White Castle Cheeseburgers & Christmas wrap-up

Welcome 2011, please treat me nicer than 2010. Actually so far this year has been about a billion times better than last year, although the bar was pretty low. I stayed home last night and fully avoided being anywhere near the roads and drunk drivers.

Time for the first post of the year. Starting with frozen cheeseburgers:

White Castle Cheeseburgers

Now most people have at least heard of White Castle, most people from the movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. White Castle is the oldest fast-food burger chain in the US. They only have 422 location across America, mostly in the Midwest. For everyone outside the 11 states featuring actual White Castle restaurants they produce a line of frozen burgers. They are the same as the fresh ones minus the pickles (pickles do not freeze well apparently).

Cheeseburger!

They taste better than they photograph. I used to get these all the time when I was a teenager. The Cost Cutter in Blaine, WA used to only carry the Hamburgers and I would have to add my own cheese. Sometimes I would use spray cheese. The best part about White Castle burgers are the little onions, they taste delicious.

Christmas Wrap-up:
Christmas kind to me this year. I got an amazing back massager. It is a shiatsu massager with heat. Feels so good for my back.

Back Massager

I was going to write more but it took me like twenty minutes to get that last picture to appear correctly, so I’m going to call it a post.

X-Mas Stuff!

I don’t really feel like typing that much today, but I’m getting a backlog of holiday photos I took to use in blog posts. Since American Thanksgiving has come and gone and it is now officially the holiday season I better get sharing. So without comment, some photos of holiday related stuff I have picked up so far:

Hickory Farms!

I love Hickory Farms stuff. You may remember from last year. Actually I just really like gift boxes/baskets. I like the little assortment of goodies you get with them.

Well the other week was my first sighting of a Hickory Farms gift box, and of course I bought one:

First Hickory Farms of the year

Looking at the photo I realize two things, 1: It is a crappy photo, 2: It is the exact same assortment I photographed last year, right down to the not featured in this year’s photo spreader and strawberry candies.

Last week I ate it all for lunch:

 

On Remembrance Day I went to Bellingham and checked out the Hickory Farms kiosk that is temporarily in Bellis Fair mall. Of course I had to buy something, so I got this:

Second Hickory Farms assortment of the year

I haven’t eaten this one yet, but I can’t wait to use the mini cleaver when I do! If you will notice I also have a new tablecloth featured in the background. It was one of my many purchases from Target’s holiday selection. The rest I’m saving for a future post.

Christmas Crunch Update:
No sightings yet this year. I’ll be checking again soon. If I find any this year I will be buying fewer than three boxes this time. I didn’t even finish one box last year.

McRib

Yesterday I went to the US, and during this trip I had lunch, and during this lunch I ate a McRib.

If you haven’t heard of the McRib, where have you been? I mean it’s even been parodied in a Simpsons episode.

So I ordered one:

McRib box

And then I ate it. I liked the pickles on it, a nice contrast to the flavor of the barbeque sauce. The meat tastes extremely processed, which I’m sure it is, but it doesn’t even taste like meat. The bun was ok though.

McRib

Go get one if you want to be able to say you had a McRib like I did, or if you just like heavily processed food stuffs.

Back from Disneyland!

So I was in Disneyland from October 7 to 12 and had an awesome time. I ate at the Carnation Cafe three times, the Rainforest Cafe, and even the Blue Bayou.

And I got a pretty sweet souvenir:

A Swiss Family Treehouse attraction poster with original leaf from the attraction all in a bamboo frame. The Swiss Family Robinson is one of my favorite movies, so of course the tree house would be one of my favorite Disneyland attractions, had they not replaced it with the lamer Tarzan Treehouse in 1999. Thankfully when they replaced it they kept some of the leaves so I can have a cool souvenir like this, and they left the Swiss Family Treehouse in Florida alone so I had a chance to see it back in May.

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Book Review: Behind the Bell by Dustin Diamond

Behind the Bell by Dustin Diamond

So this is my first post about a book (I think). And the book I choose to write about today is “Behind the Bell”, the tell-all memoir from his time on Saved by the Bell by Dustin “Screech” Diamond.

If you are of a certain age, you probably remember Saved by the Bell. The saturday morning live action series that was then syndicated to death in after-school time slots. You may even remember the short-lived Saved by the Bell: The College Years. I have fond memories of Saved by the Bell and my perverse curiosity drew me to Dustin’s book.

The book is all over the place, jumping forwards and backwards in time while telling the story of what was happening behind the scenes on the Bell. Mostly it’s entertaining and lightweight reading. Dustin gets a little confused about dates, which leads me to believe the book never had a thorough fact checking read through, which causes me to question the rest of the book.

The biggest piece of Saved by the Bell dirt that Dustin dishes (other than Tiffani-Amber slept with it seems everyone but him) is that Mario Lopez allegedly raped a girl in the guest house on his parent’s home and NBC lawyers paid the girl off and kept it all quiet for a paltry $50,000 pay off.

Other than that he mostly complains about the gay innuendo between Screech and Belding that was written into scripts of Saved by the Bell: The New Class.

If you liked Saved by the Bell and see this book in a bargain bin, buy it. Just do not pay full price for this, it’s not worth it (trust me).

Donald Duck Orange Juice & Sea Monkeys

I think the title of this post explains it all. I am about to write about Donald Duck orange juice and sea monkeys.

First, Donald Duck Orange Juice:

Donald Duck Orange Juice (No Pulp)

I found this at the grocery store in Blaine, WA near where I get my mail. I’m not a huge OJ drinker, but I mean come on, it’s Donald Duck. It’s not immediately apparent to me the connection between Donald and OJ, but I don’t think it really matters. FYI, it was available in two versions, the regular no pulp seen here and a no pulp with extra calcium. Apparently Donald doesn’t like pulp, but that’s ok because neither do I.

And Sea Monkeys:

Sea Monkeys (No Longer on Mars)

You may remember (or probably not) that I had try to start a sea monkey family before. Actually I tried twice. And failed. Twice. Each time I ended up with only one sea monkey left alive after a week or so. This time looks to be much more successful. Instead of ordering the sea monkey stuff from Amazon I bought them from Walmart, and I gave up on making my sea monkeys live on Mars. It’s only been a week and a half since they hatched, but it looks way more promising then the last times since there are way more than just one sea monkey alive at this point. It’s hard to see in the picture but there are dozens of them in there. And yes, I’ve named most of them. And no, I can’t tell them apart so I might be calling some of them the wrong names.

Cat Bowling!

I’ve discovered a new sport, CAT BOWLING! Isadore the cat is a very lazy and not very playful ragdoll. Trying to get him to be a little more playful I’ve started to bowl him down the hardwood floor. He actually doesn’t seem to mind, after I bowl him he gets up and comes over to be scratched. All I need now are some cat friendly bowling pins.

Cat Bowling with Isadore:

Waffles, Golden Waffles!

Since I got a freaking amazing rotating waffle iron for Christmas I had been scouring the internet looking for the best waffle mix. Well I’m pretty sure I’ve found it.

Here’s the awesome rotating waffle iron I got:

ROTATING Waffle Iron

 

And thanks to Amazon.com I have 3 large containers of Golden Malted Waffle mix:

Golden Malted Waffle Flour

 

Now, I’ll tell you one of the reasons why I think this waffle mix creates the best waffles. One of the ingriedents is MELTED BUTTER! Melted butter is one of the best things on earth. Half the time when I order crab legs or lobster it is simply to eat something that I can dip in melted butter.

To conclude, this a picture of the waffle that I ate for dinner last night:

WAFFLE!