The White Rose System Aka: Hamburger Holy Land

Photo from j gavin heck – “whiterose”

How could someone manage to squeeze so much yummy, burgery, flavor between two slices of bun? Flavor so dense it’s only comparison is non-baryonic matter? That is ladies and gents, the question of the day. That is the conundrum that has boggled Burgerologists for decades.

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Monte Cristo @ Duchess Diner

The Current list:

Ok, so far I have done two off the list. Today I hope to knock off two, possibly three more depending on how much I can get done.

The “Monte’ Cristo” sandwich

What is it?
Where did it come from?
How did it get here?
Why the hell is there swiss and turkey on my french toast?

Because it is tasty my friend! Wikipedia says that it’s origins are actually unknown. A cookbook I once read said it was inspired by the need to make french toast a lunch/dinner item in 24hr Diners. I however have a feeling that it is actually some sort of bastardized american offspring of the “Croque-Monsieur” or just plain “Croque” sandwich. The (when executed properly) serving of the sandwich is nearly the same. The only REAL difference is that you swap the turkey for the egg, and that it is plated open face (on the east coast). Have it how you wish. I like mine with a bit of sweet mustard or just a tiny drizzle of syrup. I have heard from a number of people that the sandwich is the featured item at Blue Bayou in Disneyland. I can nay confirm nor deny this as I have never been to “The Happiest Place on Earth”. I can however tell you that it is hard to find a good Monte. They are either deep fried (yack!), drowned in syrup (bleh!), soggy (barf!) or just plain cooked wrong. This one ranks up there with the best of them though.

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Convert .bin .cue to .iso on OSX / Linux / BSD with bchunk

I have used this in the past on BSD, but just remembered about bchunk since I needed to do a quick convert from .bin/.cue to .iso on my intel macbook. Compiles fine and ran with no issues for me. There are also prebuilt packages if you are using a packager system.

binchunker for Unix, version 1.2.0 by Heikki Hannikainen
Created with the kind help of Bob Marietta ,
partly based on his Pascal (Delphi) implementation.
Support for MODE2/2352 ISO tracks thanks to input from
Godmar Back , Colas Nahaboo
and Matthew Green .
Released under the GNU GPL, version 2 or later (at your option).

Usage: bchunk [-v] [-r] [-p (PSX)] [-w (wav)] [-s (swabaudio)]

Example: bchunk foo.bin foo.cue foo
-v Verbose mode
-r Raw mode for MODE2/2352: write all 2352 bytes from offset 0 (VCD/MPEG)
-p PSX mode for MODE2/2352: write 2336 bytes from offset 24
(default MODE2/2352 mode writes 2048 bytes from offset 24)
-w Output audio files in WAV format
-s swabaudio: swap byte order in audio tracks

You can use it very simply, or it has much more advanced options.

bchunk my.bin my.cue ~/out.iso

Great software guys. A+

:{)

Eggs Benedict @ Duchess Diner next to Salson’s Bakery

One Down!

The Current list:

Day 1, 6am. I trucked over to the Duchess for a bit o’ brekkie. Sat down at the bar and without even poking at the menu already knew what to order. The eggs benedict.

Good stuff, Yum. Looks like it has loads of Hollandaise Sauce yea? Nope. It is actually a thin layer. The cook lays it on really hot so it looks like there is more then there really is.

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Oh so many things to do before Thursday night

Sitting here pondering all the things that I have to do here on the East Coast, I realized that anything on my list (outside of things that I specifically came here to do) involve food. These are in no order, just as they popped into my head. I should be able to squeeze it all in and get the things I need to done since I technically have an extra day (leaving at 5:50pm).

The list:

I of course will obtain pictures of each, and report back all of my findings.

Glad I still have a metro card with some bucks on it!