10 Second Kitchen, It's Been A Little While

We haven't posted a new episode of 10 Second Kitchen in a while, but I'm hoping that changes. I've got some ideas about how to expand this little video project, and I hope you enjoy what we have to offer.

Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter so you can see where we might be filming new episodes of 10 Second Kitchen.

And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube feed to see the episodes as soon as we put them up.

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Candy Critic Eats Food, A Restaurant Review - DC Super Heroes Cafe

For those of you who may not know me, not only do I love snacks, candy and junk food, but I’m also a bit of a comic book nerd. Before Candy Critic even existed, I had been reading comic books, and I even spent a few years working in a comic book store as a teenager. When I was a comic book reader, my publishing company of choice was DC comics. I know today DC has fallen behind Marvel comics in popularity (particularly with the movies), but I don’t consider myself that hip, so I don’t feel like I have to be down with what the kids are into.

With my love and fond memories of DC comics, you can only imagine how I felt when I was in Singapore recently and I stumbled across the DC Super Heroes Café. I had not read about this place in any of the guide books, nor had I heard about other branches of this café anywhere else in the world. Allison and I were just walking through a mall (mostly to cool down) and we came across this amazing place.

I’m going to assume that this place is fully licenced by the folks at Warner Brothers, and that each piece of merchandise and the menu items are fully endorsed by the company who owns these characters. I don’t know this for a fact, but there is one detail that really made me believe that whomever built this place had permission. Most of the time when you see unlicensed things in certain countries, you find discrepancies in the details.  For example, when I’ve come across unlicensed toys in the past, they often mix up the DC and Marvel universe, and you’ll see a Batman toy packaged with a Spiderman toy. This wasn’t the case at the DC Super Heroes Café, it was all on brand and very on the mark.

For the start of my review we’ll talk about how the DC Super Heroes Café is laid out and decorated. The place is split into two sections, the restaurant and the store. The store is pretty much full of all kinds of DC related toys, merchandise and art work. Some of it is very expensive, other things are more reasonable. There was nothing that you wouldn’t find in an average comic book shop, if all that comic book shop sold was DC merchandise, and no comics. The store (and parts of the restaurant) was also filled with life sized statues of various comic book characters, mostly from DC movie tie-ins. I’m not sure if these were for sale, but I’m sure the price tag was way out of my range.

The restaurant side was half take out bakery and half sit down restaurant. When we first approached the place, we just looked at the various cakes and drinks available at the front counter and didn’t really think about actually eating there. The restaurant side is not really cohesive in its design, and kind of looks like a bunch of comics from the 70s exploded everywhere (take that as you want to). The lack of cohesive design of the restaurant indicates to me that this might be the only one of these in existence, and that the person who opened this place has deep pockets to pay for licences, and not an eye for design. The lack of cohesive design actually made the place kind of fun, but also made it a little confusing.

The other thing that made this place confusing is the menu. Which we eventually decided was worth checking out after looking over the items for sale in the bakery case. When you think about a comic book café, you might think about trying some of the famous foods that might appear in comic books. I would want to eat a hamburger that Superman might enjoy, or a meal that might be served at Wayne Manor. Instead the dishes are just random diner foods with DC comics puns added into the name and all kinds of logos thrown all over them (mostly made of processed cheese and cut vegetables).  Things like the “Clarks Kent’s Crevettes Carbonara” and the “Doomsday Chicken and Waffles” were what was on offer. It didn’t really feel like there was a story behind these dishes, only “clever” puns and lots of logos.

There were also several drinks and cakes with puns in the name, and many of them also had colour themes that would go with the character that was part of the pun. Or in the case of the cakes, they were decorated with logos and colours, and some designs that would associate with the characters. I will give this place credit; they made some deep cuts when it came to the characters they chose to associate with the foods. Most restaurants would only use the characters that might have made it to the mainstream or in the movies, but this place had no trouble dealing with some of the more obscure characters including Bizarro and Mr Mxyzptlk.

I also like the fact that the restaurant was clearly interested in the comics and not the movies. The walls were decorated with comic book pages featuring the origins of some of the more popular DC characters. The chairs and the tables were all decorated with character logos from the comics. The colours everywhere were just bright and comic book like. Visually this restaurant was a feast for the eyes, but the food…

As described above, the food is basic diner food, it’s nothing fancy and nothing that creative. I ordered the Doomsday Chicken and Waffles, and Allison got the Batman Burger (that came in an amazing box). Both are meals were fine, but not amazing. I felt like the chicken and waffles was made by someone who had never actually eaten chicken and waffles before. It came with maple syrup on the side, but was already covered in nacho cheese sauce. I’m not an expert in chicken and waffles, but I’m pretty sure nacho cheese is not a part of it. Allison enjoyed her burger, but felt it was a little overpriced for what it was.

