I'll Just Help Myself! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Potatoes au gratin

Potatoes au gratin is a cheesy potato dish that is eaten in quite a number of places. Depending on where you live, the cheese sauce can be made with different types of cheese. Sometimes cheddar is used, other times parmesan, gruyere, swiss, etc. The one thing is, though, that you must have at least one hard cheese, like cheddar or mozzerella, that will melt but stays hard at room temperature (this means no goat cheese!), although any cheese can be used in addition to the hard cheese. Even cottage cheese can be used, but that shouldn't be the main cheese used.

Answer: Poi

A chi, or chai, is an Indian spiced tea with milk. Chai can be bought at a store as dried leaves, or as a concentrate. You can either add milk or water to bring the concentrate down, but milk would be the true way to drink a chai.

Ham is from a pig, and can be eaten in hundreds of ways.

Cuy is, and I apologize in advance to animal lovers and the squeamish everywhere, but I must tell you, is a guinea pig.

Poi is a dish often eaten at Polynesian luaus. It is made by mashing the underground stem of the taro plant, after the taro has been cooked. Water is added to get the consistency just right, depending on how thick or how creamy the maker wants it to be served. In retrospect, it is very similar to mashed potatoes, as one can add milk or cheese for the desired texture of the mashed potatoes. You can even use purple potatoes, and make "Faux Poi", as I like to call it. Another way is to add dye to creamed corn, but that is a whole other quiz altogether.

Answer: Gruel and bread

Originally written by Charles Dickens in 1838, "Oliver Twist" has become an amazing success over the years, and has been made into musicals, movies, and several other theatre productions. It was Charles Dickens' second work, and the first novel to be about a child. Until this point, that was unheard of. The main character was always an adult.

Perhaps the most famous line from Charles Dickens' work would be that of Oliver asking for more gruel and day-old bread. Gruel is like porridge, but it can be much thinner. Gruel is made of oats, wheat, and certain types of flour, and it is boiled in milk or water. Sometimes it's not even cooked. It is a very cheap meal, which is why that was all the kids at the orphanage from "Oliver Twist" ate, but it wasn't very filling. That would be the reason Oliver wanted more, I suppose. And, of course, day old bread is not the best bread to eat, as it starts getting crusty and dried out, but I would imagine it could soak up the gruel quite nicely.

Answer: Chocolate Chip

Granted, Cookie Monster would eat any cookie he could get his paws on, but chocolate chip cookies would be his first choice. Cookie Monster was first voiced by Frank Oz, from his appearance in 1969 to 2002.

Cookies are usually made with a few basic ingredients, including flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, plus whatever else to make the cookie a different flavor. For instance, for a chocolate chip cookie, you would add chocolate chips, and for a peanut butter cookie, you would add peanut butter.

Mmmm, cookies. Awwwwn nom nom nom nom!

Answer: Coldstone

Coldstone Creamery was founded in 1988 in Arizona by the Sutherlands, a husband and wife team. Coldstone is known for its singing employees. Every time an employee notices a tip being given, they will begin to sing. Most of the songs involve ice cream in some way or another, and parody other songs, like the "Flintstones" theme song. Coldstone's flavors and toppings are endless. You can get anything from vanilla with sprinkles to coffee with hot fudge to banana with Oreos, or you can do something crazy, like cake batter mixed with cotton candy with cookie dough (my personal favorite). You can mix and match your ice cream flavors and toppings and the employees will make it for you, just the way you ordered. Coldstone also makes ice cream cakes.

Tim McGraw's "I Like it, I Love it" was released in 1995.

