My dishes are clean.

Yeah, I’m going to talk about cleaning the dishes. No, it isn’t food, but we can all agree it’s food related.

I’m a big fan of saving money when it makes sense. And one of my go-to tricks is to buy the store brand dish detergent. In particular, Trader Joe’s product.

It gets my plates and glasses and spoons satisfactorily clean, or at least clean enough to eat off of again.

But I’m trying out Cascade® Platinum™ ActionPacs™ for free because I’m a BzzAgent and I get stuff for free in exchange for telling you lovely people about it.

These are the pretty little pods that contain multiple cleaners to get your dishes as shiny as a forehead on a Texas summer afternoon.

(Kids also love to eat them, so mine are way up high behind a locked cabinet door.)

Here’s what’s cool about them:

• They’re super easy to use. Just drop one in the detergent tray, and you’re done.
• They’re not messy. I’m not particularly neat when I try to pour powder into that same tray.
• There’s no guesswork. No measuring. No arguing with my husband about how much detergent to put in the dishwasher.
• And my dishes are indeed clean.

Are they cleaner than what my TJ’s detergent can accomplish? Meh. I haven’t really noticed a difference, to be honest. You’re definitely paying for the convenience factor with this product. And if you have the money for that, go for it.

 

Refreshingly Nothing

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m a BzzAgent. It means I’m a consumer member of a company who provides samples and coupons in exchange for product reviews.

The goal is to incentivize (positive) word-of-mouth marketing in order to sell more products. It’s honest.

The latest product I’ve received, however, isn’t honest at all. Or, rather, it lies by deletion.

Welche’s Refreshingly Simple™ juice proudly boasts in all-caps:

• NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP
• NO ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS
• NO ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS

And that all sounds wonderful. However, the listed ingredients are:

• Filtered Water
• Sugar
• Apple Juice Concentrate
• Grape Juice Concentrate
• Citric Acid
• Natural Flavor
• Mango Juice Concentrate
• Peach Juice Concentrate
• Beta Carotene

Here’s the deal about product labels. Ingredients must be listed in order of what is most present to what is least present. Therefore, this product contains more sugar than juice.

I love me some sugar; I don’t deny it. But I like my sugar honest. If these were Welch’s Refreshingly Simple™ Ice Pops, I’d be down. But it’s juice. It’s supposed to be what I give my kid with his breakfast or in the afternoon as a little pick-me-up.

Juice isn’t really healthy in the first place; all of the healthy parts of the fruit get removed. But that doesn’t make it evil. Marketing sugar water as juice, however, is just a fucking lie.

This isn’t pasta. It’s a hot salad.

“Spaghetti squash is a delicious alternative to traditional pasta!” all of the shitty food blogs have told me.

It’s a lie. A damn dirty lie.

Health nuts (and even a spattering of my friends) are lying to themselves if they think this is true..

I made spaghetti squash the other night. I cooked it in the oven. Seasoned it. Scraped it. Dumped on marinara sauce.

I’m not sure what I was expecting. After all, squash is a goddamn gourd, not a wheat product.

My mouth was primed for pasta. What I got was a mouthful of salad. Hot salad.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad. However, most of my life spent eating has been people giving me a plate of sides expecting that to be a full meal (you know, because of the vegetarian thing). So I know what a side dish is even if I’m confused about a main course.

Coincidentally, I’m not the greatest meal planner in the world. I’m not anywhere near the top because I’ve been groomed and programmed to eat nothing but side dishes. I’m gullible; Brussel sprouts is a main dish for me now. However, spaghetti squash as a main course didn’t fool me. Or satisfy me.

This is something that should be served BEFORE you eat your real meal. Or dumped on top of your real meal as a garnish. Or scraped out so you can turn the squash into a jack-o-lantern.

Spaghetti squash is no substitute for pasta. Nothing is.

LG Refrigerator Model LFX31925ST Can Suck My Ass Through a Flaming Straw.

For those who’ve followed Yummy Awesome off and on, you know about my history with appliances. (Remember the bread machine from Hell?)

