IKEA Monkey

By way of our friends at Puck Daddy comes this clip of Adrian Alvarstein, Narvik Arctic Eagles player and the best dancer to come out of Europe since Robyn, busting a move so hard he destroys it after his team’s 8-3 victory over Viking Hockey.

My first thought is that your celebrations should never go Full Frank Drebin, because you’re disrespecting your opponents and the game. Right? But then my second thought is, “holy shit this guy rules.” (My third thought was that Norwegian hockey teams have the best names.)

I’ll let Adrian’s body do the talking.

This clip is so awesome it gives me Norwegian wood.

He told NRK.no that showing them off was limited to only the Narvik locker room. “I’m trying to get it out to all of Norway. When people hear the song, they should know that there is this dance that apply,” he said.

“I do not dance much myself, but [I promise] to practice it before the season is over,” joked Narvik head coach Magnus Skogfält.

I think I’m in love with you, Norwegian hockey.

What’s the ideal age to become a parent for the first time? It turns out many people believe women should start sporting pregnant bellies fairly young, while men should wait a bit longer to become dads, according to a new survey.

Sarah Palin, a human angry telephone call from an apoplectic aunt whose opinion you long ago stopped valuing, is BACK (I didn't realize that she'd gone away, otherwise I'd had spent more time cherishing my precious Palin-free days). The former Alaska governor and current Alaska embarrassment's recent media blitz has been characterized by an apparent renewed zeal for saying batshit insane things. The latest? The federal debt is like slavery, and an organized army of atheist Scrooges are trying to murder Christmas.

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VIEW SLIDESHOW: The Food Lab: How to Make a Turkey Porchetta

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

It's time for another round of The Food Lab. Got a suggestion for an upcoming topic? Email Kenji here, and he'll do his best to answer your queries in a future post. Become a fan of The Food Lab on Facebook or follow it on Twitter for play-by-plays on future kitchen tests and recipe experiments.

Behold! The Mighty Turchetta!, King of the Thanksgiving roasts. Gentle and benevolent ruler of the holiday table, fair in his judgment and ample in his juiciness. If ever you sat down on the third Thursday after the first Monday in November and could not think of a single thing for which to give thanks, I implore you to place one of these guys on your table this year. Simply put, that problem of yours will disappear. This isn't a roast for celebrating with; this roast is a celebration in itself.

Exactly what is a turchetta? It's a turkey breast prepared in the manner of a traditional Italian porchetta. The breast meat gets butterflied and laid out perfectly flat, then slashed and rubbed with a curing mixture flavored with black peppercorns, sage, garlic, fennel, and red pepper flakes. It's then rolled up tightly in its own skin, allowed to cure, and then gently roasted. The end result is a stunningly geometric roast that arrives at the table deep golden brown and crisp. Because it's 100% bone-free, it's a snap to slice into identical serving portions, each one coated in crisp skin and brimming with juicy, perfectly seasoned meat. You have never had turkey breast this juicy, and that's a guarantee.

Now, now, I know what you're thinking. Didn't I already come out last year and say that a spatchcock turkey is the ultimate holiday roast? What gives? Well it's true. A spatchcock turkey is the absolute best way to cook a turkey. If (!) your goal is to get the best return on your time investment—that is, excellent results with nearly zero effort.

A turkey porchetta, on the other hand, is the recipe for you if your final goal is best-possible-eating-experience-who-gives-a-damn-how-much-work-it-takes. I'm not going to lie: this is not a recipe for beginners. You need some reasonably good knife skills, you need to be good at butterflying meat, you'll need to use butcher's twine, and above all, you'll need a fair amount of patience. But if you come along with me for the ride, I promise that you (and more importantly, your Thanksgiving guests) will be rewarded with the best turkey you've ever tasted. Here's how it works.

The Problem with Turkey

My family long ago ditched the traditional whole roast turkey approach to Thanksgiving. There's a big problem with turkey, and it lies in the fact that breast meat withers and dries when you take it much past 150°F or so, while leg meat needs to be cooked to 165°F in order to be palatable. Compounding this problem is the fact that in their natural state, turkey breasts project far above the legs in a roasting pan, causing them to cook even faster.

The result is that by the time your legs reach the requisite 165°F, sections of the breast will have soared all the way up to 180°F or beyond. It's almost as if turkey breeders have custom-designed a bird to be prone to overcooking and drying out. Pass the gravy please.

There are a few solutions to this problem. The easiest I know of is to surreptitiously replace the turkey with a whole suckling pig. I tried this one year and would've gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for my meddling sister who pointed out that turkeys don't have curley-cue tails.

Since then, I've resorted to spatchcocking the turkey—I.E. removing the backbone and laying it flat. This exposes the legs to more heat, allowing everything to cook at the same pace and resulting in much crisper skin, along with juicier breast meat.

The other alternative—and the one we're going with today—is to just separate the darn thing and cook the legs and breasts independently. That way you can maximize the potential of each.

