Neural Network Cookbook- Now Illustrated!

Janelle Shane, a research scientist, has been teaching cooking to a neural network. A neural network is basically Skynet if you didn't know. After letting it look at tens of thousands of cookbook, she set it free to create its own recipes, the best of which you can see here. Taking inspiration from the list, I have some cookbook illustrations for you:

to see additional cookbook illustrations 

Pintester Movement - Cheese Porn

So, Sonja Foust, over at Pintester.com has started The Pintester Movement, which is a concerted effort to try Pinterest Pins and post about them, and I figured I would use it as an excuse to try some pins that I have on my Pinterest "Nom Nom *Chomp*" board, because it was something to do, and I always find myself putting off making things that I really want to eat because it takes effort.

The problem is, I am too awesome for this project. Or else I only pin things that are well within my scope of abilities. Notice there are no pins of things that require dipping or patience, ala How Not to Make Cake Pops. I know that making cake pops (which I just typoed cakepoops, clearly a Freudian slip, because we all know how I feel about those asshole treats), will make me want to stab people, so I chose something amazingly easy, and excelled at doing as little as possible, as the recipe demanded.

Recently, I found the food blog "Oh Bite It!" It is like my foodie spirit animal. Every post has bacon, or fried, or some sort of combination of butter and sugar, and that really speaks to me, in an OMG PUT THE FOOD IN MY MOUTH, sort of way. At this point, I have stopped pinning all the things I want to make from that website because my entire food board would be filled with her recipes.

The pin I chose to test for the Pintester Movement maiden voyage into the waters of possible fail, was "Oh Bite It"'s Grilled Cheese Pull-Apart Rolls, mostly because I miss grilled cheese so much, and any promise that something will taste like grilled cheese, while not causing my insides to try to kill me is something I am going to want in my mouth. I also thought it was kind of appropriate for da Cheeseblarg.

So I followed the directions, which are basically, open a can of biscuits without having a heart attack (almost failed on that one), flatten canned biscuit, stuff that motherfucker with velveeta cheese, pincha-pincha-pincha, drown in butter, and bake.

I made half the recipe because there were only two people eating it and I was also making pizza soup to go with it, because half a pound of cheese in bread is apparently not a full meal.

Only the rolls took 40 minutes more to cook through than the instructions lead me to believe, and when I tasted them finally, they tasted like canned biscuits stuffed with velveeta cheese, and not so much like grilled cheese. I was slightly disappointed, even though they were really easy to make. But then, the next night, having the leftovers, because I could only eat one roll the night before, reheated in the microwave, they tasted exactly like a grilled cheese sandwich, and all was redeemed.

That means I will be making these again, and I have complete faith that I will enjoy anything that Oh Bite It comes up with.

This image makes no sense, I just wanted to draw myself in a cute polka dotted bathing suit.

The biscuits' identities have been hidden for their safety.

The Popcorn Paradox

It is bizarre to me, that the same substance can produce one of the best AND one of the worst smells in the entire universe.

Super (Nom) Bowl

This is REALLY how I view the Super Bowl every year.  I don't hate football, but I do love eating ridiculous foods that I only feel justified in making a few times a year, as well as watching funny commercials. I am more than willing to put up with the football part of the event to reap the joy of these two SUPER bonuses.

Each year I look forward to finding out who is in the Super Bowl, though I don't watch any other games, JUST so I can figure out what kind of food I will get to make (as I make my spread match the cities of the playing teams).  This year it is pizza dip (as well as a few other New Yorkish Dips from the same site) and Lobster Rolls (made with 2 sad little lobster tails 'cause they were on sale and we needed to budget for the month) and Shrimp Skewers.

And now I am going to finish cooking it all and then eat it, while watching commercials to see which company wins this year.

Happy Birthday, Cheeseblarg AKA How NOT to Make Cake Pops.

Today is da Cheeseblarg's FIRST birthday.  A year ago today, I started this here blarg to talk about my computer being a dick, which it still kinda is.  But to celebrate, I made us some cake pops! And I made us cake pops, mostly because making cake pops is one of my least favorite things to do in the ENTIRE world.

It was also to prove a point, because my mom thought that making cake balls might be a great idea for holiday gifts and having made them before (or well, cookie balls, which might actually suck more than cake balls) I wanted to show her that while we are good at A LOT of things, dipping shit just isn't in our skill set.

So here is a (partially) illustrated guide for how NOT to make cake pops:



1. Gather your ingredients. Take a picture. Forget ingredients.

2. Begin to make a cake which cues everyone else in your house to come into your very small kitchen to also cook. Get angry.