Well, forget the bread machine; it’s a walk in sugary cake land compared to my LG refrigerator. I don’t even know where to begin.

The King of Awesome and I bought a house four years ago, and we bought a fridge to put in it. So doing the math, that means said fridge is also four years old.

We picked the LG 30.7-cu ft French Door Refrigerator with Single Ice Maker (Stainless Steel) (Model No. LFX31925ST) because of a few reasons:

• It was attractive.
• It could hold a metric fuck-ton of food.
• The water dispenser was funny.
• It allegedly could make ice like a mother fucker.
• It had good reviews and my cousin had it (and she loved it).
• The LED lights looked pretty boss.

We enjoyed the hell out of it for about six months. Then, the never-ending battle began.

First, we heard a knocking sound. After answering the door to no one for the tenth time, we realized it was the fridge. I Googled. I read the manual. I scratched my head. “Unplug it,” everything more-or-less told me. Great; restart it. Hold down CTRL+ALT+DELETE at the same time. Got it.

I left it unplugged for the recommended four hours. Then I powered LG LFX31925ST back up and the knocking immediately commenced. A few days later, we got the IF error code.

Error code? A refrigerator has an error code? Seriously. This was too damn complicated already. Once again, I turned to Google, the manual, and my scalp. “Fuck this,” I probably said aloud a few times. I called Best Buy. After all, they had strongarmed us into a warranty I didn’t want, and I’m so glad they did.

So the repairman came out. He told me that these fridges were notorious for breaking down. Then he proceeded to show me how to repair it myself because, “This isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.”

Imagine doing this every three months. I don’t have to imagine, because I fucking have to do it.

We took the entire freezer apart to get to the ice blower fan, essentially. It gets frozen solid. Every three months like clockwork.

Yeti coolers are the shit.

Was it manageable? Yeah. First world problems and all that. But then other shit started going down:

1. The large mechanism that slides into some other shitty, plastic part did something stupid, so the door wouldn’t always close. So guests would shut our fridge but not shut our fridge, which resulted in …
2. A ripped rubber door seal.
3. No matter what temp the fridge was set at, food sitting directly on the glass shelves or in two of the three produce drawers would freeze. And we’re not talking about some delightful icy crunch. Entire pieces of fruit, meat, even cheese would freeze solid. Did you know cheese could turn into ice? It can. We cannot store food in half of our fridge. (However, I lined all of the shelves in newspaper, which seems to have helped. Plus, I can now read about the local elections from a year ago every morning while I get the orange juice.)
4. The freezer fan clogs with ice so often, I have to mention it …
5. … twice.
6. The water dispensing button is starting to stick.
7. The ice dispenser clogs on a daily basis. We keep a knife honer nearby to stab into the bin. I repeat, this happens daily.
8. It gets fingerprinted to hell. I know this is a hazard of being an appliance in a home where the occupants have hands. But I hate this thing and now I’m just searching for more to add to the list.
9. The water valve that connects the water line to the fridge wore out. So now we don’t even get water or ice until I replace it.

Guys, I don’t write in this blog that often anymore. I have a child and two dogs and I take care of all of them while trying to work for myself. Blogging has fallen to the wayside because life comes first. However, I am so vehemently pissed off about the thousands of hard-earned dollars I wasted on this refrigerator, that I had to document it. We have a second fridge in our house. We got it for free from an apartment complex that was throwing them away. We keep it in the garage as the King’s beer fridge. Dudes, this fridge (I don’t even know the brand) is probably 20 years old (at least), is ugly as sin, and is chugging away like the King does on a can of craft beer.

Meanwhile, the $2,500 heartache mocks me with a frozen water melon, incessant ticking, and dripping water. Our LG LFX31925ST has become an unfunny joke on our social media pages. My Facebook community and my Instagram followers aren’t even surprised when I bitch about my fridge anymore.

The fridge has a reputation.

I’ve Googled it so much. I actually found a class action lawsuit about it! The saddest part, however, is I found it a day too late to join. And the message boards dedicated to people suffering like me with this same shitty appliance make this situation even bloodier than it already sounds.

