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Arty Eating and Drinking Featured

Shake and Bake: Onelargeprawn Makes a Cake

Shake n’ Bake mix is very convenient for students, amateurs, and harassed soccer moms. It’s usually our M.O. too, but today, Team Onelargeprawn got adventurous on our own  awesome asses, and  decided to make a cake from scratch. And it turned out to be a great looking and delicious piece of confectionery. See the story below.

Using a classic all-in-one sponge cake recipe from domestic goddess dinosaur Delia Smith, Lucy Furr and I set about mixing our ingredients together, poured them into the pans, and after 30 minutes, two cakes emerged from the oven. They looked bland, much like my underwear collection. But all was not lost…

Next up, the icing – butter, icing sugar, a splash of milk, and “crimson red” food colouring. Not exactly the fiery red I was hoping for, but the result was pretty cool.

Breaking free of my kitchen assistant shackles, I decided to ice the cake. It went surprising well, my palette knife blurring as I did my thing.

Finally, the “cherry on top” – we stuck on a Bull Terrier stencil I made several years ago, and sifted icing sugar over the top. I’m pretty pleased with our effort, so pleased I just had to blog about it ;-)

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Cautionary Tales Useful/Useless Info

Worldometers: See World Stats in Real Time

Whilst completing my Bachelor of Alcoholism degree at a certain university in the Eastern Cape, I took a course in statistics. What are the chances of me remembering any of it? Slim to none. That is a pity as I’m always running out of conversation topics at parties and much to the grimace of Lucy Furr, I often resort to back-ups like the world’s strongest vagina, or disturbing taxidermy jewellery.

But that is soon to change. Now I can titillate bore everyone with a whole range of statistics. From population to society and media, to environment and health, Worldometers provides real time statistics that are fantastic and frightening at the same time. Here’s a snapshot I took earlier.

WOW! See more numbers in real time at Worldometers.

Another worrying statistic: Number of cigarettes left in box: 1. :pain:

[Thanks Gavin]

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Cautionary Tales

Last Meals: Final Requests by Death Row Inmates

Aside from continually spilling food down her top, Lucy Furr also has a knack for bringing up odd conversation topics at the dinner table. Some time back it was the Russian exorcism, and last night as we were tucking into the pasta, she started talking about last meals – as in the customary meal a prisoner is entitled to before they get summarily executed.

According to Wikipedia, the history of the last meals goes back to the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians, and Romans; apparently the overly-generous Aztecs fed their human sacrifices for up to a year before their death. In any case, here are some famous last meal requests.

Adolf Eichmann

So called the architect of the Holocaust thanks to his organizational talents, Karl Adolf Eichmann was captured by Israeli Mossad operatives in Argentina and tried for crimes against humanity. Before his hanging in 1962, Eichmann’s refused the last meal but requested a bottle of Carmel, a dry red Israeli wine.

John Wayne Gacy

John Wayne Gacy, Jr raped and murdered 33 boys and young men and hid some of them under a floor of his house. During his trial in 1980 he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity but that was flatly rejected and in 1994, he was executed by lethal injection. His last meal consisted of a dozen deep-fried shrimps, a bucket of original recipe chicken from KFC, French fries, and a pound of strawberries.

Ted Bundy

Actual numbers remain unknown but Theodore Robert Bundy is thought to have murdered around 35 people. He would bludgeon his victims and strangle them to death; sometimes he would rape them and perform necrophilia depending on his mood I guess. In 1989 he was executed by electric chair. He declined the last meal, so he was given the traditional steak (medium-rare), eggs (over-easy), hash browns, toast, milk, coffee, juice, butter, and jelly.

Timothy McVeigh

Convicted for the 1995 bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001. He asked for two pints of mint chocolate-chip ice cream.

Rainey Bethea

Bethea confessed to the rape and murder of a 70-year-old white woman and was the last person to be publicly executed in the United States. On August 14th 1936, in front of a crowd of 20,000 people, Bethea was hanged. The previous day his last meal comprised fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes, pickled cucumbers, cornbread, lemon pie, and ice cream.

