Tag: food

Welp, I guess all of ‘Murica is just one giant FOOD SWAMP

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I remembered when I first heard of the phrase “food desert” it entertained me a great deal because whomever coined the phrase really tried to compare blighted, impoverished areas to like, the Mojave or Sahara deserts, gigantic wastelands of sand and heat.  And it immediately brought to my mind a desert in an early Final Fantasy title and of course I made a post about it back then, complete with the corresponding Final Fantasy screen grab.

But basically, food deserts were communities that were statistically past a certain distance threshold to the nearest grocery store or market where fresh produce and other perishable goods could be purchased, as well as just food in general.  And being so far from such then makes them the equivalent to floundering in the desert without edible resources.

In other words, it was basically used to describe rural areas or ghettos, where grocery stores don’t want to build in, because there’s not nearly as much money to be made there, regardless of the demographics of those areas that are conveniently zeroed in on as reasons for such invention of terminology.

Anyway, just today I learned that a new term was invented at some point: food swamp.

Kind of along the same base as a food desert, but except that in spite of the difficulty in being able to procure fresh produce and perishable goods, they have an abundance of options when it comes to fast food, prepackaged garbage food and other unhealthy options.

The irony is that food swamps can be used to describe, basically the same conditions that make a food desert a food desert: remote areas and/or ghettos that have the access issues when it comes to being able to get fresh, healthy foods, but in a lot of cases, they’re areas where there’s also an abundance of shitty fast food options.

So despite the fact that new terminology has been invented, the places that they describe seem to have a tremendous overlap.  Funny how things work out like that.

But more importantly, it allows me to once again use old school Final Fantasy screen caps, to best describe the words being used, and like the subject of the post says, given the criteria of what makes a food swamp a food swamp, I guess it really could be said that pretty much most of ‘Murica, is just one giant fucking food swamp after all.

It’s the little things

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When mythical wife told me that we were going to go on a field trip for Father’s Day, I thought that perhaps we were going to head to the ballpark and catch a game.  The Braves were at home, they were playing hot, and there’s usually some sort of Father’s Day promotion or giveaway associated with the day.  Plus, we haven’t been to the ballpark since like 2021, and a nice day game seemed like a viable option for Father’s Day.

But when I saw her punch in “Columbus, GA” into the GPS, I knew what we were doing.  She probably knew I knew, because she knows how fixated I am on these sorts of things.  Regardless, it very much was a me kind of thing to be doing, but obviously with the introduction of kids into our lives, things like me are fewer and further apart, so it really was a welcome idea to turn the clock back a little bit and do something completely random and time-consuming for what really amounts to so little in the grand spectrum of a day.

We went to the newly opened Tim Horton’s in Columbus, the very first in the state of Georgia. The first of allegedly 15+ to come in the state.  But as much as I love their iced cappuccinos made of crack like they were actually made of crack, I really didn’t have much thought about trekking all the way to Columbus for it, because they’re nearly like two hours away from Atlanta.  Especially since there’s already a proposed location in Atlanta, even if it’s in the shitty Midtown area.  But I was willing to wait out my first ever Georgia iced capp for when they were closer to where I was, and not Columbus, Georgia.

However, mythical wife knows me pretty well, and this is totally the type of thing I’d do in my previous life.  And so we made the journey down to Columbus to the first-ever Timmy’s in Georgia.

I was curious to whether or not the place was going to be slammed or not slammed, because Tim Horton’s is still a Canadian company, and there’s no guarantee that the yokels of Columbus really knew what was going to be put in their little town.  I feared the place would be a shitshow, but fortunately when we got there, it wasn’t that bad.  If we were driving through, it would’ve been a wait, but after the drive down, I wanted to go in and take my time a little bit.

Unfortunately, despite the name and brand being brought down here, the service and performance of the staff were still reliant on locals, and despite the fact that the restaurant was just three days open, and they were overstaffed to the gills, they were still completely overwhelmed, and they took forever to fulfill even the most basic of orders.

And unfortunately, they kind of messed up on my order, by completely forgetting to give me my hash browns, and more importantly, botching up my iced capp, the one thing I really wanted.  Granted, they botched it by making it an Oreo iced capp, which was delicious in its own way, but I still wanted a regular, vanilla iced capp, with no shit in it.  I didn’t notice it until we were gone, because it wasn’t mixed very well, and it wasn’t until I got a chunk of Oreo coming up the straw did it dawn on me, but at least I still got sort of what I was hoping to get.

