Look what the UPS man just dropped off:

Yummy caramel apples from Sherm Edwards Candies. It’s probably too late to order some apples for yourself but they’ve got a ton of other tasty treats for you. We love everything they have to offer!

Thanks Dave!

October is a special time of the year for the folks at OrangeYouGlad. We decided years ago that instead of sending Christmas cards or gifts to our clients, we would focus on Halloween (it being the bestest day of the year of course). We’re furiously working on our 2009 promotion but thought you might like to revisit some of our past promos:

Read Scary Mary’s Little Bleak Book

Create your own Paper Plate Masks

Cook up something from our Eerie Eats Recipe Cards

Have a drink in our VooDoo Lounge

October 11 is World Zombie Day - your chance to smear on some blood and gnaw on human body parts. If you live in the Pittsburgh area (I’m looking at you Dave) you can do your zombie-thang at the actual Monroeville Mall, featured in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

Some of my fav zombies flicks:

This is on my list of movies to see - I think World Zombie Day would be a good day to do so:

And just for fun, here’s a great track from The Zombies

The only excuse we’ll accept is if you are a celebrity that has recently died. Otherwise you must come to our party!

Join us at the Bell House on June 29 at 7 PM for a FREE Night of Rock celebrating the launch of two new local Brooklyn-based businesses - King Killer Studios and xtrapulp, and the 4-year anniversary of a third local business – Realty Collective.

The evening will feature 5 bands, tacos by Calexico (first 50 tacos are free!), and we’re also going to hold it down with an actual free raffle. That’s right, show up and you can win stuff. Stuff!! Will be raffled!!

What else have you got to do on a Monday night other than keep it local and go bananas at a raffle?

You will raise the devil horns to these bands:

Wounded Buffalo Theory
Kabona Zombies
Mike Hunchback and the Weird Fantasy Band
CONDO
In Musth
Dj sets by Robot Hot Dog

More about the event online on facebook.

A new joint opened up in our neck of the woods - Olga’s On Smith. Finally a place to get a coffee right on our block! Olga’s serves up healthy, kosher, and delicious fare, in a really nice and elegantly simple little storefront just up the street. (401 smith). There are a number of vegan, dairy free and/or gluten-free items.

I’ve been hitting them up for breakfast and lunch lately and I have a few favorites from their menu. Namely the Israeli couscous salad with mint (pictured below), the vegetarian lasagna and my favorite of favorites the pan fried eggplant in a pita with vegan dill sauce (also shown below). Unfortunately I’ve also become helplessly addicted to their Hungarian raspberry shortbread. Why shortbread? why did you have to come into my life?

eggplant sandwich. Going to get one today. YUM!

The CDC has said you cannot catch swine flu from eating pork so head on down to the Brooklyn Pork Off this weekend.

According to the Pork Off site, “the sausage-stuffed donuts, smoked baby back ribs, candied bacon ice cream, pressed pork belly sandwiches, pinakbet, and the rest of the pork pack will be properly handled, and royally, excellently cooked.”

Bacon. In Brooklyn. Sunday.

more info

Well, actually last cry because this was the last package of the Bacon of the Month Club.

Charles Star, who’s wife and cute baby (Sadie, I’m playing matchmaker with you two when you’re old enough!) were out of town, hosted a poker game last week. In attendance were the usual crowd (Dawn, Alceste, and Kearns) and a bunch of jokers who had us laughing through the night.

I felt some trepidation about this selection - garlic infused bacon. I was worried that the garlic would overpower the sweet sweet bacon.

Whole garlic cloves must have been inserted in the slabs of meat before they were smoked and sliced.

Kearns had attended many of the “cooking bacon in other folk’s kitchen”-paloozas and always expressed his disdain for the porky products (notice his thumbs down yet again). He attributed this aversion to his religious upbringing. We all laughed when he mentioned that he had recently eaten bacon, turkey bacon - which of course is not bacon but smoked, processed turkey. However, after minimal peer pressure, he forsook his religion and delved into the glory of bacon.

Sorry Kearns, not the most flattering photo

The finished product. Quite tasty, especially the pieces of garlic that fell out of the slices.

Now that the subscription is over (thanks again Al!) I’m a little sad that I have no more packages to look forward to but it certainly has been fun. My favorite bacon of the subscription had to be the cinnamon apple flavored bacon. I was quite surprised because I thought the additional flavoring would overpower or be artificial. Perhaps it was actually the sweet taste of victory that influenced me.

Every website deserves a slice of bacon!

Bacon-ify your website:

Hat tip to Veronica for the yummy link.

After many missed opportunities to cook up a Bacon of the Month package at LJ’s place we finally settled on Lost’s Season 5 premiere night. Both the bacon and the show did not disappoint.

This month’s selection was the typical smoked bacon. Unlike most of the packages from the BoMC this one was not too salty. The New Braunfels’ bacon was thick slabs of meaty goodness that balanced the sweet and salty quite nicely.

Although you can’t see it in this picture, directly behind me was the cutest Hello Kitty humidifier. LJ swears by it and I’m thinking of replacing my current one that doesn’t work so great.

yummy yummy bacon

We also played the Mookie to not so good results - too many distractions with Lost, bacon and my stupid laptop mouse going wonky.

As this was the Lost package of bacon and not the Last package there’s one more to go. February’s selection is tentatively scheduled to be cooked at Charles Star’s which should be an entertaining evening of laughs, poker and of course yummy bacon.