The experience of eating at this place is far more fun than the food itself. I feel like this place was designed by someone who really loves DC Super Heroes, but doesn’t really understand how to tie it into a restaurant. As I mentioned before, it was not cheap. I feel like we were paying for the licensing of the characters more than the food (if I find out that this place is not licensed than there’s no excuse at all). I’m glad I tried it once, but I don’t see myself ever going back, except maybe just to browse the store.

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Amazing Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Microwave Grilled Cheese

This one device can pretty much solve every problem I've ever had between 11 am and 2 pm.

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More Canadian Junk Food Footage

While we’re here in Canada we’re compiling a list of our favourite must have Canadian Junk food. We’ll be putting together a video all about it when we’re back home. For now though we’re sharing some of the random footage we’re collecting of each of our selections. Today is all about poutine.

Click here to check out the poutine footage.

Make sure to keep up with all our Canadian trip shenanigans on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well.

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A Little Help With My Lunch Please

I'm not saying that I need this grilled cheese toaster all the time, I need it right now... to make my lunch.

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A Pizza (Not) Candy Pool Thing

You have to buy at least 8 of these so you can have a whole pizza.

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Daily Rations - Part 5 - Chicken with Ham and Cheese Sauce

Whenever you're writing anything, the key is to end on a bang, save the best for last.  I really tried with our collection of ration pack reviews this week, but unfortunately something went horribly wrong.  I'll start by telling you why I thought this dish had potential.  First of all the chicken is one solid piece, it's not ground, or processed in any visible way.  Secondly, chicken is probably my favorite meat, so I figured it has a pretty good shot of doing well.  Thirdly there's cheese involved, I mean who doesn't like cheese?

After reading the description on the package things pretty much fell apart.  The smell that came out of this ration pack was not pleasant.  It was cheesy, but not a pleasant cheesy, it was instead the smell of cheese that's trying really hard to impress.  A cheese smell so strong, and so sharp, that even a stinky cheese connoisseur might gag a little.  I was happy to see that the chicken was in fact a sold piece, however I'm guessing for packaging reasons it had to be cooked very well done.  I took a knife to this chicken and had to use great effort to break it apart.  Even though it was soaking in this cheese goop for the last 2 years, none had penetrated the dry interior of this chicken.

The smell of the cheese was just a warning for the taste that came with it.  It was so strong and sharp that I had trouble getting down more than a couple of bites.  It says there's ham in this, and you might be able to smell it a bit, but it could have been much stronger allies with the chicken and maybe given up some of it's juice fat to moisten this dry chicken breast.

As always I'm sure if I was out in a jungle fighting to stay alive, this would be fine.  However on my kitchen table it was a struggle to get down.

This review wraps up my whole week of eating rations for lunch every day.  While I did poke fun at the taste of these meals this week, I don't want to forget what they're for.  War is not a pretty place, and the fact that somebody tries there hardest to keep our soldiers not only fed, but give them something tasty to eat is a great thing.  While these aren't home cooked meals, for some people it's a taste of home that can give them a moral and energy boost to get through a tough day that's much harder than any day I've ever had.

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Daily Rations - Part 2 - Wieners and Beans

All this week I'm eating ration pack meals for lunch, yesterday I had some pretty horrible cabbage rolls, today it's wieners and beans.  There is one serious problem with comparing a ration pack of wieners and beans to a home cooked meal of wieners and beans, and that is, I've never tried home made wieners and beans.  This isn't the first time I've ever had wieners and beans, however every other time I've ever tried them they've come out of a can.  In general canned foods, and ration pack foods are pretty similar, so my reaction to these is exactly the same as if I was having a can of wieners and beans.

So unless you're a wieners and beans connoisseur, and you make them at home from scratch, chances are you'll probably enjoy this ration pack fine.  The wieners are pleasant enough, sliced fairly large, but small enough to be bite sized.  The beans are also tasty enough, they maybe could use a bit more of a maple or brown sugar sweetness, instead these have a general sweetness.  The ratio of beans to wieners is exceptional.  I managed to have a bit of wiener with just about every bite of bean.

