Epic Portions

Category: Randoms

  • The Ghetto Gourmet

    coolioFresh off of his crack possession arrest at the L.A. airport, Grammy award winner Coolio is apparently energized and ready to teach your ass how to cook.  Remember Coolio? You know, Coolio, the wacky-haired MC who dropped science about gangsta paradises and gettin’ up before you get down back in, like, ’95. Well, apparently since his rap career went down the crapper long ago, he’s out to make a comeback — not as a rapper but as a cook. Yes, a cook. Cookin’ with Coolio is Coolio’s latest endeavor in the cooking world, following his Cookin’ with Coolio webisodes, which are more entertaining and informative than 90% of the shows currently on the Food Network.

    Recipes include “Heavenly Ghettalian Garlic Bread,” “Tricked-out Westside Tilapia” and “Grilled Italiano Breastesses.”

    Here is the description for “Fresh-pickin’ Raspberry Chicken.”

    Raspberries and chicken? Coolio, have you gone mad? Have you lost your damn mind? Do we need to lock you up like Lil’ Kim? Hell to the no. I know what I’m doin’. I ain’t the ghetto gourmet because I do stuff like everyone else. This recipe was born when I found myself back at my house with a beautiful lady at 3:00 a.m. with less than a fully-stocked fridge. So I took nothing and I made something, and then I got myself a little something something. Know what I’m saying? Shaka!

    Currently selling for $10.80 on Amazon, this could possibly be the deal of the century.  Apparently the man wasn’t lying when he warned us to get our asses out of the kitchen if we couldn’t take the heat.  He really is on a mission.

  • Cleaning out Grandma’s Liquor Cabinet

    So my grandmother just moved out of one of my favorite American cities – Baltimore!  Home of the Wire, the Orioles, the best Blue Crab in this galaxy, a fantastic NFC defense, and…apparently…one of the most interesting old-school liquor collections I’ve ever seen.  If you’ve moved as much as I have – you know that it isn’t fun at all.  Moving lots of glass is even less fun – especially when it is filled with the remains of rare and mysterious liqueurs and bitters.  So here are a few gems that we discovered.

    The first of this mysterious collection came in the form of a strange apertif – “Palo Morey”?  Anyone have any ideas what this is?

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    Note the tools required to uncork…

    My meager attempt at a web search revealed what seems to be a similar liqueur:

    Palo de Mallorca –  a spirit obtained by the maceration and/or infusion of cinchona bark and gentian root (gentina lutea) with sugar, caramelized sucrose and ethyl alcohol. Its name is derived from cinchona bark (also known as palo quina), which originally came from South America and became known in Spain thanks to the Countess of Chinchón. Cinchona bark contains various different substances like quinine, which gives it a bitter, astringent taste but has antipyretic and anti-malarial properties.

    It turns out that this stuff was actually still drinkable, although I’m fairly sure that determining this took several months off my life.  It is incredibly interesting to see how thick this type of liqueur becomes over time.  It’s hard to see in the photo, but this thing had LEGS – about the viscosity of a thin molasses or WD-10.

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    Anyway – we tossed it.  I’m really hoping that one of you dedicated readers doesn’t tell me that the bottle was worth 30 grand.  Moving on…

    Next on the block was pretty much the coolest wine bottle ever, containing the most destroyed cork and oxidized wine known to man.  This was a 1965 Château Cissac, a winery in the Moulis-en-Médoc appellation (or “controlled wine area”) of the larger Bordeaux wine region of France.  Odds on this was a pretty good wine during its day.  Now…no longer so…


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    All those little pieces in the sink are from my repeated attempts to get the cork out without pushing it into the wine.

    This wine did have what I think is on of the greatest wine labels I’ve ever seen.  Talk about classy.

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    Has anyone ever had to clear out old liquor cabinets?  Any interesting finds?

  • Krispy Kreme is Taunting me

    Has anyone out there ever seen one of the Krispy Kreme donut machines in action?

    Is it just me, or is this a little piece of Industrial magic? I stood outside a Krispy Creme in Washington, D.C. for like 20 minutes marveling at this thing. Truly beautious!

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    It actually got me thinking.  Does anyone out there own a personal donut making machine?  You know, those little ones you always see advertised in Sky Mall and other, assorted crazy crap catalogues.  If not an actual machine, does anyone make their own donuts?

    If so – do you love it?  Does it make you and your loved ones as happy as I would presume it would?  I know if any of my loved ones made their own donuts, I would mow their lawns, wash their windows, and write them directly into my will.