NEW DOMAIN! Hopefully.

Soon I’ll be transferring everything over to my new domain http://jestergoblin.com/

That is all.

What I’ve Been Reading – Columbus Day Weekend Edition

Whenever I fly, I always make sure to pick up a new book or two. Most of the flights I take are under two hours, which means about an hour of each flight makes me electronicless, so I need something else to do. I recently got $50 to Amazon through my credit card and decided to pick up a few graphic novels I’ve been wanting.

Dynamo 5 Volume 3: Fresh Blood
by Jay Faerber, Mahmud A. Asrar, Yildiray Cinar, and Marcio Takara

For those that don’t know, Dynamo 5 is a monthly series published by Image Comics. I used to read it in issues but switched to trades for all my comics about a year ago. The premise of Dynamo 5 is simple: Captain Dynamo (this universe’s Superman) was less than loyal to his wife and fathered five children with five different women, each one of them gained one of his super powers.  After his sudden death, his widow sought out the children and assembled them into a crime fighting team to protect Liberty City.

The last trade left off with Dynamo 5 disbanding after their base of operations had been infiltrated by a group of supervillains. Without a group of protectors, Liberty City becomes overrun. This trade picks up with a new hero patrolling the streets: Vigil.

Through a progression of guilt, Scrap returns to the city and creates a new Dynamo 5 consisting of the newcomer Vigil and three established heroes: the mother-daughter duo both named Firebird and Quake. The story follows this groups new adventures against The Veil. I’m not going to give away the plot, but it’s a solid read.

Dynamo 5 as a concept is great and follows the ideas presented in other books like Fantastic Four, X-Men and Avengers. The premise of most of those books is how they are a family first but Dynamo 5 switches it up. They are literally a family only none of them know what to do. Faerber takes generic superhero comic cliches and twists them just enough to make them feel new. The villains are a great balance between a caricature and innovation. The Veil draws heavily from HYDRA but feels new. Bonechill looks like a blue Ghost Rider but works as a character. It’s not about how or why, the villains just are – something that’s been missing from mainstream comics lately. I started reading this during Civil War and it felt right: clear sides, good versus bad. Asrar continues to do great work, though he occasionally gets cheesecakey. I’d love to see him work on any book that involves Emma Frost because Firebird looks just like her.

As a trade, this is a great continuation of the story but you need to start at the beginning to understand it. The book’s recap page doesn’t do much for new readers, but this is one of the best superhero comics out.

Things that shouldn’t exist: Giant Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

like peanut butter filled hockey pucks

This weekend I was down in Hershey, PA for my grandma’s 90th birthday. Since we were right by Hershey Park, we did the only thing we could: be tourists.

Between the trolley tour of the town – where our guide had either recently discovered coffee or speed, I can’t tell, or the nasuea inducing spinning carpet before the factory tour – I learned one thing: I’m tired of chocolate. But I knew I needed to bring my girlfriend back something. I was tempted to get the “World’s Largest Chocolate Bar” but it wouldn’t fit in my backpack. So instead I bought the “World’s Largest Peanut Butter Cup.”

Easy Dinner: Lemon Garlic Chicken & Sides

Last night was one of those “cook with whatever I have in the fridge” nights to make a meal for two and it worked out pretty well. Almost all of these ingredients are standard and you should have in your kitchen, with the exception of cous cous.

Expense-A-Steak: Genius? Nefarious? Both?

Just don't look too closely.

I don’t know if you guys have heard about this yet but supposedly the economy isn’t doing too well </sarcasm>. Restaurants, especially the super high end ones, are being hit hard – sales have dropped by almost a quarter in less than two years!  So companies are coming up with new and innovative ways to bring in customers.

One such restaurant in Midtown Mahattan has come up with a great way to help out their business customers. It’s called “Expense-A-Steak” at Maloney & Porcelli’s and the premise is simple: they’ll give you fake receipts that look like they’re for office supplies.

Is it wrong for a company to offer this tool? Maybe but as of now it’s just a fun tool online to play around with. But Maloney & Porcelli’s have offered a special perk for customers with leftovers – they’ll put it in a much cheaper looking bag. Don’t want people to know you just dropped $100 on a steak? Throw it in an Olive Garden bag.