3. Mistake directions on cake box, read: mix on HIGH for 2 minutes, instead of MEDIUM and splatter entire kitchen with cake batter.

4. Fight the people in your kitchen to get to the oven to put the cake in to bake.

5. Remember to check how long you should bake the cake that is now in the oven. Take box out of garbage, consult, set timer (minus approximate amount of time it took you to remember that you should probably set a timer).

6. Wait a long damned time for cake to bake and cool. Begin writing and illustrating your hilarious blarg post on the subject in the meantime (optional).

7. Go to Bakerella.com and read the recipe because you realize you don't really know how much of what you are really supposed to use.

8. Crumble cake and mix in half a can of frosting. Roll into balls. Ask someone else to come in and set up a pan for you because your hands are now coated in cake and frosting.

9. Clean out fridge to make space for the balls to chill.

10. Take some prescription pain pills because this is going to suck, and also because you have been standing for hours and all of your joints hurt.

11. Read the directions on the candy melts, follow directions, spend 17 minutes melting stupid candy melts. Think using a blow dryer might be faster.

12. Begin dipping cakepops. Have an argument about dipping methods. Result in cakepop that looks like this:

13. Add Crisco to candy melts because Montana weather makes them harden up in approximately 1.75 minutes.

14. Give up on cakepops, turn to cakeballs.

15. Give up on cakeballs, dipping is too hard.  Roll rest of the batch in powdered sugar and call it a day.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how not to make cake balls. You should probably not follow it. But, while I knew it was going to be bad when I started, I did manage to make one cute one.

American Cooking Horror Story

I just got back from three weeks of being away from a TV, which of course means hours of watching TV to catch up on things I missed.

Most of it was cooking shows.  I have a bit of an obsession with them.  Anything that has to do with cooking and reality, I'm there.  I may not continue watching all of them, but I pretty much want to see each new show, at least once.  I just like learning new cooking techniques, and watching people being abused (when they submit themselves to it out of greed or desire for fame... I do not condone other abuse, just so you know).

I must say, though it is old news, I was really disappointed with "Extreme Chef" on Food Network.  I thought the title had such potential, but then when no one was shot/stab and forced to make 5 star meals to get medical treatment, I totally lost interest.



But it wasn't all trashy cooking shows.  After hearing so much about it, I had to check out the pilot episode of FX's "American Horror Story."

If you've not watched it, here is a teaser video:

 And here is an artist's rendition of me watching this show:

And of course, I cannot wait for the second season of "The Walking Dead" premiering on Sunday. Big surprise there?


And thank you to those who are sharing my link and making pledges to my Cheeseblarg Takes Manhattan project.  Even a dollar helps.  Every time you pledge or share (or contact said Late Night show telling them how awesome I am) you are helping me fulfill a life long dream... and again, there are rewards for helping!

Out of the frying pan...

Sometimes I need to vent.  Especially when I have oil burns on my neck and  face.

Why broken windows are bad.

Today, I would like to talk about another of my great hatreds.

When I first moved in with my husband, who was then my boyfriend, we lived in a house that belonged to one of his coworkers, who also lived there with his cat named Nigel.  Nigel liked to go outside and hunt in the overgrown jungle that surrounded the house, and so, whether by happy accident, or on purpose, I never asked, one of the panes of the French doors at the entrance of the house was busted out which made a makeshift cat door.

But of course, as the case always is, nature doesn't follow the rules of a house and the cat was not the only thing that was able to enter through that door, no, not just the cat.

There was the night that I walked out towards the bathroom and saw a large raccoon happily eating the cat food in the front room, but that is not what this is about.

This is about the flying creatures that trespassed into the house.

Moths have always bothered me (especially since I share their desire to hurt myself with bright lights) but one evening, it was kicked in to full blown phobia realms.  I went into the kitchen and opened the cabinet to get ingredients for dinner.

 I had cut up some chicken and grabbed a box of seasoned rice to make a quick fry up, and so I melted butter in the pan and poured the rice into the pan to brown it before I added the water.

 Only, some of the rice was moving.

And then I looked in the box and found a moth, obviously a mommy moth, and then I screamed, and cried in a  totally hysterical manner, before throwing the rice away and all of the boxes of rice that were in the pantry.  And then I went out to buy the biggest container of mothballs that I could possibly find.

I've gotten to the point where I no longer need to make my house smell like that of a grandma (it only took a few years), but I still am prone to screaming and flapping when a moth finds its way into my environment, and I call (read: screech)  for its immediate removal and/or murder.