Dueling Dunkin Donuts

A while back I had mentioned the case of Dunkin Domination here in Beverly - eight dunkin donuts within 2.5 square miles of land.

This weekend, Becky and I had the occasion to drive around the Route 60 rotary in Revere for the first time in a while. We discovered that there were now two Dunkin Donuts on the rotary, immediately across the street from each other, as shown by “DD1″ and DD2″ in this diagram:

So, whether you’re entering the rotary or leaving the rotary, there’s a DD to satisfy your cravings. And there’s probably another one down the road if you missed one of those. And another one in case you get lost. And another one in case you take the wrong exit. And another… and another…

By Peter | 10.05.2004 | 06:33 PM | Permalink | Categories: Food | No Comments

Stupid Selects

How about a nice tasty pack of “I hate those stupid commercials!” Though McDonald’s Chicken Selects do look sort of tasty, the people in those commercials certainly don’t make me want to be associated with them. Will they turn me into the office dolt if I eat them - guarding my Chicken Selects with fervor, and uttering such phrases as “Step slowly away from the deliciousness?”

Would I think differently if it was an ad for Taco Bell? Well… maybe. Probably. Yes. There’s little Taco Bell could do that would discourage me from eating there.

Apologies to our readers from outside of McUSA.

By Peter | 09.20.2004 | 10:21 PM | Permalink | Categories: Food | No Comments

Arr, Shipwreck!

On Saturday, Becky and I had Jeremy and Angela over for dinner. We haven’t seen too much of them recently, since Jeremy has been working crazy hours for Back-to-School season at Staples, so it was good to hang out, talk, and catch up.

Since Becky was at work for most of the day, I was in charge of preparing a meal for dinner. I’ll freely admit that Becky has a much greater knack for cooking than I, so she is usually the one to prepare our meals. But, I was determined to cook something yummy, so I turned to the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook. Crock pot recipes are great, of course, since you just prepare the ingredients, put them in, set the timer, and “Forget it”. Yep.

The recipe I selected was called “Shipwreck”. To be quite honest, I selected it mostly because the name sounded interesting. We had most of the ingredients, and I went out and got the others that we didn’t have. I put it all together as directed, and when I served it later that night, the consensus was “Yum!” I have to say that it didn’t look so appealing, but after we tasted it, it was quickly consumed.

Anyway, here is the recipe, along with some notes from me:

qqq|Shipwreck

Makes 8 servings We got 6, but probably because I used fewer potatoes

Ingredients: 1 lb. ground beef, browned 4-5 potatoes, cut in French-fry-like strips I only used three potatoes here, 4-5 just seemed like too much. But you could probably use more. Some sort of potato-slicing device would probably make this easier. 1-2 onions, chopped 16-oz. can light red kidney beans, drained 1/4 lb. Velveeta cheese, cubed Next time I’ll probably use more cheese. 10 3/4-oz. can tomato soup 1 1/2 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. pepper butter

1. Layer in slow cooker in this order: ground beef, potatoes, onions, kidney beans, and cheese.
2. Pour soup over top.
3. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Dot with butter.
5. Cover.
6. Cook on Low 6-8 hours. 7. Serve to hungry and delighted guests!|qqq

All in all, it was a successful first attempt at crock pot cookery for yours truly!

By Peter | 09.13.2004 | 08:08 PM | Permalink | Categories: Food, Friends | 2 Comments

Etcetera Whatever

Becky made tater tot casserole for dinner again, tonight… yum. See the goodness for yourself:

Continue reading…

By Peter | 08.09.2004 | 08:07 PM | Permalink | Categories: Food, Randomness, Techie | 1 Comment

Dunkin Domination

If you live in the Northeast, you already know the extent to which Dunkin Donuts dominates the coffee/donut/bagel marketplace. In the past few weeks, DD has expanded its reach yet again in the city of Beverly. There are now a total of eight DD franchises in our fair city (that I’m aware of). They are indicated by red dots on the map below:

That’s eight DD’s in roughly 2.5 square miles of land. 3.2 DD’s for every square mile. Beverly’s population in 2000 was 39,862, so that puts approximately 5000 Beverly residents to each DD.

DD has been making other moves, too. I recently noticed that the QuiKava coffee hut on Highland Ave. in Salem was just recently taken over by DD.