Our goal is to get to five years with this fridge. I don’t know if we’re going to make it. I’m replacing parts on it left and right. But they’re just bandaids. It’s a terrible design made with really crappy parts. If I ever meet anyone who’s an engineer or designer of LG appliances, I cannot promise I won’t punch him/her in the face without saying a word first.

Here’s the model number one more time just for Google. LG LFX31925ST French Door Refrigerator.

 

Updates:

February 9: Mother fucker stopped making ice.

I hate food blogs.

What does irony taste like, huh?

But it’s true. I really hate food blogs.

I hate the long, drawn-out stories about nibbling on bits of bullshit while walking the streets of some over-worshipped city and reading about some diva wannabe’s childhood dreams of whipped cream for eight paragraphs before you get to the recipe.

There’s a limoncello taco on Pinterst. I want to read what’s in a limoncello taco and how to make it. I don’t want to hear about how you bought corn from some street vendor who told you about special sour creme cows that are massaged with olive oil so the cream is extra buttery so you got some of this sour creme and it was oh so divine you would not believe oh my gosh.

Seriously. That’s how every one of those fucking blogs sounds to me. Like a bad teenage diary about food.

They aren’t all bad. But they certainly aren’t all good.

If I want to read a story, I’ll read a story. If I want a recipe, I want to read a recipe. Not your shitty narrative. Nothing is worse than reading the long-winded musings of a journalism major who decided to not work for a newspaper and decided to blog instead.

I should know. I’m a journalism major who decided not to work for a newspaper. However, I don’t make money from this blog. So I have that going for me.

And I keep these things short, something I learned from my professional, non-journalism writing career.

Anyway, I’m going to go eat a taco now. Adios.

The Sake Years

Like most suburban teens who discovered alcohol, I had no idea what was good.

There was Boone’s Farm and there was this stuff called Mad Dog 20/20. Or at least I think that’s what it was called. I’m not going to Google it.

There was Zima, which was like the Smirnoff Ice of 1999, and Bud Ice, which was Budweiser with more booze in it.

Anyway, I knew jack shit about alcohol.

So in college, once I turned 21, it was all about exploring.

Enter Dr. Brew, PhD., who introduced me to my party beverage of choice my final year in college. Sake. See, she and I had saved up a ton of dimes so we went to this little sushi place near our college. And Dr. Brew ordered a bottle of sake for us.

I wasn’t even drinking wine, yet, but I was going to give this sake stuff a try.

My life changed. It was so good! Sort of sweet, but it tasted like rice.

It also got us incredibly smashed. We got so silly-drunk that we couldn’t drive back to my apartment. So we decided to eat more whatever rolls instead of using that money for books.

Dr. Brew ruined me that day. After that, I took a bottle of sake to every party I went to, and it sort of became my thing. Sure, my friends made fun of me. But I didn’t care.

For whatever reason (pregnancy/breastfeeding), I haven’t had sake in a while. But I got a bottle the other day. And it’s taking me back to the early 2000s. All I need is a midriff-exposing shirt, crimped hair, and a choker and I could be 21 again.

I’m back, bitches.

Dear Mother Fuckers,

I’m back. And I had a baby.

That’s right. The queen procreated. And the baby is awesome.

He’s a sugary little lump of boy and I’m about 90 percent certain he’s made of marshmallow fluff (the kind without gelatin).

But anyway, I’ve missed the ever-loving stuffing out of this blog. And my goal is to start writing to it again.

Actually, the goal was to keep track of my weird pregnancy food stuff. But my kid is nearly seven months old now. Oops. Being a mom is rather time consuming.

However, I did keep a pregnancy diary. And every now and again I’d write about food. So here’s one of my insane pregnancy food experiences. Enjoy.

 

The Baby of Awesome, the Dog of Awesome, and Me

 

14 Weeks and 3 Days Pregnant

Hi, I’m [the Queen of Awesome] and I’m a hormonal mess.

