Heath C. Ice

I left work at 2:00 yesterday and I had yet to eat any lunch. On the way to the hotel, I spotted a Long John Silver’s / KFC. As it’s been years since I’ve eaten at a LJS and I really liked the food, I stopped. I vividly remembered what the fish and chicken tasted like and how much liked it, so I couldn’t wait to get my food. I ordered a “Fish and Chicken Plank Meal with added shrimp, and a medium Dr. Pepper.

When filled my soda cup, I found out that there was no ice at all in the building because all of their ice machines were broken. This was never mentioned to me when I ordered. Take note if you work at a fast food place, if you know you are out of ice, tell me this when I order a soda. Fountain soda with no ice, at least to me, taste horrible!!! I was fortunately heading back to the hotel where I had ice in the freezer.

I was back at my hotel room 5 minutes after getting my order and I started to eat. I tried the fried shrimp first and they were great! They tasted like they had come fresh out of the fryer a few minutes earlier. The temperate was just right as they were really hot, but not too hot to eat them in one bite each. The batter was a little saltier than I remembered, but it was the right saltiness that just helps enhance the other flavors! I had forgotten just how grand and addicting the batter was at LJS.

I hope everyone reading this has tasted the greatness of a tray of crumbs from LJS doused in malt vinegar. If you don’t know what I am talking about, I’ll explain. When LJS takes food out of the fryer and throws it into the bins of cooked food, brittle pieces of cooked batter will break off of the food. As they cannot really do anything else with these cooked crumbs, LJS has always given away trays of them for free if you request them. I know that I am failing to describe how good they taste. They are well worth the health-hazards (they are batter and grease) of eating them.

I moved on to the chicken only to have my meal head downhill. The chicken was barely hot and had a rubbery texture. It tasted nowhere near as good as the chicken I remembered. I am positive it had been sitting under a heat lamp for far too long, so I may go to a LJS again while I am close to one but eat in so I can take stale food back if needed. The chicken was always my favorite thing there, but it had to be freshly cooked!

The chicken was a disappointment, but since I was hungry still I moved on to the fish. The meal was redeemed at least some at this point. The fish was almost as good as I remember. It was hot and the batter was amazingly good. Like with the shrimp, it was a little more salty than I remembered, but not oversalted. The fish itself was flaky and tasted good (what little of it you could taste over the joyfully good batter).

Overall, the shrimp were amazing, the fish was really good, the chicken was very disappointing and having no ice was an annoyance. I have been retaught a big lesson though; for the battered food items at LJS to be great tasting, it all has to be HOT and FRESHLY COOKED! If you pick it up with your hand, it should be hot enough that you can only hold it for around 5 seconds. Time permitting, I may go back to LJS, but I’ll make sure all the food is fresh and hot before I walk out of the store.

Edit (June 29): I ate at Long John Silver’s again tonight for dinner. I had not eaten much all day and stayed at work until around 7, so I was starving. Anyways, I ordered the same thing as I got earlier in the article. This time though it was all great! Everything was hot and perfectly cooked! I just wish that I could get great food every time I go there!

One of my favorite things to eat is fettuccine alfredo with chicken and broccoli. I have only two choices when it comes to frozen dinners though; fettuccine with broccoli or fettuccine with chicken.

This has always been a disappointment to me, until tonight! Nothing sounded good to eat until I looked in the freezer and noticed that I had both frozen dinners. Given that one is a “Smart Ones” and one is a “Lean Cuisine,” the combination is still fairly healthy, has just a little over 500 calories, and costs a total cost of less than $5.

I was worried at first that the two meals would not mix well, but I was pleasantly surprised at how good the combination tasted. Bachelors of the internet, enjoy this homecooked goodness.

I am currently staying at an extended-stay hotel that has a small kitchenette. Here are the salt and pepper shakers. I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea. It serves no useful purpose and makes accessing the salt and pepper nothing but an annoying hassle.

I know this comment probably won’t win many friends, but I am somewhat certain that a guy would never have decided that this was a good idea.

Blog post about my first impression of Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

I decided to eat at the Five Guys Burgers near the Walt Whitman Mall again. This time I ordered fries, a Mr. Pibb, and a little bacon cheeseburger with mustard, pickles, BBQ sauce, and grilled onions. I asked them to cook the fries extra crispy, but the concept seemed to elude the cashier taking my order.

Once again the burger itself was good quality and tasted decent, but it was nothing special. It was served much less hot than I would expect a fresh burger to be. The fries, again, were pretty danged good. I just wish I could have gotten them well done so that they were more crispy.

Since the Walt Whitman Mall location has disappointed me twice now, I will try another location soon. The second location may end up being a lot better. For the sake of all of those who think Five Guys is the east coast’s In-N-Out Burger, I hope the second location lives up to the hype.