Either way, for Father’s Day, yes, mythical wife and I drove two hours each way, so that I could get an iced cappuccino.  It was worth it, and I look forward to the next time I can have another Timmy’s iced capp, and hopefully it will be correct then.

But it’s the littlest things that make me happy, and short of my yearly belt photo with my daughters, there’s not really anything else I could have asked for.

This is what we call a smart bride

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I would have killed to have had a wedding food budget under $2,000: Georgia bride sparks internet debate after revealing that she had catered her wedding with food from Chili’s

Camp me firmly and unquestionably on the side that is completely on board with catering from Chili’s.  I would have been willing to shave my head if I could have paid 1/6 of what I ultimately paid for catering at my wedding.  Not to mention the menu itself sounded perfectly adequate, if people didn’t hear the Chili’s name attached to it:

served guests an all-Chili’s menu including chicken tenders sliders, egg rolls, chips and salsa, Cajun chicken pasta and salad

I know the woke society we live in is all anti-chain and tends to automatically dislike restaurants like Chili’s, but I have no problem with Chili’s.  In fact, of all the lily-white chain restaurants out there, I’d go out on a limb and say Chili’s is probably among my favorites if not my favorite one.  Their ribs are fantastic, they used to have these tacos that were both good and economical, and frankly there’s nothing on their menu that wouldn’t hit the spot on any given day.

When a Taco Mac is slammed to the gills despite the fact that they’re a chain restaurant themselves, just regional, it’s nice to know that I can probably get expedient and quality table service from a Chili’s if there’s one nearby, which has been the exact case more than just a few times in my life.

I feel like I went to a wedding within the last year where the menu was kind of like this, and I’ll be lying if I didn’t say that it wasn’t completely satisfying to go back up for seconds and get a generous helping of chicken tenders with three different dipping sauces.  It might not have been from Chili’s, but the menu seemed to have some overlap here.

But seriously, I’m completely on the side of this bride who sounds like she made the best of her budget and went with an option that provided decent grub at an extremely economical price point, and I feel like anyone who criticizes her choices probably needs to get their pretentious heads out of their pretentious asses, and get over their prejudices of chain restaurants.  More so if they themselves have never had to plan a wedding and deal with the ridiculous cost of catering, because that shit is absolutely bonkers and they 100% put a cost on the fact that it’s for a wedding in the pricing.

I’m surprised it survived this long, honestly

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TIL: The Greenbriar Mall Chick fil-A was the first-ever Chick fil-A opened, in 1967.  But it’s closing for good now

I did know that a large part of the original expansion for Chick fil-A’s strategy was to get themselves into mall food courts, like they did at Greenbriar Mall.  I remember the first time I ever encountered a Chick fil-A, it was at Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Virginia and like most kids embarking on a journey towards childhood obesity, the main standout was the fact that they had waffle fries.

But it’s interesting to learn that the very first Chick fil-A that was opened was in Greenbriar Mall, and it’s even more fascinating to know how it has managed to survived throughout the passage of time, because the passage of time hasn’t been particularly kind to Greenbriar Mall.

Since I’ve lived in Georgia, Greenbriar Mall hasn’t exactly been known for the best of things, and off the top of my head the greatest (read: not greatest) hits are:

  • Former home to the only Magic Johnson theater on the east coast which ultimately succumbed to the increase of crime and shenanigans and closed down
  • One of the hottest areas on crime heat maps in the entire Metro Atlanta area
  • Where a massive flock of sneakerheads gathered in the middle of the pandemic for the release of the latest Air Jordans, garnering global ridicule

Needless to say, I didn’t even know that a Chick Fil-A was in the mall and yes I have been there before, because it was pretty much where the last Circuit City in the area was, and I have gone a few times in the past to get computer shit.  But it’s safe to say that Greenbriar Mall was basically the inspiration for Chris Rock’s entire routine about black malls, and even Donald Glover’s Atlanta show acknowledged it as much.

But considering the company as a whole is extremely guarded and calculated with their locations, I’m amazed to have learned that they stuck it out for over 50 years in that location.  I’m assuming that history had something to do with their staunch tenacity at staying put, plus the fact that since the company is based in nearby Hapeville/College Park, there’s something about keeping the OGs intact as long as possible. 

