Pepto-Bismol vs. Turducken
This newspaper ad tickled me so much I had to take a photo of it:
It’s a chicken. Inside a duck. Inside a turkey…
A Melt-in-the-Mouth Cookie Santa
To the casual outside observer, my mom has “a Santa problem”, which we playfully tease her about every Christmas (even though we all secretly love it). She morbidly taunts us that when she’s dead and gone, her Santa problem will become our problem—our inheritance won’t be counted in thousands of dollars, it will be thousands of Santas, muahahaha!
Well, it seems she’s not content to wait until she’s dead and gone. This year I got a very cool Santa Claus of my own, custom-made by Michelle Treichler, complete with a stack of Melt-in-the-Mouth Cookies and miniature reproductions of Woman’s Day Magazine (where the recipe first appeared).
Santa, just chillin’ on the mantle with a plate of Melt-in-the-Mouths
December Cookie Traffic
I love December, and not just because of my birthday or the holidays—because it’s when people start baking lots of cookies. And inevitably, someone searches Google for a certain long-lost cookie recipe and stumbles upon my Melt-in-the-Mouth history (or my original post about the recipe that inspired it).
Blue is the Melt-in-the-Mouth recipe, red is the history
And the best part is that occasionally they’re so floored to have found the recipe (usually after missing it for several years), they leave a comment to express their heartfelt thanks. Here’s a taste.
From Marlene:
Justin I too had the recipe 25 yrs ago. THANK you for posting this!! My Son still remembers when I made them. Now we can share these with his children!!
From Gina:
My mother has had this recipe for years, since I was a little kid, and I’m 40 now. We used to make them every Thanksgiving and Christmas. But we lost it a few years ago and I’ve been looking for it ever since. I can’t believe I finally found it!!! Thank you!!!!
From Melissa:
I’m just another grown kid searching for childhood cookies! I imagine my mama found this recipe in Woman’s Day like your grandmother did. No one else I knew ever made them, but we loved them. I have my mama’s handwritten recipe but they never come out like hers. I will compare notes tonight and see if she left out any “special” instructions. I look forward to sharing these with my grandkids this Christmas! Thanks for your diligence!
You are welcome, all. Please, help yourself to a cookie:
A plate of Melt-in-the-Mouth cookies
I’m famous! (on a virtual supermarket website in Chile)
Back in July, Andy Baio posted a link about these virtual South Korean grocery stores where people can shop by scanning QR Codes next to photos of the items (while waiting for the subway).
Tesco’s virtual grocery store in South Korea
Well, apparently they’re also making a splash in Chile. I just hope they stock up on lots of tasty Justinsomnia!
Screenshot of Jumbo Mobile in Chile showing off my QR Code
This ain’t your father’s turducken
Instead of plain, ol’ turkey for Thanksgiving, Danny and Claudine treated us to a gourmet turducken, procured from 4505 Meats. This franken-turducken was half turkey on one side and half chicken on the other, with duck sausage and cornbread stuffing in the middle. It arrived pre-cooked sous-vide, so all they had to do was stick it in the oven to heat it through. It was very tasty. Thanks to Claudine for the photos!
Turducken Junior: Before
Turducken Junior: After
Turducken Junior: Inside
Fried red plantains with beans
I sometimes wondered what it was like for those of you who followed my dispatches from our travels over the last year. If they were even half as interesting as Terrie’s updates from her Peace Corps training in Ghana, I can rest easy. Access to Terrie’s blog is restricted to friends and family, but I wanted to share one small slice of life that made me smile:
My favorite meal so far, and maybe my new favorite food…fried red plantain with beans…it was like caramelized sweet potatoes that you scoop up with baked beans…amazing! It was so good it made me teary and homesick for Thanksgiving.
Holy QR cupcakes, Batman!
If you happened to catch the recent Duncan Hines “Bake On” commercial, you may have registered a subliminal cupcake crop circle that momentarily materialized before disappearing beneath a giant flying brownie. I’m not making this stuff up. The first time I saw it, my brain didn’t even realize that it had seen a QR Code until after the next commercial started—and by then I had no recollection of what that crazy kaleidoscopic, cupcake-tastic commercial was even advertising. Here are some screenshots from the trippy 30 second spot:
At first glance, it seemed utterly pointless—flashing a QR Code so fast no one even knows that they’ve seen, let alone has the time to pull out their smartphones. I imagined people on the edge of their couches with iPhones primed, eagerly anticipating that split second when the commercial inevitably airs again. Visions of Orphan Annie’s Secret Society decoder pin danced in my head.
And then I remembered all those DVRs out there. Now assuming folks are not already skipping the commercials, this is actually a pretty neat strategy to get people to stop and take note of an ad, albeit one with a pretty high technical barrier to entry.
So where does the QR Code go? Well, that depends. It encodes the URL http://dhbakeon.com/qr/code/1, which, if you scan (or click) using a desktop web browser, will redirect you to Duncan Hines’ Facebook page. But if you scan with your iPhone (a more likely scenario), you’ll get a little web-based mobile site with recipes and coupons, including some features that are “locked”, requiring you to “Scan more [cupcake?] QR codes” (leaving no brownie unturned, I’d imagine).
Beef worthy of a Texas grill
Texas pride can be a little over the top sometimes, so when I saw a steak in the shape of Texas on the side of an H-E-B semi-trailer the other day, I had to get a photo of it. I was driving at the time, so I asked Stephanie to snap these out the window for me (with her original iPhone). It was only after passing the truck that we realized the entire ad was a barbecue-rific recreation of the Texas Flag, complete with “lone star” tongs. Absolutely brilliant!
Thinking to myself: man, what I wouldn’t give to see a Texas-shaped steak sizzlin’ on a Texas-shaped grill.
