Tag: food

Dad Brog (#171): Someone made me breakfast for a change

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Toof fairy goin’ broke these days lately

For the first time in forever.  I guess years of passive remarks about how nobody ever makes me breakfast has sunk in to at least one member of my household, and my six-year old daughter took it upon herself to demand that she make me breakfast one morning.

And in spite of her grand aspirations, wanting to make something straight out of a Disney feast, I reminded her that often times the best food are the ones that are simple, use fewer components and are just made with love, and she took that to heart, when bringing all the things she wanted to use to a cutting board, separated from me since she wanted it to be a surprise.

It was Nutella spread on two end pieces of a loaf of bread, with blueberries in between.  The blueberries were not rinsed, giving me a moment of pause of concern, given the current news of listeria bacteria prevalent in today’s vegetables, and my child seems to have noticed that I’m the only one who ever really eats the heels of the bread, mostly on account of my staunch refusal to waste food. 

My breakfast sandwich was served with a few cubes of watermelon on the side, and a literal cherry on top.

It was the most delicious breakfast that I’ve ever had. :*)

Nos vemos en cuatro años, Copa Mundial de la FIFA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And just like that, the World Cup is over.  Este fue un viaje hermoso.

Not really, but with the eliminations of Los Estados Unidos, as well as Mejico, within the span of the last 48 hours, and even Canada, all host nations are eliminated from the tournament, as are their Cinderella dreams of deeper runs, and general interest in the World Cup, I would predict are about to take a massive hit, with most casual futbol enthusiasts seeing little reason in continuing to watch.

I know it’s arrogant to predict such things based on the continued participation of the United States as well as Mexico, but I’d be curious to see the Fox One data for the rest of the World Cup, compared to when the US and Mexico were still in it, once the tournament is officially over.

But not only is it a sad albeit inevitable fate that the host nations are all out, but to the point of my general criticism of the state of futbol globally and the World Cup, the remaining teams are mostly the same pool of countries that always remain, including France, Argentina and Spain; Germany and Brazil were unfortunate victims to some upsets courtesy of Paraguay and Norway, but for the most part, it appears that the general script of the World Cup is still on course to have a rematch of 2022 in the finals, between France and Argentina, primarily the matchup between Kylian Mbappe and the MJ of futbol, Lionel Messi, over who can extend their all-time World Cup goals record, and if Messi can presumably go out as a two-time champion, seeing as how he’s possibly done with World Cup competition after this one.

I’m not going to say I wouldn’t watch any more World Cup now that all of the teams I’ve been generally supporting are out (Korea, USA, Mexico, Brazil), but personally my general enthusiasm for the rest of the field is mostly depleted, with a lingering hope for countries like Norway and laughably Egypt, to disrupt the status quo, but once they’re out, it truly is just another copy/paste field of World Cups prior and I can’t say that I’d have much interest if the finals do end up being comprised of France or Spain vs. Messi.

Circling back to the USA vs. Belgium elimination game, man I just knew, I knew, that the United States was fucked as soon as the red card suspension controversy swirling around Folarun Balogun started, with our sad sack excuse of a dear leader meddling around and somehow got FIFA to allow him to play against Belgium in spite of the red card he had drawn against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The narrative powering the United States went from being the Greatest USMNT in History that was actually starting to garner some respect from the global futbol community, to [Orange fuck] Meddles with World Cup to Give USA Unfair Advantage and it was back to everyone hating ‘Murica again; but more importantly igniting a fire under Belgium and giving them all the motivation in the world to shake off the nerves that got them to the Round of 16 looking vulnerable with just two wins and two draws and 4 goals allowed, to looking like a top-10 FIFA ranked team in the world again.

Not only was the motivation real for Belgium, but the distraction was palpable for the United States, who basically played like shit for 80 minutes against the Belgians.  They couldn’t pass, they couldn’t touch, they lost seemingly every 50/50, everything was challenging, they couldn’t get the ball to the Belgian side of the field, much less have any attempts at goal.  Pulisic was shaky and invisible, Dest couldn’t dribble, Balogun being allowed to play was a complete non-factor, Remm was getting worked the whole match, and the whole team couldn’t handle Belgium’s pressure, and I can only imagine how pitiful their pass accuracy looked.

