Junk Food Nation, today is going to be a grab bag of sorts.  I never did get around to trying a new junk food because, well, I was quadruple tasking last night. I was drafting my fantasy basketball team (more on that after the jump), watching X-Factor (more on that tomorrow), live tweeting both events on my phone (nerd alert), while doing pushups and other exercises (because, why not?) Anyways, by the time the draft and X-Factor was over, I was completely exhausted, needed a shower, needed to call three people back, and not interested in ingesting the latest and greatest snack. I know, I know – I can barely look at my reflection in the mirror.

So I thought I’d take this time to highlight some random stuff that has been on my mind or in my life recently.

1) The Nyan Cat. My friend Mary of Girl Meets Food introduced this to me. Or rather, she posted this on Facebook and said, “I really have to question the ‘Most-Viewed YouTube Videos of 2011.’ A Pop-Tart cat saying “nyan” over and over again for 4 minutes? Makes me want to shoot myself in the face.”

Yeah, apparently this video has, oh, 55 million views after being added in April of 2011.  55 million. I’d never HEARD of this video, much less all the internet memes that spawned from it. And I feel compelled to share. Here it is, for all of you: Nyan Cat.

Yeah.  Yeah. You watch and you like it.

I don’t know why it has so many views. And the video is what it is – it’s the same thing for four minutes straight. No scary faces jump out. No surprise endings. But…I couldn’t look away. I know I’m late to the party on this. But I couldn’t look away.  Reminds me of Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Somebody help me.

2) Fried Macaroni & Cheese Balls! My friends John and Kate made these awesome carb nuggets at their recent holiday party. I’ve had some fried Mac n’ Cheese balls in my day, but I’d never seen them made in person:

A pretty simple but impressive process: take already cooked Mac n’ Cheese, roll into a ball and dip into some eggwash (at center), then rollin some nice flour (upper), until you finally plunge into a pot of boiling effing oil (scary). Yeah I was surprised I was able to take this picture without getting an oil splash to the face.

John managed to do this cooking process while wearing a blazer.  No, he was not wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask. Yes, the counter next to the stove IS a random place for a trophy.

The next step – place on paper towel to cool, or until paper towel becomes translucent/clear with oil.  Look at the crisp on this baby, though!  Excellent. PS: Bonus points for anyone who can guess what beer I was having with it. It’s not hard, people.

The Mac n’ Cheese balls were going fast – people were eating them faster than John could make them, so I was lucky to snap this picture.  The best part – you can see how the bowl glistens with excess oil.  That’s the way to be, my friends.

The taste: perfectly indulgent. Great savory salty flavor, great crunch to the outside, and carby and cheesy on the inside. Not too oily.  Quite honestly, these were a lot better than a lot of Mac n’ Cheese balls/shapes I’d had at restaurants, which always over fry the suckers drying them out.  These were moist and gooey.  Nice work, John.

Oh yeah, at this party, Kate made Apple Jack Treats. Not Rice Krispy Treats – APPLE JACK TREATS! Um, yeah. Taking homemade confection to a whole new level. They may have ripped the heck out of the roof of my mouth, but they were scrumptious. Scrumpdiddlyumptious.

3) Office Cookie Time! During the holidays, my office, like your office, has a million holiday parties. And office holiday parties can be fun – everyone stands awkwardly around the conference room drinking sparkling cider, or sitting in computer chairs in clusters eating chips and cheese dip (like THAT’S normal), and everyone understands that NO work is going to get done.

Office holiday parties are a great time to sample homemade junk food.  A woman in my office, Marybeth, is a great cookie maker, so here are some confections she brought in:

Office parties feature things like labeling your food contribution with Post-It notes.  These, as you can see, were dark chocolate chip and candy cane cookies. Cookie was nice and crumbly and the flavor was good – good crunch to the candy cane and it mixed well with the dark chocolate.

Another office party junk food contribution from Marybeth. Peanut Butter Banana Reeses Cookies?!  You have to wonder if at some point there is a diminishing rate of return from the number of things you can jam into a cookie.  These were a peanut butter – banana bread-like cookie with Reeses.  Tasted great, just like you’d think, but due to the banana bread-like nature of the cookie, fell apart and went everywhere.  That’s ok, I’ll eat cookies with a fork if I need to.  Definitely a moister cookie.

The recurring problem with office holiday parties is too much dessert.  When everyone signs up to bring something, dessert is always the easiest because how hard is it to go to Costco and grab a cake for $10-$15? Answer: not hard. And so at another office party, this happened:

Yeah, let me just say there was maybe 50-60 people at this holiday party, and like 17 desserts.  17!  What, does everyone get a quarter of pie!?

Those are FULL CAKES people!

Bread pudding, apple crisp, a FLAT of cupcakes….

As expected, some cakes went untouched.  Yeah I dunno why there’s a random deviled egg platter in the background. Just ignore that.

Anyways, just wanted to share a little bit of what the holidays on my end were like so far 🙂

4) FANTASY BASKETBALL ROSTER RESULTS! Yeah, for any sports geeks who were interested in how my auction draft in my friend Lynnette’s league went last night, this is my final roster:

 

Swish Jayed Church
Budget			$200
1.		Kevin Love(Min – PF,C)	$61
2.		Stephen Curry(GS – PG)	$46
3.		Chris Bosh(Mia – PF,C)	$19
4.		Zach Randolph(Mem – PF,C)	$21
5.		Josh Smith(Atl – SF,PF)	$19
6.		John Wall(Was – PG)	$25
7.		Tony Parker(SA – PG)	$3
8.		Ben Gordon(Det – PG,SG)	$1
9.		Toney Douglas(NY – PG,SG)	$1
10.		Jameer Nelson(Orl – PG)	$1
11.		DeJuan Blair(SA – PF,C)	$1
12.		Shawn Marion(Dal – SF,PF)	$1
13.		George Hill(Ind – PG,SG)	$1

 

I’m pretty happy with it – getting Bosh and Randolph for $19-$21 bucks is solid. John Wall I thought was a steal at $25, until I saw Jrue Holiday go with the very next pick at $11.  And already I’m injury bitten – jammed ankle for Love and more ankle issues for Stephen Curry.  We’ll see. I have an itching drop/add finger, so most of these players will be on waivers by the end of the week 😉

That’s all for my random blog post today, everyone.  Tomorrow, back to normal reviews!

Any thoughts? Tell me in the comments below or hit me on Twitter @junkfoodguy or on my Facebook Page.

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy