IKEA Monkey

   In which other babies are met (or, as I believe William put it on the livefeed of this Baby Meet And Greet, per Twitter — my own livefeed kept cutting out and then coming back to a shot of like, a CHAIR, which was not helpful for me from any kind of satisfyingly voyeuristic perspective, Read More ...

I am not a religious person, but Reverend Smith spoke a few lines of the Prayer of Saint Francis on an episode of Deadwood I watched recently and I can't stop thinking about it. The prayer in full:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

The Reverend put it slightly differently:

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to understand, than to be understood, to love, than to be loved...

Believer in eternal life or not, that's a way of living life I can get behind.

Tags: religion

In a new episode of Billy on the Street, Billy Eichner and Paul Rudd ran around New York City (well, a small portion of it by Madison Square Park) to ask people if they would have sex with Rudd for a dollar. People said no! There is no accounting for taste I suppose, even if the man magically does not age.

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Oh, this is the dumbest thing but it made me laugh today: Celebrities that Look Like Mattresses.

How on Earth did they find these pairings? Has Google perfected their Mattress Recognition technology? (via @Rebeccamead_NYC)

Tags: celebrity

While plenty of hair removal campaigns for women are subtly trying to indicate that the only way you're attractive is without body hair, Veet's new campaign "Don't risk dudeness!" goes one step further and suggests that without their wax strips, you risk turning into a man.

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From Chicago

[Photographs: Mike Gebert]

One of my rules for scouting out places is that whatever they stress on the sign is probably the best thing they have. There may be shrimp, gyros, and chicken chow mein on the menu, but if the sign says Giuseppe's Pizzeria Roma, well, you calculate the odds.

So I spent a long time driving past Eastern Style Pizza on a mostly kosher stretch of Touhy in West Rogers Park, because I figured it was a kosher pizza joint. (There actually is one just a few doors down.) Not until I went with my friend Michael Morowitz, who grew up in the area, and his kids one Saturday afternoon did I learn that everything I assumed about it was wrong.

The owner, Frank, is Greek, and the pizza, though New York/East Coast-style and perfectly fine for a quick slice, is not the main attraction.

Meatball Grinder

Instead, it's really a grinder joint, an East Coast style of sub sandwich that you don't see much here. Here at least, it's whatever you want on a long crusty roll—long enough that two could easily share a sandwich—that might be smeared with tomato sauce and topped with onion, green pepper, some seasoning, and mozzarella, and then baked in the oven. Not microwaved, not run through some conveyor belt contraption with a heating element, but baked for a very long ten or fifteen minutes in an actual oven like you have at home.

What comes out has all the simple, warm, and comforting virtues of hot bread and gooey oozing mozzarella. Which is to say, if this doesn't make you happy and feel eight years old again, you're already dead.

Pepperoni Grinder

I like the meatball version, and it's also good with something like pepperoni or salami. But there's about a zillion choices, from a Philly Cheese Steak grinder to Chicken Parm to a gyros grinder. (No chicken chow mein grinder, though.)

There are mostly two kinds of sandwiches in this world today—the awful chain sandwiches of plastic meats and chemical-tasting bread of which we will not speak further, and artisanal sandwiches made with housemade this and housecured that. Eastern Style Pizza, the grinder place, belongs to a fast-disappearing third category, the original kind of working class sandwich, which was nothing artisanal, nothing you couldn't make yourself, but freshly-made with real food. The kind of sandwich you might well have had on the Jersey Shore—before it became a TV show.

Damian Mandola, one of the founders of Carrabba's Italian Bar and Grill, was arrested twice in the last five days on charges of breaking and entering...and intent of theft, and destruction of property, and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and holy shit, what are they putting in the pasta at Carrabba's lately?!

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Meet Lloimincia Hall. She is a 10. Literally — the gymnast competing for LSU keeps scoring perfect tens on her floor routine.

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This week Merriam-Webster announced that it was finally putting “Yooper” in the dictionary.

From Drinks

The best Chicago bars for drinking whiskey, rum, vodka, and other spirits. [Photographs: Emma Janzen]

Chicago is without a doubt a whiskey town. Ask a local where to find the best selection, and you'll likely be faced with a long and detailed list of options. From dives like Delilah's to more upscale joints like Longman & Eagle, one can find a good place to down a dram in almost every neighborhood.

Yet bars with new liquor focuses are also opening with each passing month, making it easier to find the best spot for rum, gin, tequila, and even Italian amari within city limits. Here are some of the best spots to explore, whether you want to sip a spot of rum, taste your way through a flight of agave spirits, or sample some homegrown vodka.

