You Can Thank Us Later, Coach Fulmer

Straight from YesButNoButYes.com's keyboard to Phil Fulmer's heart, we present to you [drumroll] Bacon-Flavored Vodka:

Makes up one pint.

• Fry up three strips of bacon
• Add cooked bacon to a clean pint sized mason jar. Trim the ends of the bacon if they are too tall to fit in the jar. Or you could go hog wild and just pile in a bunch of fried up bacon scraps.
• Optional: add crushed black peppercorns.
• Fill the jar up with vodka. Cap and place in a dark cupboard for at least three weeks.(No need to refrigerate)
• At the end of the three week resting period, place the bacon vodka in the freezer to solidify the fats. Strain out the fats through a coffee filter to yield a clear filtered pale yellow bacon vodka.
• Decant into decorative bottles and enjoy.

We're hearing new offensive coordinator Dave Rawson's duties include play calling, holding Phil's hair back, and fetching daddy's apple juice. Doesn't sound like much, but remember that he's got to fit all that in between Krispy Kreme runs.

Restaurant Review (Chicago): Aigre Doux

Our visit to Aigre Doux violated a number of the rules of intelligent restaurant eating -- we went during Chicago's Restaurant Week, late at night on a Wednesday, and to a place that bills its cuisine as "New American."

In this case, it shouldn't have mattered. Aigre Doux was named to Citysearch's Top 10 New Restaurants list, and its chefs are alums of Jean-Georges and Chateau Marmont. Throw in the fact that entrees clock in around $34, and we had good reason to expect a top-quality restaurant experience. Our visit, in a word? Meh.

Again, we have to mention that our party ordered off of the special prix fixe menu. Since they had run out of several items, however, our appetizers ended up coming off of the regular menu.

Apple and arugula salad with serrano ham and manchego cheese.
By consensus, this was the highlight of the meal, but should it have been? An apple-heavy salad is an odd choice for late winter, and the ingredients were B-grade at best. A classic pairing, expertly seasoned and perfectly boring.

Butternut squash soup.
At high-end restaurants, you usually get one of two things: 1) incredible ingredients that blow your doors off, or 2) innovative, interesting food with a twist. Here, we got butternut squash soup. Quite nice, and again expertly seasoned, but the ingredients were average and the dish seemed unfinished. No schnazzy crouton, no drizzle of exquisite olive oil to round things out. Butternut. Squash. Soup.

Baked salmon in a garlic sauce, served with polenta and an artichoke heart.
After dinner, several members of our party commented that it seemed like the food had been prepped and sitting in the back for hours, just waiting to be warmed through. This dish was the principal culprit, and really nailed the theme of the evening: fine, but not at this type of restaurant. Think about it -- baked salmon, $35. Oy.

Sweet and sour short ribs with squash puree and kale.
An unmitigated disaster. The meat was nicely cooked and very tender, but neither sweet nor sour (neither was the tasteless, thin, orange-colored sauce drizzled over it). The kale was fine, but totally out of place on the plate. It is unclear whether the puree was intended to be cold or hot; it was neither. Short ribs are basically a blank slate, with any number of options available for an inspired chef. Why the hell would you do this with them?

Sticky toffee pudding with Devonshire cream.
Chef Ameen's dessert was undoubtedly the "star" of the meal -- texturally interesting, packed with flavor, and topped with delicious cream. A little too sweet? Perhaps, but still a big win.

Other
The single best thing to hit the table was the bread. Ameen is supposed to be a whiz with pastries (and, we presume, also handles the baking), and this was a moist, cheese-crusted killer. Likewise, the after-dinner coffee was exceptional.

As for the other stuff ... well, we're generally food snobs, not restaurant snobs. We don't need (or really want) our napkins folded when we hit the bathroom, and we rarely notice service (unless highly informative) or decor (unless dazzling). When the food's not great, however, we tend to be a bit more critical on those fronts. Smudged windows and somewhat condescending, uneven service are generally things we overlook. In this case, they were mildly annoying.

