Blizzard Ramen with Meatballs

This is what it looks like when the plow has been by a couple
times, but it's still gonna keep snowing all night

Sometimes in life you get thrown a curveball. Sometimes that curveball is actually billions of snowflakes (actually more like quintillions, but billions is easier to wrap your head around) falling and covering everything in your immediate geographic area with a cold blanket of beauty and traffic collisions. Sometimes you spend hours cleaning off of your car and driving through treacherous conditions just to get to the store, only to find out that the store wasn't dumb enough to open in this weather. The point is, sometimes you have to make due with whatever disparate ingredients you have lying around, and try to make something tasty and nutritious. Or at least tasty and not poisonous. Or at least tasty and not immediately poisonous. Listen, tasty is the important part. Survive until the end of the snow and then you can go get all of the fancy medical attention you want.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Ground Beef
2 packs Ramen Noodle Soup
3 cups Water
1 cup assorted Frozen Vegetables
1 cup Seasoned Breadrumbs
1 Egg
1/2 an Onion
2 tsp Grated Ginger
2 tsp Soy Sauce
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1/2 tsp Onion Powder
1/2 tsp Toasted Sesame Oil
1/8 tsp Hot Sauce
1/8 tsp Crushed Red Pepper
Salt
Oil

Now, I know that's a daunting list of ingredients. It's in the double digits, and the world is ending outside, and you don't want to deal with this. You'd rather just order a pizza. There is no pizza. The pizza place exists outside of your apartment, a place that may-or-may-not even still exist at this point. And most of these ingredients are just spices anyway, so deal with it. Take a bowl and mix together your ground beef with your breadcrumbs, egg, onion powder, hot sauce, sesame oil, and half of your ginger, soy sauce, and garlic powder. Got all of that? Good. Once your hands are covered in meat goop, wash them off, using some form of witchcraft or yoga to actually turn on the faucet without touching it with your gross meat hands. Then thinly slice your onion half and sauté it in some oil along with a standard human's pinch of salt over medium heat until the onions start to soften and turn a little translucent. Form your meat goop into golf-ball sized balls and then crank the heat on your pan up to medium-high, and toss in your meatballs. Or gently place them in if you're a wuss who doesn't like grease burns. Don't stir them around a whole bunch. Give them time to brown before turning them and repeating on as many sides as time and geometry will allow you.

There's nothing quite like eating way too much food from the
comfort of your couch while watching the olympics

While your meatballs and onions are doing their thing, stir the seasoning packets from your ramen in to your water along with another pinch of salt, your crushed red pepper and the rest of your ginger, soy sauce, and garlic powder. Once your meatballs are sufficiently browned, add in this spiced murky water along with your frozen vegetables and use a wooden spoon to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of your pan. Bring the whole mess to a boil, then cover it and reduce it to a simmer for 10 minutes. If you live in a standard apartment building, it's about now that your neighbors will start sensing the presence of food, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, and start wandering the halls in a zombielike trance, trying to find its source. Don't be fooled into letting them in to your home. It's totally a trap. You might not all make it through this winter alive, and you want to make sure that you don't get killed and eaten. Anyhow, after your 10 minutes are up, take the solid bricks of noodles from your ramen and break them up into about 4 pieces each. Add them in to your pan and stir until they're tender. And that's it! You have food to make it through the storm possibly. Happy shoveling!

Whiskey Fudge!

If life and the Simpsons have taught me anything, it's that
Yale's motto really should be Semper Fudge

So I'm going to be straight with you all. I've been known to enjoy some whiskey on occasion. And yes, that may have been a contributing factor to my decision that it would be an excellent addition to fudge, but that doesn't change the fact that I was totally right. It gives it a subtle complexity that tastes awesome, and helps keep the fudge from being too sweet. Too sweet sounds like a good thing for fudge, but if you make it a little less sweet then, aside from tasting better, you can totally justify eating significantly more of it at one time, which means you'll feel slightly less bad about yourself when you snork down half of this recipe before lunch. And sure, if you have a super low alcohol tolerance it's entirely possible that this recipe will allow you to literally get drunk on fudge (Drunk On Fudge is definitely going to be the title of my memoir), but that's a risk that I'm willing to take.

Ingredients:

14 oz. can of Sweetened Condensed Milk
12 oz. Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
5 oz. Bittersweet Chocolate Chips
1.5 tsp Whiskey (I used Irish Whiskey, which worked really well. Technically, you can use whatever whiskey you want, but if you use garbage whiskey you may end up with garbage fudge.)
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

You may have noticed that there's not a whole lot going on in terms of ingredients. You're welcome. The entire point of fudge is to be easy and delicious. And sure, you can add fancy things like caramel sauces or toasted nuts on top if you like, but they're like ketchup on a really good hot dog, or like your appendix. If you like it then sure, go and have fun with it, but it's ultimately not really necessary. And before all of you ketchup lovers and appendix lovers start sending me your angrily worded handwritten emails, let me just remind you that - and I mean this sincerely - I don't care. Anyhow, open up your can of sweetened condensed milk, and let it gloop out of the can into a pot. After about 3 minutes of waiting for it to stop taking its sweet time, try futilely to speed up the process using spoons, spatulas, and other various implements of destruction. Once your can is more or less emptied into your pot dislodge any dust and spiders that may have settled colonies on your person, and crank the heat up to medium-low. Stir occasionally for a couple minutes to let your milk heat up before adding in both your semi-sweet and bittersweet chocolate chips. Add them in in about 3 batches. Keep stirring and let the whole thing melt and smooth out before adding more in. Normally you'd melt chocolate in a double boiler, and be hesitant about stirring it because crystals could form and it could seize up, and you could be the butt of many jokes made by me at your expense. This is all technically true, but in my experience the sweetened condensed milk helps to prevent this, kind of in the same way corn syrup would, by acting as a buffer between potential subversive crystal clumps. Follow your heart.

If possible, it's advisable to eat fudge in mountain form

Once your chocolate is melted in turn the heat off and stir in your whiskey and vanilla. Once they're incorporated and everything is smooth, pour the whole mess into a baking pan that you've thoughtfully lined with aluminum foil, and let it cool down to room temperature for about an hour. How big of a pan to use is up to you, but in my mind it's not really fudge unless it's thick. Otherwise it's just a chocolate bar. Toss your fledgling fudge in the fridge (I want to stop writing things like that, but I don't know how) and wait for it to set up completely, which ostensibly takes a couple of hours, but feels like an eternity. Allow extra time for several misguided attempts at eating your fudge early, wherein you get goop on your hands, refrigerator door, and possibly walls. When it's finally ready, turn the foil upside-down over a plate, and then remove it to reveal your fudgy treasure. Slice it into whatever servings you think are appropriate (e.g. in half, or completely unsliced) and consume it as fast as possible to keep intruders from claiming it as your own. You waited hours for this fudge. Your friends and family can pry it from your cold dead hands. Enjoy!