I first heard about “Five Guys Burgers and Fries” about 2 months ago via this Reddit articlIe. A few of the comments likened the mainly east-coast chain to the west-coast’s “In-N-Out Burger.” As “In-N-Out Burger” is in my list of top three burger places, I was definitely interested in testing this claim.

Fast forward 2 months and I have finally had a chance to try a “5 Guys” located near the Walt Whitman Mall in Huntington, NY. I ordered a little cheeseburger with grilled onions, grilled mushrooms (an option that In-N-Out would do well to adopt), and mustard; a regular order of fries; and a small soda (Mr. Pibb). My initial reaction to “5 Guys,” unfortunately, is “meh :-/.”

The burger wan’t bad, but it was served lukewarm at best. I didn’t really taste anything special in it over a Hardee’s Mushroom and Swiss burger (btw, if they still existed in a majority of places it would be in my top burger list). I cannot really say there was anything wrong with the burger, but it didn’t hit me as “I HAVE to eat this again.”

Let’s move on to the fries. I loved the fries. as stated on their website, they use thick-cut fresh potatoes to create their fries. This includes skin and all. The plain fries were definitely better than In-N-Out’s plain fries. As I stated on Twitter and Facebook right after eating at “5 Guys,” if you want great burgers eat at In-N-Out, if you want great fries eat at “5 Guys.”

As with any restuarant with which I was not initially impressed, I will give “5 Guys” at least one more chance at the first location and another chance at a second location. I still must try different toppings and I must see about getting my fries well-done.

As of this writing though, I think that the perfect meal combination between the two franchises would be an In-N-Out Double Double with sautéed onions and no lettuce and an order of 5-Guys fries well-done with In-N-Out’s animal-style treatment.

As I mentioned, i will be trying 5 Guys at least two more times in the near future. I will post updates about any changes in opinion.

Blog post about second trip to Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

If you value your free time in the slightest, I beg you for the love of god and all that is holy DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS GAME. Angry Birds is an iPhone game that is immeasurably addictive! I found out about this game Saturday afternoon from a friend. I have since played approximately 14 hours worth of the game in the 24 hours I have known about it.

The objective of the game is to slingshot various types of birds into structures in an attempt to knock them down and kill the pigs inside. The levels have almost the perfect difficulty. You will get frustrated at times and put the game down only to find that a few minutes later you have to try just one more time to beat the level. This is the most addictive game I have played in a long time.

While this is only an iPhone game, it looks beautiful when scaled up on the iPad screen. There is an iPad version of the game for $5, but since the iPhone game looks just fine and is only $0.99, I cannot see the point in buying the actual iPad version.

As a final note, I have been writing this post for 4 hours because I can’t stop playing the game long enough to concentrate.

YouTube and Apple really need to fix the YouTube app on the iPad. I have been trying to watch a music video on YouTube that is available in 360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p. When I attempt to watch the video over my home wireless connection the application insist on choosing the 1080p stream, which is too large for my 3Mbps internet connection to smoothly stream. While I am waiting on the video to cache, the iPad will usually go to sleep since I can’t do anything else on the iPad while the video caches. So, I figured I would try the 3G connection since I know that via the 3G connection the iPad will use a lower quality video stream. Well, the video did load completely in about 10 seconds via 3G, but the video quality was so bad that it wasn’t worth watching. All of this could be solved by having a tiny little option that allows me to choose what video quality I want to use over WiFi. My home internet connection typically streams 720p YouTube videos with few issues.

Now for the second issue. AT&T has apparently announced that they are doing away with their unlimited data plan for both iPhone and iPad (http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9G30GCG0.htm). They are replacing it with a 200MB/month for $15/month plan and a 2GB/month for $25/month plan. Apparently current iPhone subscribers can keep their unlimited plan at the current rate, but new users have to choose the lesser plans. Also, for iPad 3G users, if you currently have the $30/month unlimited data plan and CONTINUOUSLY pay for it every month from now on, you get to keep the unlimited plan. However, if you ever don’t renew, you only options become the 200MB/month and 2GB/month plans. In my opinion AT&T intentionally mislead thousands of people who bought iPad 3Gs by initially promoting the “unlimited $30/month, activate and deactivate as needed” plan a few months ago. This seemed like a great deal to users who only traveled every now and then and wanted to have the option of unlimited 3G only when on the road. AT&T, this is a dick move and you know it. I truly hope that there is a class-action lawsuit started over this bait-and-switch advertising. I do not believe for a second that AT&T didn’t plan this out as “let’s entice users to buy the 3G model by advertising a great data plan for iPad but then after enough are sold, we’ll do away with that plan and royally fuck them over on their purchase.”

Anyways, I trust that Apple and YouTube can at least easily fix my first complaint. Too AT&T though, FUCK YOU!