Goat Cheese and Black Raspberry Popsicle

God...damn. It has been a while. Sorry 'bout that. These last few months have been a blur of (in no particular order) beautiful German women, kittens, alcohol, travel, drama, action, terrorist plots, heat exhaustion, Bruce Campbell movies, facebook, homelessness, spiders, subways, procrastination, cheese steaks and a rather nice store that sells artisan popsicles. For a time I was staying in a charming part of Philadelphia not too far from University City. It was charming in the sense that the houses were cute, a good portion of the people looked like they would jump right in if I started a Defiance, Ohio singalong on a street corner, and it had loads of interesting and fun places to eat, but also contained several frat houses and sometimes people would wander in from the shadier parts of Market Street to break into cars. It was a bit like sharing a nice, big house with 4 really fun, interesting people and one business major who likes to mention his dad's occupation in pickup lines. I'd also like to add that all of the hipsters I've encountered there were not annoying little shits in the least. Most of them were actually kind of adorable and friendly.

Anyway, there's a rather cool store there called Lil' Pop Shop at 265 South 44th street. I wish I had pictures. It's really tiny inside. Basically there's a cooler/counter full of popsicles and behind it there's a big blackboard with all of the flavors they have that day. There's free water too. All they sell is popsicles for 3 bucks each. I'm a cheap motherfucker so believe me when I say that it's totally worth it because every popsicle I've gotten there has been fucking delicious. The last time I went I had the pleasure of trying the goat cheese and black raspberry popsicle.

Yes, I had this blog in mind when I ordered it. It's the consistency of frozen greek yogurt and tastes like a raspberry... goat cheesecake. There's real bits of raspberry in it too. Pardon me for sounding like a Pabst-swilling hipster but it tastes very authentic and I can safely say that I have never, ever said that about a popsicle before. Honestly, even if you don't like goat cheese I think you might still like this. Just think of it as a cheesecake popsicle, it pretty much is. You should stop by if you're in West Philly. Hit up Honest Tom's Taco Shack while you're at it. It's right next door and they make amazing burritos. Stay queer!

Chocolate Covered Cherrystone Clams

Allerfic to shellfish? Not in the mood to prank someone? Well, you're just not any fun at all, are you? You will, however, be gratified to know that this is a very simple recipe for chocolate dipped whatevers and you can simply replace the clams with fruit or pretzels. Chocolate dipped fruit is a big seller on Hallmark Day and stores will gouge the shit out of you for it. It might look less fancy if you do it yourself but you get more for what you pay, you can put on as much chocolate as you want, and unless the person you give it to is a materialistic brat, a homemade token of affection is much nicer than a store bought one. You know, I made chocolate dipped fruit once a few years ago with my best friend. It turned out great. I distinctly remember raising a piece of banana to my mouth and she said, “You know, you could make so much money on the internet with this.” She responded to my look of utter confusion with a knowing, “College lesbian sucks chocolate banana.” She’s earning a PhD right now.

Anyway, I really must reiterate that intentionally feeding someone something they’re allergic to without their knowledge is extremely dangerous and VERY illegal, even if the allergy is relatively minor. You can be hit with a number of life-ruining charges, up to and including murder and attempted murder. Gross someone out, don’t hurt them.

You need

Canned cherrystone clams (If you can afford fresh clams then go for it)

Toothpicks

Semi-sweet chocolate morsels

Wax paper

Butter

Total cost: $1 - $10, assuming you used canned clams

Drain the clams and dry them with a paper towel. Melt a half cup of chips and 2 table spoons of butter, margarine, or shortening in a double boiler. If you don't have one, fill a pot with a few inches of water, put another pot or ceramic bowl in the water, and bring to a boil to make a jury rigged double boiler. Take care to keep water from getting in the chocolate. Stir until smooth. If the chocolate is too thick, add more butter.

Line a baking sheet with wax paper or baking parchment and arrange the clams on it. Stick a toothpick in each one. Dip each clam in the chocolate, slowly turning it over the bowl after each dip to drip off the excess and spread the chocolate evenly, and place them back on the wax paper.