Answer: Skunk Spray

Nauseated yet? You should be. Ok, now stop reading if you have a weak stomach. Jelly Belly has a line called "BeanBoozled". In this set of 20 flavors, there are ten different colors of jelly beans. When you eat one, you could get an original flavor, or a revolting flavor such as the ones listed. The black could be "Licorice" or "Skunk Spray". One could be "Top Banana", or it could be "Pencil Shavings". The brownish yellow ones could be "Caramel Corn", or it could be "Moldy Cheese". You could be eating a "Coconut" Jelly Belly, or a "Baby Wipes" flavor. One might be "Berry Blue", but then again, it could be "Toothpaste". "Buttered Popcorn", which doesn't taste great to begin with, could end up tasting like "Rotten Eggs"! "Cafe Latte" might end up being "Ear Wax", and your "Juicy Pear" might end up being a "Booger". What about "Plum" tasting like "Black Pepper"? Or, probably the worst of all, the "Peach" Jelly Belly jelly bean tasting like "Vomit" instead? "BeanBoozled" jelly beans were released in 2008.

These aren't the only disgusting flavors made by Jelly Belly. Jelly Belly made some jelly beans based on the "Harry Potter" series, and, appropriately, called them "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans". These have been discontinued (hmmm, wonder why, could it be the vomit?). You could really get someone good with regular, harmless looking jellybeans, but what could it be?

Let me guess, you will now always second guess taking a jelly bean when someone offers you one, right? Be afraid, be very afraid.

Answer: Worcestershire sauce

Worcestershire sauce is notorious for it's unpronouncibility. Worcestershire sauce was made first in, you guessed it, Worcester, England in 1837.

To begin, rub seasoned salt into the meat, and marinate it in Worcestershire sauce. I love using Worcestershire sauce for the saltiness it adds to a dish, and when you cook a porkchop in a frying pan with a constant layer of the sauce in the pan, it will form a delicious, sweet and salty glaze on the porkchop. To add to the porkchop, you can use the caramelized bits on the pan to form a delicious gravy. To make gravy, add flour to the pan with a dash more Worcestershire sauce to create a roux. Then add the milk needed, and you don't even need seasonings, because the sauce and the seasoned salt will be quite enough, and pour the gravy on the pork chops. Usually, by the end of making pork chops for a family of four, you will go through nearly an entire bottle of sauce, between the marinating and the constantly adding sauce to the pan to keep the pork chops juicy. Potatoes are the perfect complement to this dish, in my opinion.

Well, there you go. You now have a delicious recipe to go and try tonight. You won't be disappointed.

Answer: Teriyaki chicken

Sesame chicken, orange chicken, and sweet and sour chicken can all be found in an average Chinese restaurant. You can also order cashew chicken, kung pao chicken, chicken chow mein, and all sorts of chicken dishes. Teriyaki chicken, though, would not be found in a Chinese restaurant, as it is a Japanese dish.

Answer: Sherbet has milk, sorbet does not

The only difference between sherbet and sorbet is that sherbet has milk in it. This makes the iced dessert creamier, and resembles ice cream much more than sorbet does. Well, it resembles gelato more than it does ice cream. Wikipedia describes sorbet as "sweetened water flavored with iced fruit, chocolate, wine, or liquour." Add a milk product and you have sherbet. Sorbet is perfect for those who are lactose intolerant, since there is no dairy in sorbet.

However, one might want to stay away from sherbet as well as ice cream.

Sherbet can also be spelled with another r, as "sherbert."

Answer: Half chocolate, half heavy cream

The basic way to make chocolate ganache is to mix half chocolate with half heavy cream. Chocolate chips work fine, semi-sweet being the preferred choice. Do not melt the chocolate chips, though. Heat the heavy cream, until it boils. From here, you can pour the heavy cream, THROUGH A SIEVE, directly on to the chocolate. The boiling cream will melt the chocolate just fine. You can add a bit of flavor by adding liqueur, oils, or zest from a fruit. I like to use orange zest and a bit of vanilla extract. The vanilla extract deepens the flavor of the chocolate and really adds to the dish. Of course, one downfall of chocolate ganache pie is that, although it doesn't need to cook, it takes an awfully long time to set, often longer than a cheesecake would take. But it is definitely worth it in the end.

Three parts chocolate to one part cream makes a good ganache base for a truffle filling. The amount of chocolate to the amount of cream really depends on how thick and firm you want it to be in the end. Half chocolate and half cream makes a smooth and creamy mixture that hardens enough to stay on the pie, but doesn't harden as much as a truffle or a glaze would.