I recently worked on a commercial for Juicy Drop Pops, a sour lollipop made by Topps - the Ring Pops and Bazooka gum people. This commercial pits a ninja (me) against a pirate to see who can withstand the sourness longer.

It just started airing on Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, CW Sat Morning Kids, ABC Sat Morning Kids, Nicktoons, and Disney XD. Check it out to see who wins!

so I’ve been doing a bit of cooking lately, cooking a whole lot of comfort foods because it’s just so goddamn miserable outside.

I’ve been pretty successful so far scouring the interweb for relatively simple recipes and turning them into dinner, but I seem to be running into a recurring problem: many recipes require 2 cups of broth (or stock or consommé). 2 cups = 16 ounces.

there’s clearly a disconnect between recipe writers and canned broth (or stock or consommé) manufacturers because they seem to only make them in 14½ ounce cans. they make 32 ounce containers, but the next size down is 14½ ounces. what?

in retrospect, I suppose I could try shopping at more than two different locations for groceries before I go on a rant about it. but I got this far with this entry and there’s just no turning back at this point.

it was a simple plan, really. go to the grocery store to pick up blueberries so I can make blueberry pancakes in the morning. that’s all I really needed.

instead I futzed around all morning (although some freelance work was involved) and ended up going much later than I wanted. on top of that, I didn’t eat anything all morning so I went to the store hungry.

what happened? I ended up getting all these snack items and enough chicken thighs (oooh, dark meat) to last me a few weeks. I get home and it wasn’t until now I realized I didn’t get the blueberries.

so make a mental note: grocery shopping with an empty stomach makes you lose focus but gain plenty of snacks and chicken thighs.

episode 2… was a good episode, I just seem to have forgotten that the early goings are there to separate the wheat from the chaff. we saw continued excellence from My Main Man Steffan (”MMMS”) and the other european fabio, who, by the way, are hilarious together. they totally look down upon the americans but rightfully so – at least at this point in the season where they are clearly demonstrating dominance over the others. but there were also some serious trainwrecks by the chaffs.

and now for my thoughts that contain SPOILERS. don’t highlight the boxes if you don’t want to know what happened.

what the hell is jill’s deal? if he/she would have stuck up for his/her dish, or had he/she done more than shrug at the judges, he/she would probably still be on the show. but instead ariane got to stick around despite his/her dish causing a top chef first (?) of padma having to spit out the food.

but it was sad to see ariane back in the stewing room post-elimination, apologizing to jill crying “I don’t deserve to be here.” I think his/her days are seriously numbered… hey let’s not forget he/she has a zagat-rated restaurant back home.

top chef season 5 new york premiered tonight! what with the departure of project runway TC will likely take over as my favorite show on bravo.

so as I like to do when a new competition reality show starts up, I pick an early favorite to win the whole thing. I was very closely studying the faces and swaggers of each contestant as they appeared in the opening title sequence and I picked out stefan.

those who saw the show tonight can highlight the box below to see how I feel about my pick so far. others who didn’t see it and do not wish to read spoilers… what the fuck are you doing here? I do nothing BUT drop spoilers.

so yeah.

now where’s my free cone from ben & jerry’s?

all kidding aside, although a free ben & jerry’s is no joking matter, it really was great being among a record turnout for the election. I’m not a coffee drinker but I’ll be staying up watching for the poll numbers as they begin to close across america starting 7pm.

today I caught the chicken, the fish and the king crab at the film festival. I made sure I ate before catching it because I figured I’d be bombarded with shots of food that would encompass my entire field of vision.

this film follows one spanish chef, jesús almagro, and his quest to compete at the bocuse d’or, an olympics-like culinary competition between 24 top chefs from around the world.

chefs train years to compete in this, not to mention spending over $100,000 in materials to practice with.

but you know what? the type of miniscule, surgically crafted miniature square morsels did little to fuel my appetite. it was much like a fashion show where everything looks pretty but you wouldn’t really see yourself wearing anything coming down the runway. same thing here — I can’t imagine eating the kind of foods they were judging.

it just wasn’t that exciting to me.

the final scene was of the spanish chef helping his mother prepare a big pan of paella while talking to the camera about his experiences at the bocuse d’or. the paella looked good. really, really good. and it made me wonder, was there a message that this was REAL cooking — preparing meals for your family and friends? the paella, with big chunks of chicken and shrimp tumbling around in the big metal pan, couldn’t have been farther from the intricately delicate sculpture-foods at the bocuse d’or.

not to run this message into the ground, but to me, the shot of the paella was much more appetizing than anything else I saw in the film.

it would have been nice had the final message in the film been a big fuck you to the competition.

the film itself was very enjoyable as jesús almagro is a lovable underdog who you really want to do well. is this the karate kid of the culinary world? you’ll just have to watch and see if jesús delivers a crane kick to the french chef at the end of the competition.

I think I really, really like ricotta cheese.

so my last three meals have surpassed my expectations and I felt the need to post.

1. dinner last night when I had a surprisingly good salad (of all fucking things, right). spinach salad with a whole lot of goodies like avocado and alfalfa sprouts and turkey and boiled egg and… I forget what else. the place kicked in a free thing of soup, which was tight.

2. breakfast this morning when my boss brought us all fresh bagels. holy shit I ate 4.

3. lunch today at this indian/pakistani place. chicken vindaloo with naan? oh fuck yes.

surely writing about those will jinx the streak and jeopardize the goodness that would be tonight’s dinner, but whatever.