For Whiskey: Delilah's

One of Chicago's most renowned spots for whiskey with an attitude, Delilah's has rocked a great selection of over 600 whiskies since 1993. The small Lincoln Square "rock n' roll booze emporium" is divey without being too disheveled, and the bartending staff are friendly without being in-your-face about customer service. With $3 daily specials ($4 for mixed drinks), you'd be hard-pressed to find a more affordable place to throw back a shot of Maker's or Jim Beam before a night on the town, but their vast selection also plays host to more prestigious offerings as well; the bar stocks Scotch from over 70 distilleries, including some rare single cask offerings from private bottlers. They also team up with a different distillery every year to make a new whiskey for their anniversary parties; last year they collaborated with revered Compass Box Whisky on a bottling that is now available internationally.

Delilah's: 2771 N Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614 (map) 773-472-2771; delilahschicago.com

More Whiskey: Fountainhead

This welcoming Ravenswood/Lincoln Square gastropub is known for its great craft beer selection, but what most people don't realize is that their whiskey collection is also extensive. 10 pages of the 29-page house drink menu are dedicated to a wide variety arranged into sections based on origin, including bourbon, American whiskey, Scotch, and Irish whiskey. They also have a special selection of rare Scotch selected by the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Edinburgh, including Cask No. G3.3, a 26-year-old "Curious But Good" whisky aged in a bourbon barrel, and the 22-year-old Cask No. 30.70 called "Venus in Furs," whose quirky flavor notes include "well-matured Dundee cake washed down with black currant and cordial," and "horse shoes and fresh mud." It's a fun list to explore.

While the mahogany-clad bar is warm and cozy in the winter (with plenty of natural light, something not all gastropubs enjoy), one of the biggest perks is the rooftop patio, which opens for sunshine-hungry patrons as soon as the weather warms up. And if their vast selection of whiskey and friendly ambiance isn't enough to please, the bar also hosts regular whiskey education sessions and tastings in the Barrel Room.

Fountainhead: 1970 W. Montrose Avenue, Chicago IL 60618 (map)773-697-8204; fountainheadchicago.com

For Gin: Scofflaw

Even before Scofflaw opened their doors in March 2012, the crew responsible for the Logan Square bar (alumni of The Whistler and Boiler Room) knew they wanted to team up with a local distiller to make a house liquor reflective of their focus—gin. The Scofflaw Old Tom Gin was created in collaboration with North Shore Distillery. Co-owner Danny Shapiro says it's "a bit higher proof than the others on the market (45% ABV / 90 Proof) and contains a subtle floral note due to the inclusion of osmanthus blossoms."

But the house Old Tom is merely one of over 80 bottles of gin stocked at the cozy antique-clad bar. Traditional London Drys share shelf space with Dutch-style Genevers and a broad selection of New American gins, like the lavender-forward Waterloo from Treaty Oak Distilling in Texas, and a local gin from Few Spirits that boasts a lemon peel and vanilla profile. A house cocktail list also explores the versatility of Mother's Ruin, with a small selection of drinks listed at an affordable $8 each. Warm up to the fireplace in the slightly disheveled Victorian-style back room with one of their well-balanced gin cocktails for one of the most relaxed, intimate drinking experiences in Chicago.

Scofflaw: 3201 W Armitage Avenue, Chicago IL 60647 (map) 773-592-9700; scofflawchicago.com

For Vodka: CH Distillery and Bar

There is something truly special about drinking a spirit from a barstool within eyesight of where it was created. While several new distilleries have opened in Chicago in the last year that also have in-house cocktail bars and tasting rooms, CH Distillery and Bar easily has the most captivating space. They also happen to make outstanding vodka.

Made from red winter wheat and rye grains sourced 50 miles from the city center, CH mills, ferments, and distills the grain in-house, which is pretty rare. Not many distilleries make vodka from scratch. The spirit is soft and slightly sweet upon first sip, then evolves into a slightly dry and almost peppery finish. Try it the "traditional" way at the bar, with a slice of rye bread and pickles, for the full effect.

CH Distillery and Bar: 564 W Randolph Street, Chicago, IL 60661 (map) 312-707-8780; chdistillery.com

For Rum: Three Dots and a Dash

There are few bars in Chicago that provide more of an escape from the real world than Paul McGee's Three Dots and a Dash. Between an on-point tiki atmosphere, extensive list of Polynesian-inspired cocktails, and impressive back bar selection, this whimsical bar is one of the best places in the entire country for discovering and exploring rum.

