BLOG — FOOD

Shrove Tuesday or "Pancake Day" marks the last day before the Christian holiday of Lent, traditionally a period of self-induced food abstinence, associated with clearing your kitchen of all goods such as sugar, fats and eggs. For some reason Lent is one of the least popular holidays falling well behind Arbor Day. It just might have something to do with not being able to eat any delicious foods.

It's commonly known as Pancake Day because it represents the perfect opportunity to use such ingredients ahead of the fasting period. Why it wasn't called Cupcake Day is still a mystery. Cupcakes are the pancakes' reckless cousin...fun, good looking, and gets you into trouble, but still gets invited back to family gatherings because who can stay mad at a cupcake?

Pancake Day takes place 47 days before Easter Sunday. Because the date of Easter Sunday is dictated by the cycles of the moon, not to be confused with the lunar cycle of the werewolf, Pancake Day can occur anytime between February 3 and March 9.

Now, go and eat some pancakes...and enjoy!

We wanted to do something nice for everyone in the HMNIM family. So we thought, flowers? No, that's stupid. Can you imagine? Ordering a package and getting some wilted, dying flowers in your package. So, we went back to the drawing board. Cash? We could put some money in everyone's order, but that's really not that thoughtful. That's something your aunt and uncle get you because they don't really know you well enough to get you a good present. Now, we think we know you pretty well, so you can forget about getting a cash present from us. What is the one thing that almost everyone loves? Chocolate. And if you don't like chocolate, you can regift it to someone else and they might like it, and most likely like you more than before for giving them the gift of chocolate.

When can you expect this gift? Maybe just in time for Valentine's Day? Stay tuned, and be sure to have some cold milk ready.

Jerusalem, Mecca, Varanasi, Disneyland, like all holy places, one must make the pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime. We made the trek to Highland Park last week to the temple of Mark Trombino's Donut Friend. Mark got his start in the donut business like most people. He started out in the music industry, making good music sound great for the likes of Jimmy Eat World, Blink-182, Motion City Soundtrack, Midtown...the list goes on and on here.

Mark's take on the donut is a refreshing one. Sure, they have some with fun band-inspired names, but it's way more than that. He's brought a novel approach to an industry that hasn't seen a new idea since the donut hole was discovered in 1913 (we aren't counting the Cronut as a new idea since it's still just a donut, and fried croissants have been around since the early 80's). Mark's idea, put simply, has combined the ease of ordering at Subway with the toppings of a PinkBerry yogurt shop.

You can pick your donut canvas from several choices. We went with vanilla cake. They take your donut, slice it in half and that's where the fun begins. Now, we move over to the fillings. Locally sourced jams and other concoctions of delight await. The raspberry habanero jam was calling our name. 

From there you move down to glazes, yes glazes. And then, regrettably there is only one last step, your toppings. Candies, nuts, sauces, sugars, bacons, and more. Enough to blow your mind that this is really happening....that this place really exists and it's not just a fever dream brought on by the onslaught of Stage 2 Diabetes.

Be sure to check out this place. It's pretty amazing, but we suspect that most of you didn't get halfway through this post before jumping into your car and heading to the new holy land, which is 5107 York Blvd.

If you get the New Tees On The Block reference then you either grew up in the 90's or your television is broken and stuck on VH1. You really need to get that fixed, having only one channel is no way to go through life. Sure you could read a book or go outside, but there are literally hundreds of TV channels that you could be watching and to limit yourself to just VH1 is crazy. Do you know how many shows there are about cooking? Or ghosts? Wait, idea time! Why has no one come up with a paranormal cooking show? It's genius! Don't even think about flying to Hollywood and trying to pitch our million dollar idea. We came up with it first. Not exactly sure how that would work. Celebrity ghost judge? No, it's a terrible idea. You can have it. We've got lots of projects we are already working on over the next few months, and we can't get sidetracked with "Ghost Chef", plus there are three new HMNIM tees coming out next week. And part 2 of the Mark Hoppus "Hi My Name Is" video series, but enough about Mark, let's get the focus back on the new tees. New Tees coming soon.

This blog title is very witty and you don't even know why yet. You're probably wondering what the hell we're talking about. We are talking "rare" as in, only the second ever to be seen. This post is about a six-legged octopus or hexapus as it were. The only ever sighting took place back in 2008 in north Wales. That creature, was lovingly named "Henry the Hexapus". Well, if only the most recent find lived long enough to have a name...read on.

Hexie as we've just nicknamed it, was caught in Greece by happy family man Labros Hydras. 

Labros and family were quite pleased with their catch of Hexie. They played with her, took photos and generally had a fun time with little Hexie. But that fun was short-lived. Literally "short-lived", because shortly after these family vacation photos were taken, the Hydras family decided it was time eat the poor, rare creature.

The Hydras did indeed make a meal of Hexie, even after being told by a local chef that he wouldn't cook the animal because it was such a rare find. But the Hydras had made up their minds and Hexie was no more. The End.

Once every few thousand years comes an invention that changes the world. Changes the world in a way that effects every man, woman, and child. Some would argue that it was the automobile or the computer but those people would be wrong, dead wrong. In fact, some people would call those people idiots. Because we all know that the single most important invention was invented by Dominique Ansel. Did he cure cancer? Find life on Mars? Purify water for 3rd world nations? No, he combined the flaky goodness of a croissant with the heavenly perfection of a donut. May I present you with the Cronut.

Ansel was recognized in 2013 with the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef. And if all goes according to plan, he will receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his Cronut. Because if there is one thing that can bring all humanity together is fried dough and sugar. Did I mention that they are pumped full of cream? No? I didn't did I? They are pumped full of cream, might as well be pumped full of angel tears because this is as close to heaven as some of us may ever get. 

There is only one place in the entire world to buy a Crount and that is at Dominque's Bakery in New York. They are released every morning and sell out within minutes. For those of you lucky enough to live in New York, you should probably drop out of school, quit your job, abandon your family, postpone that life saving surgery and go wait in line. There can be nothing more important than tasting one of these Cronuts.