Summary:
Frankly, we just don't understand what we paid for. If innovation isn't Aigre Doux's thing, ingredients and preparation need to be ... and they aren't. Our experience featured the rare flash of quality -- amazing bread, delicious cream -- and a whole lot of blah. At a restaurant featuring $20 entrees, that sort of thing might be tolerable. When the tab for two approaches $200, not so much.

Ratings follow the Zagats model. Food Price is for an average-priced entree, appetizer, and dessert. Wine Price is, in the grand tradition of Homer Simpson, for the "freshest" bottle on the menu.

Food: 20
Service: 21
Decor: 20
Food Price: $57
Wine Price: $42

Aigre Doux
Chefs Mohammed Islam & Malika Ameen
230 W Kinzie St
Chicago, IL 60610
Phone: (312) 329-9400

Women Are Stupid, But Great At Baking

If the Washington Post said it, it must be true. This marvelously offensive article confirms everything men have been trying to convince women of for centuries. Our favorite portion of the article is probably the line where the author professes a sincere belief in phrenology, but this paragraph is a close second:

I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies. I can't add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then what?). I don't even know how many pairs of shoes I own. I have coasted through life and academia on the basis of an excellent memory and superior verbal skills, two areas where, researchers agree, women consistently outpace men. (An evolutionary just-so story explains this facility of ours: Back in hunter-gatherer days, men were the hunters and needed to calculate spear trajectories, while women were the gatherers and needed to remember where the berries were.) I don't mind recognizing and accepting that the women in history I admire most -- Sappho, Hildegard of Bingen, Elizabeth I, George Eliot, Margaret Thatcher -- were brilliant outliers.

So there you have it, ladies. Women should take off the pants, stay at home, and perfect what I like to refer to as the Holy Trinity of Female Life Skills -- blow job technique, foot rub methodology, and the proper preparation of a gin & tonic.

Site Changes

Some of you may have noticed the new box (top right) entitled "Irons' List Of Links." Via the magic of Google Reader, we'll be able to instantly share all of the crap that's currently amusing us. We find this to be a much more convenient alternative to the ubiquitous "links post," though major developments will obviously still merit their own post.

Naturally, this won't keep us from posting pictures of liberated, successful women.

thanks to Poon of the SEC

And hell, we'll probably still throw up a few links from time to time ... like this beaut (via Deadspin) featuring the mighty Manatee Community College playing the Pittsburgh Pirates in a spring training tuneup. Surprising no one, the Manatees held the Buccos scoreless over the last 8 innings of the game. Did we mention that there was a 20 MPH wind blowing out to right? If you're one of the few remaining Pirates fans, now might be a good time to consider ritual suicide.

Oh, and there's this little gem, which can also be filed under "utterly unsurprising." Turns out, rugrats don't make you happy, and childless people have lives that are at least as fulfilling as Darren McFadden's. And, as the article notes, "they sure do have more money to squander as they try to pursue what happiness they can and strive to somehow fill up their allegedly empty lives."

Georgia v. Tennessee: The Coming Land War

Time to oil up your firearms, folks -- as you may have heard, Georgia is in the midst of an unprecedented drought. In the event the Jesus doesn't make it rain soon, Atlanta residents may have to plant cacti on their sprawling front lawns.

Anyway, the Georgia legislature has come up with a novel solution -- redraw the state's borders to include some of Tennessee's water supply.

Needless to say, the orange-wearing hillbilly trash have met this with protests ... and taunts, like this one from Chattanooga's mayor:

WHEREAS, it has come to pass that the heavens are shut up and a drought of Biblical proportions has been visited upon the Southern United States, and

WHEREAS, the parched and dry conditions have weighed heavily upon the State of Georgia and sorely afflicted those who inhabit the Great City of Atlanta, and

WHEREAS, the leaders of Georgia have assembled like the Children of Israel in the desert, grumbled among themselves and have begun to cast longing eyes toward the north, coveting their neighbor’s assets, and

WHEREAS, the lack of water has led some misguided souls to seek more potent refreshment or for other reasons has resulted in irrational and outrageous actions seeking to move a long established and peaceful boundary, and