With over 255 bottles hailing from a wide geography including Martinique, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Bermuda and 21 other exotic locales, finding a pleasing style or vintage would be difficult without the help of the knowledgeable and friendly staff. Ask about some of the house's most exclusive bottles, like the Black Tot Rum, which was last distributed to the British Royal Navy on July 31, 1970 or the Dewar Rattray Caroni 15 Year, a 15 year old rum from a defunct distillery in Trinidad. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume and quality of choices? The bar will begin offering flights soon to help customers taste through a spectrum of styles, ages, distillation methods.

Three Dots and a Dash: 435 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60654 (map) (312) 610-4220; threedotschicago.com

For Tequila: Mercadito

Mercadito offers a thoughtful selection of tequila and an upscale Latin vibe to match. The menu features over 60 options ranging from $9 to $50 per serving, and is appropriately split up into the various types of tequila—blanco, reposado, anejo, and extra anejo. Cousin spirits mezcal and sotol also have a place, with a small but considered selection.

When it comes to cocktails featuring tequila, you're not limited to Margaritas and Palomas. The contemporary list, determined by the famous drink slingers the Tippling Brothers, features inventive and thirst-quenching concoctions like the Little Market ($11.50), a splash of sunshine with pineapple juice and warm guajillo chili spicing up the oaky Olmeca reposado, and El Pirata ($8.50), a spunky twist on your average Michelada with pineapple juice replacing the standard tomato, and Negra Modelo complementing a crisp Cazadores blanco. Looking to avoid the busy upstairs rush? Check out Double A, the downstairs bar that features great weekly specials on drinks, and regularly hosts special tequila-related events.

Mercadito: 108 W Kinzie Street, Chicago, IL 60654 (map) 312-329-9555; mercaditorestaurants.com/chicago

For Other Agave Spirits: Masa Azul

One of Chicago's best hidden gems, Masa Azul is a small but upscale Logan Square restaurant and bar with a focus on hand-selected Mexican spirits. While they have an excellent selection of tequila, the real stars at Masa Azul are the other agave spirits—mezcal, sotol and bacanora. Partner Jason Lerner takes special care to work with distributors to find high-quality small-batch agave spirits for the roster, which rotates often depending on what unique producers he believes are worth showcasing at the time. The list often includes hard-to-find bottles that not many other bars fight to acquire, like the Ocho Cientos Sotol and the Cielo Rojo Bacanora from Sonora.

You don't need to be an expert before you arrive: the menu offers a brief history of each spirit and other helpful tips for those new to tequila's agave cousins. Flights ranging from $15-30 allow customers to sample a wide range of ages and styles. Agave is also celebrated on the list of classic cocktails, where mezcal or tequila are typically subbed into traditional recipes. Try the Oaxacan Old Fashioned, which features mezcal joven, tequila reposado, agave, mole bitters and Angostura. It's a sultry, boozy exploration of everything that makes aged agave spirits shine.

Masa Azul: 2901 W. Diversy Avenue, Chicago IL 60647 (map) 773-687-0300; masaazul.com

For Local Spirits: Watershed

Finding local spirits on the shelves of Chicago bars usually doesn't pose too much of a hassle, but if you're looking for the best place to drink your way through a portfolio of locally-made booze, River North's Watershed is the place to visit. The intimate "parlour room", located underneath the team's popular Champagne bar Pops for Champagne, boasts an entire menu of spirits and craft beer from around the Great Lakes region. From Wisconsin vodka to Michigan gin and Chicago's mouth-puckering favorite Malört, the menu lists liquors by category and includes the state and distillery of origin for each, making it easy to navigate through the options.

If you're not one to sip a spirit neat, they also offer a hearty selection of house cocktails ($10) made with the same crop of ingredients. Try the Phenomenal Genius, a cheeky mix of local New Holland Bourbon, Yahara Bay Coffee, Grapefruit cordial, and 5 Vulture Beer from Chicago's 5 Rabbit Brewery. It's an evolving wash of rich coffee, sweet oak and vanilla, and slightly smoky ancho chili beer—all made within a stone's throw of the bar itself.

Watershed: 601 N. State Street, Chicago IL 60654 (map) 312-266-4932; watershedbar.com

For Amari: Billy Sunday

Open just slightly over a year, Billy Sunday rapidly rose to many "best of" lists throughout the country thanks to an inventive list of exceptional cocktails. But what makes this Logan Square bar extra special is the rows of dusty bottles that rest behind the back bar cabinets—a treasure trove of vintage Amari, or Italian bitters.