Now you could simply roast the breast whole (and I've got a great recipe for that), but even then, you run into problems of uneven cooking: the breast is much skinnier at one end than at the other. A turchetta solves this problem. By removing the breast halves, seasoning them, then rolling them up in their own skin, you end up with a perfect, evenly-cooking, bone-free cylinder that's a snap to carve and serve.

But before we get there, we've got a few other tricks up our sleeves.

A Part of the Cure

My mom is one of those people who is particularly sensitive to sodium intake and often requests that I make low sodium versions of certain dishes for her. I usually happily oblige, but on some occasions, I regretfully tell her that it's simply not possible. Sausage, meatballs, and cured meats are the most frequent cases. Why can't you simply make a salt-free sausage or turchetta? Won't it be exactly the same other than the saltiness?

The answer is no. Beyond simple flavoring, salt plays an important chemical and physical role in cured meats by both increasing their juice-retention capabilities, and altering their texture. With a sausage, salt causes the protein mysosin to dissolve, allowing bits of meat protein to form tighter bonds with each other. This linked protein network in turn gives the meat a bouncier, more resilient texture, and allows it to retain more moisture as it cooks. That's why sausages have such a pleasing snap and are consistently juicier than an intact piece of meat.

With turkey, salt applied in the right way can have an equally profound effect. The most frequent way we see salt applied to turkey is with a brine. By soaking the turkey in a salt water solution overnight, you dissolve some muscle proteins in just the same way you would with s sausage. This allows the turkey to absorb some of the salty liquid, and more importantly, it causes it to shrink less upon cooking, retaining more juice in the end.

An even better alternative to brining is dry-brining—that is, rubbing the turkey with plain salt and letting it rest at least overnight. Initially, this salt draws some moisture out of the turkey via osmosis. The salt then dissolves in this moisture creating a very concentrated brine that then acts to dissolve muscle proteins and slowly works its way back into the meat. You end up with turkey that has the same moisture-retaining properties as a wet-brined turkey, but with none of the flavor dilution that comes along with traditional brining.

With a turchetta, we go one step further.

Rather than simply using a basic salt rub, we add a few herbs and aromatics to the mix. Sage, fennel seed, red pepper flakes, garlic, and black peppercorns are the traditional porchetta mixture, and it works for turkey as well, though you can go with a much simpler mix of straight up salt, pepper, and garlic if you prefer to let the natural flavor of the turkey speak for itself.

The more important step is in how this mixture is applied.

By butterflying the breast halves and deeply scoring them with a sharp knife, we're able to work that curing mixture deep into the meat, helping treat its muscle protein from the inside, and resulting in a cooked turkey breast that has the juiciness of a Christmas ham.

Salt does take a bit of time to work its magic. Six hours is sufficient, but up to two days is even better, which is good news if you're the type who likes to work ahead and minimize fuss on Thanksgiving day.

Roasting

With a large, exposed roast like, say, prime rib, I like to roast low and slow first, followed by a blast at high temperature to crisp up the exterior. This minimizes the amount of overcooked meat on the exterior, while still allowing for a great golden-brown crust.

With a turchetta, I still go for a low oven temperature to get the most even cooking possible, but I wondered if the layer of insulating skin that surrounds it, along with the long salt cure, would preclude the need to move the sear to the end of cooking. I tried roasting my turchetta using both methods—sear at the beginning and sear at the end—and found that it made very little detectable difference at all.

On Thanksgiving, I like to keep last-minute fussiness to a minimum, particularly when I'm trying to frantically gather folks around the table and cook at the same time, so I'll be searing my turchetta before it goes in the oven. A cast iron skillet is the fastest and easiest way to do this.

How do we know when it's finished roasting? Why, with our Splash-Proof Super-Fast Thermapen, of course (you do have one, don't you? If not, put it on your holiday gift list STAT).

I cook my turchetta to around 145 to 150°F (because of the salt cure, it can handle temps all the way up to 160°F if you are so inclined; just don't take it much above that or risk drying it out), and because we're cooking it so gently, it requires minimal resting, to boot.

This thing comes out so ridiculously juicy that a gravy is almost redundant. Then again, you've got yourself a whole turkey breast bone to work with here, so making a quick gravy definitely doesn't hurt. For meat this juicy, I like to keep my gravy nice and thin, so that its flavor doesn't get muddied with too much flour.

Like I said, this is not a particularly easy process, and if you plan on making one (or two if you have more than a half dozen mouths to feed) on Thanksgiving, I strongly suggest you give it a practice run first (cold turchetta makes awesome sandwiches). Check out the step-by-step slideshow for a more in-depth look at the process, or jump straight to the recipe with the link below.

And wait, did I say that this was the best-possible-eating-experience-who-gives-a-damn-how-much-work-it-takes? That's a lie. That would be the sous-vide, deep-fried turchetta. Stay tuned.

