Westervin Recommends for February

We’re world-class at providing the recommendations you didn’t know you needed.  Remember when someone told you what you should order at your first Indian restaurant?  And it was Chicken Korma?  Remember when someone told you about a website called YouTube?  And then you found a video of cats that sounded like they were talking?  We’re that guy, all the time.

Pundits. Proselytizers. Purveyors.

Making Your Own Popcorn

{ MA – Vice Magazine by Vins Baratta }

When I was a kid my parents took my brother and I camping.  They thought it would be cool to show us Jiffy Pop popcorn, the kind that you hold over an open flame and the foil balloons up rapidly like a UFO when the kernels start popping.  Mom and Dad forgot to mention to us that this was normal.  Instead, as the foil blew up, my brother and I screamed and ran behind a tree.  I haven’t forgiven them for laughing so hard.

The first time I made homemade popcorn I had a flashback to that camping trip.  Except this time I could handle it.  Though making it still feels a little dangerous at that Jiffy Pop moment of maximum poppage.

You can roll it in salt, butter, parmesan, garlic OR cocoa powder, cinnamon and chili powder OR drizzle with caramel and chocolate sauce and then freeze it.  But those are just the ones I’ve tried.  Super cheap too.

(http://theslowcook.blogspot.com/2008/01/secret-to-worlds-greatest-popcorn.html)

Drinking In-flight

{ cloudyREDS — a WAFA collaboration between Anthony Zinonos and Brandi Strickland }

I know what you’re thinking; why have booze on a flight when it’s overpriced and dehydrating and you’re not in the air that long anyway.  To you naysayers…I say “Nay.” It’s really not any more money than your typical cocktail (of course you get a cocktail, you don’t get a Miller Lite when you’re pretending you’re in first class).  United has the best tonic water, and they even give you limes.  Try it sometime.  Order a mid-afternoon drink, mix your tiny bottle of liquor with the tonic in a little plastic cup on your tray table.  Sip, recline, imagine it’s helping your travel sickness/anxiety.  It’s the only way you’ll get through Two and a Half Men anyway.

The Wire

{ TV Room (Entry Hall Wallpaper) by Hollis Brown Thornton }

Have you heard what everyone is saying about this show?  It’s The Great American Novel in five grueling seasons.  The show could be a sociology dissertation on like, thirty different subjects.  Everyone’s a little conflicted, but everyone has a mother too — the cops, the gangbangers, the crooked politicians, the students.  Watch it and prepare to be inducted into the coolest club of other people who are into it.  You smile at each other differently because you know. Oh, and the theme song is Tom Waits.   That’s all I can say.

Yayza! Brandi Strickland

Can we talk about how shockingly cool this is?  I’m mesmerized.

{ mountain house by Brandi Strickland }