Touchy, touchy!

Is everyone in the world just WAY less gross than I am or are touchscreen computers as awful an idea as I think they are?

I'm not a Luddite. I am happy to embrace new technology when I encounter it, but look... my screen is disgusting enough with me NOT touching it. I seriously thought a guy had a mole in the middle of his forehead scrolling through my Facebook feed tonight... until I scrolled a little more and then realized there is just a mole on my monitor.

Every year around Black Friday, I fantasize about getting a new laptop to replace the one I got 4 years ago that has no backspace key, that overheats in 10 minutes of being on, that randomly scrolls through page after page without any movement from me when it is in a bad mood, but if all of the laptops currently available are ALL touchscreen, I just cannot picture myself buying one.

And that is because... I have pictured myself using one.
I spend a lot of time on my computer, so it is not uncommon for me to be eating something while computing, or picking my nose, or. . . Look, lord knows where my fingers have been or what is on them when I am using a computer, okay? I wash my hands a lot, but I'm totally not getting up to wash my hands after eating an eclair while watching shows on Project Free TV so I can stop the video to obsessively check my email or whatever.

Beyond having to place your mouth or genitals on your monitor to use your computer, I cannot think of a worse design. So, is this working for people? Or do you all just have Cheetos dust covered, sticky, nasty monitors? Or am I just really really gross?

Cheeseblarg 1400 Subscribers Pizza Party!

Sometime earlier this year, I promised on Twitter that there would be a Cheeseblarg Pizza Party to celebrate when we got to 1400 subscribers and yesterday, thanks to me becoming part of  Oh Noa's "League of Funny Bitches," we exceeded that amount... so, YAY! Pizza party!

Unfortunately, I can't eat tomato sauce any more, or pizza dough, so, CREATIVITY!

I started with frozen biscuit that I thawed and rolled out to work as crusts... looked through my fridge and realized I also had no mozzarella. EVEN MORE CREATIVITY!

So I made a Llama Ham and Swiss (with honey mustard as sauce), a Mushroom Llama with Carrot Alfredo sauce, and a Bacon Mushroom Narwhal (also with carrot alfredo sauce, which is a great addition to alfredo sauce when trying to get more veggies into your belly).

What I end up with was the following:

Good, hammy, thumbs up.

Uh, that llama looks a little ill...

Total Narwhal Annihilation.

I'm telling you, narwhals always have to be complete assholes. 

I'm eating his face first.

Cake continues to be a lie.

Yes, I'm alive. Thank you for checking on me.  I went for a three-hour cruise on the S.S. F.U.NABLAPOMO and after several days of getting stranded on the isle of Mai Intestines Haight Me with the professor and Mary Ann, I am back.


And now that I can tentatively keep food down again, my body delivered the following message via twitter:

"I think I'd like Pepperidge Farm vanilla cake with chocolate frosting for breakfast. I don't have any but that's what my body wants."

Well, I mean, I wrote that, I don't have some internal twitterater, but it was a direct message from my body.

So I set out to find my precious Pepperidge Farm Golden 3-Layer Cake, directly.

And then, 4 hours later:

THERE IS NO CAKE!

Seriously, this town is like a black hole of things that JRose wants to eat.



And yes, I am aware that I can ask my store to order things, but that doesn't put the cake in my mouth when I want it... which is now.

Brilliant Product Ideas #1

Every once in a while, I come up with some brilliant ideas, instead of just pure unadulterated crap of the silly persuasion.  Unfortunately, upon presenting these ideas to the respective companies, I received the following replies (paraphrased):

Dear Ms. Rose,
That is pure unadulterated crap.
Please stop sending us unsolicited product ideas.
No love,
Us

But they were wrong, wrong I say! So I will share my amazing product ideas with you and then multinational conglomerate type companies, that I fully intend upon naming, will see how wrong they were not to steal my ideas when I was offering them up for free instead of writing about them in my AMAZINGLY popular blarg which will create a paper trail back to me, should they then decide to use said AMAZING product ideas. Early bird, yadda yadda...

So without further ado...

Marshmallow Charger Packs!

In my family, cereal was eaten more as a snack than part of a complete balanced breakfast, and as such, when I was finally able to buy myself Lucky Charms in college (it wasn't that my mom didn't let us have sugary cereal, it was just that she probably knew this problem would arise), I often found, when I went to actually eat a bowl of cereal with milk, all that was left in the box were moderately sweet oat type pieces, because, in snacking on the cereal, I, of course, had picked the majority of the delicious pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds, purple horseshoes, red balloons, and tasty tasty rainbow marshmallows out of the box. You see, they were magically delicious, but without the crunchy sugary marshmallows, not so much. And then I thought, if only there were little charger packets of marshmallows in a separate bag, I could joyfully pick all the marshmallows out of the cereal, but then have some when I wanted to actually eat a bowl of cereal.  They could even make collector marshmallow packs to entice new buyers. Maybe team up with Zynga? This way, General Mills would be getting even more money from me, I would get more marshmallows, all would be right in the world.
It could also work in other applications, most notably, eating a bag of Lucky Charms marshmallows, by themselves, with no care for dry tasteless oat bits, at all.  But also for decorating cupcakes and cakes, putting in hot chocolate, or sticking them to your sister's face (after licking them, of course) while she is sleeping... the list is endless.