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.

Get the Recipe!

Catherine Fitzgerald* had been in debt all of her life—to the tune of $100,000. Here, she explains how she got there in the first place, and how she paid off her last credit card by age 40.

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Oh, Justin Bieber. What the hell are you doing, man.

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MILWAUKEE - A Wisconsin woman who was a teenager when she disappeared nine years ago has been located in Mexico, living there with her husband and three children, police said on Thursday.Connie McCallister was 16 when she disappeared in 2004.

A 10-year-old boy got a surprise bonus after being treated for leukemia: The very same procedure that cured his cancer also may have cured his severe peanut allergy.

We've all been there, tempted by morsels left out in the open for who knows how long. But when is a long time too long? When is exposed food no longer good to eat? The chefs at Stack Exchange are here to help.

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In keeping with the forethought and forgiveness that has characterized absolutely everything about this story, the Florida couple who found themselves under siege after Spike Lee retweeted their home address—under the misguided belief it belonged to Trayvon Martin’s killer George Zimmerman, and that inciting mob justice was the best response to a tragic act of vigilante violence—have filed a lawsuit against the director, seeking more than $15,000 in damages. Lee made amends both publicly and privately shortly after the incident, and ultimately settled with Elaine and David McClain out of court for an undisclosed amount of money, an apology that Mrs. McClain said demonstrated “he felt really bad about it,” and hopefully, a coupon redeemable for one Spike Lee siccing of the Internet on a home of their choosing, no questions asked. 

But settlements and Spike Lee’s remorse can only provide so much comfort. The ...

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Benevolent overlord Oprah has bestowed upon the world her annual list of Favorite Things, just in time for the winter solstice (that time of year when the barrier between the spiritual world and the world of mortals grows very thin, and all of the ghosts yell "IIIIIIITTTT'S OOOOPPPRRAAAAH!" at once in their otherworldly timbre). This year, Oprah's favorite things exist on a spectrum, from "whimsical stocking stuffer" to "over-the-top indulgence." Let us have action hero Jason Statham read some of them to us.

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Avril Lavigne is still promoting her new self-titled album, which meant that Friday afternoon she went on Katie to talk about her grown-up sound and – most importantly – her endlessly fascinating relationship with Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger.

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-baby #1: Anderson County Senior-Junior School

KCTV via Raw Story

The incident: A boy wore a purse to school.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: The school suspended him. 

Last Wednesday, 13-year-old Skylar Davis wore a multicolored Vera Bradley purse to his school in Garnett, Kansas.

After a complaint from a teacher, he was called to the office of the assistant principal, who told him he was not allowed to wear it. 

Skylar refused to take the purse off as, he said, girls at his school are all allowed to wear them. “I don’t think everyone should be treated differently,” he said. “Everyone should have the same privileges.”

Since he refused to take it off, he was suspended. His mother, Leslie, was called and told she would have to come pick him up. "I was a little furious and I called the school to reverify the story," she told KCTV, "and yeah, he refused to take off his Vera Bradley bag, nothing more to it."

Also speaking to KCTV, Skylar said that he'd been wearing the purse daily since August and it had never had any issues with it. 

Leslie said that she checked the school's official handbook, and there were no rules about purses listed. 

The initial suspension was only for a day, but Skylar has said he won't return to school until the issue is resolved, “It expresses myself, and I think everyone else can wear it, so I wear it as well,” he said.

Cry-baby #2 An unidentified Chick-fil-A customer

Via Reddit

The incident: A woman cut the line at a drive-through.

The appropriate response: Giving her the finger. Maybe yelling.

The actual response: A guy tried to shoot her. 

On Monday morning, a brown Buick Regal stalled in the drive-through line at a Chick-fil-A in Jacksonville, Florida.

As the car wasn't moving, the woman in the car behind drove around and started placing her order.

That's when, police say, the guy in the brown Buick got out of his car and started yelling at the the woman who'd overtaken him.

He then produced a gun and fired a single shot into the car, before getting back into his own car and fleeing.

The (presumably insane) woman who was shot at drove after him, but was unable to catch him. 

Police were called to the scene and found a single bullet casing on the ground. They have yet to make an arrest.

Seems incredibly unlikely, but if you happened to witness this incident and know who did it, you can get a $3,000 reward by snitching on the guy to 1-866-845-TIPS.

Which of these fools is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll right here:

Who is the bigger cry-baby?

Previously: A guy who shot a teenager over a Halloween prank versus a water company that's suing one of its customers for criticizing its services.

Winner: The water company!!!

@JLCT

[Photograph: Chef's Choice]

When the PetitePie Maker ($79.95) from Chef's Choice landed on my doorstep, the first thing my husband said was, "Pot pies?!?!" Well, I was thinking about apple, but...yeah, I guess we could do pot pies.