The Greatest USMNT in History looked completely outclassed and overwhelmed, and the prevalent thought going through my head throughout the whole match, as well as the Mexico vs. England match was that futbol of the Americas, unfortunately still has a long way to go when it comes to being able to compete with futbol from Europe.  Both the US and Mexico were completely defeated by higher-tier European squads, and it’s like they’ve both figured out how to dominate against the CONCAF, but are completely clueless on how to compete outside of it.

Sure, Mexico defeated Czechia, and the United States defeated Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the US also got exposed by Turkey, and the conclusion is that European futbol is still in a class above North America, and this World Cup ends with continued head scratching on wondering what it’s going to take for the US to ever catch up to Europe, if they ever can.

Regardless of the conclusion of Cinderella(s), I can still fondly opine that this has been the most beautiful and entertaining World Cup that I can remember since like, 2002, when Korea (and Japan) captured the imagination of the world when they hosted.

The amount of wholesome and wildly entertaining content to come from this World Cup have been stuff of legend, with tourists and visitors foreign to the Americas coming in and documenting and sharing their amusement, wonder and culinary discoveries with the internet, and there’s been no shortage of happy entertainment over the whole tournament.

Mexico welcoming everyone, and making BFFs with everyone from Korea, Japan, Czechs, Uzbeks and even the English has been a delight to watch.  Tourists from all over Europe and Japan making their journeys into the United States, and experiencing quintessentially American things like fast food, Buc-ee’s, barbecue, Tex-Mex, ‘Murican portions, MLB baseball and of course, ranch dressing, have all been amusing and helpful as an American to see what others actually don’t hate about our country.

There was a great meme narrative that summed it up pretty well, along the lines of that the World Cup is showing that we don’t all hate each other, we just hate our world leaders, and the World Cup is like a giant fun gathering of cousins where the parents all hate each other, and it really couldn’t be any more true.  The amount of unity, acceptance and general copacetic peace shown by so many throughout the United States, Mexico and presumably even Canada has been genuinely the best part of the whole tournament, completely regardless of the outcomes on the pitches, and even if the end result is yet another boring France or Argentina win, it doesn’t change that this has still been the best World Cup ever.

Thoughts on Singapore, Hong Kong, and cruising out of Asia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although Korea was priority 1A on this vacation, 1B was very much the Disney Cruise that mythical wife booked, leaving out of Singapore.  Frankly, the way I looked at things, seeing as how both mythical wife and I had a lot of plans, ideas and goals we wanted to do in Seoul, the real vacation wouldn’t be until we were sequestered onto Mickey’s boat, and had no other choice but to relax.

Seeing as how I logged the steps probably for about 125 miles while in Seoul, a vacation while on vacation seemed like a good idea and sufficient reason to tear ourselves away from the Motherland.

But not to go overlooked, were brief stops in Singapore before the cruise, and a whirlwind night in Hong Kong, both of which added value to the trip, and seeing as how neither of us had been to either before, were good toes dipped into the water to realize that both are worth seeing again in the future.

So Singapore, we actually spent two nights before cruising out, although the first was pretty much an arrival day at night.  But with one full day and a morning, I felt like I got a good taste of the place, from a lot of walking around, as well as eating pretty much nothing but hawker stall food.

One of the observations I made about Singapore is that food is cheap, but booze not so much.  I’m pretty sure all the food I ate for breakfast and lunch on our first day didn’t cost as much as one of the Singapore Sling cocktails we had at the Line Bar.  And maybe it’s because it was at a touristy location, but Tiger beers costing the equivalent of $8-9 USD seemed kind of steep for what’s basically the Budweiser of Singapore.

