and chocolate even go together? Why do they work here but aren’t often paired?
Just as good the next day
August 25, 2026 (Tuesday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
9am: Leftover eggplant parmesan.
12pm: A black and white cookie.
2:30pm: Two hard boiled eggs, made at home.
5:30pm: Radiatori alla vodka with yellow eye beans and ricotta, made at home.
6:30pm: Chocolate pudding with mascarpone cream from Ideal’s in Durham, North Carolina, and half of a new moon cookie.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024008-ricotta-pasta-alla-vodka?unlocked_article_code=1.8FA.DS9b.LG_udWYT7RQN&smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share
Radiatori look like spinal columns or half of a screw
Kind of made this without bacon
Olive oil, 1 small onion, 4 garlic cloves, chili flakes, half a can of tomato paste, leftover reduced tomato sauce from the eggplant parmesan, Josh chardonnay, cream, parmesan; needed lemon at the end; topped with seasoned ricotta
Pudding was great. Lot of vanilla bean. Brian had a panna cotta with raspberry curd. The curd got strange compared to when we bought it; too much liquid seeped into it or something and it fell apart. Still had great flavor.
August 26, 2026 (Wednesday)
7am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half and a hard boiled egg, made at home.
9am: A cup of coffee with half & half at the office.
10:30am: Leftover radiatori with ricotta.
Cake room: Half of a strawberry ice cream cake for someone’s birthday and NYT Cooking Page-a-Day calendar recipes for Green Salad With Warm Goat Cheese (Salade de Chevre Chaud) and One-Pan Roasted Fish With Cherry Tomatoes.
4pm: A black and white cookie.
5:30pm: Scrambled egg with American cheese and Texas Pete garlic hot sauce on an olive oil toasted Ideal’s English muffin, made at home.
7pm: Half of a new moon cookie.
My boss ate a whole lime during our meeting
She gave me a blackberry
Drove to work and got stuck behind a Tobacco trailer so that added about 10 minutes on my drive. They’re going 15 miles an hour and then on the drive home. I got back on the same road. It got stuck behind a car that was on fire, but it’s still driving. My car was filling with fumes and it smelled like the time my Furby died.
August 27, 2026 (Thursday)
9am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half and a hard boiled egg, made at home.
11am: Grilled American cheese on butter toasted heritage grain sourdough, made at home.
12:30pm: A bowl of cornflakes with milk and a pour of Brew Dr mountain ginger kombucha.
3pm: A lemon full moon cookie, made at home, and a pour of Brew Dr mountain ginger kombucha.
5pm: Braised eggplant and pork with Thai basil over rice, made at home.
6pm: A lemon full moon cookie with raspberry jam, also now known as a blood moon, made at home.
NYT Perfect Black and White Cookies (Half batch full moon test with raspberry jam; only made white frosting flavored with lemon juice as to not use chocolate as it’s expensive)
Cookies
127g cake flour
½ tsp baking powder
⅛ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp sea salt (½ tsp diamond crystal kosher)
⅓ c buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon lemon zest (I used a whole lemon worth)
⅛ teaspoon almond extract
½ stick butter
100g sugar
1 egg
Icing
150g 10x
¾ tablespoons corn syrup
½ tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt
Made mounded balls in the style of the wonky column chocolate chip cookies to limit spreading; also chilled in the chest freezer for about 10 minutes before baking. 6 minutes on one side; other side needed 8 minutes to be springy in the center. Nice and puffy and fat. Next time need to not stack as high because it took too long to set. A number of recipes have commented that you have to sort of flatten them out so they cook evenly before they brown too much on the bottom. Next time I need to flip the cookies over sooner and cool on the mounded side so that they stay flatter when I ice them. Otherwise they kind of tip around.
Spread two cookies with jelly and tried to set in freezer; in hindsight I should have made thin jelly circles on parchment and froze them separately. Worried about jelly releasing water upon thawing. Successfully iced without the jam being fully frozen; was still sticky to the touch but mostly set and the glaze went over flawlessly with minimal contact.
Lemon only version: So light and fluffy. Not as soon as a classic black and white though. Maybe 8 minutes was too long; bottom had nice browning but maybe slightly too much.
Raspberry jam version: you can kind of see the raspberry through the glaze; chocolate glaze would probably mask it. Tasted exactly like Entenmann’s raspberry danish. DIVINE. Brian thought the cookie was a lot different and fluffier; I think this was because of my new stacking shaping method.
Blood moon? Strawberry moon? Pink moon?
Tried to find all the moons and could only find articles for kids
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/space-astronomy/what-are-names-full-moons-throughout-year
Reviewed Pancake Princess Black & White Cookie bake off comments
https://www.thepancakeprincess.com/best-black-and-white-cookie-bake-off/
Might try the Ina Garten frostings next time per PP’s recs; vanilla uses cream instead of water and the chocolate uses butter; best true white color of all the icings
One taster said that the Baked recipe tasted like entenmann’s doughnuts which was exactly what I thought; tasted like the entenmann’s glazed donut holes
PP’s ideal cookie: NYT or Epicurious cookie base with Ina’s frostings.
