UPDATE: Southern Style Chicken Biscuit @ McDonald’s…with honey!

After carefully considering everyone’s advice on the subject, I did finally try improving upon perfection yesterday by adding some honey to my Southern Style Chicken Biscuit @ McDonald’s. And let me tell ya, it was amazing!

Since I wasn’t sure if my local McDonald’s would have honey on hand for the experiment, I brought my own in a tiny plastic container that Christine picked up at The Container Store.

Now, I gotta admit that when Christine bought these little containers a few weeks back, I kinda gave her a hard time about them: “What could we possibly need those for?” Well, now I know what we needed them for…those little guys are the perfect vehicle for transporting my honey to McDonald’s! Yeah! So, I am happy to admit I was totally wrong about your containers, sweetie. Sorry…

Anyway, yesterday morning, while the guys at the register stared and laughed — I try to pretend I’m not a breakfast regular now, but I think they’re on to me — I whipped out my ghetto-ass container of honey and my camera and got to work.

And though it is kind of crazy messy — I had honey everywhere when I left, including the steering wheel of the car and mysteriously, my cell phone! — I gotta tell you, the addition of honey to the mix is pretty damn spectacular! I shit you not, amigos, this is heaven on a biscuit. You gotta try it…

I should also mention that they are now playing cool Stax-style Southern Soul at my McDonald’s in the morning too. Man, they are really selling the Southern experience hard right now…and I, for one, am truly loving it. Yee-haw!

Ben & Jerry’s newest flavor: Imagine Whirled Peace

Christine has always favored Ben & Jerry’s over all other ice creams, and even though I must admit to being much more of a Baskin Robbins man myself, I do love me some sweet, socially-conscious Ben & Jerry’s sometimes too.

Their Chunky Monkey kind of slays me…it’s amazing. And Christine actually fought a woman to the death for the last pint of Cherry Garcia at Vons one time. Yeah, um…we don’t talk about that much…

The thing I dig most about Ben & Jerry’s is that they make great gourmet ice cream for a cause, several of them in fact, and yet despite the often serious nature of the causes they morph into flavors, the company maintains a cool, cheeky sense of humor. Who else but those crazy hippies from Vermont could take a cause as noble as ONE.org’s campaign to “make poverty history” and make it into ONE Cheesecake Brownie?

Haven’t tried that one yet, but man, that is just hilarious. So when we heard that Ben & Jerry’s were creating a new flavor to honor John Lennon’s lifelong commitment to the peace movement, we were all over that shit!

Launched in Times Square on May 27th, Imagine Whirled Peace is caramel and sweet cream ice cream swirled with fudge peace signs and toffee cookie pieces. And, man alive, is it delicious!

Even cooler than the ice cream is the way it was introduced to the world. Staging a recreation of Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous “bed-ins for Peace” with super cool actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, B&J’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield and Jeremy Gilley, founder of Peace One Day, Imagine Whirled Peace was literally launched from bed. How cool is that?

As always, a portion of the profits go towards the Peace One Day foundation, which was started by Gilley to keep the peace movement alive in today’s crazy world. Peace One Day events are celebrated annually on September 21st.

And while she wasn’t there in person to launch the flavor, Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono did provide a statement for the event that supposedly brought down the house…er, bedroom. “Make peace — a dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” Wow, almost me wanna run out and buy more some ice cream…nicely put Yoko!

And while I gotta admit that I was not initially turned on by the actual ingredients in the flavor, one bite of that toffee cookie dough goodness changed my mind immediately. Imagine Whirled Peace is straight-up fantastic! And though I usually find large chunks of chocolate in ice cream to be too hard, those tasty little peace signs literally melt in your mouth. Must be the fudge factor.

So even if you don’t eat it in bed, I urge you to check out the links above, help make a difference and most of all, as Lennon famously encouraged us to do with peace, give this flavor a change, baby. You’ll love it!

Apple’s new iPhone 3G!

Unfortunately, Christine and I have not joined the iPhone generation yet, but that hasn’t stopped us from following every new release and upgrade with the greatest of interest! So, when we heard that Steve Jobs pulled a lighter, faster and, best of all…cheaper, iPhone out of his pocket at Apple’s WWDC in San Francisco today, we were breathless with anticipation!

