Kurt: How is korea treating you
Mike D: I have learned that a black belt is useless against jetlag
Kurt: Oh? I recently got a black belt in procreating

Oooooooooooh man!

Congratulations Kurt and Shauna!

Mike D here. Shaun L. has been kind enough to write a review for mikedidonato.com describing his experience with KFC’s new Double Down Sandwich. Take it away Shaun!

The morning of April 18, 2010, I landed at JFK, returning from a 3-week long trip to Brazil for work. There was only one thing on my mind. Kentucky. Fried. Chicken.

While Brazil has beautiful women and Churrascaria’s as far as the eye can see, they are missing one thing: KFC. While I was abroad I saw via the interwebs that KFC was finally letting the infamous Double Down out into the wild! Alas, I was out of the country and would have to count down the days until my return flight home.

On Tuesday, April 20, after much needed recuperation, I decided to stroll down to my local KFC in Meriden (aka the armpit of CT) for lunch to see if the mighty Double Down was able to live up to all the hype. 5 dollars and 29 cents later, I had a deep fried mess of a chicken sandwich in my possession. They have a grilled version that you can buy but that would just be ABSURD and STUPID. I’m not sure if mine was packaged correctly as it came in a KFC Wing’s box complete with wing wax paper but Whatever. It didn’t change the fact that this thing is two fried pieces of chicken for bread, with bacon, cheese, and some special sauce in the middle. AKA, a gift from the Gods of Olympus.

Greasy.

A few obligatory close-up shots later and it was time to eat. How did it taste? Well, exactly like you would expect: fried chicken with some cheese. If you love the Colonel’s Original Recipe than you’ll probably enjoy this. The cheese was a nice touch and the sauce was like the Colonel’s 12 herbs and spices were liquefied into a ‘creme de tangoscity.’ KFC most definitely has a PhD in sauce-ology. As for the bacon; I didn’t even taste it. I had two scrawny pieces of bacon between those two luscious deep-fried chicken breasts. For a sandwich that is basically the epitome of America, they sure did skimp on the bacon. Wendy’s baconator and KFC’s double down need to get down and dirty and make a love child that is overflowing with bacon. Overall it’s a pretty tasty sandwich, but make sure that you have plenty of exfoliating face wash (the kind with those micro scrubbers is preferred) handy so that you can remove the multiple layers of grease that will form on your face within minutes after devouring.

The big question however is whether or not it was worth it? For $5.29 for the sandwich alone and $7.40 for the meal (tax included in CT) which includes potato wedges and a drink, I’d have to say HELL NO. While it is a tasty morsel, it didn’t do a great job of filling me up. For $4 I could have gone to McDonald’s and bought 3 McChickens and a McDouble and been full. Would I have been sick? Yes. Would I have been full? Hell Yes. For even less I could have made a PB&J sandwich and ate about 1 cup worth of Cheeze-Its and I would have been equally satisfied. I think that ultimately you are paying for a gimmick. This thing should be priced at $3.50 or made larger. I’ll just factor the extra $1.79 as paying for the luxury to eat something so utterly ridiculous. Nice try KFC, but you’ll have to do better next time to impress me.

Just because grocery shopping is deeply ingrained in the fabric of our weekly schedules does not mean it is actually enjoyable. In fact, I dare say grocery shopping is a lot like the fourth season of Heroes. You don’t watch that rubbish because you like it. You watch it because it’s Monday, 9pm EST. You suffer through your self-imposed detention, rationalizing all the way to 10pm. You pretend you like it.

But you don’t. No one does.

It’s not like we eagerly plan trips to Shaws with friends on a Saturday night. A specialty food store? Perhaps. But only if it’s followed with sophisticated cultural cheffery.

I submit to you that any gratification that we get from shopping relates less to the act itself as much as to the completion of a pesky chore or perhaps the successful triumph over Maslow’s foundation. I will not revere this ritual.

On Monday, I slapped grocery shopping in the face.
On Monday, I signed up for Peapod.
(Peapod is Stop and Shop’s internet powered grocery delivery service.)

To those of you who gawk at my willingness to spend extra dollars needlessly I say Lo! Get your preconceived notions out of my kitchen!

For $100 in groceries, delivery costs about seven bucks. While 7% seems a bit much, especially for someone with a history of cheapness like myself, there are ways to reduce the fee. If you can accommodate a wider delivery window, you can get up to $2 off your order. First time buyers can further reduce the cost $10. Subtract coupons, add the $7 delivery, throw in a $5 tip to the driver and I made out even-steven.

The Trial Groceries.

Furthermore, Peapod’s search feature allows you to easily pick the cheapest items according to their unit cost/volume. This comes in especially handy for those annoying purchases like bread, whose cost tends to be camouflaged in hard-to-see ink on the bread bags themselves (dear bread manufacturers: why? stop this.) AND, there’s no impulse buys on the internet. No aisles of candy quietly beckoning for your sugary patronage.

But what about the food quality?!? How will you know that Stop and Shop will properly test your carrot for color, cut, and clarity?

At least for this order, the produce quality was high. The only items that I would have picked differently were the bananas. I tend to like them further along on the ripeness scale – but as Mom D noted: better not quite ripe enough than too ripe.