Thanks to diligent research and a few dedicated contacts in Italy, the bar stocks over 500 different bitter liqueurs (although they are not all for sale). In the menu, or "Good Book" as they call it, there are over 45 different offerings just in the Fernet category, organized by origin location in Italy, and featuring vintages from the 1930s to today ranging from $15 to 45 per sample. The "crown jewels" of the collection, as bartender Alex Bachman describes them, are several bottles from a 1930s collection that were originally marketed as medicine.

An abundance of various other amari are also listed in the book, such as the five different kinds of Rababaro, bottles of Campari Cordial from the 1960s and 1990s, and vintage Genepy from not one, but two different producers. The whiskey selection is also nothing to sniff at, if bitters aren't your thing; the Scotch options range from accessible to very rare, with some decades-old bottles costing upwards of $500 per drink.

Billy Sunday: 3143 W. Logan Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60647 (map) 773-661 2485; billy-sunday.com

About the author: Emma Janzen is a freelance drinks writer and photographer based in Chicago. While she loves exploring the world of bitter Amari, she'd likely tell you agave spirits are her favorite category of liquor.

Search teams looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are investigating a number of sounds detected by ships in the southern Indian Ocean, authorities said Sunday, but it's not yet clear if any of them are from the missing plane's so-called black box.

Usually when you eat a York Peppermint Pattie, you unwrap it and put it in your mouth. Well, according to one school district in Mississippi, that's what sex should be like: they've been having students unwrap a pattie and pass it around the room to simulate what happens when you sleep with too many people. (You get so dirtyyyyyyy.)

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In news that's very interestingly timed , Condé Nast said Thursday that Self magazine editor Lucy Danziger had been let go from the publication, as had vice president/publisher Laura McEwen. Danziger is being replaced with Cosmopolitan executive editor Joyce Chang, while a replacement for McEwen has not yet been announced

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Here is your regular reminder that Democratic Congresscritters can be craven grasping money hounds just like their GOP counterparts! Happy Friday. Retiring Representative James Moran (D-VA) is very sad that he has been forced to limp along on a mere $174,000 salary for the last four years.

“I think the American people should know that the members of Congress are underpaid,” he told CQ Roll Call. “I understand that it’s widely felt that they underperform, but the fact is that this is the board of directors for the largest economic entity in the world.”

Dude, you do know that if you were actually the board of directors for a ginormous company, approximately 9/10 of you would be fired for incompetence and the remainder of you would only be kept on as figureheads while a competent CEO and CFO did all the actual work, right?

Moran has some Deep Thoughts about how to shower more coin on the Do Nothing Congress he is a part of. Perhaps, he mused, it could be pegged to what other federal employees make? Great plan, Moran, except that the average salary of a federal worker is about 45% of what your lazy lot already make.

The Office of Personnel Management reported that as of September 2012, the average salary for a full-time, permanent, non-seasonal position was $78,467. The comparable figure for December 2010 was $76,701.

The median salary — the point at which half are above and half are below — is now $74,714, up from $69,550 in 2010.

We are down with this. Here you go, James Moran. We’ll drop your salary down to $78K, just like a federal worker, and then you can get the regular raises they get, which happen about every completely whimsical time Congress does not cockblock their raises. Why, you’ll be back up to $174,000 in no time at all, and by “no time” we mean literally never.

Moran also thought maybe the poor denizens of Congress could make a little extra scratch by getting a per diem like state legislators do. Also a super cool idea, except that state legislators make anywhere from zero dollars to about $95K, so even piling sweet-ass per diem monies on those salaries doesn’t get your state counterparts anywhere close to $174K.

And let’s not forget that being a member of Congress isn’t just about collecting six figures for doing nothing. Naw mang, it is also about getting undeservedly showered with money from people that want to own you, and you are so not afraid to be bought. Over half of the Congress is worth over $1 million, which is not a number that applies to the rest of us, usually. And while Mr. Jim Moran hasn’t kept pace with that, he is worth mid six-figures, so looks like he’s been able to scrimp and save some portion of that $174K per year.

You’ll have to forgive us, because we can no longer write about this as we’re unable to see the computer screen through our tears of rage and laughter over the hubris of this guy thinking he is just a working class stiff like the rest of America. STFU, Moran.

[TPM/Roll Call]

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

Waffled macaroni and cheese might not rank quite as high on the list of "things you must try before you die" as, say, a fresh-from-the-water oyster, or a sliver of Parmesan sliced off of a wheel that has just been opened in front of your eyes, or skinny dipping in mixed company. But it's certainly good enough that it should immediately make your list of second-tier priorities.