However, there’s no denying the unsatisfactory area that Greenbriar Mall and surrounding area have become throughout time, and I can’t say I’m the least bit surprised to hear that they’re shuttering the location.  I’m more surprised that they managed to last 50 years there, so at this point, it’s not really so much a sad departure, as much as it’s kind of like a sort of honorable death from the Night’s Watch.

And now their watch is over.

I think I’m done gambling for a while

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I took a whirlwind, 24-hour trip to Las Vegas this past weekend, primarily to bear witness to one of my closest friends getting married.  I deliberately made the trip short, because I’m stingy with my PTO at work, mythical wife couldn’t come with me, and frankly there’s nothing good to come out of me having too much time in Las Vegas.  I’m already uncomfortable in my financial life these days, and trips like Vegas can be colossal hazards to anyone’s personal finances.

Still, short as the trip was, I made sure to tackle some of the things that I missed out on during my last trip during Labor Day, like hitting up Ellis Island, and visiting Sayulita’s, where I needed to try for myself one of the monster big ass burritos that I’d seen from their social media presence. 

And let me tell you something about this burrito pictured here, it was without question the largest burrito I’ve ever encountered in my life, and this wasn’t the biggest one on their menu too.  I waffled on the idea of going there, since I was still full from the post-wedding dinner that I got to indulge in, but I knew that if I didn’t go there, I’d be left with no real other food options except the one Shake Shack in McCarron Harry Reid which would be slammed packed from other travelers left with no other option, plus I would just simply regret not going when I was already in the city.  So I went, and even thought it was $20 after tax and tip, it definitely is more than $20 worth of food.

I wasn’t hungry at the time, but I ate a quarter of it before my flight, because I didn’t want to get hungry mid-redeye flight, and be that asshole unwrapping a monster burrito on an airplane and letting its aroma get all over the place.  After I got home and took a little bit of a recovery nap, I ate 3/4 of what was left before I felt like I was going to burst, and later in the day, I finished it off, and then I literally didn’t have to eat again for the rest of the day.

And it was fantastic, and every bit worth the trip off the beaten tourist path to go try them out.  Would definitely drop them a five-star rating on Yelp if I weren’t low-key salty about them not making me Elite status again for 2023.

But anyway, to get to the point of the title of this post, I think I’m done gambling for a while.  Not solely because I didn’t have a particularly good gambling trip in the small opportunities I had to gamble (I got pretty decimated, so much for wedding luck), it’s just that I frankly don’t have the bankrolls or the means to build the bankrolls I’d need in order to gamble as I’d like to in Las Vegas anymore.

I used to be able to stretch $500 to last a whole weekend in the past, but that amount barely kept me in the game for a single day this past trip.  Table minimums have risen across the entire Strip, and pretty much at no point does a table drop beneath a $15 minimum at any casino I’ve been to, from Harrah’s to Bally’s Horseshoe to Cosmopolitan to the Venetian.  And after like, noon, those “low” limits vanish and it’s basically $25 minimums anywhere and everywhere from there on.

Nice, manageable $10 minimums are an extinct relic on the Strip now, and that means a $100 buy in here or there just doesn’t last as long as they used to, not to mention that even at a $15 minimum, they’re harder to manage and round off to nice increments of hundos, and obviously such is done deliberately to more expediently part money away from us gambling schmucks in the first place.

Lower, more appealing to my broke ass limits are still available, off-Strip and places like Ellis Island, but other than my brother, it’s hard to convince anyone at all to go to Ellis Island with me.  I think I’ve talked about the place so much it’s to the point where people want to deliberately shun it just to troll me, that and the fact that for whatever reason, people just can’t seem to want to ever wander off the Strip in the first place.

The bottom line is that it’s gotten to the point where I can’t really afford to gamble in Las Vegas anymore.  At least at this juncture of my life, where nearly all of my earnings goes towards my kids and bills and there’s practically nothing left for me to do anything.  But it’s still a little demoralizing, because I really do enjoy gambling and being in Las Vegas, but aside from rising minimums and my cash flow not rising commensurate to keep up, the place has changed a lot since the days in which I’d make 3-4 trips a year, and after this past trip, I think I can safely say that my itch to Vegas it up in all applicable ways, is kind of gone.