Put them in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

The buttery, chocolately goodness is shockingly tasty with clam. The soft texture of the chocolate and the clam also work well together. It pretty damn good I’d say. If you gave this to someone wearing a blindfold, you’d probably be much more likely to get a worried “Dude…what is this?” than a panicked “AAAHHHHHHHHH! *spits*” Either way, I’m sure the look on their face would be fucking priceless.

I think a token of affection is appropriate any day of the year. Don’t feel limited to giving the gift of chocolate-covered clams during the holidays or only using clams. There’s a whole world of mollusks (and gastropods, for the particularly adventurous) out there just waiting to be dipped in a concealing layer of chocolate. What better way to let people know exactly how you feel about them? Stay Queer!

Turkish Halva

While in a Polish grocery store in Queens, I happened upon this.

I’ve never heard of Halva. The first ingredient is tahiri, which I later discovered is ground sesame seed paste. My girlfriend asked the cashiers if they knew what it was. Apparently it’s some kind of dessert thing but neither of them could really describe it.  How intriguing.  Apparently halva is made in several countries, comes in several varieties, and originated in Iran.

For some reason, the marbled appearance gave me the impression that it'd be soft, like a spread. It’s actually very firm and crumbly and you have to break it apart. The texture is kind of odd.  The best comparison I can think of is ultra-densely packed fine ground peanuts. It starts off really easy to chew but, as you continue, it gets this kind of toffee-ish consistency. It’s sweet, kind of peanutty-tasting, and there’s a hint of coco.  It’s pretty good, if insanely rich.  A friend of mine tried it and seconded my assessments. Watch yourself if you have fillings, dentures, or just bad teeth in general because I could see this pulling something out if you're not careful. It’s enjoyable while you eat it, but it’s very easy to have too much and end up sprawled across the couch, feeling like there’s a billiard ball-sized wad of honey in your gut, and making noises like a walrus with gas pain.  Stay queer!

Canned Grass Jelly?

You know, there comes a time when you have to face your own prejudices and ethnocentrism and either admit that you were wrong or scramble to let everyone in the room know that you have friends belonging to the group you just derided, thereby absolving yourself of all blame and accusations of racism, or at least that's what your racist brain will convince you, you racist, racist. 

You know that you did something wrong.  You’re just too defensive and confused to admit it…and everyone knows. 

Where was I going with that?  Anyway, call me a stupid American, but I just never thought of grass being a dessert food, with the exception of the mint grass from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.  Apparently I was wrong.  Behold!

You need:

One can on Deluxe Grass Jelly Dessert

What’s in this?  The ingredients are listed as “water, grass jelly, sugar, mung bean, coconut sap and extracts, konjac, chickpeas and algae extracts.”

Huh.

I’m not entirely sure what country grass jelly is from.  My extensive study of Asian characters (which consists entirely of watching the occasional dubbed anime and the opening quotes from Sun Tzu in the beginning of Romance of The Three Kingdoms 8) fails me, so I’m going to turn to the internet for assistance.  Ok, according to Wikipedia, grass jelly hails from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.  It comes with its own spoon too. Let’s get this bitch into a bowl and see how it is.

Oh my God.

I’ve never had a dessert remind me of a festering wound before.  First time for everything, I guess.  I’m feeling…hesitant.  I think it's the color that's putting me off. It smells kinda like wheat grass.

OOOOOOH WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIRD.

The gelatin itself has a strange, sweetish, almost tea-like flavor.  There’s almost a hint of…honey?  The chickpeas taste as you would expect them too.  I think these cubes in here are konjac and they’re like really chewy gelatin.  The mung beans just sort of…sit there tasting like mung beans.  I don’t understand.  A bunch of bland stuff in a weirdly sweet gelatin.  I’m sure it’s good for you but it feels like I’m eating a bowl of condiment.  Like this is supposed to go on something else.  I can’t finish this.  It’s not “bad” per se, it’s just really strange to my pallet. I'm sure that properly prepared grass jelly is better though. I'm not soured to the dish, but I don't think I'll be having it from a can again any time soon. Stay queer!