If for some reason you find yourself in a situation where wieners and beans in a ration pack are on sale at your local store, go for it.  They're exactly the same as the canned version, but the portion size is better for one person (I often find that a can of wieners and beans is a two serving things).

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A Cool Candy Thing

You know what would make this lunch box even more awesome?  If it was filled with Jelly Beans.  Imagine the joy of opening a lunch box that was covered with jelly beans, only to discover that it was also full of jelly beans.

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Spreads - Zoodles

I just finished an art piece for bewarethecheese.com's fine art gallery "Senses". For this piece I had to photograph, and eventually eat more than 40 different spreads.  I've decided to post a little something about each spread that I sampled.

You're probably thinking that I'm nuts for calling Zoodles a spread.  I'll admit, I'm pushing it, but only because you don't really spread them the same way you spread something like butter.  As far as eating Zoodles on bread, well that's been a favorite snack of mine since I was a little kid.  I don't remember if I saw someone else doing it, or if I just started it myself.

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Spreads - Mayonnaise

I just finished an art piece for bewarethecheese.com's fine art gallery "Senses". For this piece I had to photograph, and eventually eat more than 40 different spreads.  I've decided to post a little something about each spread that I sampled.

I once heard that mayonnaise is not the killer ingredient that most people think it is.  People often say that you have to be really careful about how you store and serve mayonnaise because it can spoil quickly and cause you to be sick.  According to some scientist, modern day mayonnaise is in fact almost never the problem with food poisoning.  They ran tests on mayonnaise and found that in some cases mayonnaise would actually kill some harmful bacteria.  So if you get sick from a turkey and mayonnaise sandwich, it's probably the turkey.

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Ramen/Borscht

I love it when different cultures collide in the food world, some might call it fusion, but in this case I'd call it a collision   While wandering a grocery store in Poland looking for a nice hot lunch, I came across Barszcz (Borscht) in the ramen noodle isle.  This might be the worst combination in food history.

The noodles were pretty much your standard ramen noodles.  The strange thing about this is, I don't think borscht is supposed to have noodles at all.  Why would someone decided to make a non-noodle soup with noodles as the star?

My hope, although I knew it was unlikely, was that the soup mix would be so good that it would take away from the noodle faux pas.  As you can tell by the bright purple colour of the powder, I wasn't too hopeful.

After mixing in the water the colour pretty much stayed the same as the powder, a nice unnatural purple.  There was little to no beet flavour at all, and it was way too salty.  It also lacked any garlic, creme, or any other flavours that would make it even remotely borscht like.  Even as a ramen it was pretty gross.  What you have here is a bowl of salty, very purple noodles in warm water.

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Lunch Time Idea

I have to admit that I'm a little upset that I don't live in the US right now. Friendly's (which I assume has no locations in Canada) has mixed two of my favourite lunch time meals into one. Apparently it's not very healthy, but that's ok, I'll only eat one.

Click here to check it out.

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I Do Take Requests

As requested by my friend Mike I present to you a mouth full of Zoodles. I did in fact go hunting with a bowl a spoon and I believe I went over my hunting licence limit. I also believe that I did eat some endangered creatures as well. The experience of eating a huge mouthful of Zoodles was ok except for one part. My Zoodles where way too hot and I think I burned the roof of my mouth. The sensation and taste other than that was fine but I think in the future I’ll let them cool before shovelling way too much into my face.

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Even Candy Fanatics Should Eat Right In School

Now I know I talk a lot about candy and how great it is, but I’m not stupid. I know the value of eating a good food for meals. Well I just came across this site that is all about how crappy school lunches are and I’m frankly astonished. Seriously go out and get a Kit Kat bar but eat a decent meal first.

Click here to check out Fed Up: School Lunch Project.

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Pop Goes My Lunch

A group of New York artist/designers have decided to create places for people to eat lunch in New York City. They’ve designed a whole bunch of contraptions that allow the street food dinner the ultimate in luxury. I may have to make a trip to check this out.

Link via Boing Boing, click here to check it out.

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Desert my Lunch

I was in a train station store and I needed a little snack. I decided I’d pick up a pre-made peanut butter sandwich with the crusts cut off. What I learned is that these sandwiches are more and just peanut butter. Instead of the standard crushed peanuts you get a whipped peanut icing that taste so creamy and sweet. Most expecting peanut butter may be disappointed, but those of us with a sweet tooth are in heaven.

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