My wife has been eating a lot of brown rice lately. She really likes the Minute Rice single serve bowls. However, they're a $1/serving and like Kenji, I can't cook rice very well on the stove top. I would like to keep it under $30. So what do you guys recommend?

Hi everybody! I find myself wanting homemade pizza quite often, but not wanting to make the dough each time. Ideally I would like to make one big batch of dough then freeze one pizza size balls of it. I was thinking of taking it out in morning to let it thaw and rise and then cook it when I get home. Is this possible and how are the results?

In technology terms, vaporware is a product that is annouced but is never released. I bring this up because every day on my way to work, I pass a half renovated restaurant that says "Coming Soon" and has said that for the past six months. In its previous life, it was a small burger joint that closed a few years ago and sat vacant until a little while ago. About eight months ago, the for rent sign was removed and remodeling began. The exterior of the building was painted and new signage was put up exclaiming that the new restaurant would serve Egyptian fast food. There was newspapers put in the windows that are still there and it doesn't look like there was much work done in months.
I really don't know that much about what it takes to open a restaurant, but it doesn't seem that a small 30 seat fast food joint place should take this long. I'm assuming that the owners of the restaurant are paying rent on the place so for every day the it's not open, it's losing money. So is this restaurant vaporware or will it pull a Duke Nukem Forever and eventually open? Have you heard of a restaurant being annouced, but it never opened?

Since last February, we've all marvelled at Adam's Cookie-Stuffed Cookie where an Oreo is stuffed inside a chocolate chip cookie. But is there a way to get more cookie goodness inside of it? It's an enigma wrapped in mystery stuffed inside cookie dough. After pondering this dilemma for many a moon, I believe that I have cracked the three level cookie quandry. The secret is...Biscoff Spread. Biscoff Spread is basically peanut butter with ground up Biscoff cookies instead of peanuts. I plan on making the Fauxreos using Bravtart's recipe, but instead of using vanilla cream, I will be using Biscoff Spread to fill my cookie. Is this madness or genius, I do not know. I'm not even sure that a cookie-in-a-cookie-in-a-cookie won't cause the apocalypse. But I will find out and it will be delicious.

Since AHT loves crazy Japanese burgers, here's another one: a nine inch Whopper. It comes in two versions, fresh avacado and nacho cheese with tortilla chips, cheese sauce and jalapeno peppers. It retails for around $22, but you can't put a price on the happiness this culinary masterpiece will bring to all that consume it.

I used to enjoy seeing how much (or little in my case) about certain foods and drinks. I looked in the archieves and the last quiz was posted in November. Is it not possible to do quizzes anymore since the redesign or is there nobody to write them? Thanks for reading.

Thanks to Hawk Krall's excellent Hotdog of the Week series, we know of a multitude of various regional hot dog varieties (Chicago, Detroit Coney,etc...), but I'm having a hard time coming up with a similiar list for hamburgers. I know of the Juicy Lucy in Minnesota and the fried onion burger in Oklahoma, but burgers just seem to be more uniform across the country. Are there any other regional varieties that I'm missing?

In an update to my previous post in Talk, the winner of America's Next Great Restaurant, Soul Daddy, is closing their final location at the Mall of America. In the end, the show (10 weeks) lasted longer than the restaurant it created (8 weeks.)

According to Eater, America's Next Great Restaurant winner Soul Daddy is closing their locations in New York and Los Angeles and keeping the location in the Mall of America open. The two closed locations were open for about a month. I really don't think that this location will last for much longer either. This really isn't that surprising of news given how low the ratings for the show were and how tough it is to open a new restaurant.

I just had lunch at Wendy's that had the new Coca-Cola Freestyle fountain with over 100 flavors. I didn't try all the flavors, but I did sample all the flavors of regular Coke except Orange which was out. Here is a quick review of what I had:
Cherry: Tasted just like the Cherry Coke you would normally get out of fountain. Very pleasant artificial cherry flavor.
Vanilla: Good vanilla flavor and not overpowering.
Lime: Very odd tasting. Lime flavor was there, but some other flavor was present that I couldn't identify.
Rasberry: The worst of the bunch. Bad artificial rasberry flavor and it was acidic like the ratio of carbonated water/syrup was off. I was disappointed since this was the flavor I was looking forward to the most.
Cherry Vanilla: Now onto the best flavor. Very pleasing combination of both flavors. It came out silghtly red and reminded me of Dr Pepper. Coke needs to sell this stuff in cans ASAP.

Has anybody else tried it yet and what are your favorite flavors?

Sure raw and grilled onions are staple burger toppings found just about everywhere beef hits a griddle or a grill, but what about their deep fried friend? Mostly found on "Western" burgers also containing barbecue sauce, bacon and chedder, can they break free of their rodeo stereotype or are they doomed to life of "Yee Haws!"? And if they are an acceptable topping, are battered or breaded onion rings the way to allium-beef nirvana?

Some taquerias put rice in their burritos, others do not. How do you like them, ¿con arroz or sin arroz? I prefer the rice on the side as somtimes the rice can overwhelm a burrito and become just a tortilla filled with rice.

For those who haven't been to Hawaii, POG is a juice blend containing passionfruit, orange and guava juices. Ever since I was there five years ago on my honeymoon, I've been trying to find it on the mainland or create a version myself. I found that the company that makes the original POG, Meadow Gold, will ship it to you, but it's pretty expensive. And that a company called Hawaii's Own makes a frozen concentrated product, but it only contains 10% fruit juice and a lot of high fructose corn syrup. Bolthouse Farms also just came out with their version of POG, but it is pretty expensive and contains a fair amount of apple juice. However, with a little experimentation and a lot of luck, I came up a version that lived up to my memory from those many years ago. POG is great with some rum for a tropical cocktail and it also makes an excellent braising liquid for pork shoulder.