The pie maker works like a waffle-maker, but with pie-shaped recesses designed to cook pastry dough. A cutting tool for making the correct-sized rounds is included, along with a "pusher" to help the bottom crust properly fit into the recess.

First, let me say that generic pre-made pie crust is pretty awful. Subsequent batches with better quality dough tasted a heck of a lot better. (What was I thinking?)

I have to say there's a bit of a learning curve involved with making pies in this gadget. One important consideration is the amount of filling. Since the top crust cooks from contact with the top plate of the pie maker, you need a large enough mound of filling—a generous half-cup—so the top crust is high enough to make contact. Too much filling, and you risk having it leak out.

Cooking time is based entirely upon the browning of the crust. The filling gets plenty hot during the baking process, but it's not in there long enough to actually cook. Cooking time, depending on the crust and filling, was about 8 minutes.

Speaking of hot, the filling, even when I started with refrigerator-cold ingredients, was screaming hot when it came out of the pie maker. So if you need to make two batches and want to serve hot pie, the first one should still be plenty warm by the time the second is done. You could also toss them into a warm oven if you need them to keep longer.

Examples of my more successful pies. [Photograph: Donna Currie]

I have to say that I had a few spectacular failures along with the successes, not necessarily the fault of the gadget. In my experimenting, I tried one filling that was too wet and not conducive to mounding—it was more like a chunky jam than a pie filling—and the filling boiled and leaked out of one of the pies and created a rather amazing mess. Meanwhile, since the pie filling didn't mound high enough on another pie, that one had a very pale top. On the plus side, the surfaces are nonstick, so cleanup wasn't nearly as bad as it looked.

I'm not going to stop making full-size pies, but I have to admit that the mini pies have their advantages. Like portability. And portion size. I plan on making a whole army of turkey pot pies after the bird is done and freezing them for easy lunches.

About the author: Resident yeast whisperer and bread baking columnist Donna Currie also has a serious gadget habit. When her father-in-law heard about this column, he upgraded the nickname for her kitchen from "gadget world" to "gadget heaven." You can find her on her blog, Cookistry or follow her on Twitter at @dbcurrie.

Disclaimer: Testing samples were provided to Serious Eats. /small>

From Drinks

We chat with Camper English of Alcademics. [Photo: Michael Sommers]

If you do any cocktail-related reading, you've probably seen the name Camper English before. He's the man behind Alcademics, which covers spirits and cocktails in general as well as sharing news on the Bay area bar scene. He's now the Contributing Drinks Editor at Saveur, and spirits editor for FSR Magazine, plus he writes for scores of other publications. We checked in with Camper about what he's drinking these days, what cocktail trends he's tired of, and where he sees cocktails going next.

What're you drinking these days, Camper English?

Lately I've been drinking a lot of American whiskey, because I've been writing and speaking about it more. It's a category I've struggled with—I never felt like I really "got" it from a tasting perspective and felt unqualified to judge one brand against another, but finally a few hundred bottles later I'm in the zone and making up for lost time.

Last night I was researching amari for a forthcoming magazine story and so I went to a pizzeria and crammed a huge slice in my face as fast as I could, so I could take advantage of the bitter liqueurs' digestive benefits. I pretty much plan my eating around my drinking these days.

What Bay Area bars do you go to frequently?

Dalva Hideout, which is the best closest bar to my house. It was my local-local bar for years, and then they built a cocktail bar in the back of it. It's my default bar for both cocktails and cheap Mexican beer.

Besides Dalva Hideout, I probably appear the most at Jasper's Corner Tap. It's open all day downtown so it's good for meeting people, it's casual, they have a great cocktail menu and a greasy grilled cheese sandwich for absorbing booze if you've been drinking already. Beyond that I like going to Trick Dog when it first opens at 3 p.m. and though I don't get there often enough I still love me some Bar Agricole. But I've been busy just trying to keep up with all the new bars opening lately—running around to them all to see what they're doing, so I'm spending less time in any one bar.

How did you get into the drinks-writing business in the first place?

I was an unemployed software engineer in 2001 so I started writing bar and club reviews to help with the rent. Then in 2006 I could see where this cocktail renaissance was going so I changed my focus to study the cocktails and spirits rather than just the bars. Long story short: I always liked drinking so I found a way to get paid to do it.

What spirits and brands are you excited about right now?

For the last year I've been really excited about water: mineral water, carbonated water, and how they affect what they're mixed with. And I feel like I'm going to be really into Armagnac in 2014.

Why Armagnac?

Armagnac can be more wild, herbaceous, and rustic than cognac and it shows through in cocktails, though I'll admit part of my excitement about it is that it's a lesser-known category in the US so there is a lot to discover. At Bar Agricole [in San Francisco] they have a ton of it right now.

What cocktail trends are you tired of?

I like bitter spirits and cocktails as much as the next person, but it seems lately I keep getting drinks that don't balance the bitter against sweetness. They taste like waking up with dry mouth in the morning. Also the mezcal thing has gotten a little out of hand.