Speaking of food, I wasn’t really a fan of Haianese chicken rice in spite of all the suggestions to try it.  However, the satay from Satay Street was fantastic, but if I had to name a favorite food from the entire country, it was the curry puff pastries, that I housed like four of them in my short stay.  They’re basically samosas, but still so fucking delicious.

I also made a point to go see the Merlion, which I summed up to being kind of like what the Mannekin Pis is to Brussels, some arbitrary statue that somehow has the identity of the city baked into it.

Honestly, Singapore felt kind of like the Chicago of Asia to me, since it’s such a diverse mixing bowl of cultures that all seem to converge in one harmonious city and country.  Natives co-exist with people from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan, and it all seems to work out.

9/10 for Singapore, would visit again, even if it were ball-sticking hot and humid.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Singapore, Hong Kong, and cruising out of Asia” →

Seoul Searching, circa 2026

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I feel like there’s got to be an industry for creating end-of-vacation travel packages that help mitigate the downward emotional connotation of a conclusion to a trip.  Not sure how it would entirely entail, but stuff like low-stress return travel, not having to do death marches at inconvenient times, and any methods of help reduce the strain of time changes and logistics.

Of course, this is a hypothetical thought that comes to mind while mythical wife and I are en route home after two weeks without kids, as we’ve traversed through Seoul, Singapore, the ambiguous open seas somewhere between Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and wherever else, before a crash course through Hong Kong, and on our way back to ‘Murica, while trying to fight the feelings of dread of returning to normal life although we’re both looking forward to seeing the girls again.

This was, for all intents and purposes, the first true adults-only vacation that we’ve been on, since, our honeymoon, due to the unintentional expediency in which our kids came into the picture, as well as a fucking pandemic.  Not necessarily by design, during the course of our trip, a lot of shit happened, noteworthy to me, like the Knicks winning the NBA championship while we were in the air, missing ALL of the World Cup group stage, while trying to catch some action while hilariously on the other side of the planet, Father’s Day, and our anniversary, where we entered year 8 of marriage dear god where has the time gone

But, in true autist fashion, of course I jotted down notes and blurbs of things and thoughts that came to mind during travels because of course it’s got to become shit for me to write about in the brog that nobody reads except for me.

The last time I was in Korea was nine years ago, when I came with mythical wife on what was her first-ever visit to the Motherland. She has since been back a few times without me because she hates traveling with me, but I was excited to return because it has been quite some time since I’d been.

I didn’t think that much would be different since my last visit, but I suppose it was naive of me to think that, because it was almost culture shock to count all the ways things had changed since my last time out here.  If I had to try to nail the reasons, I would say that it’s probably a combination of boy band BTS going globally mainstream, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and the general mass popularization of Korean culture on a global scale, because for the most part, Seoul was absolutely crawling with foreign tourists.

Naturally, this is me saying that it was at times, uncomfortably and inconveniently crowded at times, and I’d be lying if I didn’t think to myself thoughts about how Thanos Was Right and other nihilistic things that stem from my general aversion to crowds.

Continue reading “Seoul Searching, circa 2026” →

I bet this never happens at a Canadian Timmy’s

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYPost: altercation at an Indiana Tim Horton’s over an argument about a drive-thru order results in a 75-year old woman dead

I’d be curious to know what exactly happened in this scenario to where things escalated to physical violence.  I’ve had my share of fast food fuckups, and even if I cared enough to expend the effort to try and get it rectified, I can’t say I’ve had a low success rate at some sort of resolution.

It’s like, just remaining calm and not being a dick seems to a good enough strategy at achieving some sort of recompense, so I can’t help but wonder what happened at this Indiana Tim Horton’s, where an irate 75-year old woman marched into the restaurant, got in the grill of a 17-year old drive thru worker before their 20-year old manager intervened, to where things escalated even further, to where it became physical.

Tim Horton’s iced capps are definitely on my Rushmore of fast food items, but fuck if I’m going to risk my life if someone there possibly fucked up my order.

Watching the video, it’s scary and unfortunate to see the escalation of a conflict get physical, and to the point where death entered the chat, because there is seldom anything funny about the loss of life.