The people have spoken (well, DawnSummers has commented) so here’s the November bacon post.

Way back in November the Brooklyn crew were invited over to Jersey City to check out Alceste and Dawn2’s new home and watch some football (in hopes of furthering DawnSummers football knowledge in preparation for her quiz this upcoming Sunday). And what goes great with football (other than beer and chips and salsa and pizza and pretzels and…)? Bacon of course! As you probably know by now, bacon goes great with everything. Say it with me Kearns, bacon goes great with everything.

So I used this opportunity to cook up the November package from the Bacon of the Month Club. You may recall that I used Alceste’s kitchen before (remember that hilarious Superbowl when Tom Brady was so embarrassed he had to later injure himself so he could hide away in his lovenest with Giselle?) Well, this was a brand new Alceste kitchen so bacon cooking was on.

November’s BoMC

November’s selection was the typical applewood smoked bacon - I think 75% of the bacon from the BoMC has been applewood smoked.

lovely new cooktop

cooking in Alceste’s second kitchen

1/4 of the package cooked

I cooked up the whole package and Alceste commented that it was a lot of bacon to eat. I had no fear that we would scarf it all down and other than the one partial slice that ended up in Dawn2’s coffee, we demolished the whole plate (well, not the plate, but the bacon on the plate).

I should be getting one more package from the BoMC and I still have a garlic-infused bacon selection that needs to be cooked in someone else’s kitchen so let me know if your kitchen is available. (Sorry CK - not planning on bringing a package to Vegas with me. LJ - still need to cook at your place. Charles - plan another poker game so I can come cook a package on Hawthorne St.)

With my regular Tuesday night poker game cancelled I thought I’d spend a quiet night in watching the ocassional returns. However, the evil temptress DawnSummers coaxed me out with promises of a new kitchen to cook bacon in and the possibility of some poker. How could I turn down both bacon and poker?

September’s Bacon of the Month package

cooking in Pi’s kitchen

yum yum

Kearns’ disapproval

For some insane reason Kearns is fearful of all things pork - he is truly the anti-Homer.

Of all the BoMC bacon that I’ve cooked so far this has been my favourite. While cooking, it gave off a pleasant cinnamon aroma. It did have a slight cinnamon-y taste but I really couldn’t detect an apple flavor. Not too sweet and not too salty - as Goldilocks would say, it was “just right.”

DawnSummers agrees that this bacon was quite tasty

Alas there was no poker but yay! we won!

As we drove home from Pi’s the streets of Manhattan were filled with cheering folks and honking cars. Union Square was mobbed with celebrants overjoyed in victory.

The best part…waking up this morning to see that we still had won!

Over here at 423smith (a.k.a - OrangeYouGlad) we’ve spent the last year or so working on the branding, web design, print and package design, and even the signage (see those cute wall decals?) for new Washington DC based cupcake shop Hello Cupcake. That is a full year of looking at photos of Penny’s tasty creations, drooling over their delicious descriptions, imagining their oh so delectible cake-tastic taste. And now, as of today, the shop is finally open and I am in the wrong zipcode to be able to get my hands on one of those precious little jewels.

Truth be told, I was able to get a hello cupcake teaser back in April when soon-to-be “Grandma” Duncan suprised me by contacting Penny to bake cupcakes for my baby shower. But, it has only left me wanting MORE!

These really are the best cupcakes I have EVER had (and I am not just saying this because Penny is our client/friend.) So, if you are reading this and you are in the DC area, please go treat yourself to a Velvet Elvis and have a second (or third) one for me.

a quick look at what the blogs are saying..

Washingtonian.com - The Opening Day Scene at Hello Cupcake, August 25, 2008

DCist - First Look: Hello Cupcake, August 25, 2008 includes some nice photos of our design handy work - packaing, logo, signage etc…

Daily Candy Washington DC - I Say Hello, August 25, 2008

If only Sadie’s middle name was Bacon! If I ever have a kid I’m definitely including Bacon in their name. Okay, I think I’ll have to settle on Bacon as the name of my next dog.

Little Sadie (well, actually Tammy and Andrew) kindly offered up their kitchen for some bacon cooking this weekend. I had just received the August shipment from the Bacon of the Month Club so I decided to go with that package rather than busting out the June or July selections.

August’s Bacon of the Month selection

I’ve never had, and therefore never cooked, cottage bacon before. I fried it up and that seemed to work out okay.

Cooking bacon in T&A’s kitchen

It reminded me a lot of the bacon served in Australia.

Brooklyn LJ snatching a piece

Everyone at brunch seemed to like it but I wasn’t a big fan. One thing I’ve noticed with the BotMC bacon is that it has been really salty. I’m not sure if that’s because I typically don’t use salt and thus the bacon seems extra salty to me or if it actually is that salty. However, the cottage bacon wasn’t sweet or salty. I found it kind of bland and think it would work best when paired with other ingredients such on sandwiches.

The bacon wrangling is getting out of hand. I’ve got June and July’s bacon waiting for a kitchen. August’s has yet to come but it will be here soon. Potential kitchens include Tammy’s, LJ’s, and Alceste’s second home. If F-Train ever returns to Brooklyn I’m volunteering his kitchen whether he likes it or not - although we all know how much he loves his bacon so how can he refuse?