But never say never, who knows how things will change in the passage of time.  Maybe I’ll make more money one day, and not all of it is hoovered up by responsibilities, or maybe but not likely Vegas will drop their minimums and bank on getting more action.  Or maybe I’ll come across some more gambling videos with supposed unbeatable, low-risk grind methods in roulette or craps that will reignite the itch.  Until then, we’ll see how long it takes for me to get back out there next.

Bron Breakker looks like a Costco rotisserie chicken

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Was watching a summary of the most recent episode of NXT, and when they got to the segment where a freshly heel-turned Bron Breakker got in the ring to get up in the business of Chase U, all I could think of was just how fucking orange Baby Steiner was.

Like, we’re talking even more orange than the former president guy, so orange that he looks like he belongs on Jersey Shore.  My knee jerk reaction was that he looked like a Costco rotisserie chicken, but one that was left in the oven four minutes past the timer, and whomever was in charge of the cooker at the time went on break to let it simmer in residual heat even longer.

There can’t be any way he thinks he looks good like this.  Sure, he still has the body and musculature of an Adonis, and there’s no denying the in-ring talent and he’s only going to get better with experience.  But the fact that he still looks like overcooked poultry certainly can’t help his career where appearances aren’t everything, but they still do hold a tremendous amount of weight.

And considering the tremendous heat on his family’s name with his dad going full bigot at a wrestling convention during Wrestlemania weekend, Steiner Jr. should be avoiding all possible sources of negative perception, including the ridicule and embarrassing things, like being the exact same color as a Costco rotisserie chicken.

Seriously, zero color correction went into these images.  I screen capped NXT, and shopped in an unedited photograph of a Costco chicken on top of it.  133 and 1/3% color match.

Dad Brog #109: My kids seem to only have my weaknesses

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Up until recently, I’ve been thinking that #2 seemed to be the more sturdy of my daughters, seeing as how #1 can’t eat eggs without it coming back out in some unpleasant fashion.  She gets this unfortunate ailment from me, seeing as how almost to the day I turned 30 years old, my body has decided to revolt against eggs.  I can still eat things with eggs as an ingredient to a small extent, but I can’t fry up eggs or hard boil them and eat them without a fairly predictable and unpleasant result a few hours later.

Some say that peoples’ dietary tendencies have a tendency to change every 7-10 years, but it was actually very recently where I indulged in a quiche, and most definitely paid for it later in the day.  A decade later and my body still doesn’t like dealing with eggs any more than when I was 30.

However, not only can #2 eat eggs, she loves them.  Scrambled, fried, Korean-souffle style, she really enjoys eggs, and doesn’t have any ill effects like her sister or dad does.  For that reason alone, I figured she was the more resilient child.

Until just a day ago, I was getting texts from my au pair asking if #2 had any allergies.  Subsequent photos came in, and there were some rashes on my daughter that were unnerving to see, resulting in me leaving work early and taking her in to urgent care, because I wanted to get some professional opinion on what I was already suspecting.

At the tail end of the cruise, my group did a load of laundry on the ship, so that we could get it out of the way while on the ship, as well as the fact that with as many outfit changes my kids were doing, we had to.  As is often the case with lots of cruises, nothing is free, and I had to purchase an individual wash cycle, a dryer cycle, and because we didn’t bring any, some laundry detergent, which was a plain, regular single-serving size of Tide.

Long story short, I quickly pieced things together, and made an educated guess that it was a detergent-related rash that #2 was dealing with, because some articles of clothing from the cruise laundry were coming back into circulation, as well as the fact that, not specifically with Tide, but again, a detergent allergy is something that has happened to me before as well.

In my case, it’s Purex, or whatever the fuck they put in their formula, that triggers my body to have a rather unpleasant hives-ey/rash-ey reaction, and it’s pretty evident that Tide has the same effect on my daughter.

Needless to say, swapping out the afflicted articles and replacing them with not-Tide washed bedding and clothes have already stabilized things, and I’ve learned that Tide is 100% on the blacklist for shopping in the future

But it’s apparent that my second child has picked up a weakness from her dad, just like her sister has.  It’s too early to tell yet, but I’m hoping, considering how much they’re already taking after me, that they get some of my strengths and don’t just continue to grow with weaknesses of mine without any sort of balance.