In one hand, I can’t help but feel inclined to side with the restaurant, because the elderly woman did march in there and seem to aggress with minimal restraint.  And when things get physical, people have the right to defend themselves.  But in the other hand, it was a 75-year old woman; obviously most of us probably aren’t experts at hand-to-hand combat with 75-year olds, but how hard could she have hit to incense a 20-year old to fight back with such fierceness?

Either way, it’s a scenario where everyone involved loses.  A woman lost her life, the employee that fought her will probably need therapy for the rest of their life knowing that their actions contributed towards it, and Tim Horton’s name gets dragged down into the muck by having a customer death controversy tied to their brand.

Plus, the daughter of the deceased takes some shrapnel for getting quoted sounding like a dumbass:

You should not enter a coffee shop for a coffee and a doughnut and come out unalived. That is diabolical,”

Really, unalived?  I’d ask, what are they, 13?  But it’s the daughter of a 75-year old, so presumably someone closer to my age than someone who probably actually thinks unalived is a real word.

Like the title of this post says, I can’t imagine something like this ever happening up in Canada, because Canadians are typically way more well-mannered and not as violent as their southern neighbors, and hopefully incidents like this doesn’t inhibit the expansion of Timmy’s in the US, because we’ve finally got remotely accessible locations in Georgia, and I hope to always be able to get iced capps when I really am in the mood for them.

Where has this stuff been all my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Chili oil crisp was always something I never gave much thought about; it’s not something I hadn’t ever seen before, after all, it’s almost always at the table whenever you go to an actual sit-down Chinese restaurant.  I’ve never really been compelled to try it before, but over the course of the last year or so, I’ve heard occasional remarks about people who love this particular brand of chili oil crisp, Lao Gan Ma, and how it is one of those condiments that goes with everything, almost like a Chinese version of Frank’s Red Hot or something.

I was at the Asian market a little while ago, and I saw an endcap display where Lao Gan Ma was on sale, and I figured ehh, why not, no time like the present to give it a whirl.  When I brought it home, I tasted it straight, and it was good, but I didn’t really see what all the fuss was all about.  Most people talked about how it went great on eggs, but I can’t exactly eat eggs straight, so that was out of the question, but I could imagine different things that it might go well with, but not many things that I was going to make any time soon.

I found it went okay with curry, but when the day is over, I preferred adding chipotles to my curry as my preferred heat additive, and although I liked the Lao Gan Ma, I knew I had yet to find the right thing to add it to, to really unlock its potential for my palette.

Recently, The Algorithm has been showing me content of all these people who were making these cucumber salads, touting their ease, and general low-cost, when combined with stuff like canned tuna, celery, dill, salt and pepper, with some people utilizing mayo, and others using combinations of cottage cheese and/or Greek yogurt.

Impressionable as I sometimes can be, I decided to give a flyer to one of these recipes, since they seemed a little bit on the healthier side, while being lower on the carbohydrate scale; and it was pretty good, but I felt that it was something that probably would taste great with some sort of hot sauce . . . or some chili oil crisp.

And it was in this union of a creamy cucumber tuna salad, and Lao Gan Ma chili oil crisp, I unlocked this mega combo, where the creamy base of the salad, tempers a little bit of the heat of the chili oil crisp, and they go together in a fantastic combination to where I’m crushing half the bowl of the salad in one sitting, and emptying out a third of my jar of chili oil crisp.

Sure, a hot sauce like Frank’s would probably be good with this cucumber tuna salad, but it wouldn’t give it the satisfying crunch that Lao Gan Ma crispy chilis do, and now I’m basically at a stage of my life where I’m wondering where the heck this stuff has been throughout it, and how excited my inner big back is at seemingly finding the key to unlocking the potential of chili oil crisp, and deliberating future foods that it could probably go great with now as well.

The poor Chick Fil-A recruiting class

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, there was a Chick Fil-A that then-mythical gf and I went to pretty regularly.  There was a guy that managed the place, who we called Sam; whether that was actually his name or not is irrelevant at this point, but Sam was one of those guys that had an explosively bubbly personality, was always smiling, always happy, and clearly had an 11 on his attribute slider when it came to people skills.