WHEREAS, it is deemed better to light a candle than curse the darkness, and better to offer a cool, wet kiss of friendship rather than face a hot and angry legislator gone mad from thirst, and

Whereas, it is feared that if today they come for our river, tomorrow they might come for our Jack Daniels or George Dickel,

NOW THEREFORE, In the interest of brotherly love, peace, friendship, mutual prosperity, citywide self promotion, political grandstanding and all that,

I Ron Littlefield, Mayor of the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee,

Do hereby Proclaim that Wednesday, February 27, 2008 shall be known as “Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day”

Asshole. As a Georgia native, I'm excited about the prospect of an invasion. If drafted, I will serve, and god willing I'll be the man who gets to shell Neyland Stadium. But if things go south, I'm going to need to search damn hard for the motivation to defend Atlanta.

SEC Name Of The Week: Feb. 26 Edition

The clear #1 reason to have children? The opportunity to brand them with a ridiculous moniker that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their days. Thanks to a wonderful confluence of immigration, Yuppies, and a generally terrible education system, today’s America is a brilliant moment in child-labeling – sort of a Golden Age for Retarded Names, if you will.

Fortunately, many of these blessed children play football in the SEC. Each week in this space, we will introduce you to two of them. For an introduction to the SEC Football Names of the Week, go here.

SEC Name of the Week:

Lazarius Levingston, DE, LSU Tigers

Pregnant Mother: You know who I like in the Bible?

Father: Who?

Pregnant Mother: Lazarus.

Father: Oh yeah?

Pregnant Mother: Dude was a bad mofo. Hung with JC.

Father: Rose from the dead.

Pregnant Mother: Lazarus. Lazarus. How's that for our boy?

Father: I like the name. Lazarus. But it's a bit boring.

Pregnant Mother: Yeah.

Father: Shit needs zing.

Apologies In Advance

So it’s the offseason, and we ain’t got shit to do, right?

Look, we apologize for the lack of college football content on the site recently. Recruiting just isn’t our thing, and we have trouble getting all excited for winter practices or even the spring games. The niche that we enjoy the most (arrests and other bad behavior by athletes) has been filled. As most of you have doubtless figured out, a significant portion of our pleasure from watching college football is derived from watching institutions that we can’t stand lose in particularly humiliating fashion. It’s hard to get that sort of feeling from an intrasquad game (“Red totally crushed those Black losers hahahahahha”), so unless Jimmy Clausen blows an ACL or Tennessee gets the death penalty ... well, call us in August.

So how do we fill our time from February to July? Working in soup kitchens, building homes for the poor, spending time with our loved ones college baseball.

Yes, as Brady has already pointed out, this is one college sport that our undergraduate institution can compete in. For those of you who don’t know, Tulane’s baseball program is one of the best in the nation, regularly appearing in Omaha for the College World Series (please, please don’t ask how we’ve done once we’ve gotten there). Coached by the highly regarded Rick Jones, the team has produced talents by the name of Sutter, Aubrey, Gautreau, and Owings. Sure, you may only recognize that last name, but our stud draftees have had some bad luck with injuries of late. You’ll see more Tulane grads in the majors in the very near future, rest assured.

At Tulane, students spend a significant portion of spring at the park, knocking back cold ones and yelling the Hullabaloo (below) after each minor on-field success. It’s a pretty good way to spend a lazy spring day.

A One, A Two,
A Helluva
Hullabaloo
A Hullabaloo
Ray Ray
A Hullabaloo
Ray Ray
Hooray
Hooray
Vars Vars Tee Ay
Tee Ay, Tee Ay
Vars Vars Tee Ay
Tulane!

Yeah, it’s a silly cheer, but it becomes much more coherent after downing a flask of Jack. Our point is that baseball is one of the things we love about the school and New Orleans, and we aren’t alone. Tulane draws some of the largest crowds in the nation, and has a bitter instate rivalry with the Louisiana State Cheating Tiger team and its incompetent coaching staff. This year is especially exciting, featuring a new stadium and a number of high profile transfers.

And yes, this is all justification for the amount of time we’re about to spend talking about it.

Deal with it, people.