Oreo Stuf!

My other idea was born in the time of Oreo Big Stuf.  If you don't know what an Oreo Big Stuf is, picture a horrendously gigantic Oreo that has been mutated by radiation so that you would need a shoehorn to get it into your super, boss Dukes of Hazzard lunch box.  Who am I kidding?! All of my lunches were packed in plastic Publix Supermarket bags *sad face*... Anyway, I digress.
In high school, my mom was great about packing me lunches full of stuff I actually wanted to eat, which was greatly appreciated, however, when eating Oreos, it historically only takes a few bites before I grow weary of the chocolate sandwich cookie and end up chucking them, after licking out the middles.
I had a system that worked for me, which I now realize is completely grody, but I am going to tell you about it anyway, because, well, why the hell not.?! Sitting in the hallway of my wonderful high school (no really, it was the best, like summer camp for 4 years), I would happily eat the middles out of the Oreos that were packed in my lunch and, once I was done, I would give the chocolate wafers to my friend Erik, who apparently had no issue with eating cookies that had made contact with my mouth and were partially covered in my saliva... yeah.. I don't really know what that was about... but they didn't go to waste, and that was acceptable to me at the time.
The Oreo Big Stuf was much better, because it saved me grand amounts of time, as I only had to open one cookie to get the creme equivalence of 8-10 cookies, but I still felt bad about wasting the chocolate part. There had to be a better way.

My solution, which was summarily rejected by Nabisco, was selling jars of Oreo Stuf, not unlike cans of frosting, or marshmallow fluff. Selling the patented Oreo Creme, in a container, all by itself, would allow those people who really prefer the creamy center to the chocolate wafers (or were allergic to chocolate) to get what they want without accumulating a giant pile of discarded cookie outers.  Again, multifaceted product... it could be used as a filling for Oreo cakes, as a frosting for brownies, OR it could be consumed all in one sitting, using only a spoon, or maybe a finger or two, while watching "He's Just Not That into You," whilst crying...

Nabisco clearly made a grave error by rejecting this spectacular idea.


But, you know where to find me, companies, if you need a fresh new face for your R&D departments.  I have no qualifications at all, other than an active imagination, a love of food stuff, and a useless Bachelor's degree in art, but I'll be right here, waiting for your email! An apology wouldn't hurt either!

When Food Attacks!

Many, many years ago, I stopped assigning moral value to food. Nommy noms are no longer "good" or "bad," they are just food.  Cakes aren't sinful, candy bars aren't naughty, carrot sticks aren't chaste, lettuce doesn't make me worthy of love and praise. I eat food and it is just food, and my life is infinitely happier that way.  As I always say, the only thing you should ever feel guilty about eating is babies.

Since I've chosen to surround myself with people who feel the same for so long, it is now really foreign to me when I go visit food blogs full of amazing, delicious-looking pictures like those at Willow Bird Baking or I Am Baker and people in the comments talk about how dangerous the food is.  My mind automatically pictures little cake truffle gangs, or confectioneries with bombs strapped to their bodies.

Really, the only dangers inherent to food that I am willing to acknowledge are a) allergies, b) spoilage/poisoning and/or c) inhaling it into your lungs by accident, which I tend to do way too often for my own liking.


No really, that is all I am willing to acknowledge. Humor blarg. Serious debate is prohibited. As is the "D" word...

Cake is a lie.

It is shameful to say that it wasn't until I was in college that I knew what the phrase "You can't have your cake and eat it too," meant.  Mostly, because it was never taught in any class I was in, and the phrasing makes no sense.  I mean, the only way you CAN eat cake is if you have some, right?

I would like to petition that the phrase be changed to "You can't eat your cake and have it too," because then, it would actually say what it means and make sense.

Photo-bombing Llama (Cookies)

When I am not drawing or writing or being exceedingly painfully awesome, I enjoy cooking and baking.  Part of that is decorating cookies, even though my hands are not as cooperative as they once were in my early 20s (as you can see in the photos below).
Each year, I send my friends around the country little packages of goodies.  This year, in the spirit of this blarg, I though I would make some funny cookies to go in with the fancy ones.  So my friends received a package of cookies that began with these very serious looking cookies:

and then behind that lovely snowy scene they found this:

LLAMA

PHOTOBOMB!

I thought of doing a blue whale but whales really don't like skiing.

I used my favorite recipe for the cookies, which you can find after the jump:

Jelly Donuts of the Deep!

It wasn't until I was an adult that my mom brought in the tradition of sufganiyot (aka jelly donuts) which is apparently an Israeli thing.  As a long time lover of fried things filled with sweet things, I feel quite cheated that I was denied the joy of extra donuts as a kid... but seeing as we are not Israeli, it kinda makes sense.  


Have a jelly donut for me today.  It is your present this 6th night of Hanukkah, along with this:

A squid on a sufganiyot.