What trends do you anticipate going forward?

I think we'll continue to see bulk format craft cocktails—on tap, in punches, bottled, carbonated, shareable, etc. And then I think we'll see a backlash against them when the bartenders can't make fresh versions of the same drink to order.

The lower-alcohol trend is going to continue and spread (grab a copy of Dinah Sander's gorgeous book Art of the Shim) as an alternative to all the crazy boozy drinks on menus and I am really happy about it—as long as the drinks are priced accordingly. That trend is bolstered by the new attention to vermouth and sherry and those categories are really exciting right now.

Can you tell us about any favorites in the vermouth and sherry categories?

For sherries, I'm just happy to see it used in cocktails as it's such a great and versatile ingredient. Some interesting small-import products are hitting the market too, like the Equipo Navazos sherries and Alexander Jules selections. The Spanish Table in Berkeley is the place to shop for it [in the Bay Area].

For vermouth I do love the Imbue from Portland (it will be on tap at TBD [the new restaurant from the AQ team]) and the locally-made Sutton Cellars, but I'm also really excited about the new La Quintinye Vermouth Royal from the G'Vine gin folks—I just tried it in Berlin and it's delicious; made with a base of Pineau des Charentes.

So many drinks, so little time. Keep in the loop on Twitter, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

What would you do if you were a Kentucky teenager set to participate in a regional championship race, but just before you took off THE DEVIL HIMSELF showed up in a Charlie Daniels Band ‘The Devil Went Down To Georgia’ scenario and stopped you from doing it?

That ridiculous scenario, sadly without hick’ry stumps and shoes made out of gold, happened to Whitley County High School junior Codie Thacker. She was set to compete in her third regional championship race, a race she’d been training for since June, but her coach drew bib number 666. That conflicted with Codie’s religious beliefs, and when she was told that she couldn’t change bib numbers, she dropped out entirely.

The story, with a hat-tip to Cameron Smith at Prep Rally:

Your browser does not support iframes.

Via Lex18.com:

“I didn’t want to risk my relationship with God and try to take that number,” said Thacker.

Maybe God’s trying to tell you something, Codie. Or maybe your coach is evil?

A spokesperson with Kentucky High School Athletic Association told LEX 18 it wasn’t brought to their attention that the request was because of religious beliefs, adding that if they knew, they would have changed the number.

For those who know Thacker, it’s easy to believe what happened next. “I told them to mark out my name because it makes me sick just thinking that my name is associated with that number,” she said.

Sigh.

Okay, look. I don’t want this to seem like I’m ragging on her because of her religious beliefs. Whether I agree with them or not, the girl’s entitled to follow the faith of her choosing (or her parents’ choosing, which I’m guessing because I also grew up in the Bible Belt) and make whatever decisions she wants based on it. She’s not hurting anybody by dropping out of a high school race, and the only consequence here is some other kid getting to go to Nationals.

That said … Codie, there’s a thing called context. Context is what puts things like “what should I do” and “how should I live my life” into perspective. I know you’ve heard that 666 is the mark of the beast and you assume that means something terrifying, but when you learn a little about it it becomes less dramatic. The book of Revelation talks about John’s vision of two beasts, one being a blasphemous sea-hydra suspiciously symbolic of Roman emperors, and the other being a monster that “speaks like a dragon” and has to go around marking everybody. The number 666 is the number of a man, and used to help us identify the beast. This is supposed to happen during the End Times. You are probably not the beast because that number showed up on your running identification bib, and your Kentucky high school cross country race is probably not the End Times.

Furthermore, 666 being the mark of the beast at all is debatable. Other manuscripts of Revelation read the number as “616″ instead of 666, because the Bible has been translated and retranslated and moved around and reinterpreted for the entirety its existence. The girl running with 616 on her shirt is also blaspheming God, if you don’t wanna do the research. The girl running with 999 could be doing it, too, because that’s 666 upside down, and a lot of people consider that the number. And you know what? Somebody in the comments section will probably stop by to fact check me, because everyone has learned something different from somewhere and thinks they know what they’re talking about.

My best advice to you (because I assume you’re reading my comedy sports blog) would be to keep your religious beliefs strong and to cherish them, but also to maybe think a while beyond your initial “666 means THE DEVIL because THE BIBLE” and pick your battles. Use the positivity of Christianity to better yourself and your community, and maybe not to be a local news story about how you’re being stupid as f*ck at a local race.

Or, you know, try to figure out all the people whose numbers add up to 666. Don’t let 235 and 431 run side by side, that could be disastrous.

Last Saturday morning at around 2:30am 19-year-old Renisha McBride got into a car accident in Dearborn Heights, a predominately white Detroit suburb. Because her cell phone battery was dead, she went to nearby home for assistance. That might seem like the reasonable and understandable thing to do, but it was the biggest mistake of McBride's short life.

