Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Grandma's Schi: Russian Sour Cabbage Soup


Grandma just made some of her Russian sour cabbage soup that is called Schi. This is my 2nd favorite Russian soup after red borscht, and I really enjoy eating it. So grandma made 9 of these 32oz cups of Schi and I took 6 of them of them. Just made (reheated in microwave) a serving for myself and ate it. Good thing that grandma made it per my request without peppers and bay leafs, because I hate that stuff.



32-ounce cup makes a good serving bowl.



Sour cream is a-must with this soup, and I use the bird brand sour cream, because it is frequently cheaper than the store brand of sour cream.



A generous dollop of cold sour cream...


...mixes with the soup.



Theres plenty of juicy sour cabbage in the serving, just like I like it.



The rib really seals-in the flavor. I always ask that the rib would go in the Schi soup, and sometimes I ask for it to go with red borscht soup.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Jaguar Quartered Chicken Legs


Just got some quartered chicken legs a while a ago and decided to give them the good ol' roastin', but I did not wanted to make them seasoned and roasted without any sauce on; I want to cover them with something nice. I checked the fridge and there were no good sauces left, so I decided to make my own.



At first, I just seasoned the quartered legs with garlic powder, prairie style buffalo wing seasoning, Parmesan cheese and dried parsley flakes, and sent the whole thing down the oven.



Then I began thinking of what sauce to whip out and I decided on the following things to go into one sauce.


All 3 sauce ingredients in a bowl.



Now all mixed together. I had to give this sauce a name, so the first thing came to mind was "Jaguar". I don't know why and I decided not to challenge myself with questions and just settled on the name.



Quartered legs halfway through.



Time to slap some sauce on.



All done now!



Close-up shot.



On the plate.



Inside: juicy meat.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Snack Size McDonald's Chicken McBites


The Spicy Chicken McBites is the newest product by McDonald's that is currently being promoted throughout the nation. I think of it like of a popcorn chicken product and I was eager to get my hands on it and try it out, but thanks to McDonald's coupon, I was able to try a bunch of these for $1.09 per snack size container (small size). There are 3 sizes in all to buy McBites in: snack (small), regular (medium) and shareable (large). I am not 100% sure on the prices but I think that they cost somewhere around $2.00, $3.00 and $4.00 respectably. The first place that I tried them at was at the 86th Street location of McDonald's; right across the Deals store. I took the photo on the lamppost pedestal because some old dude with a walking cane came in and sat on the bench that I was sitting on, like 15 seconds after I got there, and then he began talking about some random shit. Don't you just hate it when random people just have to talk to you about some random stuff, and they can't seem to shut up? As soon as he sat there on the bench, I knew that it was time to leave the premises and take my McBites elsewhere for the photo-op, so the corner lamppost made a decent area to the photo on.



The whole spiel on the container sounds pretty promising.



Box-O'-Vision.



Overall I ate around 8 or so snack size McBites throughout the month, and once I managed to keep my hand off the McBites so I could get them home so I could take some photos of them.



Close-up of McBites.



Inside of McBites.



Tangy BBQ sauce.



Dipping McBites into sauce can be pretty tasty, especially the larger pieces, but for smaller size pieces I prefer to eat them without any sauce, just like popcorn chicken. I think that these McBites are excellent in terms of taste and quality and I can't think of any other restaurant chain that has a product thats better than these McBites. The outer breading is very crisp and crunchy, while the chicken on the inside is slightly moist and tender. There is a spicy kick to McBites, which I think is a notch below mild spicyness. The snack size for $1.00 was a great value for such quality chicken product that I enjoyed eating, and like I said before; these McBites are like McDonald's version of popcorn chicken. The only thing that I did not liked much was that with different orders the sizes of chicken McBites were inconsistent: sometimes I received containers with all McBites being too small, while other couple times there were too many large pieces. I rate McBites at 4.8/5.0 and value rating is 4.4/5.0. I don't know for how long these will be offered at McD's, but I recommend them to anyone who likes breaded/battered chicken.



You can also try scoring a slam dunk with the empty container. I guess that this is a registered Ronald-approved trademark of McD's.

