Welfareloser's Blog

so. dinner and dessert. dinner was german egg noodles with parmesano-reggiano and basil, tomatoes, and peppers from the garden. and thai yellow curry chicken, because PositiveRoleModel is an asshole. dessert was german egg noodles with coconut milk and honey reduction, dried chile mangoes, candied ginger, dry-roasted peanuts, lime and basil, because i’m an asshole.

i thought i was being clever with the basil in the dessert, but o lordy no. i picked out every last bit of that shit after the first bite. THEN it was an awesome invention.

my hotel! these are just 3 of the 17 different casinos, each with a different theme, each perfectly designed to disorient the shit out of you relative to time and space, and to drown out the tortured screams of your bank account:

This was my room. squee!

being from iowa, it’s difficult to get anywhere near a really good concert. occasionally someone awesome comes to des moines, but usually i have to travel 4 hours or more to get to a larger city. i lucked out – not only were Stone Temple Pilots playing AT MY HOTEL, there was still exactly one balcony seat available! and since Scott Weiland is newly sober, the show even started on time and i got to bed at a decent hour for my event the next morning!

now, it is obviously a terrible idea to eat at a converted-taco-bell-lookin-ass restaurant with a white trash name advertising authentic mexican food.

terrible, but funny! i had brunch here before an early-afternoon event, and holy crap was it good. healthful, even! mexican grandmas made me an egg and homemade chorizo burrito with love and fresh salsa. halfway between my hotel and the fencing venue, rocket-fuel power-lunch FTW!

i was supposed to fly home the morning after my last event. the thunderstorms in denver had other plans, though, and my flight was cancelled. so i booked flights for the following day, got back on the airport shuttle, and went back to the fencing venue with all my luggage. i hung out with Coach and got to watch AbsoluteZen and Capo95 in their last events, then finally got a room at the atlantis hotel, which was right next door to the fencing venue. by the time i checked in to my new room, it was 5 PM, and all i had eaten since the night before were a couple of power bars. so i looked into restaurants at this hotel… and as it turns out, “toucan charlie’s,” a horrible margaritaville-themed restaurant, had an all-you-can-eat buffet for $20. after 3 days of fencing and a day of fasting, turns out, i can eat a fucking LOT.

then, i was totally headed back to my room to read or watch tv. i SWEAR. but it turns out there’s a video game arcade tucked in among the casinos of the atlantis, apparently so parents can dump their under-21 children there for hours on end to scream and fight with each other in seizure-lights happy-land. this arcade had 3 dance dance revolution games that were only 30 cents per 3-song, 2-person dance-off play. AND there was a group of bored teenage mexican girls. so! for an investment of only $20 and four hours, i got my biggest ass-kicking of the week! also, i was more sore from the dance-off than i was from all the fencing combined. and i slept like a baby on the plane!

SALTED CARAMEL CRUNCH BROWNIES

this is a recipe that ran in several newspapers around the country, including my local paper. it’s box-mix brownies, covered in a layer of caramel, then a layer of chocolate with salty peanuts and pretzels. sounds good, right? it wasn’t. because obviously, nobody actually tested this motherfucking recipe. and nothing pisses me off more than an untested recipe that wastes my time and money, and more importantly, fucking disappoints me. when i want to eat fresh, warm, salty, crunchy caramel brownie goodness, and instead get a mouthful of sloppy, fucked-up, ham-fisted, unbalanced, badly-flavored disappointment, i want to find the lazy syndicated bitch that wrote down her shitty thought experiment and got paid for it instead of actually coming up with a recipe that was worth a shit, and beat her with a fucking fistful of uncooked spaghetti.

here is the recipe as it ran in the paper:

1 (14 ounce) package caramel candies – okay.

1/4 cup milk – really? because the consistency of caramel candies is about right already, but you want us to water them down with MILK? THAT MUCH milk? fuck you. the result was an oozy mess that didn’t stay on top of the brownies. not when fully cooled, not even when refrigerated. it was as runny as hershey’s syrup. also, within a day, it had soaked the brownies so badly that it too, was an oozy fucking mess. liquid brownies. yum. with wet pretzel pieces on top. i hate you so fucking much.

1 (9-by-9 inch) pan brownies, baked and cooled in the pan – again, really? a box of brownies gives you the option of making it in anything from a 10-by-13 inch pan for flatter brownies, to a 9-by-9 inch pan for really super-thick brownies. so… we’re going to add a layer of caramel, and then a layer of chocolate with crunchy shit in it, AND we’re going to start with brownies as thick as we can humanly make them? again, fuck you, you lazy recipe-faking whore.

1 (12-oz) package semi-sweet chocolate chips – fucking REALLY? the base of this monstrosity is chocolate motherfucking brownies. when you cover that with an entire package of dark chocolate chips, you know what the finished product tastes like? fucking shitty dark chocolate chips. if i want dark chocolate, i can go buy a bar of it – or a bag of chips of it! – and eat the shit straight out of the package, and not waste $10 and and two hours fucking up my kitchen to make some messy bullshit that tastes EXACTLY LIKE THE UNADULTERATED BAG OF FUCKING DARK CHOCOLATE CHIPS. bitch.

1 teaspoon shortening – HUH? this is supposed to be melted with the chocolate chips. first off, it’s too small an amount to do what i assume it was intended to do, which is give the cooled chocolate top layer a softer texture. second – crisco? add crisco to chocolate cake/candy-mess? ever hear of butter? you know, that shit that makes candy/cake-mess ACTUALLY TASTE GOOD? why in the bloody screaming fuck-all am i diluting chocolate with motherfucking crisco? oh, wait. because you’re a lazy bitch.

1 cup lightly salted peanuts – no. lightly salted was undetectable. this is supposed to be salty/sweet. and had you actually put any of this abomination in your mouth, you would have tasted the fail, you lazy bitch.

1 cup gently broken pretzels – okay. except for the part where trying to stir 2 cups total of chunks of shit into that little melted chocolate is fucking impossible. i dare the lazy bitch who faked this fucking recipe to prove that she can get the melted chocolate shit to stretch so thin that it can physically cover all that surface area. i’m waiting. i thought so. BITCH..

SO. here’s an actual tested version of the recipe, which is well-balanced, has three layers of roughly equal firmness, and keeps for 5 days and counting with shape and texture intact. you’re welcome, america. and, you’re welcome, you lazy bitch. if you have any conscience, you will send me the money you got paid for your fake-ass version.

box-mix brownies, baked and cooled in a 10-by-13 inch pan

16 oz of caramel candies
1/4 cup butterscotch chips
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

melt all that shit together. slowly. carefully. double boiler. short bursts in microwave. whatever. just don’t burn the shit. you don’t like butterscotch chips? use caramel chips. or peanut butter chips. just shut the fuck up and use some chips. whip it smooth and spread it on the brownies. and don’t bitch to me about the fat content. you already dumped like a cup of oil into the damned brownies. quit pretending you’ll make any measurable difference in fat content by substituting wet-ass milk. if you’re going to be a dumbass and use milk anyway, for fuck’s sake, at least cut it to 1/8 cup. asshole.

after it cools, push into the top of that layer:

1-1/4 cups dry-roasted peanuts

then melt this shit together:

10 oz milk chocolate
1 Tablespoon peanut butter

and stir in:

1-1/4 cups gently broken pretzels

and drop that shit all over the top. cool it. cut it. eat it. share it. make more. YOU’RE WELCOME.