Booze and bacon milkshake

My best friend (who also did some of the photography for this post) alerted me to the fact that a restaurant somewhere rum and bacon milkshakes on its menu.  This interested me enough to want to try to make one, but not enough to actually look for a recipe or stay true to more than 50% of the stated main ingredients.  I decided to make my own version.  I didn’t even measure 3 of the 5 ingredients because I'm a rebel like that.

You will need

Liquor: I used this cheap brand of burbon called 10 High. 

Milk

French Vanilla ice cream

Oreos

Maple Bacon

Price range: $20- $30

The burbon was free and everything else was on sale, so it was actually more like $10 in my case. You can make a LOT of shake with a small amount of ingredients. Why not have some friends over and make a day of it?

 

Anyway, fry yourself up some bacon to your desired crispiness.  I made three strips.

 

Next add milk and three oreos to a blender.  Don’t use much milk if you want a thick shake.  The bourbon thins it out considerably. Of course, you can always add more milk or ice cream later if you're not happy with the consistency. 

Now add your ice cream.  

Add a generous amount of booze.

Throw the bacon in.

Now blend it like you mean it…

… and if your feeling decadent:

I love it. The bourbon, oreo and maple all combine into a sort of amaretto-ish flavor.  The bacon is reduced to a billion tiny bits so if you want to taste it you have to chew it a little bit. The resulting texture is slightly grainy but, since the bacon is also soft, it's not gritty or gross.  The sweetness of the maple bacon and kick of the burbon compliment each other nicely.  By the way, the other ingredients do nothing to mask the taste of the liquor, which could make it or break it for some. This is a really fun recipe and it's a great comfort food. My only complaint is that it may put you into a sugar coma.  Stay queer!

Spiced habanero peanut butter cookies

The bread mix wasn’t the only thing my sister (who has requested that I refer to her as “the cool sister” from now on) gave me.  I also got a jar of habanero peanut butter, and what better way to try it out than to make peanut butter cookies with it?  .  

No, I'm not being sponsored by Asskickin' (not the company anyway). 

Well, I guess this is the good stuff because it separated.  The oil is red. I like how this is going so far. “Maybe they aren’t fucking around”, thought I.  I tasted a bit and indeed they are not.  I’m getting the full effect of both peanut butter and straight hot sauce.  I guess if you want to make your own you could just add some ground habanero or hot sauce to regular peanut butter.  By the by, once it’s been stirred up it doesn’t look or smell any different from regular peanut butter, which could make it awesome for playing practical jokes.  Also, you didn’t hear that from me.  This is probably a good time to mention that intentionally feeding someone something that they’re allergic to without them knowing can land you in very serious legal trouble so don’t be too much of a jerk.   

There are a million different, yet highly similar, recipes for peanut butter cookies so don’t feel like you have to use the one I’m using.  As long as peanut butter ends up baked into some sort of cookie-like confectionery you should be golden.  In my opinion, the focus of peanut butter cookies should be peanuts, so this recipe is pretty much straight peanut butter topped with peanuts. I think that actually makes it gluten-free.

You will need:

Some marriage of hot pepper and peanut butter

Eggs

White sugar

Baking soda

Vanilla extract

Salt

Thai spiced peanuts (You can buy these from some grocery stores or make your own)

Butter or baking parchment
Price range: $20 - $30

The following recipe may need to be tweaked if you're using crap like Skippy but that’s really more of a problem for you than for me, isn’t it? Preheat your over to 350.  Grease or lay baking parchment on a cookie sheet.  Mix together a cup of peanut butter and a cup of sugar until it’s thoroughly blended.  If there are any lumps in the sugar try to break them up before you start mixing.  The resulting dough is really sticky and thick so stirring out any of the little bastards is a bit of a pain.  Stir in one egg in, ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt.  Happily, I now get to revisit my favorite part of the spiced prune and cheese pudding.  Put about 1/3 of a cup of peanuts into a resealable bag, smash them up with something that your ex gave you until they’re ground to whatever consistency you desire, and stir them into the dough.  Roll the dough into balls and place them on the baking sheet.  Cookies made with this recipe don’t spread much so they don’t need that much room. Depending on how big you make them, you should get between 18 and 24 cookies.

Now lightly press a fork into each one.  This flattens them out, which makes them cook more evenly and makes them look kinda cool.