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GREENSBORO, NC—According to sources at a local Qdoba, 31-year-old advertising sales associate Anthony Gerrit is about to purchase an extra-large burrito that will completely resolve every concern, burden, and troublesome issue in his life for six bl...

You’d think that most parents would be applauded for not giving in to their kids’ demands for fast food, but a court-appointed psychologist in New York City (New York City?!?) has reportedly decided that one father is an unfit parent because he failed to feed his 5-year-old son’s craving for McDonald’s.

According to the NY Post, the youngster recently threw a tantrum when pops decided to take him to dinner at a restaurant instead of the Golden Arches.

He claims that he doesn’t normally deny his kid’s fast food requests, but decided at the time that the boy had been eating too much of it. Also, after the child threw a tantrum, he says he did not want to reward his son’s bad behavior by giving into the McDonald’s demand.

And so he says he gave the child the option of dinner anywhere but McDonald’s or no dinner at all. The kid chose the no-dinner route.

When news of the incident got back to the man’s ex-wife, with whom he is involved in a custody battle, that’s when things apparently got really hairy.

The dad says that his ex contacted the court-appointed psychologist in their custody case and reported the to-do over the McDonald’s demands, and that the doctor only interviewed the mom and the boy before determining that the father should lose weekend visitation rights because he was “wholly incapable of taking care of his son.”

If taking your kid for fast food is a hallmark of good parenting, then my otherwise neglectful dad would have won Father of the Year for most of the ’80s.

Pamela did it. Jennifer Hudson did it. Aniston sorta did it but not really. Now J. Law. Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Joanna Coles thinks every woman over the age of 40 should chop her hair off: "It oozes confidence." Thoughts?

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Well, this is some real bullshit. Mexican Coke is ditching its key ingredient, cane sugar, for high-fructose corn syrup. This is objectively awful.

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America loves their sandwiches. And, as we’ve recently discovered, they’re actually a marvel of engineering. But which sandwich is each US State’s favorite? Business Insider did their homework, and has laid out each State’s sandwich preference in easy-to-read map form.

Did they get yours right? They actually nailed NJ, although anyone living south of the Exit 11 would argue that it’s called “Pork Roll.”

[link, via First We Feast]

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

I'm embarrassed to say that before today, I don't remember ever eating Life cereal. In fact, now that I've written it for all the world to see (because obviously all the world reads this column), I'm even more ashamed. Well, I'm here to talk about how I've been missing out on Life all these years. Basically, this clip by the incomparable Jerry Seinfeld says it all.

Life Cereal is truly awesome.

I'm not sure why life was never on my radar. I guess growing up it was one of those seemingly benign/boring/healthy cereals in other households, but it was never allowed in mine. Not sure why— maybe too many colors on the box? Too much joy in the name? Whatever the reason, my younger years were spent Life-free. And yes, as the sad story goes, by the time I got to college, other more sugary cereals won my attention.
For a bit of background, Life was introduced in 1961, but became popular in the 70's with its famous "Mikey" Ad Campaign. Today's flavors are Original, Cinnamon and Maple & Brown Sugar.

Several people at SEHQ have mentioned Life from time to time. I started to pay attention when the non-cereal-lovers started talking up Life, and I realized this was a topic that needed to be discussed.

Ok, not so much discussed as stated. Life cereal is incredible. While dry, the crispy sweet little squares flake apart pleasantly. In milk, the pieces sort of meld together in a soft pillow of sweet, multigrain goodness.

The Cinnamon variety is equally as superb. While there is no physical evidence of the cinnamon-sweetness like there is on my beloved Cinnamon Toast Crunch, there is wonderful cinnamon flavor hidden inside these humble squares.

My only regret in regards to Life cereal is that I've spent a lifetime not enjoying it. This stops now! There's got to be some dedicated Life fans out there, right? Any other chumps out there like me who have somehow never tried it?

About the author: Aside from doing an awesome job with her role as Advertising Sales Manager, Leandra Palermo secretly harbors a lifelong passion with all things crunchy and served with icy cold skim milk. This column represents the culmination of that love affair.

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We may have found one of the most stupid drivers in the city of Chicago. [ more › ]

VIEW SLIDESHOW: 6 Brick-And-Mortar Brunch Spots We Love In Portland, OR

[Photograph: Lindsey Howald Patton]

What is Portland's classic dish, anyway? Its Chicago-style dog? Its New York slice? Its New Orleans muffuletta?

I started asking around after I landed in the city on a recent visit, but made little headway. A few of the answers, I have to admit, would make grin-worthy material for a Portlandia skit—a vegan gluten-free all-natural organic non-GMO burger, maybe? A growler of cold-brewed Stumptown coffee? Maca smoothies? It quickly became clear: there is no single quintessential food to be found in this city of celebrated eccentricity.

Although I never found the one dish you have to try, there was something that everyone could agree on: "Brunch," all of my friends said. "If there's anything uniquely Portland, it's definitely brunch."