Braised Eggplant, Pork and Mushrooms (Mark Bittman, NYT, Hakka)
12 ounces eggplant (I used a pound)
⅔ cup water (I used chicken stock)
3 tb Shaoxing or dry sherry (I used Josh Chardonnay)
Joshxing; Josh Shaoxing
2 tb soy sauce
1 tb sugar
1 tb black vinegar
¼ tsp black pepper
2 tb vegetable oil
6 to 8 ounces ground pork (I used a whole pound)
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 dried chilies, sliced (I used already ground up dried chinese chili flakes)
3 ounces enoki mushrooms (omitted)
⅓ cup cilantro (omitted for health and safety; sub Thai basil)
ADDED: cornstarch slurry, MSG
Like many NYT Cooking recipes, the amount of sauce produced over the course of the recipe does not match the image shown. So much saucer than what is pictured. It was great. A lot of commenters, and the recipe, recommends doubling the sauce, which I think would be kind of insane. I used double pork and a full pound of eggplant and still had too much sauce.
TIP: USE COLD WATER WHEN CLEANING RICE STUCK TO POT
August 28, 2026 (Friday)
7am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
9am: Leftover pork and eggplant over rice.
1pm: A lemon full moon cookie and a bottle of Brew Dr mountain ginger kombucha.
5pm: Leftover radiatori.
6:30pm: An Arcor orange filled hard candy.
Lemon cookie was not better the next day like the lemon ricotta cookies. Not as good as the raspberry blood moon version. The jam lent so much moisture and dimension. Brian agreed that the raspberry jam made it delectable and therefore was an unfair comparison.
August 29, 2026 (Saturday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
11am: A sunny egg and yellow eyed beans over fried masquerade potatoes with chives and chili flakes, made at home.
1pm: A fig and maple soft serve swirl in a cake cone at Broken Spoke in Hillsborough, North Carolina.
3pm: Fried green beans with honey mustard and blue cheese and a pour of COHESION EDELWEISS 12° CZECH LAGER at The Wooden Nickel in Hillsborough, North Carolina.
6pm: Popcorn with Parmesan and Banner roasted garlic, parsley, and basil compound butter, made at home, and a pour of Kloster Andechser Hell.
Flavors were so subtle and the same tone of beige I really would have had no idea what I was eating besides sometimes getting a brief memory of a fig newton.
COHESION EDELWEISS 12° CZECH LAGER 12oz $7 CO 4.9% using old world technique and brewing with an american malt called edelweiss, it showcases lovely notes of cucumber, melon and biscuits: disgusting and bitter
Paulaner sunset cola with orange at German bottle shop
Banner butter sells gallons of buttermilk which I desperately need to find
Brian’s mom gave him a Justin Timberlake album when he was 28 because she bought it for herself and didn’t like it like it
August 30, 2026 (Sunday)
8am: Counter Culture coffee with half & half, made at home.
10am: Scrambled eggs and bacon, made at home.
2pm: A black and white cookie, made at home.
6pm: Japanese curry with pork, carrots, potatoes, and peas over basmati rice, made at home, and a pour of Oberdorfer Festbier.
Made another half batch of black and white cookies to test out raspberry jam plus the ina garten glazes and they spread a lot and were very misshapen, merging into the center of the pan and into each other. Not sure why this happened. Only difference was that I used AP flour and chilled slightly longer, for 18 minutes, which is maybe too long? 10 minutes feels right based on previous batches. This AP flour is from a local mill and maybe too unprocessed for the type of cookie I’m looking to make. Will stick to King Arthur cake flour next time, which I could not find in the Chapel Hill Whole Foods.
Ina white icing, which I loved the flavor of
100g 10x
Pinch of salt
1tb cornsyrup
Dash of vanilla
3tb cream
Splash of water
Ina chocolate icing
2tb butter
2.5oz Tony’s dark chocolate
Chocolate tasted like coconut and was way too dark and intense. HATED it. Vanilla was gloopy but good. I think NYT is the way to go with this. Pancake princess contradicted herself by saying that she would do either The New York Times or Epicurious base with the Ina Garten frosting, but in the same article, she said that she would just do a cocoa powder based glaze in the future because it’s the least effort to highest reward output possible next time I think I will do The New York Times chocolate icing, but with maybe a little bit less actual dark chocolate.
Honorable Mentions (diabetes summer)
Pizza
Green goddess https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8WY8TXF/
Dave’s pizza oven 24 hour dough; yield 1x 12” pizza
117 g bread flour
50 g all-purpose flour
4.3 g salt
0.1 g instant dry yeast
103 g cold water (use crushed ice to get temperature around 45°)
3.3 g olive oil
3.3 g sugar
you are using a stand mixer, here’s my recommendation:
add you water, flour, yeast and sugar
mix on low for about ten minutes, or until the dough reaches 60°
cover and rest for 30 minutes
add the salt and mix for 3 minutes on low
add half the oil and mix on medium until absorbed. Then add the other half
once all the oil is absorbed, drop the speed back down to low until the temperature is roughly 70°
cover and rest for 30 minutes.
do at least one series of stretch and folds and check the window pane test.
Store on the counter for 20 hours, or 12 hours and then chill until ready to use.
Updated version that does a 1-2 day cold ferment.
Eclair cake https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8WpJYC7/
NYT crumb cake
Wacky cake with mayonnaise
Iambaker / cupcake project vanilla cake
Chocolate chip cookies
https://www.afamilyfeast.com/copycat-entenmanns-chocolate-chip-cookies/