That is, of course, if you do it right.

We're pretty thorough when we try to answer the question "will it waffle?" In this case, it meant waffling macaroni in three different ways before finally nailing it.

N.B. The Waffleizer recommends breading the macaroni and cheese in eggs and bread crumbs. His waffles look glorious, but we took a different approach.

Method 1: Waffle Batter

My first idea was to go with the approach Kenny Shopsin uses with his famous mac and cheese pancakes: just throw macaroni and cheese into batter and cook it as normal.

To up the game a bit, I started with my Bacon, Cheese, and Scallion Waffles as the base, stirring in some fresh mac and cheese that I made on the stovetop, using a basic recipe of cooked macaroni and a roux-based cheese sauce (a tablespoon of flour cooked into a couple tablespoons of butter, a cup of milk whisked in, and 3/4 pound of cheddar cheese stirred in off heat, the whole thing whipped up in a blender with a touch of mustard and hot sauce).

I folded it together then dropped it into the waffle iron to cook.

The waffles that came out were...okay. The flour and egg-based batter sort of takes away from the gooey, macaroni-and-cheesiness of the whole thing.

Don't get me wrong; It's a breakfast I'd eat with reckless abandon—particularly with plenty of hot sauce—but it wasn't quite what I was after.

Method 2: Sandwich

My second method was a big step up. Instead of a batter, I simply sandwiched my macaroni and cheese, along with a couple of extra slices of American cheese, between two slices of white bread that I'd slathered up with a bit of mayo.

A definite improvement (it probably could have done with some bacon). The mac and cheese stayed gooier, and the bread provided a nice crisp crust.

Still, doesn't anything that's not actually macaroni and cheese distract from the macaroni and cheese? How much macaroni-er and cheesier could I get this?

Method 3: No Filler

This time I tried doing for macaroni and cheese what KFC did for the chicken sandwich with their Double Down: replace the bread with the filling.

I started by pouring out my macaroni and cheese onto a buttered rimmed baking sheet and placed it in the refrigerator until it set up.

A half hour later, it came out as a solid brick about a half-inch thick.

Next, I sliced it into squares with a knife.

With the help of a metal spatula and the careful application of physics, I was able to get the square out in single slabs. Slabs that just so happened to be about the size and shape of a slice of bread.

I tried waffling a single slab on its own, but it was nowhere near cheesy enough. Instead, I decided to go with the grilled cheese sandwich approach, spreading a thick layer of grated cheddar cheese in between a couple of mac and cheese slabs.

Now, you might be afraid that such a monstrosity will stick to the inside of your waffle iron and relegate it to the trash heap, but not so!

Yes, the cheese oozes out from between the macaroni and cheese slabs and flows in rivulets through the waffle wells. Yes, the cheese breaks and pools of glorious fat start to bubble up.

But! As anyone who has ever made Parmesan crisps or eaten at the venerable Shady Glen in Manchester, CT knows, if you fry cheese for long enough, it'll fuse into a crisp, browned shell that comes right off your cooking surfaces.

After the mac and cheese "sandwich" cooked long enough to brown, it lifted straight out of the waffle iron, clean and easy, the cheese rivulets lifting straight up and hardening into lacy, crisp edges as they cooled slightly.

This really might be the best way to eat macaroni and cheese ever. The center stays gooey and cheesy, while the edges get crisp and browned.

If you really want to get down and dirty, you might consider filling those waffle wells with syrup and hot sauce. But don't blame me if you end up unsatisfied with every other aspect of your life after having tasted its glory.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

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LOS FELIZ, CA—After nearly six years of expensive treatments and dozens of visits to top professional stylists, local woman Denise LaMarck, 32, tragically succumbed to her natural hair color, her friends reported this morning.

[Photographs: Elizabeth Barbone]

Here's a question I ask each year when Easter candy hits the shelves: why are regular Reese's peanut butter cups gluten-free but the seasonal shapes, like eggs, not gluten-free? While I'm sure it has something to do with how the seasonal items are shaped, the whiny part of me just wants to say, "Whhhhhhhy?!?!" Because even though I can count on one hand how many times I eat peanut butter cups during the year, I love those peanut butter-filled eggs.

So, instead whining and spending yet another Easter without one of my favorite candies, I decided to make a batch myself. It may not be quite as easy as picking up an egg or two at CVS, but the process isn't hard—it just requires the right tools and a little time.

