A blog by Cameron and Shannon

Items of interest this week:

Taco Bell’s Big Bell Box & Bacon Club Chalupa

As a followup to my previous post, I feel the need to speak out regarding the Big Bell Box and Bacon Club Chalupa.

The Big Bell Box

Taco Bell’s Big Bell Box is comprised of a taco, a Bacon Club Chalupa, a burrito, a thing of Cinnamon Twists, and a drink. Who cares, because you can buy all of those items separately, making the Big Bell Box nothing more than an extremely arbitrary combo meal served in a box instead of a tiny grocery bag. The KFC Big Box meal presents you chicken in a manner otherwise unachievable; unless the Big Bell Box is modified to also include something unique (e.g. a single tortilla), it will fall short.

The Bacon Club Chalupa

I generally don’t eat chicken at Taco Bell, but if you add Bac-O’s and mayonnaise and put it in deep-fried flatbread, you’ve crossed the line — as well as a number of other lines that have been drawn after that, Yosemite-Sam and Bugs-Bunny-style. I can’t follow you down this road, Taco Bell … but I’ll be here when you get back.

You’re Going To Learn Something Next Week

I’m going to teach you how to use Quicksilver. If you have any idea what that sentence means, the article won’t be for you. It’s going to be called “Quicksilver for Normal People”, and it’s going to be straightforward and simple, and afterwards, your Mac experience will never be the same. I promise.

Flickr Now Has Video

Flickr now has video, and I’ve decided that I like it. I made one video while sitting on the couch one evening, and it garnered a (for me) fantastic amount of comments/attention, so I made a second, more entertaining video, which has been completely ignored, so whatever. Expect more of these occasionally. They’re fun to make.

I Now Have A Film Scanner

Thanks to a bonus, I have now ordered a film negative scanner, and will be starting a photography site at a domain I’ve had reserved for this very purpose. More on this very soon; I’m excited. As soon as it comes in I’ll get a splashpage up, so that you may share in the excitement. (I’ll probably write a post about the incredibly tedious process of deciding what to buy — expect that next week, too.)

I’ve decided just now to introduce a semi-formal new category of posts for the site (or at least a “wikipedia” tag). Every once in a while I’m going to write about the stuff I learn in Wikipedia. Why? Because Wikipedia is amazing. It settles obscure factual arguments in mere seconds. It entertains for hours. It’s my favorite. (On long road trips, Shannon and I will take turns reading each other Wikipedia articles from our iPhones. I heartily endorse this technique.)

So, this morning, the standard Wikipedia thing (xkcd never lies) happened: Shannon and I went from iChatting about adopted kids, to her telling me that you could rename a kid when you adopt (something I did not know and was slightly weirded out by). She then found this BoingBoing article about a Swedish couple that were fined for naming their kid Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116.

This intrigued me. What names are and aren’t legal for you to name your child? I hit up Wikipedia hoping for a list. No luck so far, because I didn’t make it any farther than the List Of Unusual Person Names, which is itself awesome enough to deserve a post all its own.

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Today I’m going to tell you how to make your fast food experience more awesome. I have compiled a list of 5 tips — mine and others — that will inevitably enhance your chances of walking out of a corporate megafranchise more than just marginally satisfied with your culinary experience.

“But Cameron! My fast food experience is already more awesome,” you say, eyes wide with confusion, anticipation, and animalistic grease-lust. Well, my friend, no, it’s not. You’re wrong. It is, at best, a faded spectre — a mere muddled reflection of true awesome.

Don’t fight it. Click Read More and shut your chalupa-hole.

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I didn’t originally set out to roast a chicken for this meal - I set out to make an Anthony Bourdain recipe of some sort. But let’s review: I’m a decidedly average (some may say “ridiculously unexperienced”) cook, while Bourdain is a 30-year veteran of French cuisine — and in his Les Halles cookbook, he isn’t about to cut you any slack. Ever. And he’ll call you impolite names every three pages. It’s rough.

Nevertheless, since I haven’t dropped the $35 necessary for his book yet, I googled “Bourdain recipe” and found Nick Kindelsperger’s entertaining Poulet Roti experience on The Paupered Chef (which, by the way, appears to be a real cooking blog, check it out). Hooray! A reasonably simple recipe with reasonably simple ingredients!

So, I set to it. Time to roast my first chicken!

Mise in place, sort of.

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I’m something like 6 weeks late telling you about this, which is a shame, because it’s awesome.

Shannon and I aren’t big fans of Valentine’s Day. Granted, back when we were dating, I used V-Day as an opportunity to flawlessly execute all sorts of fabulously romantic plans with … wait, actually, we started dating in June and were engaged by December, so February as a whole never really came into play until she already had the ring. So, never mind.

Last year I got us a reservation at the ridiculous 2-story Maggiano’s in West End, where we had to wait 30 minutes for a table anyway and turned out to only be 1 story (the bottom story is restrooms and a VIP something-or-other).

The point is, Valentine’s is lame. Not that I don’t like arranging romantic evenings or whatever, but I feel no need to time my romantic arrangements on some sort of a national scale with the rest of society. Plus, all the good restaurants are crowded.

This year, Shannon had a brilliant idea. She offered to fix us a seven-course dinner. I was speechless. Seven courses! Even better: She wanted it to be a surprise! (Translation: I didn’t have to do anything!)

Seven courses, by candlelight, for me … I mean us.

Ultra-brilliant! Smashing! Awesome! Here’s how it went.

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This is a story that I posted about a month ago on the very short-lived other Coblog — I’m reposting it here because I hate to see it go to waste. Plus, I watched the pilot of Twin Peaks last night instead of writing an entry. (Loved it. We’re getting the next disc as soon as possible.)

I have a story about what just happened. We just arrived at home from Kroger and I immediately plopped down with MacBook Pro™ to tell you about it.

We usually don’t go to Kroger. The one near us is crowded, small, and the interior hasn’t been updated since 1988. The meat counter mysteriously packs up at around 6 every day (even though the store is open 24 hours) and the meat section itself uses the very un-Publixy technique of marking questionable meat with a “MANAGER’S SPECIAL” sticker and selling it on the cheap. Also, I think that rich eccentric people shop there and demand rich eccentric items, because this Kroger regularly stocks Whole Beef Tenderloins ($110ish, shrinkwrapped in the cold case) and Giant Snow Crab Legs ($90 and up).

Anyway. We were just grabbing some quick essentials (lunch, steak for chicken fried steak tonight, green tomatoes, Shiner Bock) because we didn’t want to drive all the way to Whole Foods. Shannon had run off to grab a couple more items, so I was in line.

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Hello, readers! Today we’re going to cook shrimp scampi.

Shannon wrote an entry for soup back on the old blog, and the intention was (and is) for us to start doing that on a regular basis. It’s easy and interesting posting material, and hey, a great way to make a successful new recipe more rewarding is to blog about it and have someone else read and try and love it. Am I right? I’m right. So let’s do this.

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Last Saturday, Shannon and I visited Hot Diggity Dogs, a local purveyor of non-local hot dog cuisine. I came across it on Yelp! Nashville and couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard about it before. A hot dog place? Serving Chicago dogs? 5 minutes from our apartment? Unbelievable.

Needless to say, I declared a meal there to be top priority, and we forewent our (unfortunately) standard Saturday Taco Bell lunch to head over to Hot Diggity Dogs, because I don’t know if you’re aware, but the Chicago Dog is one of the greatest foods ever invented.

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