I find this clip useful when in IRC or an instant messenger program and someone says something rather obvious. It’s from an episode of Drawn Together.
Category Archive: on tv
We are so screwed
It was documentary night on the CBC. The Nature of Things was discussing the possible effects of having the Earth’s magnetic poles shift and reverse. Fascinating stuff. While watching I noticed that a handful of people in my Twitter feed were watching as well. The following comment and the responses after made me laugh.
Great apocalyptic documentaries on CBC TV just now. We are so screwed - wheeee!
@ottaross
The Ottawa Ross
Inspired shepherd’s pie
One of the side effects of watching Food Network is that I often find myself with urges to take on various cooking challenges mimicking what I see on TV. Heck, they make it seem so easy, right? I have a small bit of skill with cooking. I can do it! When I’m flipping channels one of the shows that airs on Food Network that I will actively stop for is Eat, Shrink & Be Merry. Why that show? Well, they spend one show focusing on a single dish, which is always a healthier version of some restaurant counterpart. The stuff that they make always seems to put up a good fight against the counterpart in a side-by-side taste test. More often than not I’ll come out from watching that show thinking, “hey, I want to try that, too.” You may recall that a while back I successfully made their Shockolate Cheesecake. Low fat cheesecake that tastes rich? How can you lose? Anyway, this week the network aired the episode where they made shepherd’s pie. Well, the recipe seemed simple. It wasn’t that hard of a decision to try it out on my own.
I ventured out to Wal-Mart to gather the ingredients. I wanted to use the Yukon golds like they did, but ultimately I opted for convenience by buying pre-cut cubed potatoes that just needed to be put in the microwave then mashed. I wasn’t keen on peeling a proper butternut squash so I hoped to find something in the freezer aisle, but I came up empty. So, in the end my topping consisted only of potato. Maybe next time, right? For the meat and sauce, they used chili sauce. I decided to use sriracha because that’s what I had on hand. Besides that, sriracha is so flavourful. A little goes a long way. When everything was assembled, they sprinkled some Parmesan cheese on top to get some melted and bubbling action going. For mine I decided to mix in some panko bread crumbs with the Parmesan. I figured that it would make the top even crispier and delicious. Well, how did the end result turn out? Have a look.
I totally made a good call with the panko. The contrast in textures was just amazing. The taste was very balanced and delicious. I’m totally happy with the results. And to think, I didn’t use a single bit of butter or cream for this. Crazy. I swear, the next thing I’m going to tackle from them is their Better Butter Chicken recipe. It’s a bit more involved than this shepherd’s pie, but I want to see how well their spice blend in the recipe works out.
On the air elsewhere
Gosh, watching TV in a different city is a strange experience. It’s not like the sets of shows are different between urban centres. I mean, Idol is Idol no matter where you move, right? Rather it’s the little things that make me miss the TV experience at home. Local commercials that are at least a bit more relevant to me. TV personalities have an accent that’s closer to mine. Channels appear in a numerical order that’s ingrained in my mind. Shows can be aired in different slots due to a difference in time zones. It’s all just very odd, is it not?
Surely, there are better things to worry about when heading somewhere but really the minutiae are just as fascinating.
There is only one real South Park
Probably not safe for work. Seems to be in the spirit of it, at least. Some of the voices are quite off, but…I’m willing to ignore it.
Tweeting the opening ceremonies
You know, watching the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics has totally been transformed by tweeting and contributing to the chatter at the same time. Everyone is so damn snarky and appreciative at the same time. It really does feel like I’m tapping into the collective mind.
If you ever get a chance, I recommend following along next time there’s a big spectacle that you know most are going to be watching. Twitter’s totally enriched this experience for me.
Protectors of the wolves
My parents are back to watching one a long Filipino television serial, or teleserye. This is slightly new to me because usually their series watching is centred around Christmas and New Year. What this means is that once again the TV in the living room is usually in use. However, I’m almost sure that they’re going to break from the teleserye to watch DWTS and Idol.
So, hey, what’s this current series about? The title is Lobo. I’m not going to go into plot details, but the story seems to centre around two people: Lyka and Noah. What drives the show is the mythology of werewolves and the resulting warring factions: one that aims to protect the werewolves, and one that aims to kill them off. Go figure. In any case, from what I’ve seen it looks like it’s a good series. It looks like a good amount of money was put into the show. So far, there hasn’t been the overwrought melodrama that I tend to associate with other teleserye that I’ve seen.
There seems to be 12 discs in the set, which means that the parents will be watching this one for a long time. At the very least, I’m a bit relieved that they aren’t doing all the episodes in one big marathon. I’m actually kind of interested myself to see just how the story will unfold.
Don’t judge!
Shockolate Cheesecake
If you’re with me on Twitter you’ll have seen me tweeting about this baking project. This is a full post summarizing the results.
So. After church a few weeks ago I was flipping channels and came across an episode of Eat, Shrink & Be Merry on the Food Network. In that particular episode they were battling against La Rocca over chocolate cheesecake. They managed to come up with a rich looking chocolate cheesecake that was lower in fat with higher protein content. They dubbed it the: Shockolate Cheesecake (link to recipe). Shocking, indeed. They subbed out part of the cream cheese with cottage cheese. It was all run through a blender so no one would have noticed a change in texture. They swore that it tasted as if you’d have used all cream cheese. The finished product won in the taste test side by side. At that point I figured that it would make a good project to do one weekend.
I went out to No Frills on Saturday and picked up the necessary ingredients. The light sour cream was 5% milk fat. I honestly would have thought the 1% was the light one like with milk, but I guess that’s different with sour cream. I didn’t want to use the non-fat stuff (which was the 1%) because apparently you can taste the difference. The recipe also used 1% cottage cheese and light cream cheese. All healthier, but would it be obvious?
Assembling it was actually really easy. I say that pretty often, but seriously, this was simple. I used a brownie mix for the crust. Mixing the batter involved adding water, and egg, and oil and using a spoon. The cream cheese involved stuffing the milk ingredients into a blender, melting some chocolate (put a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water–easy) and combining some dry ingredients, then mixing it all together. EASY. Honestly, my main concern was ending up with a really cracked end product after baking. I tried to follow a really gradual cooling process. I cracked the door open a little bit, then widened the door a little bit more. About 45 minutes into cooling, I had a look and it was still in one piece. I was quite happy. Next time I checked though I saw that the thing developed a big-ass crevasse the size of the Grand Canyon. I was disappointed. Sure, it’d still taste great (I assumed) but I was hoping for a perfect end result. The crack made for a great picture though. Maybe I beat the batter too much–especially after adding the eggs. Maybe I sped the cooling process way too much. Who knows?
After it cooled to room temperature, I let it cool in the fridge overnight. At lunch today I cut up some strawberries and melted some chocolate. I decorated the top with all of that, and honestly, you can’t even tell that the crack was there. We ate the cheesecake after lunch. The recipe said to cut it thinly because it’s particularly rich feeling. Holy crap, they were right. That was a ridiculously rich, chocolaty cheesecake. I approve! Two thumbs up! Thing is, I can’t eat much of it, like, at all. I know it’s lower fat and such, but damn, it doesn’t feel like it at all. I know now that I have another good recipe on hand that’s bound to impress.
Next time, I want to consider using a classic graham cracker crust. I’ve also been thinking of using something other than chocolate. Perhaps mint? I think that would be a grasshopper cheesecake, yes? Thing is, it’ll be a very long time before I even try doing this recipe again. It’s great, but it’s the kind of thing that requires a lot of time between instances.
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