One time, he saw us in the drive-thru line and addressed the two of us by name, and after we had left, we had one of those collective moments that both found it a little weird that he clearly learned, us, and that we probably come by too often, to where it’s gotten to this point.

All the same, as slightly uncomfortable as it felt to be learned by Sam, there was no mistaking the fact that he ran a really tight ship, and this particular location was always firing on all cylinders.  The line moved fast, orders were almost never inaccurate, and the place had to be among the leaders or the region in terms of profit and satisfaction.

Any time mythical wife and I come across any sort of business, whether it’s another Chick Fil-A or not, where the customer service and general quality of employee performance seems below par, we often remark about how this place could use a Sam.  He’s basically become the measuring stick of effective leadership, regardless of it it’s in the fast food space or not.

Anyway, I’ve made no secret of my general love of the Chick Fil-A app, and locations that utilize an app-only lane.  The app is one of the greatest apps in the history of mobile application development, and I love how it gives me access to the app-only lanes of certain CFA locations, because fewer things in the world tickles my fancy than checking in with the app, and then bypassing at least five cars, slowly ordering and waiting in the pleeb line, multiplied only by how fast I get my food and am on my way versus how many cars are still waiting in pleeb class.

One of the greatest days of my fat guy life was when the CFA location that my house frequents the most, underwent renovations in order to implement a dedicated app lane.  Sure, when they re-opened, there were some growing pains and some training needing to be done by the restaurant and to the idiot customers, but eventually we got to a point where it became business as usual; I could whiz into the app lane, check in, pass by 3-7 pleebs in the old people manual ordering line, and be on my merry way.

However, over the course of the last contemporary school year, it has been noticed how ineffective the local CFA has become.  Long waits, frequency of inaccuracies rising.  It didn’t matter if I were using the app or not, the kitchen would get backed up and overwhelmed from what seemed like fairly predictable and busy periods that should be relatively easy to anticipate.  The app lane did very little to change things, and the gleeful text messages I’d send mythical wife of how many cars I passed in the pleeb lane were often replaced by frustrated texts detailing how long I’ve been waiting, and how generally annoyed I was feeling from this experience.

The coup de grace was when I was coming to pick up some food from the CFA, and I noticed that although the drive-thru still began with two lanes, with one of them being solely for app users, prior to reaching the pickup point, the lanes forcibly merge.  And in some cases, in a twist of irony, by the sheer nature of zipper merges, occasional pleebs who ordered with sticks, nuts and pebbles get to jump in front of the savvier app users, and conversely, few things annoy me as much as that.

Naturally, when inane bullshit like this begins to go tits up, I often ponder, how?  I began to think about how the whole school year, performance has been relatively on the lower-tier of output, and I concluded with the notion that my local CFA just simply had, a bad recruiting class. 

Much like in the same vein of when a college has a poor recruiting class, resulting in poor performance throughout the season, and an eventual sense of wanting this to be over with so that they can possibly retool and rebuild for the following year.

I suppose the people in my community and I have been taking for granted the general strong yearly performance of our local CFA, seeing as how when it’s actually bad, it’s really noticeable, but it’s still disheartening that they seem to operate much like a college program, where if you’re bogged down with marginal talent, you’re stuck with it until they all graduate out, and hopefully a more talented class takes their places afterward.

But make no mistake, the problems at my local CFA definitely stem from the fact that they had a very poor recruiting class for the 25-26 season, that can’t handle the kitchen, which in turns taxes the runners, which in turn slows down the drive thru lines, which unfortunately results in the deactivation of the app-only line in order to drop the general speed to something that the kitchen is capable of handling.

All I’m saying is, if Sam were in charge of this CFA location, none of this bullshit would even be a part of the discussion.

Every business out there, regardless of if it’s a Chick Fil-A or not, could only benefit from having a Sam of their own.