Top Chef Las Vegas Recap – Prawns & Power Failures & Eli’s a dick

I'm guess half the people in this photo are drunk.

After last week’s break, I’ve got a new round up over at VegasTell.com of last night’s episode. But there are two things I wanted to talk about over here.

First off, product placement and cross promotion.

Before I go into it, a note to Bravo: cut back on the cross promotion and endorsements. Yes, we know all about the Gladware family of products, but making BOTH challenges corporate-sponsored? The Cookstr Quickfire and the Macy’s Elimination Challenge – in the same episode? It’s Top Chef, not Top Integrated Marketing Strategies. It was almost as bad as Heroes a few weeks ago when they talked about how much they loved Guitar Hero and Legal Seafood.

I’m not kidding. This episode was terrible with the cross promotion. Sure, going to Whole Foods to get ingredients is one thing but having both challenges in a single night be branded? I have no interest in going to Cookstr now, nor will I actually link to them. I understand with DVRs becoming more and more popular, people are watching fewer and fewer commercials but come on. The Macy’s Culinary Council? That sounds absolutely terrifying.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Chocolate Cupcakes with Buttercream Frosting

I could spread this out over three days because it’s three different recipes but I’m going away for the long week and won’t have access to the internet most likely so consider this the post for the next three days.

Get ready for three recipes: chocolate chip cookie dough, chocolate cupcakes and buttercream frosting. Or combine them all into one amazing recipe: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Chocolate Cupcakes with Buttercream Frosting.

Baking Secrets: Chocolate Chip Cookies

The perfect chocolate chip cookie: does it exist? Probably. I would go to venture that the perfect chocolate chip cookie was the one made by Ruth Graves Wakefield. Most of you probably have never heard of her but may have made one of the biggest contributions to our society.

She invented the chocolate chip cookie. By accident.

It seems absurd to think about now, that someone accidentally created that delicious cookie. But it’s true, she was making a batch of cookies and a miracle happened. One account of the events was that a chocolate bar accidentally fell  into a batch of butter cookies and broke, thus creating chocolate chunks in the batter. Another variantion was that Ms. Wakefield ran out of baking cocoa and tried substituting baking chocolate in hopes it would melt into the dough. Whichever story is true, bakers owe her a lot.

Toy Review: Superhero Squad Wave 15

Hulk & Nova

HULK GOT NEW HAIRCUT!

Hulk is a brand new sculpt and reminds me of Smart Hulk. Minus the well thought out outfits (that was harder to type then expected). But he’s still just another Hulk figure. He’s a good size but something just feels off about him, it may be the hair or the color. He’s only got three points of articulation: neck and arms, I expected a waist. The biggest issue I have with the figure is we’ve gotten plenty of green Hulks but we haven’t gotten a Smart Hulk, Joe Fix’it or the Maestro.

No one expected this!

Holy crap we got Nova. I’m impressed by the sheer selection this line offers still so take that Marvel Legends! Nova looks amazing and is based off his more recent outfit I believe but it’s one of the few series I haven’t kept up with. He nicely designed, clean paint applications and is an all around good figure. His articulate is slightly limited by his helmet, but his neck and arms are the norm. Nothing ground breaking but above average.

Chipotle Mac ‘n Cheese & Cornbread

While at the Phantom Gourmet food festival in Boston last week I tried the newest cheese from Cabot – chipotle cheddar which was absolutely fantastic and I knew I needed to create something with it. So I did: Chipotle Cheddar and Smoked Gouda Mac ‘n Cheese.

Before I get to the recipe though it’s worth talking about what a chipotle is. At the most basic level, a chipotle is a smoked red jalapeño. The jalapeño is smoked until almost all the water has evaporated, reducing the weight of the jalapeño by around 90%. They’re used in many different Mexican foods and allow for a more complex flavor.

The word chipotle comes  from the Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs,  word chilpoctli by way of Mexican Spanish, it literally means “smoked chile.” Chil means “chili pepper” and  poctli means “smoked.” Now that you’ve learned something today, check out the recipe!