If you had to make a last meal request, what would it be? I’d die for a Steak a’ Portuguese from our favourite restaurant, Dias Tavern.

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Eating and Drinking Video Clips

Food Trials: Hamster Chooses Organic

CooksDen wanted to test whether organic food really does taste better, and roped in an unconventional test subject for the experiment. Hammy the hamster possesses superior taste buds, has no problems expressing her opinions publicly, and more importantly is not suckered in by fancy packaging or flashy advertising.

Given the choice of organic and conventional food item of the same type, Hammy chose organic in over sixty percent of the trials.

It’s all fine and good but unlike us, Hammy doesn’t have to pay for anything. Had she known about the ass-raping she would get when it comes to organic food prices, things may have turned out a little differently.

Get the stats and full report at CooksDen | Image Credit: JesseBarker.

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Eating and Drinking

Onelargeprawn Visits Carne SA

I love beef. I really do. I could probably give up booze and smokes if I had to, but good old bloody red meat – NEVER!! No food is dearer to my heart than a thick cut, well-aged porterhouse or rib eye done medium rare. So a newspaper review of Carne SA, a specialty steakhouse at 70 Keerom Street (Cape Town) obviously caught my eye, and last night the crew from onelargeprawn and family decided to give it a try. The peeps at Carne were unaware that we were going to crit their place on the net, and we paid full price for our meal.

And this is what we thought:

Food, ah the most important part of this review. None of us had antipasti, but the options on the menu all looked very good and I regret not trying the beef carpaccio. Our waiter brought a huge platter of raw meat to the table to demonstrate the different cuts available – this might be off putting for some people, but if you can’t stand the sight of raw meat, you shouldn’t be eating it at all you big girl’s blouse! Basically, your choices are a fucking enormous T-bone (1.2kg), 300g sirloin, 250g hangar steak (which according to our host is meat from near the kidneys – a very tasty cut, and chewy but in a good way – needless to say none of us had it), and rib eye in either 300g off the bone or 600g on-the-bone versions.

The meat all looked good. When our steaks arrived, they were cooked to perfection having been marinated in only extra virgin olive oil, a little garlic, and salt. The tender, full-flavoured beef was an absolute joy to eat, and as I forked each sumptuous piece into my mouth, all distractions disappeared, I could no longer hear the conversation at the neighbouring table, the silly knives and forks no longer bothered me. Heaven.

Side dishes charged for separately, are all lovely except that we all found the fine cut fries over salted. Prawn1 marked them down for the fact that they did not have tomato sauce or ketchup of any kind to go with his fries. I know that at fancy restaurants it may not be polite to eat tom sauce with your food, but you are the customer and you’re paying for this food, the least they could do is give you a simple condiment. As for desserts, the Crème Caramel was rich although a little bland, but the vanilla ice cream was first class – both were overpriced. Coffees were too bitter for us. As a result of the delicious competitively priced meat, food gets 4/5.

Décor at Carne is amazing if you (like me) enjoy contemporary architecture and furnishings. The walls are finished in raw concrete, and there are beautiful timber panels on doors and walls, and several huge carved wooden bowls that look like they’re from up Africa someplace are displayed in the bar area. The Philippe Starck type Perspex chairs and sleek glassware are the perfect compliment to the lovely marble-topped tables. The china is plain and white – the best thing to present a steak on.

The silverware, and I use the term loosely, leaves much to be desired. It is light, poorly designed, and feels cheap – more suited to a toasted cheese sandwich in a greasy spoon than a beautiful hunk of prime beef.There were no steak knives, and I do appreciate the fact that my steak done medium rare was definitely tender enough not to need a sharp knife, but if you prefer you meat well done, or choose a tougher cut, you will struggle through it with the cutlery provided. Décor gets 4/5.

Our thoughts on service, ambiance, and general vibe are after the jump.

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Arty Hints & Tips Mindlessness

The Ominous Death of Mr. Peanut

More image bookmarking awesomeness at FFFFOUND!