And their donuts aren’t even that great. Hopefully Krispy Kreme can make some inroads - but at this point there are only 3 KK’s in the whole state of Massachusetts.

By Peter | 07.08.2004 | 02:25 PM | Permalink | Categories: Food | 1 Comment

Taco Bell

Inspired by Will’s recent announcement that he’ll be working at Taco Bell for the summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about Taco Bell today.

Now Becky and I consider ourselves to be pretty big Taco Bell nuts. Consider the fact that Taco Bell was, in a way, the common bond by which our relationship was first formed. Consider the fact that we regularly went to Taco Bell during college even though the closest one (that we knew of at the time) was 30 minutes away. Consider the fact that we’ll choose it over any fast food restaurant, if one is convenient.

But I had no idea there were so many people who could be more nuts (or beans?) about TB than us.

Today I Googled for “taco bell road trip” to see if I could find a way to get a list of the Taco Bells on our driving route to Ohio this summer. I didn’t end up finding such a thing, but I did find the Taco Bell Road Trip. Holy moley. These guys are my new heroes. Because of them, I’m now considering plans for our own Taco Bell-based road trip for later this year.

From their site, I found numerous other links, including Talko Taco Bell, a user-maintained database of Taco Bell restaurant ratings, and Crazy Gorditas, a compilation of all past and present Taco Bell menu items, including the famed Steak Burrito Bellgrande (one of my favorites of years gone by):

Steak Burrito Belgrande Description: This discontinued burrito had steak, green sauce, cheddar cheese, fiesta salsa, sour cream and get this…tater tots! This burrito retired years ago. However, we have someone who can turn back the clock for us and tell us how it was!! Kevin’s Opinion: This was GODLIKE. The Steak Burrito Belgrande was what I ordered every time I went to Taco Bell for the entire time they were available. Everything else on the menu paled in comparison. There was tons of steak in the burrito, the cheese blend was perfect, had plenty of the tomatoes/onions/cilantro blend, the perfect amount of sour cream, and the tater tots were surprisingly good. The result was a mix that was so uniqe and flavorful that it shouldve been illegal. Overall, this was the best burrto that Taco Bell ever had…and is only rivaled by the Chicken Grilled Stuft. God I wish the Steak Burrito Belgrande was back. It was almost holy.

I agree on all counts. It was an amazing burrito while it lasted.

Hm. It’s 11:37 pm. Taco Bell’s still open. Should I stay or should I go?

By Peter | 06.02.2004 | 11:38 PM | Permalink | Categories: Food | 2 Comments

News Bites

Wednesday, May 19: I gave a presentation to the MacWoburn Macintosh User Group on “Blogging With The Mac.” The presentation went well, and the attendees had some good questions about blogging in general, as well as the Mac OS applications I had reviewed in the process of preparing for the meeting. For those who couldn’t attend, I have a complete website available which details the essence of the presentation. It includes reviews of six different Mac OS X blogging applications, and you can find it here.

Saturday, May 22: Becky and I went down to Hyannis to visit Jeremy and Angela. We had a delicious dinner and then went out to get some ice cream at the opening night of Four Seas Ice Cream in Centerville. I had peanut butter chocolate chip, while Becky had a pink-colored mint chip. Yum!

I brought along a couple video tapes so that Jeremy and I could continue our regular viewing of The Shield. We’ve been getting together to watch it since its debut in March of 2002 on FX. It’s admittedly quite an intense show (”too intense for network television”), but we’re strangely fascinated with it, along with millions of other viewers. If you haven’t been following the series, it’s probably a bit too late to tune in now, unless you buy the DVD’s and try to catch up.

Upcoming: We’re going to be out of town for the next three weekends, which should be fun. Two of them involve Martha’s Vineyard, and one involves New Jersey. We are also planning a road trip to Ohio, later this summer, to see my family, with a side trip to “camp out” at Niagara Falls. (Note the quotes around camp out… though we may be sleeping in a tent, it’s far from roughing it.)

In the meantime, it’s business as usual for me, and for Becky her new job with SPNEA will be starting soon! If you haven’t already, stop by her entry a couple of posts down from this one and leave her a note!

By Peter | 05.24.2004 | 09:51 AM | Permalink | Categories: Family, Food, Friends, Married Life, Randomness, Techie, Television, Travel | No Comments