Cook them for 20 minutes. They should come out really soft.  They firmed up a bit after they cooled but not very much. I mean, they're wads of peanut butter after all.

Wow.  Peanut butter and pad thai got drunk and had a love child.  A love child that listens to punk rock, has 3 girlfriends, and is full of hot sauce.  These are wonderfully peanut buttery and sweet.  The combination of heat, thai spices, and peanut is really tasty and the texture is very pleasant.  It isn’t as strong as the beer bread but it’s still pretty hot.  They also smell like pad thai.  The effect is kind of weird but it’s not bad.   In addition to how good they taste, I think they could be really versitle.  They would be great for a chili festival or with beer and pizza or teaching roommates, pets, and rascally, Dickensian urchins a learned aversion to stealing your food.  Stay queer!

Spiced Prune and Cheese Pudding

Wartime, prison time, and college are all similar, in that they will lead you to try some very odd food combinations in a desperate effort to add enough variety to your meals to ward off those cannibalistic urges  which are always, always hiding just below the surface, barely restrained by the trappings of social niceties, and which tend to become stronger when coupled with a monotonous diet.

Rationing can lead to some pretty weird recipes, some of which stick around long after better things become available.  Don’t believe me?  Look through a cookbook from the 40’s or 50’s and see how long it takes for you to find something that sounds bat shit crazy.  In a gesture indicating that she wishes I had moved out sooner, my mom sent me a recipe for spiced prune and cheese pudding, which came from some cookbook that was published in 1956. 

No, this is not like a Yorkshire pudding.  No it’s not cheddar cheese, or swiss or any other kinds of wholesome, God-fearing cheeses that all red-blooded Americans consume by the pound.  This is a dessert pudding and it’s made with cottage cheese.  They weren’t kidding when they called this "spiced pudding".  If you don’t already have the required spices then this recipe can get real pricy, real fast. Also you should stock your kitchen better.  Luckily, I do have a well stocked spice rack. I’m graduating from college this week and I need that money for beer and shenanigans.  Anyway, you will need:

Eggs

Dried prunes

Nilla wafers

Chopped walnuts 

Cottage cheese

Cream or evaporated milk

A lemon

Butter

Sugar

Flour

Salt

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Ground cloves

Butter 1 1/5 quart casserole dish and set it aside.

The recipe says to cover ¾ of a cup of dried prunes in boiled water and simmer it for about 45 minutes, or until tender.  Coarsely chop them and remove the pits.  Luckily, packaged dried prunes these days are usually pitted and pretty tender to start with, so that step isn't strictly necessary.

Now you need to melt three tablespoons of butter and make a half cup of nilla wafer crumbs, which takes about 12 cookies.  Put them in a big resealable bag and take your frustrations out on them.  Now mix the crumbs together with the butter and set it aside. 

Measure out a half cup of chopped walnuts and set aside

Sift together 1/3 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon flour, 1/4 tsp salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and 1/8 tsp cloves. Set aside.

It says to put 1 ½ cups of cottage cheese through a sieve to strain out excess moisture. Luckily,cottage cheese technology has marched on and you probably don't need to do that. Anyway, mix it with 2 beaten eggs, a half cup of cream or undiluted evaporated milk, 1 tsp lemon juice and 1/2 tsp grated lemon peel.

Stir the dry mixture, chopped walnuts and prunes into it. 

Now it says to “Turn mixture into casserole”.  I’m going to assume that means that you should pour the mixture into the dish now.   

Everyone here agrees that it looks like vomit.  Opinion is divided as to what kind of animal it came from.

Top it with the wafer crumbs. 

Better.

Bake at 350 35-50 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.  I ended up cooking it for about an hour.  Serve it warm.

 

Oh wow…This is actually good.  It’s actually really good.  I don't like dried fruit so that's a nice surprise.  It tastes a little bit like a baked apple.  The texture is a bit like a dense cobbler crossed with a quiche.  Sorry if this description is a bit confusing.  It’s a bit hard to find relevant comparisons.  Four of my friends also tried it.  The general verdict is “It tastes nice but the texture is weird”. I guess we can now rest assured that this recipe is just as successful at staving off cannibalism today as it was in the 50's.  

Stay queer!