Unlike homemade peanut butter cups, which can be made in a muffin pan, homemade peanut butter eggs require a candy mold. This doesn't need to be an expensive investment; the mold I used cost about three dollars. After selecting your mold—a harder process than you'd think, there are lots of choices!—select your chocolate. I like milk chocolate, but dark or white work well, too. And if you don't want to temper chocolate, select a high quality confectionery coating. Some coatings, like the ones sold at craft stores, taste waxy and aren't gluten-free. Merckens' coatings, my preferred brand, tastes very similar to a Hershey's kiss-level chocolate.

After you've selected your chocolate and egg mold, you're ready to make a batch! Er, almost. The filling, a dough made with peanut butter, confectioner's sugar, and butter, tastes better after ripening for about two days. So stir the filling together, throw it into the refrigerator, and forget about it. Okay, fine. Maybe sample it before you throw it into the fridge. You'll notice it's a little sweet. After the ingredients have a chance to mingle for two days, the sweetness settles down and the filling tastes very similar to a Reese's peanut butter cup.

Finally, it's time to make some candy! Here's how to make the eggs:

Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Set the candy mold instead the pan. Don't grease the mold. Next, place your tempered chocolate or melted confectionery coating into a pastry bag.

Fill each cavity about 2/3 of the way with chocolate.

Turn the mold over onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Shake and rotate the mold. The melted chocolate should coat each cavity. After shaking out the excess chocolate, inspect each cavity. If there are any bare spots, dot a little melted chocolate onto them with either a small brush or your fingertip.

Quickly sweep a metal spatula across the mold. This clears excess chocolate from the edges of the mold. After you do this, the mold might look smeared with chocolate.That's fine. The thin chocolate breaks easily away from the finished eggs.

Allow the chocolate to set up, but don't refrigerate it to speed the process. The finished chocolate looks flat and almost fudgy.

Pat your filling into the cavity; the amount will depend on the size of your mold) To prevent it from sticking to your finger, dip your finger into a little powdered sugar beforehand.

You want the peanut butter filling to be about 1/8-inch below the edge of the mold. If the peanut butter filling sits too high, it's hard to seal the mold, so you're better off having too little filling than too much.

Place more chocolate into your piping bag. Cap each mold. The easiest way to do this is to go slow, using a zigzag pattern. STOP before the mold is fully capped.When you tap the mold, the small space you left will fill in. If it doesn't, just go back and add more chocolate. If you overfill, though, the chocolate will ooze past the edges of mold.

Chill for about 10 minutes.

Carefully remove the eggs from the mold. They usually fall out pretty easily.

Don't whack the mold or you'll break the egg, like I did here! (Cook's treat, right?)

If you want, melt a little chocolate and drizzle it over the finished eggs.

That's it!

About the author: Elizabeth Barbone of GlutenFreeBaking.com joins us every Tuesday with a new gluten-free recipe. She is the author of Easy Gluten-Free Baking. and "How to Cook Gluten-Free".

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Pizza Hut is a global menace. They simply won’t stop stuffing terrifying and unusual things in their pizza crusts. While nothing will ever top the horror of the Marmite-stuffed crust, the new Flying Fish Roe Salmon Cream Cheese Pizza is even stranger to Americans: its crust is stuffed with salmon-flavored cream cheese dotted with salmon roe. Yep, fish eggs.

Here’s the TV ad for this limited-time monstrosity. Even if you don’t speak Cantonese, swirling fish eggs and pretty ladies are an international language that everyone understands.

The toppings themselves sound quite appealing. The fish egg pizza comes in two versions. There’s the Crayfish Seafood Deluxe, which features, as you might imagine, seafood. Toppings include crayfish, scallops, shrimp, clams, cherry tomatoes, peppers, red onions, and Thousand Island sauce. For people who want less fish on their fish egg pizzas, there’s the Sausage, Pepperoni & Pomelo. Pome-what?

A pomelo, as it turns out, is a very large pear-shaped citrus fruit native to Southeast Asia that tastes like a milder, less bitter version of a grapefruit. People do put them in salads, so it’s not a completely wacky pizza topping. that’s not the only fruit on this pizza: it also has sausage, pepperoni, cherry tomatoes, peaches, mushrooms, peppers, and berry sauce.

Around the World: Pizza Hut’s Latest in Hong Kong is Crust Stuffed with Fish Eggs [Brand Eating]
Specials [Pizza Hut Hong Kong]

buy this print!

I had a little time so I drew this silly comic about Shane.

