Archive for April, 2010

The Last of the Milkmen

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

Very few of us can personally recall the days of the milk deliveryman (okay, maybe a few of you diehards in suburbia do) but the rest of us have taken it for granted that milk stockpiled in supermarkets after being trucked from major milk manufacturing facilities.

But here I am clicking away at the TV and NBC’s show “NY Nonstop” is showing a segment called “Manhattan Milk Men”.

Got milk? They do.

All sexual innuendos aside, there is a professional dairy product delivery service in New York City.

And business is good.

With a growing group of consumers interested in organic foods, the “Manhattan Milk Men” have secured themselves a firm customer base.  According to their website description, the milk delivery company offers “organic glass bottled milk, organic cage free eggs, glass hormone-free milk, cases of water, juices, and assorted dairy products.”

The source of their produce?  Fifty-one Amish families from Dutch County, Pennsylvania.  If it’s the Amish you can be pretty sure they don’t use pesticides or growth hormones.

The team here at Diners.org will do a more extensive review of the dairy products  from “Manhattan Milk Man” at a later date, but we welcome comments and opinions from those of you who sampled them already.

You can read more about the “Manhattan Milk Men” here.  You can also watch the NBC NY Nonstop segment I saw below.  Or click here if the video doesn’t work.

Sifter is pretty spiffy

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Today, a friend of mine introduced me to one of her favorite places online for recipes: Recipezaar.com Us here at Diners.org are always curious as to why some diners prefer one place over another (websites, restaurants, supermarkets, food carts, etc).  So we went to check it out.  What we found is pretty neat.

For our friend, what Recipezaar did to win her over is their database search engine known as “Sifter”.  Once we tried it, we can see why.  You can try it yourself by clicking here.

The "Sifter" engine

What is pretty cool about “Sifter” is that you can shift through their collection of recipes based on features like the types of ingredients you have on hand, the equipment you have, the kind of eating style you want, and more.  This saves you time from doing the tedious problem of sorting through it yourself (very useful if you have company over REAL SOON and you  are caught short-handed).

This is a great tool and we are pretty happy that websites like recipezaar.com are taking the extra step in making our culinary lives easier.  The team here at diners.org are also wondering what other unique features other food websites are doing to set themselves apart…

Bacon on what?

Monday, April 19th, 2010

We know people like bacon.  So do we.

But when we see recipes like Bacon Wrapped Shrimp with Apricot Ginger Dip, we have take our hats off to the people behind them.

Cooking.com’s newsletter today had a unique headline: Bacon-Wrapped Dishes for Comfort.  Naturally curious, the team here at Diners.org went to check it out and wow were we amazed.

For some strange reason, cooking.com does not include pictures with its recipes, so we had to make do with the thumbnails

Chestnuts, jalapenos, drumsticks, artichokes, and all of it covered or wrapped in bacon and all of it looked as if it came out of the kitchen of a five-star restaurant.

One day we’re going to have to experiment and see how these dishes taste.

Stay tuned.

The Pizza Taco

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

So one of our readers email me this piece of fattening high-cholesterol news that there is something greasy than that one dollar slice we get from the local pizzeria:

Mother. Of. God.

Words fail me on how a person is suppose to eat that thing.  In fact, why waste jaw muscle?  If you see this in front of you JUST EAT.

It’ll be kind of fun if someone can figure out the greasy nutritional facts of eatting this monstrosity.  Some of you out there have to be nutritionists… right?

Read the article at Geekologie here and the photo at Break.com here.

For other SUPER GREASY food items check out our old article on the Turbacondunken.

Free Starbucks Coffee on April 15th!

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

You do the math

Wow, oh, wow.  For those of you who depend on a good cup of coffee to get you through your day/hour/moment, Starbucks just announced an event that is sure to make you very, very happy.

Join the movement. On April 15th, bring a reusable travel mug into your local Starbucks and get a free brewed coffee.

One person can save trees, together we can save forests.

For the good of the planet, Starbucks is encouraging everyone to switch from paper cups to reusable travel mugs. One day in March thousands of New Yorkers made the switch. Join them now by taking a pledge to do the same.

Read more about it here at Starbuck’s website.  This event has also been reported here at Lifehacker and at the Consumerist.

While you’re reading, I’m going to look for that travel mug I swiped from the last career fair I visited…

Machine guns: a new stove top

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Most of the stuff we write about here at Diners.org are normally cooked on a stove or normal kitchen appliance.  But we are always open to new and quite AWESOME ways to break out of the norm.

Apparently someone took the fact that the barrel of a machinegun heats up ALOT when you pull the trigger for any extended amount of time.  So… why not wrap the barrel with bacon strips in aluminum foil?

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIENDS

You can read the full article here at Geekologie.

We don’t recommend you cooking your bacon at home like this or bringing bacon strips to your local gun range.  Just saying.

Can you cook a prank?

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Some of you are more adept in practical jokes than the rest of us (you know who you are; shakes fist).  Some of you brought pranks to a new art style while the rest of you are simply “lacking”.

However for the more creative (and sometimes cruel) pranksters among us, there are cooking practical jokes.

Which brought me to Disney’s Friendly Fun section.  Click HERE for “April Fool’s Day” from their Family Section.

Practical jokes for the family?  Yeah, I know right?

Anyway, the recipes are both devious and fairly harmless (though you may sacrifice the  trust of your victims for all eternity).  Our personal favorite are the “Meatloaf Cupcakes”.

Cake is a lie

Looks like delicious cake right?

WRONG! It is meatloaf!  Works best with organic ingredients.

Anyway, we hope everyone had a fun and pretty harmless (we’re not going to be naive, some of you probably hurt yourselves while outdoing each other) April Fool’s Day.