Not that either of us are in the market for a new phone right now — and honestly, as long-time Sprint users, we aren’t really looking to upgrade until iPhones are open to all phone carriers! — but man, these things are so damn cool to play with! And with the announcement today of scads of new third-party applications going on sale soon at a separate iPhone Apps Store, well, wow…how can you lose?

Practically everyone on the set in New Mexico had iPhones, and even though the browser was a little twitchy sometimes, it was still pretty cool to have all that power in your back pocket. Need to look someone’s credits up on the imdb? Bam! There you go! So cool…

And now, with a faster speed and even the inclusion of a GPS system, man, that thing is gonna rule the earth! Scheduled to go on sale at Apple Stores nationwide and online on July 11th, the new and improved iPhone will cost $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB version. That’s a pretty huge drop from last year’s original release price of $599 and $499 for far less space.

Though we were hoping to hear that Apple had opened the floodgates and made the iPhone available for use on the cell phone carrier of your choosing, we are still encouraged by the fact that the European version of the iPhone is open to several different carriers overseas.

So, hey, given time…maybe the same thing will happen here! Until then, we’ll just drool over all the shiny new iPhones when we visit the Apple Store…

Downtown L.A.’s “Ciudad”

On their very cool website, Ciudad invites one and all to “experience the bold and seductive flavors of the Latin World” and last night, we took them up on it!

Located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, Ciudad is the brainchild of world-renowned Chefs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger and though a little pricier than their fare at the similarly-themed Border Grill in Santa Monica and Las Vegas, Ciudad is worth every penny you pay. Seriously…it’s kind of magical.

Although Christine has eaten at Ciudad a number of times over the years — her workplace, downtown’s Central Library is practically across the street from the restaurant — I had only been there on one other occasion, but the memory of that meal has stayed with me ever since.

So after enjoying the sunset from the rooftop bar of The Standard nearby, we hiked on over to Ciudad for a late dinner with some of Christine’s co-workers. And seeing as the late night happy hour at Ciudad had begun just minutes before we walked in — incredibly enough, they have house mojitos, sangria and a number of other rocking good cocktails for only $4 a pop from 9-11 on Friday nights! — we could not have planned it better!

The only hitch to the late night happy hour is that you have to enjoy your drinks literally at the bar and cannot move to your table until after you’ve settled your tab. Fine by us! So we drank ourselves silly at the bar, settled the tab and stumbled to our table around 10-ish.

And the food? Wow…word’s cannot do this place justice. Fusing delicious new and classic authentic dishes from Spain, Mexico, South America, Central America, Cuba and even Portugal, the menu is almost as rich, colorful and varied as the crazy hip decor and art work inside.

We started with some incredible tapas-style dishes. And though the Peruvian Ceviche with plantain chips and Argentine Empandas (with wild mushroom, warm chipotle sauce and swiss chard!) were fantastic, I gotta say that my favorite of the three appetizers we shared was the Fried Spanish Brie. Dios mio, that stuff melted in your mouth…it was incredible.

And this from a man who is not a huge fan of the Brie…don’t get me wrong, I love me some soft cheeses, but Brie has never been my favorite. Until now!

And dinner was even more amazing! Not only were the hip, mid-century dishes super groovy to look at, but the plating of this food was out of this world. Beautiful culinary art on every plate…just gorgeous!

I had the slow-roasted Niman Ranch Carnitas with mashed yuca, organic black beans, fried plantains and grilled corn salsa. Wow, even just typing those words is making me drool. It was probably the best carnitas I’ve ever had anywhere…and that mashed yuca is something I wanna make at home, like, every night. I loved it!

Christine had a huge crusted pork chop from the “Specials” menu that not only tasted like heaven, but rivaled the Brontosaurus bone on “The Flintsones” in heft. That thing was enormous!

And that lovely pork chop was not alone in the size department, because, unlike other hipster haunts downtown, the portions at Ciudad are authentically gigantic. That’s right, they don’t eat dainty in any of the countries listed above, so why should we do it here? Sí se puede, indeed!

I don’t have any pictures to back this all up of course — Christine forbid me to photograph my food in front of her work friends — but you’ll have to trust me when I tell you that even the heartiest eaters out there will not leave this joint hungry. It’s just not possible…

So next time you find yourself downtown on a Friday night between 9-11PM — gotta hit that happy hour, I mean, come on, regular-priced Supremo Mojitos are $15! — check out Ciudad! Sure, it might cost you and arm and a leg, but I swear to God, the food you eat here will flash before your eyes when you die.

Yep, it’s that good!