Probably because of a decently-sized labor force that doesn't seem to follow 9-to-5 norms—Portlandia dubbed the city a place "where young people go to retire"—you'll see lines forming outside certain favored spots on any day of the week. On weekends, an hour spent waiting means you got lucky.

Sweedeedee's corncakes

Brunch is indeed a local institution, and it's as crunchy, down-home, and creative as the Rose City itself. The menus eschew prim mimosas and buttoned-up ambiance for fantastically messy hashes stuffed with organic vegetables and house-cured fish or corned beef; from-scratch biscuits with artisanal jams; and mixology magic, with a spotlight on rustic renditions of the classics and small-batch distillers.

These six restaurants barely scratch a flake from the surface of what Portland has to offer, but are among those can't-miss spots many locals raves about. Check out the slideshow to see them all: an trendy upstart with a global view, a quaint Scandinavian spot, a cheerful and minimalistic new darling, a quirky neighborhood diner, and a homestyle classic the parents will love.

About the author: Lindsey Howald Patton is a food, art, and architecture writer based in Chicago. You'll find her craning her neck at skyscrapers for assignments, hunching over short stories in her free time, and generally lingering way too long in coffee shops on the North Side. Check out her work at lindseyhowaldpatton.com.

View Serious Eats Neighborhood Guides: Chris Gawronski's Humboldt Park in a larger map

Humboldt Park may be off the radar for many Chicagoans, but Chris Gawronski, the executive chef at Henri, loves his new neighborhood. Gawronski started cooking at Henri six months after the restaurant opened and took over when Dirk Flanigan left. He moved to Humboldt a year ago from Wrigleyville and couldn't be happier. "Between The Gage and Henri, there's like 17 people that live within a mile of me," he says. "It's all industry people so places stay open late." He says he moved on a whim, after visiting colleague Clint Rogers, beverage director at Henri. "I went on Craigslist, found a spot, and I moved a week later," Gawronski explains. "I like how quiet the neighborhood is and the vicinity is nice. It was total relaxation from Wrigleyville. I finally fit somewhere. I didn't fit in the frat boy area."

"I really like the West Side, especially Humboldt Park," Gawronski says. "Everyone says to go to Wicker Park and Bucktown, but I like Humboldt because it's that much quieter, but still close to the craziness. It's five minutes down the road from Wicker. I don't want to live there, but I can go play there."

Read on to see some of his favorite places to eat and drink in Humboldt Park.

Trucker Bowl at Flying Saucer [Photograph: Nick Kindelsperger]

Breakfast: Flying Saucer. It's quirky; it's different. You can either walk into somebody doing a live jam session or people playing Dungeons & Dragons. It has this odd appeal to it but the food is good. They play very interesting music in the morning. You're half asleep listening to something, and you've never heard it before. It's the best way to wake up in the day. I'm real simple, so I just get an eggs Benedict.

Brunch: Rootstock. I love Rootstock for way too many things. I go there for brunch a lot on weekends, since it's just a block from my house. They change up the menu a lot. Last time I was there I had sopes and steak—so very Latin American or Mexican-style food, and super delicious. I was sitting there having sopes when my friend across from me was having gingerbread pancakes with braised pork belly. They span a lot of different types of cuisine in their approach to brunch.

A "crust" at Rootstock. [Photograph: Daniel Zemans]

Pizza: It's not quite Humboldt, but I go down to Roots on Chicago Ave. We walk down there, to Ukranian Village. Pizza joints haven't popped up as much unless they offer delivery, but as for sit-down pizza, Roots is great. It's so close, so we forget it's not actually in Humboldt.

Burger: Lockdown on Western Ave. They're funky, weird and play a lot of funky music. They have a lot of TVs, but they don't play sports. And they make an excellent burger. They cook it right every single time, which is my biggest thing with a burger, because I don't care about all the kitschy toppings. If I ask for a temperature, that's the temperature. That's what I get excited about. Every single time it's spot on. Whoever's the guy in the kitchen they should keep him forever. That's my biggest thing. I don't care what all the fixings are.

Coffee: Star Lounge. Best place ever. All the coffee shop people there are really serious about coffee. These are the Dark Matter guys, who make excellent coffee just down the road off of Western. They brew all their own stuff. Star Lounge is an old bar, and it's set up that way. They have kegs for their cold coffee. It's quirky but delicious, by far the best in the city. A lot of people would agree with that. In the summertime, they have a great back deck that you can go to just relax and lounge. It's almost like sitting in a friend's backyard. You know the Cheshire Cat from Alice and Wonderland? There's a big mural of the Cheshire Cat. If you want a quick cup of coffee or to sit and relax, it's a great place to go.

Delivery: This new place opened up just down the road. It's called Hunter & Tails. It just opened this last week and it's a gastropub. They do craft cocktails and should be really interesting for the neighborhood. But they'll also do delivery, and they're pretty much behind my house. I know it sounds odd, but if I want a steak but don't want to go out and have a steak, they'll just walk it three minutes to my house.