Dorco Razors Order Just Came In (Yesterday)


The Dorco order which I placed like 4-5 days ago just came in. After I checked their site out, I decided to place the order because I was really intrigued by their cheap razors and could not find any solid reviews for their products online. I have just 1 more cartridge left for the Gillete Fusion razor and I had no idea how fast Dorco would fulfill the order, so placing the order ASAP was a sound idea. The package arrived yesterday and their warehouse is located San Diego, so they processed the order and shipped the package pretty quickly.



All these items were the ones that I thought would be great to try out and they all fit just over $25.00, which qualified me for the free shipping. I tried to add one of the 5% off codes to the order, but it screwed-up the free shipping, so don't try the code if you will order stuff from the Dorco e-store.



Bag-O'-Vision.



This is the stuff that they had in stock that they sent to me, the only thing that they did not have in stock was the 6 blade cartridge heads with trimmer and 3-blade cartridge heads. They also have a 5% off coupon included that is good within the next 3 weeks, or so they claim.

Later on during the week I will try out the Dorco Pace 6 Plus razor system; the one with the 6 blades per razor cartridge head with the trimmer and will report on the razor's performance.

Rip It Power Power Energy Fuel Energy Drink



Rip It is a dollar beverage brand that is currently sold at the Deals stores. As far as I know, they make energy drinks and GatorAde knock-offs at the $1.00 price. Rip It Power (red) is their flagship energy drink flavor, and here I got it to give it a try. At the local deals they only had this one, Citrus X (orange) and the grape (purple) one. They also had a ton of sugar-free grape and sugar-free Citrus X; the number of sugar-free cans on the shelf dominated regular (sugar) cans by pretty much 4:1 ratio.



There is some graphic of "Wild Ride" on the back of the can, which I have no knowledge of.



Otherwise the rest of the can is pretty average with no extras.



The energy drink is of murky citrusy-yellow color and the taste is mystery flavor; I don't really know how to describe it, but it tastes kind of budgety; like a budget version of Sun Drop soda. It also smells like a budget scent. Taste is okay, it's not great or anywhere close to it, but it is also not that bad. Its not sugarless but it is also not that sweet, with no nasty aftertaste. Its like the factory people decided to use some discarded knock-off or generic Sun Drop flavor that they just happened to have tons of at the warehouse for the "Power" Rip It energy drink. The energy kick that I got out of this drink was pretty mild, and the "Power" name is just misleading in my opinion. I will not buy this energy drink anymore in the future. So far the Loop energy drink by K-Mart leads the $1.00 price point in terms of taste and value. Rating for Rip It Power is 3.7/5.0, and value rating is 4.0/5.0.



On the Rip It website they also have these PDF "recipes" but they don't tell you the mixing ratios to make the energy-fueled alcoholic beverages, so I did not bother trying to mix them.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Loop Blueberry Pomegranate Energy Drink


This is the 2nd flavor of K-Mart's own energy drinks that is up for sale in their stores, and since the 1st one came out not bad, I was eager to give this Blueberry Pomegranate flavor a try. I had high hopes for this energy drink and was looking forward seeing how well it would line-up to the 1st one within the Loop brand, and since I was so eager, I kinda put on this Bottle Top thing on top of the can without realizing that I had to crack open the pull tab first.



Same standard back-of-the-can info, without the story or some hyped-up entertaining text.



As you can see, the tab is closed-shut and I can't remove the Bottle Top without busting open the filled can.



I found these tweezers in my toolbox so I gave them a try and it worked; with a little patience I was able to slowly tweeze-off the pull tab.  



The energy drink began pouring down the cup.



Dark abyss of Loop Blueberry Pomegranate.

My initial hope from the color was that it would taste like grape, but it tasted like carbonated sour nothing flavor. I could not detect a hint of blueberry or pomegranate, the flavor was just too flat to figure out and the sourness just added the mystery to confusing flavor. Stay away from Loop Blueberry Pomegranate energy drink unless you are into carbonated sour nothing flavor. It does has a slight energy kick and the price is a dollar. I give Loop blue a rating of 2.0/5.0 and a value rating of 2.8/5.0 (hey, it gives you some energy...for $1.00).



  At the end I was able to get the Bottle Top off by squeezing the can, which in turn launched the Bottle Top against the back-splash, which then ricochet down the sink. So this is it; no more buying Loop blue (blueberry pomegranate) anymore. Good thing that the Bottle Top came open, because I would've hated to throw it away.