COME BACK SHAAYYYNNEEEE

Marian should have hit that

NEW YORK—Confronted on a regular basis with images of women who represent a diverse array of body types, a growing number of American men are reportedly feeling pressured to accept the increasingly realistic standards of female beauty now depicted i...

From Serious Eats: New York

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

Sometimes the simplest deli sandwiches are the best. The trick? Stick to what that deli does best.

At Leo's Latticini in Corona, one of the neighborhood's last bastions of Italian American food culture, that means great fresh mozzarella. It's clean and milky with a rich, buttery texture, only mildly seasoned so it takes well to sprinkles of salt or a layer of prosciutto. But I most prefer it solo in a crusty hero loaf, where it comes sliced thin and stacked high—there's an inch of mozz in this sandwich.

Leo's is also known for a mix of marinated peppers and mushrooms that add oily sweetness to their sandwiches. This is important: don't leave Leo's without them. Not getting a hero? Get them in a deli container. Buying a mozz sandwich as I did here? Ask for a generous helping on top, making sure to get both hot and sweet peppers.

At this point you could add some prosciutto or soppresata if you'd like, but trust me, try it meat-free first. The two-note tune of creamy mozz and punchy marinated vegetables is pretty perfect as-is.

Because Fox News' average viewer was already middle aged by the time MTV debuted, the network is sending one of its most intrepid concerned blonde moms into the bowels of youthful hedonism to teach The Olds about this new thing called "Spring Break." And it's hilarious.

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Trinity Broadcasting Network (or TBN) is the largest Christian TV network in the world. Its shows are currently available in 95 percent of American homes.

TBN has its headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, in the modest building you see above. The network offers free tours to the public, so I headed down to check it out. 

This guy (above, right) was the tour guide for my group, which was made up of me and a visiting Boy Scout troop. I'm not sure if he was new or something, but he left A LOT of the company's history out of his tour, so I'll be filling in some gaps for him as I go. 

Our tour began in the grand entrance hall. As we walked through, the tour guide explained to us that TBN was started in the early 70s by married couple Jan and Paul Crouch in an effort to spread Christianity to as many people as they could. 

What he failed to mention is the church's reliance on what's known as "prosperity gospel."

If you're not familiar, prosperity gospel is a system in which you're told that the more money you give to the Lord, the more blessings the Lord will give to you in return. In this instance, "the Lord" refers to "Trinity Broadcasting Network." 

They gather these donations by holding telethons in which they promise viewers miracles in exchange for donating money to TBN. And being poor isn't a problem: The network tells viewers that God especially likes it when people who are poor or in debt donate money they can't afford. "He'll give you thousands, hundreds of thousands; he'll give millions and billions of dollars," Paul Crouch once told his viewers, according to the LA Times.

The company is reported to bring in tens of millions of dollars in tax-free donations annually. It is unclear if God held up his end of the bargain to those who donated.

Next, we were taken around a small museum area that featured various old copies of the Bible, some of which were more than 100 years old. 

Curiously absent from the tour guide's spiel was any mention of allegations made against the company by Carra Crouch, granddaughter of the founders of TBN.

Back in June of 2012, Carra filed a suit against Jan Crouch and TBN's attorney. In the suit, Carra Crouch alleged that she was drugged and sexually assaulted while staying at an Atlanta hotel during the filming of one of the network's telethons. She was 13 years old at the time of the alleged attack. 

She claims that she went to Jan and TBN's attorneys to tell them about the rape, and they blamed her for the incident. "Jan (Crouch) became furious and began screaming at Ms. Crouch, a 13-year-old girl, and began telling her 'it is your fault,'" the suit reads.

Carra says that, though the network fired the employee who attacked her, they did not report the incident to the police. Beyond the obvious moral issues that arise from failing to go to the police when your teenage granddaughter is raped, this becomes even more problematic as Jan is an ordained minister and therefore legally obligated to report sexual assaults.

TBN has refuted the allegations. The case is scheduled to go to trial on July 21.

Next, we were given an opportunity to take a look around the office of Paul Crouch, the co-founder of TBN. Our tour guide explained that Paul had died in 2013, after spending almost 40 years with the network. His office is being kept open for visitors to honor his memory. 

Maybe the tour guide was in a hurry, because he completely failed to mention that Paul was accused of doing quite a few shitty things over the course of his career. 

For instance, back in 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported that Paul had paid a former TBN employee named Enoch Lonnie Ford $425,000 to end a wrongful termination lawsuit. In Enoch's lawsuit, he claimed that he and Paul had been involved in a gay relationship, and that Paul had sexually harassed him before firing him.