When five year-old [the Queen of Awesome] was asked what her favorite food was, she’d answer, “Quiche!” It was a very strange answer for a tiny Texas girl. But even as a Texas woman, I still love the stuff.

And I’ve been craving it hardcore. So while I was out running errands, I went into a La Madeleine and ordered myself a quiche florentine. I was going to dine on some spinach, egg, and swiss cheese in a flaky crust and I was going to love the fuck out of it.

When my quiche and I got home, there was a problem. It was a quiche lorraine, which means it was full of ham.

My heart sank like a stone. And I had a meltdown. I cried like someone had died.

No joke.  I actually crumpled to the floor sobbing. We’re talking borderline asthma attack anxiety and mental anguish.

The worst part? I was on the phone with my husband when I made my horrible hammy discovery.

Nothing in the world was worse than staring at the one food that I could possibly stomach right now, and I couldn’t eat it.

So how does this story end? Right now, I’m typing this and my darling husband is going to another La Madeleine to order me the proper quiche. He’s coming home to have lunch with me and he’s going to eat the ham monstrosity and I’m going to dine on some spinach, egg, and swiss cheese in a flaky crust.

I love the fuck out of him.

The only thing better than a cookie is cookie dough cookie sandwich.

I just blew your mind.

A cookie dough cookie sandwich. That’s cookie dough sandwiched between two cookies.

I had one last week thanks to the Dessert Doctor. He brought some that he made with his own two hands and some sugar. And let me tell you that it blew my mind.

In fact, just remembering that crunchy, mushy mix was enough to make me run around the building I’m in search of any kind of cookie. And what I found is only doing an okay job of satisfying the need for homebaked goods.

Because no matter what, a pre-packaged cookie will never ever compare to something from someone’s house. And then when that cookie is accompanying it’s own pre-baked dough (sans eggs, the Dessert Doctor said, so you don’t die of whatever), it’s a better match than salt with pepper.

The only way you can make something more glutinous and delicious than a cookie dough cookie sandwich is by incorporating one with a cheesecake or pie. But that’s borderline obscene, even for food porn. A dessert like that might only be available in Japan or Germany. And in a back alley, no less.

 

A Tasty Little Announcement

Hello, devoted readers.

We have an exciting little announcement. My husband, our very own King of Awesome, has a new job.

He’s working for Lakewood Brewing Company, Dallas’ third official brewery (although they’re physically located in Garland about a mile from Dallas … blame zoning laws).

Anyway, it’s one of the reasons I haven’t been writing much lately. And no, not because I’m constantly drinking. Although, maybe my intake has increased.

That isn’t to say I’m working at Lakewood, either. Because I’m not. I’m just a Beer Wife (which would be an excellent reality show, by the way).

Regardless, this is very cool because working at a brewery is one of those dream jobs that many people would love to have, but few actually get. Plus, Lakewood beer is awesome. And they’re set to start brewing very very soon, so maybe you too (if you’re local) will get a chance to try their stuff in the near future.

Anyway, congratulations to my king, my love, my super-sudsy hubsy.

Be expecting even more beer promoting.

Dallas Trader Joe’s Updates

Alas, Trader Joe’s isn’t coming to the Lake Highlands Town Center, which we all knew. But they’re still going to be very very close.

The northwest corner of Walnut Hill and 75 is going to be TJ Home #2 for Dallas. That’s the corner that currently has nothing but 42 acres of grass (42 acres? Really?). Rumor has it the new location will open sometime in 2013.

And like Dallas is apt to do, they’re creating another shopping center there. Allegedly, of course.

Dallas’ first location is going to be on Lower Greenville where the Arcadia Theatre used to be. You know, before the fire.

And rumor has it that the Metroplex’s first Trader Joe’s is already open in Fort Worth. And by “rumor,” I mean it opened on June 15, 2012. Hmm, maybe I’ll be taking a trip to Cowtown sometime soon. It’s time to stock up on chocolate covered edamame and proprietary snack foods.

Oh, and fucking Plano is getting a Trader Joe’s later this summer. Fucking Plano.