Fish carpaccio at Kai Zan. [Photograph: Roger Kamholz]

Sushi: Kai Zan. Spot on, best spot for sushi. It's one of the best spots for sushi in town right now. They're getting huge buzz. Every time I go, I just walk in and sit at the counter and say "omakase" and they send me whatever they want. But you look around and you know people are definitely not from Humboldt Park. Like, they're from the Gold Coast, and over there is a couple from Evanston sitting in Humboldt Park. I like it. They attract quite a large span of audiences, which is great for Humboldt. Their food is delicious and they're very creative about it, too. They're not super traditional. They have a play on a jalapeño popper, which is a tempura jalapeño stuffed with unagi and cream cheese. It's called an unagi popper. It's hilarious and cute, but tastes really good. Basically it's low-brow food, but it's actually delicious.

French: Rootstock. It's the most French-inspired place in the area. They do a whole turbot, which is very French in styling. They'll do their steak frites, but they also do mushroom tarts and, of course, oysters on the half shell. They also do moules frites, pâtés, terrines, and charcuterie. It's very French, but it's farmhouse French. Different from Henri, where we're more haute cuisine style, and everything has to be very pretty. But in this area, Rootstock works perfectly.

Mexican: There's this place for standard Mexican food, but I can't remember the name. I lived in Los Angles for a long time and the best Mexican food you got was off the back of a truck. You didn't go to restaurants for Mexican food in Los Angeles, because it wasn't good. I've always carried that with me. It's probably a good thing that I don't remember the name of this place. You just walk in one day when you're like "Oh my God, I'm starving." They have traditional tacos, menudo on the weekends. You never look up to see the name of the place. There's no frills; the place is ugly. You don't want to sit down for too long, because it's just fluorescent lights. If it's ugly, it's probably good when it comes to good tacos. They spend all their money on the actual product, on the food and not the surroundings. It's on Chicago, right off Chicago, not a major intersection, in a strip area.

Groceries: There's a grocery store at Chicago and Western that I always go to. What is the name of that place? [Editor's Note: Farmer's Pride Produce] I walk around my neighborhood, but never look at the signs. It's very mom and pop style. I can walk down to Dominick's and get everything else, but they have a great deli counter and serve good sandwiches. If you're really hungry in the morning or have a headache from one too many shots of Jameson the night before, they deliver breakfast. They'll deliver you coffee, bacon, and eggs. What grocery store do you know that does that? It's a two-minute walk from my home. When I'm home, I'm walking everywhere, so this is perfect.

Start your date night at Kai Zan. [Photograph: Roger Kamholz]

Date Night: Humboldt Park is actually a gorgeous park. I've never actually had a picnic or anything, though. Kai Zan impresses, but to finish the night off it's really funny to go to The California Clipper where they do honky tonk country. I don't listen to country, but the place is hilarious. It's a cool bar, very retro style and it's fun to take a date there to see how they loosen up. That's the kind of place where you can never take yourself seriously. Since I rarely take myself seriously, it's good to know how somebody reacts to that situation. If you're not having any fun at The California Clipper then there might be something wrong with you.

Drinks: Clint [Rogers] lives on the same street as me. My favorite place to get a cocktail is Clint's house when he's there. I just walk over and the cocktails are free. I just have to pay for take out. Hunter & Tails is great too. Humboldt Park is notoriously a shot and a beer neighborhood—cheap beer, cheap shot. If you don't want to break the bank, you'll get a good whiskey selection anywhere you go, since Humboldt loves whiskey. But Hunter & Tails is the first place in Humboldt really knocking down the cocktail scene. They're doing a good job. And Rootstock is knocking down the wine scene.

4 in the morning: The Continental. That's where you go to get crazy and be up 'til sunrise. I did that when I first moved. Then when I moved near The Continental, I stopped going so much. If you want to sit down and have a conversation with a friend or play a game of pool without anybody hassling you, go to The Continental. But the trick is to go before 2 o'clock in the morning. You can have two very different bar experiences depending on when you go. It's the weirdest transition place in the world, because all of a sudden the place is packed, you can barely move, and everyone's having a good time. It literally turns into a different bar at 2 a.m. It's like bar hopping in the same spot. Everyone knows the place as being crazy, and I know it as a place to play pool and chill for a couple hours.

Grumpy met Grumpy and now the Internet can go home.

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Yesterday, the people of Virginia faced the Sophie's Choice of elections — only in this case, the voter (played by the incomparable Meryl Streep) wasn't forced to decide which of two good people was going to die. They were forced to decide which of two crappy candidates — Ken Cuccinelli (R) and Terry McAuliffe (D) — was going to LIVE. Or, more specifically, live in the Virginia Governor's Mansion and govern the state for the next 4 years.

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