Monday, July 12, 2010

Celebrating my new Mac with some Mac...and Cheese!!!!

Tonight we got together with some friends to have a KD tasting.  Just in case you aren't familiar, I am referring to good ol' Kraft Dinner, the staple of college kids diets all across the land.

Recently, Kraft announced that they were introducing a new 'Smart' KD.   The 'Smart' comes in the form of pasta made with cauliflower and, in theory, the connoisseur is now getting half a serving of vegetables in their orange powder goodness.

Our very smart friends Kim and Fiona suggested conducting a scientific tasting to determine the tastiness factor.  But it couldn't just be the new one, we needed to surmise which was the superior product.

Like any good group of scientists, we needed a control to test the product against.  Our controls were the 2 products that everyone knows best, Original and Spiral.  No whole wheat, no crazy flavours.  Just that blue and orange box that stares at you from the kitchen cupboard, beckoning you to it's comforting embrace.  Like a big, warm, orange hug in your tummy.

The laboratory (Fiona's Kitchen) was prepped and the scientists donned their coats and safety goggles.  Well, we washed our hands at least.  All boxes were started at the exact same time and the package measurements were followed for the milk and butter.  One thing we noticed was the very distinct smell of cauliflower when it was being drained.

We started with the Original and the Spiral, so we were ready to acknowledge the flavour differences at a moments' notice.  Then, then we came to the new KD.  The verdict?  Really really tasty!  We were all pleasantly surprised by the taste.  It tastes almost exactly like Original, but it has a little bit of a sweeter flavour.

One of the best surprises of the experiment was that Spirals are awesome!  We've all had them before, but we concluded, scientifically of course, that the spiral shape of the pasta changes the distribution of the cheesy goodness.

However, the conclusion of the experiment is that KD always tastes best when shared in good company!


Friday, June 25, 2010

To PC or Not to PC, that is the question.

I know it's been a long time since we've spoken blog, but I'm making a big change in my life and I didn't think I could hold back.

I'm no longer going to be a PC.  I'm becoming a Mac!  (Once you go Mac, you never go back, so I've heard...:) )

This week I took the plunge and ordered myself a Macbook Pro from the Apple website and I'm now waiting for it to arrive.  I thought I was waiting patiently.  Turns out I'm not very patient at all!  Between obsessively checking my tracking number through UPS (and you can only get the good tracking if you sign up for their site.  Seriously, do I need to sign up for anything else?!?!  I can barely remember the things that I use frequently!) and making my poor husband check the mail and wait by the phone in case they call, I managed to figure out that I'm absolutely desperate for the change.

You may say, 'Oh, but Windows is so much better, they got rid of that Vista crap and it's amazing!'.  All I can see now when I look at PC is how much they want to be like Mac.  Why settle for an imitation when I can get the real thing?! 

I'm not going to lie, this decision has also been made out of peer pressure, with several of my friends and coworkers already on the Mac wagon.  Flaunting the amazing graphics, ease of use and lack of viruses in my poor, PC using face. 

However,  the last nail in the PC coffin was the virus that inflicted itself upon my computer (to be fair, it's probably been lurking amongst all of the trojans that are always on here).  This virus also turned up on a couple of computers at my office.  It cost me $100 to have it scrubbed and then after I installed my new virus program, the virus program ended up getting infected, so I had to remove it.  I still can't click on links from Google without getting routed to spam sites and I continually get pop up windows telling me how I can make my fortune by doing nothing at home.

So yes, I am saying sayonara to Bill Gates and bonjourno to Steve Jobs.  Let me hope that I don't eat my words, but if I do, at least they will taste like Apple.