TBN claims that it only paid the settlement to "avoid a lengthy and expensive lawsuit."

In 2005, Enoch took a polygraph test about the accusations as part of a TV taping, but the results were never released to the public. 

In Paul's office, there was also a photo of his cotton-candy-haired wife, Jan, who, our tour guide explained, helped Paul establish TBN back in the 70s.

He totally forgot to mention that Jan and Paul faced a fair bit of criticism over their handling of money donated to TBN as a result of their prosperity-gospel promises. 

Brittany Koper, the former director of finance for TBN, claims she was fired in September of 2011 after discovering "illegal finance schemes" being run by the network. In a lawsuit she filed against the ministry, Brittany claims that TBN illegally distributed $50 million of donated money among its directors, to be spent on a variety of super unnecessary luxury items.

Speaking to the New York Times, Brittany claimed, "My job as finance director was to find ways to label extravagant personal spending as ministry expenses."

According to the suit, Paul and Jan made multiple lavish purchases for themselves using money that their viewers thought was going to God.

These purchases included rarely used his-and-hers mansions in Florida and California, private jets, personal chauffeurs, gold-plated bathrooms, and offices fitted with saunas and wet bars. 

Jan has also been accused of using company money to purchase a $100,000 air-conditioned mobile home to be used exclusively by her two pet dogs—which is actually kinda awesome. 

The mishandling of finances is so extensive that Wall Watchers, a group that monitors the transparency of how ministries spend donated money, has given TBN an "F" rating, and added the network to its list of "30 worst ministries." 

TBN denies the accusations. 

Next on the agenda was TBN's TV studio space, where, our guide explained, TBN's popular Praise the Lord show is recorded. 

Maybe our guide was in a hurry, because he totally skipped over the fact that the hosts of TBN's shows regularly make claims that are, to put it lightly, completely fucking insane.

Like the time John Hagee claimed that 9/11 was God's judgment on America for not being Christian enough.

Or the time Lance Wallnau claimed that God had given the cure for diabetes to Christians, but they were going to keep it secret in order to gain favor with China. 

Or the time that Robert Jeffress claimed that gay sex is like plugging a TV into the wrong outlet and watching it blow "into smithereens."

Or the time Benny Hinn claimed that the dead would one day be raised by watching TBN from inside their coffins. 

Or there was the time that Paul Crouch said on air that God kills anyone who tries to get in the way of TBN.

Speaking on the network's Behind the Scenes show in 2012, Paul said, "God help anyone who would try to get in the way of TBN."

He went on to imply that God had already taken out some of the network's enemies. "I have attended the funeral of at least two people who have tried," he said. 

Our tour led us past the station's gift shop, which offers "a tempting array of items for every budget, including music, tapes, Bibles, gifts, and a complete selection of TBN souvenirs." There was even a health section, which included books on how to cure everything from yeast infections to cancer using the Bible and prayer. 

Our tour guide forgot to mention that treating cancer with prayer is fucking INSANE. Please don't do this; get chemo or something instead, K?

Next, our tour guide walked us down a recreation of a street from Old Jerusalem. Complete with animatronic Jesuses and a recreation of the Shroud of Turin.

He totally forgot to mention the super shady way the church has been accused of abusing a tax loophole to save money. 

According to TBN's former accountant, dozens of staff members—from chauffeurs to sound engineers and accountants—have been ordained as ministers by TBN. This is apparently done because ordained ministers are able to opt out of paying Social Security, saving the company a whole bunch of money. 

Our tour concluded in this theater, which TBN's website refers to as a "virtual reality theater," capable of "putting you virtually in the picture."

Our tour guide neglected to mention that the theater isn't actually a virtual reality theater at all. It's just a regular theater that shows crappy Christian movies from 15 years ago. Presumably they added "virtual reality" to the title to trick kids into getting excited about visiting. I asked the tour guide what qualified the theater as "virtual reality," and he told me, "We used to have the sound up so loud that you could feel it, but a group of visitors from Japan thought it was an earthquake and ran out of the building so we had to turn it off."

To conclude:

"Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways."
—Proverbs 28:6

Follow Jamie on Twitter.

All in all, I consider myself a good time gal — not in the the slutty WWII sense (though that's fine, too! THANKS FOR SUPPORTING THE TROOPS!), but in the way that I can take a joke and generally have a good sense of humor about myself (just so long as you never ever mention the ribbon around my neck). But here's the thing, though: I really hate pranks.

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