My only complaint were the vast quantities of plastic bags used in the delivery. Look at this ridiculousness:

Excessive baggage.

Thankfully, we recycle at the House of Rock.

If you’d like to try it, head over to peapod and, AND, if you put my e-mail address in as having referred you we’ll both get $10 extra dollars of free groceries. You might even be able to use this in conjunction with coupon code: CJN10 for a friendly $20 discount!

BOGUS! you say.
NOT BOGUS! I reply*

*this may in fact be bogus. I’m not sure if you can double up like that

my e-mail addy:
MikeDiDonato AT gmail D0T com

Oh! Lastly. I forgot to mention that my delivery guy came promptly at 4:30pm. I set my delivery schedule to be anytime between 4:30 and 6:00. This punctuality might vary per area, but I was really pleased that they hit me up early on.

High-five Stop and Shop delivery guy. High-five.

I have arrived back in the States! Overall, I would rate the trip positively, though like an olive in a cupcake there were moments of unexpected misery amidst this otherwise frosty cakey treat. Stay tuned for those salty posts.

The highlights of any business trips are always been those moments when I can escape the overcast skies of meetings and engineering reviews to hang out with friends. In Beijing, the friends of choice are Charlotte and Josh.

Josh and Charlotte in Beijing

Charlotte and Josh both grew up in China so they speak great Mandarin and dig the Chinese culture. More importantly than all that, they are both truly wonderful people. I was first introduced to them through Mika who, incidentally, is moving back to Beijing this summer and will certainly find herself on my list of favorite people to visit while overseas.

The night before my flight to the states I met up with Charlotte and Josh and we made dumplings!

Oh the glory!

Charlotte taught me how to fold the dumplings her way (above), and Josh showed me his way (below), which he described as a much simpler technique used as a desperate means of trying to keep up with Charlotte’s expert speed.

The Josh Style Dumpling

Here’s my MSPaint representation of how to fold a dumpling.

How to fold a Dumpling

Special thanks to Charlotte and Josh for welcoming me during my trip.

Here’s an Animated Gif of Charlotte, Josh, as once again I setup my camera wrong with its delay setting.

Oh the joys of laughter!

There’s a fair chance that I’ve talked about Hot Pot on this website before. Apparently I have a poor memory when it comes to hot pots. All that aside, check this out:

China FTW

Oh the glory. We’ve got two broths in the middle: one spicy, one normal. Going clockwise from the top left, we have greens, cabbage, tasty spheres of deliciousness, tofu, potatoes, dumplings, beef, pork, cauliflower, carrots, noodles, mushrooms, tofu things, and more beef.

I am strongly considering buying a hot plate for the House of Rock so that we can make this meal happen in Connecticut.

Darcy’s deep within her pursuit of a medical degree, switching in and out of exhausting rotations. Yet on Saturday night she had a break in the madness so we got together to share some dinner and good times.

Darcy, having recently started receiving Cooking Light (the magazine), made an elaborate lamb sauce pasta dish with a salad side. Take a moment to appreciate the glory:

That’s ricotta cheese and mint garnish atop a heap of mouthwatering deliciousness. This hearty dinner replaced every bit of wanting hunger with satisfaction. Well done Darce!

We followed our meal with the movie Helvetica, a documentary exploring the origin and influence of the font Helvetica. This is pretty much the movie of choice for typography enthusiasts. For me, the movie very strongly presented the question: should a font act as a transparent messenger for the words it portrays, or should a font add emotion, color, and significance to the content?

Thanks to Darcy for a wonderful time.

Last night I made a most epic Broccoli dish. The recipe was taken from the highly revered everyday food magazine. I can’t speak highly enough about the quality of the recipes within this publication. For those of you who appreciate foodstuffs, I recommend giving Everyday Food a try.

So! Let’s talk broccoli.

When I make broccoli it usually comes out pretty blah. I usually make it for its healthy qualities and it’s certainly never the highlight of the meal. Last night’s broccoli, however, put all other broccoli to shame. Here’s what I did:

Preheat oven to 450

Two med heads of broccoli
Two Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
5 garlic cloves, left whole and uncrushed
Coarse salt and pepper

Toss it all together onto a rimmed baking tray, bake for 20 minutes tossing once in the meantime

Results: Garlic Spicy Roasted Broccoli.

Try it and let me know if you agree!

Oh Sunday, I decided to spend some time in the kitchen. I recently received the latest edition of my Everyday Foods subscription and inside it had a recipe for a very hearty looking Beef Bourguignon. After my black belt pre-test on Saturday, I thought I might need some extra protein, so this seemed like an appropriate choice.

This recipe called for a dutch oven (or cocotte), so I went ahead and picked one up at Target. Mine is a 6 QT Lodge cast iron enamel coated beauty.

I love red.

The dish itself was heavy. It had mushrooms, carrots, 3 lbs beef, bacon, garlic, onions, tomato paste, flour, wine, and chicken broth. It cooked for nearly 3 hours and came out epic. (Similar recipe here)

Served with a side of mashed potatoes, it was the perfect meal for a Sunday feast.

I strongly recommend the recipe, the magazine, and the pot.