P.S: 30 minutes later I had to run for the bathroom and take a watery dump down the poop loop.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Magicka Collection For $7.49


I just got the newsletter email from GamersGate and they have 1-day special for the Magicka game collection. For $7.49 you get the Magicka computer game and a bunch of add-ons for it. The regular price is $29.95, and the promotional 75% off is valid for the next 12 hours or so. I just purchased mine but have not tried it yet, but I wanted to get my hands on this game for some time, and right now the price seems to be right. For $7.49 the following items are included in the collection bundle:
I have purchased several other strategy games in the past from GamersGate and they are a legit site.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

$1.00 Shave Gel


Recently I have been in the Deals store and bought bunch of stuff to use for the blog content and one of the items that I already knew that was worth of praising is this shave gel. Now I already had a tube of the stuff, which is half-full, so since I was in the store and made a mental note about it, I decided to buy another tube of, to take the photos and to have it on-hand once the other tube runs out. Basically this shave gel sells for $1.00 plus tax at the stores like Deals and Dollar Tree. It is made in China and marketed in the United States by the Greenbrier International Inc.; the company behind Deals and Dollar Tree stores. Inside the tube there are 5.0 generous fluid ounces of the shaving gel substance, that feels a lot like personal lubricating jelly and smells like...masculine sport scent or something like that. Under the dispensing cap, there is a foil tamper-proof abstruction device that you pull away in order to let the shaving gel flow out.



Back of the tube.



Same product but 2 different tubes: the right tube is the old version and the left one is the new version. It seems that it is now being marketed in Canada, so they slapped-on some French text in order to aid the Canadian customers with this shave gel. On the back of the tube it says that DTSC Imports Burnaby deals with this shave gel in Canada.



Dollar Shave Gel tube (5.0 Fl. Oz.) next to a tube of Zirh shave gel (3.4 Fl. Oz.). You pay less and get more of the shaving gel with the left tube; $1.00 versus $15.00. Zirh shave gel used to be $14.00 but it looks like they have cranked-up the price by one dollar now and instead of 3.4 Fl. Oz. they reduced it to 3.3 Fl. Oz.:





Left dollop is the dollar Shave Gel and the dollop on the right is the Zirh shave gel. Note that the cheaper one is less viscous and more watery than the other.

I personally prefer this dollar shave gel over the Zirh shave gel because it works better on medium-length stubble that I shave right after I trim-off the beard. The watery consistency works well with Gilette Power Fusion razor heads and the shavings move smoothly in between the razor blades and wash off a bit easier than with the Zirh. I also noted that with the Zirh shawing gel, after I apply it on the face, I kinda go about and do other stuff at my place for like 5-8 or so minutes before shaving, and with Zirh I kinda have to condition it with water to activate the gel back again. With the dollar shaving gel, I don't have to apply the water back on because it stays wet. I rate this shave gel at 4.5/5.0 and give it a value rating of 5.0/5.0; a solid value product. I stopped buying the expensive Zirh and stick to this stuff. I also use Barbasol foam from a can whenever I can get it for $0.25-$0.50 price. I also got 5 cans of Shick Hydro foaming gel from several years ago when they introduced this product and I used the promo coupons to get the cans at $0.10 each, but I don't use them that much, but I did went through the 6th can.

Also, couple days ago I also found out about this new webstore that is called Dollar Shave Club, by stumbling upon their ad on the YouTube. Basically they have 3 different monthly plans to choose from and each plan represents a shaving blades subscription: good, better and best. After the subscription you get the appropriate handpiece to go with the chosen shaving blade heads subscription plan with the 1st shipment, and any consecutive shipments only feature the shaving blade heads. This is the ad for the thing:



I kinda browsed around on the YouTube trying to find more about the Dollar Shave Club, and one of the guys said that he tried it, was satisfied witt it but moved on to other shaving blades by a brand called Dorco. What I gathered from it is that the Dorco is a some popular Chinese shaving razor brand and that some company called Pace is marketing these razors here in the states. They have a wide lineup of different products, including razor blade heads with 6 active razor strips. Currently I am paying around $26.00 for 4 Gillete Fusion Proglide Power razor blade heads and I am feeling the damage on the wallet, so I am open to try out these Dorco blades, but I am still thinking about them. Anyway, if I will get them then I will try them out and report the result here on the blog. Here is the video clip about the Dorco: