New Shirt! Falcor!

   This blog has been terribly inactive!  It’s not because I’ve been lazy, in fact its totally opposite, I can barely breathe! Its hard. You get a baby, you spend all of your time making sure that the baby is awesome, the remainder of the time is spent making shirts, its tough to blog!  Tonight a good friend of mine had an extra ticket to Sharknado featuring Riff Tracks (Mystery Science Theatre) which so happens to be my wife’s favorite.  It’s been a while since she’s been able to get out and do something awesome like this, so I insisted she go.  In the mean time, I am outside on our porch during, what the paper referred to, as a polar vortex.  Its like 70 and awesome (although a bit windy).  Before I get into whatever topic I decide to write about, it’s time for shameless promotion for a new shirt.
    Children’s movies are not the same these days.  I am a child of the late 80’s and 90’s.  Our children’s movies were balls out.  The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and of course Neverending Story.  These days, if there is anything remotely disturbing in a kid’s movie, people go nuts and raise a fuss.  And usually the people who “go nuts” are the people who have the most messed up kids.  I’m not going to get into that.  I give you “The Falcor.”

This is available in our Etsy shop, eBay shop, and our main website.  If you like something you see, our website usually has the better deal because we dont have to fork over final value fees, so go there! Do it!

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C25K Conclusion!

    I had posted blogs on my experience with the C25K app for smart phone.  Basically in a nutshell, I was diagnosed with very high cholesterol by my doctor and after convincing her to give me 6 months to change and avoid medication, I started the C25K program the next day.  Well, the 6 months have passed.  I combined this running program with weight watchers (another program I’ve had great success with) for 6 straight months, going from barely being able to run a mile, to being able to run 8 miles, all while going from 206 pounds down to 182 pounds.  I didn’t want to go on medication.  The doctor said that having cholesterol that high could have been “hereditary.”  I have a huge issue with “hereditary,” mainly because (for the most part), it’s overused.  Sure, some things are.  But some things are bullshit.  Like when cancer runs in the family, and then you notice at a mass family gathering, everyone is outside smoking.  Or, cholesterol problems run in the family, but everyone is out of shape, doesn’t exercise, and doesn’t take care of themselves.  This isn’t a direct correlation to my family, (well the smoking part was, I had noticed it at a family holiday party).  My step-dad has higher cholesterol and isn’t in bad shape, but he doesn’t really work out.  I had to find out for myself: “Did I really just have a problem with my cholesterol, or did I just need to bust some ass?”   I know some people need to be on medication for cholesterol for whatever reason, but I was not about to give in that easy at the age of 35.  
     Tuesday at 5:30pm was judgment day for me.  The final chapter in my 6 month workout saga.  I brought my wife and daughter with me, we got into the car and drove to the doctor’s office.  The doctor came in with my numbers.  I went from a total cholesterol level of 265 to 219.  About 19 points away from being in the “normal” range.  She said that she had never seen someone pull that off in 6 months (she’s younger) and was super impressed.  Everything else she said at the moment is a blur.  I was so happy and so blown away that I was just focused on my wife and little baby, thinking about how much I loved them both.  They are the soul motivation for my drive, the air in my lungs.  So not only did I miss a bunch of what the doctor was saying (all good stuff according to my wife) but I was basically trying not to cry like a huge pussy.  It’s weird.  I guess you have to have a kid to know the feeling, but you see this little version of you sitting there, looking at you in amazement every second it’s awake, and you just want to do everything you can to be there for her.  In my case, it was staying alive.  I didn’t want to have heart problems because of sky high cholesterol.  I want to see this kid do karate or play soccer.  I want to be there for every milestone.  If it means I have to go running every other day for miles and miles, and eat healthy, than god dammit, I’ll do it!  I just did.




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New Shirts This Week!

   Two new designs up this week now in our Etsy, eBay, and main website!  The first of the two is a tribute to the great David Lynch.  Growing up, I was a fan of Twin Peaks, along with my entire family.  My mother and step-dad actually got married and walked the isle to the Twin Peaks theme.  The shirt came out pretty awesome and ended up being one of the cooler shirts in our catalog. 

The shirt is available in a 100% cotton American Apparel version and the Standard Cotton (Gildan) 100% cotton version.

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Grilled Pizza! Goat Cheese Chorizo Pizza.

   In my 35 years of existence, I have worked in a ton of pizza places.  I consider myself a master.  I do.  It’s the one thing I make and make well.  This week I decided to try making a grilled pizza.  I had read about this method before, but I always put it off in fear of making a big, doughy, shitty mess.  This time, I was going to go balls out.
    The recipe this idea originated from was called, “Sausage and Fig Pizza.”

My wife and I love goat cheese, so I decided to give this a shot (even though I’m not nuts about figs.)  I went to our local pretentious market for ingedients and immediately ran into the annoying problem of not being able to find fresh figs.  I was instantly pissed.  I grabbed some dried figs because I’m not the smartest when it comes to figs.  My wife told me when I returned home with them, that it would be terrible and not work.  That killed me. So I scrapped the figs (happily.)
    I changed the recipe.  We were no longer going to use figs, I was no longer using fontina cheese, and I was going to be using chorizo sausage.  These were the new ingredients I picked up.

Chorizo Sausage
Italian Blend Shredded Cheese
Arugala
Goat Cheese
Red Onion
Minced Garlic
Pizza Dough

I never make my own pizza dough, there are too many places around that make decent dough to just buy and take home.  I grabbed a ball of white pizza dough and headed home to make this delicious pie.
 I had a few problems with the recipe, but basically, I still followed the beginning steps when starting the dough.

  
You want to take the dough and “pound it out” or if you aren’t skilled in the art of pizza, take your rolling pin and roll out your dough.  Normally when I pound out pizza dough, I use corn meal.  For this technique, you want to sprinkle flower down instead of corn meal.  Don’t go crazy, use just enough so your dough doesn’t stick and so that it slides around.  After your circle is made, you lather one side of the dough in olive oil.  I spruced it up by taking a little dish and mixing some minced garlic in with the olive oil and then brushing the dough until one side was totally coated.
    Next, you want to fire up your grill and let it get to about 300 degrees.  It helps if you have a grill with 4 burners.  I fired up 3 of the burners for this part of the recipe.  Now, the first part of the recipe is dead on.  When making pizza, you want to make sure you have enough flour on the spatula or cookie sheet so that your dough slides off easily.  You want to take your dough and place it on the hot side of the grill, oil side down.  Make sure the grates are oiled nicely as well.  You want to leave the dough on the grill for 4 minutes.  I found this to be the perfect time.  You can peel up the dough slightly to check on it, to make sure it’s not burning, but it should be fine.  While this side is cooking, I took my little dish of olive oil and garlic and used that to brush on the opposite side.  After the 4 minutes, you then flip the dough and cook the other side.  This side is to cook for only 2 minutes!  This will be the side that our toppings will go on.  After the 2 minutes are up, take the dough off the grill and place it on a rimless cookie sheet, or a pizza spatula if you have one.  Shut off the third burner.  We only want two burners cranking now and the other side of the grill we want off.

4 minutes on one side…

2 minutes on the other.  Look at that crust…”shit just got real.”

So now we have our pizza crust off the grill and ready to top.  This part is simple.  Take your chorizo sausages and squeeze out the meat from the casing.  break it down into tiny little chunks and sprinkle it all over the pizza.  I used two sausages.  Next, take your arugala, red onion, and goat cheese and spread it all over as well.  You then take your Italian cheese blend, and put your preferred amount over the top.  You really don’t need to go crazy, the goat cheese is what you want to taste here, the Italian cheese is just going to hold everything together.  Then do a drizzle of olive oil over the top of everything. Bring the pizza back out to the grill and place it on the “cool” side of the grill.  This is where the recipe is totally wrong.  The recipe says that it should finish cooking in about 4 minutes.  This is not true.  You are not going to get the sausage cooked in 4 minutes.  It ends up being more like 8-10 minutes.  Basically the pizza sits on the cool side of the grill, while the other half is cranked up, the lid is closed and the pizza bakes in the grill at about 380-400 degrees.  Check your pizza once in a while to make sure that the edge closest to the burners isn’t burning.  I’d rotate the pizza every few minutes as well to ensure a nice, even cook.  Once the sausage is cooked, the cheese should be melted as well, and you are finished!

Sprinkle on the final cheese and olive oil and bring it out to the grill.

Looking good…

…real good…

Slice it up and dish it out!  Order up!

This pizza was delicious and one of the best I’ve made.  Grilling pizza gives the pizza a taste that the pizza stones can’t cut.  I’m not sure if I can even go back to cooking pizzas in the oven.  Let me know how you made out!

Cheers!

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Clearance Section!

    Our new clearance section is up and running at supersweetshirts.com.  Our site is going to be the place to go for all sales and blowout prices.  We will still be hosting our entire catalog in our Etsy and eBay stores as well, but clearance items will only be seen at our main site.  Here are just a few things in our shop right now on clearance:

Large “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” shirt, only 1 available for $11.00! 

Small “Slapshot” shirt, only 1 available for $10.00!

XL “John Coltrane” Standard Cotton Gildan Grey, 1 available for $10.00

There is loads more! Check out supersweetshirts.com and get these while they are still here!

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Let the Summer Activities Begin: Larkin Square Food Truck Tuesdays

   There is so much to do in Buffalo when the good weather hits.  One of the newer things to do is Food Truck Tuesday at Larkin Square.  This city has a plethora of food trucks now, and they all get together on Tuesdays in what was like a mini taste of Buffalo.  If you haven’t been to Larkin Square, its impressive.  An area of what was once just old warehouses, is being turned into something really cool.  Larkin Square now hosts events on different days of the week basically offering folks a chance to come down, have a beer, and hang out.  It seems to get nicer and nicer each year.

taken from larkinsquare.com
 
As you can see there is a ton to choose from!  When we got there, Nicole made a bee-line to the Betty Crockski truck for perogies and sausage (pretty much her favorite food).  This was one of the newer trucks that we hadn’t had a chance to try.

    Nicole said the food was average, not terrible, not amazing. I didn’t get a chance to try a bite of hers because when I returned from grabbing a beer, she was finished with it.  Speaking of beer, there isn’t much variety, but I was able to have the Rusty Chain from Flying Bison which I’m not all that fond of, but I’ll drink it if I have to.
    It was time for me to choose something to eat.  I couldn’t go crazy and try a bunch of things due to my diet, but I was going to indulge in something tasty.  I decided to go with, “Le Petit Poutine” from Rochester.

I wasn’t really a fan of it.  I like my Poutine to have delicious melted cheese, this was served with chucks of curd which isn’t really my favorite.  The portion was decent, but it was basically a $10.00 container of fries and gravy.  Mine had pulled pork on it, but not much.  $10.00 was high in comparison to the other trucks.
    The covered area of Larkin Square is loaded with comfortable places to sit, but every spot was taken.  There is a stage where performers do their thing.  When we were there, there were break dancers which was sort of lame, but they get all kinds of acts there.
    Overall, I highly suggest checking this out on a Thursday.  Its easy to park, its easy to get around because its nice and spread out, and its a good opportunity to kick back and try some food.

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Memorial Day Weekend!

   Hopefully everyone is having a great long weekend.  I’m not sure where everyone else lives that is reading this, but here in Buffalo, NY it is fantastic outside.  Memorial Day always ends up being the welcoming of great weather and other awesome things.  Yesterday was one of the first days where I got to really enjoy an entire day of activities with my daughter.  Maybe that sounds odd…I guess what I’m trying to say, is that it was one of the first days that we were able to go hang out around the city with Amelia, where I was confident she was having a really good time.  Like you can take a new baby and go out somewhere, but its not the same as when the baby gets to be that age where you can see that she is reacting to the environment around her, showing signs of “having fun”, smiling at people, seeing new things.  It was really awesome.
    We started off first thing in the morning with a trip to the Elmwood/Bidwell farmer’s market.  It occurs every Saturday in the park starting around mid May.  If you ever visit the city and are here on a Saturday, its worth going to.  The market is loaded with flowers and plants, baked goods, wine, beer, cheese, salsa, free range meats and produce from local farms.  All being sold in the beautiful Bidwell Park, in the heart of the Elmwood Village.  For this activity we used the stroller with Amelia as it would serve us well for stroage.

My wife snatching up some rhubarb for a delicious pie.
We walked out of the Farmer’s Market with pork chops, flowers for our garden, 2 growlers of beer, and some rhubarb.  The entire time, the baby was all smiles, taking in everything.  We headed home with our stuff and the baby took her little nap. 
    Once Amelia woke up, she had her lunch, then it was back to the village for a coffee.  This time we changed it up, and used the device where I basically wear the baby.  During her nap I went and ran 8 miles, I didn’t take that into consideration when I strapped 20+ pounds onto my chest for another stroll around town.  It was painful, but enjoyable.  Of course our trip out for coffee was immediately altered by the food truck party that seemed to be happening.  One awesome thing about our city, is that we have a plethora of food trucks that serve top notch food.  I’m not talking about those shitty pickup trucks that drive from work site to work site selling terrible instant foods that you get at a gas station.  These are straight up mobile kitchens with restaurant caliber food.  Its pretty awesome.  We decided to go with the mac and cheese truck, “Fally Mac.”
Check out the menu:
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Mac & Cheese:


The Plain Jane Plain mac and parmesan crumbs, classic.


Oh Gee Mac N’ Chee! Enjoy hot sauce on mac? Try this out.


Summer Roll Mac (vegan) Sweet and spicy thai flavors.


Beef & Weck Mac Like the sandwich, you’ll love the mac.


Green Apple Mac Sharp cheddar, tart apples, yummy times.


Pink Lobster Mac Made with love –oh, and of course lobster.


Not Mac & Cheese:


Thai Basil Tomato Soup: Tomato soup with a tasty twist.


Edamame Succotash: Sufferin’ succotash, this stuffs good!


Meatloaf on Ciabatta: A classic homemade favorite, now grilled.

We both went with the Beef & Weck Mac.  Nicole had actually gotten it the last time we saw the truck and it was delicious.  This time, it was just as delicious, but a little watery.  We did however choose prime lunch time and the truck had a line of people around it. It was really busy.  No complaints though, it was delicious.

Full speed ahead with this little baby!
I love this kid.
Waiting for some mac and cheese.

After the mac and cheese, we grabbed some coffee and headed home.  Again, another outing where the baby had a great time out and about, no issues!  We went home, did some playing, and she went down for another nap.  When she woke up, we did more playing, fed her some dinner and decided to test our luck.  The Dinosaur BBQ had recently opened their Buffalo location, and we had yet to pay it a visit.  It’s hard when you have a little one.  We decided to call up our two friends to meet us out and headed down.  This was going to be a true test because we would be arriving at the Dinosaur at around 5.  Amelia’s bedtime is usually around 6:30-7pm.  The closer you get, the more unpleasant she becomes. When we arrived, we were sat instantly.  Amelia was having the best time.  She thought she was the coolest.  We would be taking, and you would look over and she would be just looking at you with a huge shit eating grin on her face, leaning back, totally cool.

The day ended up being fantastic!  An entire day just hanging out with me wife and kid.  I enjoyed every second of it.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Follow me on Instagram @supersweetshrts

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Home Postage Service: Crash Course.

   If you haven’t been reading this blog, when I’m not making ridiculous shirts, I dabble in the technology.  One of the things I am quite fond of is Ubuntu.  It’s hands down the greatest.  If you don’t feel like spending over a thousand dollars on a Mac and becoming a slave to the genius’s, its a great OS and gives you the opportunity to learn the in’s and out’s of an open source OS while at the same time containing user friendly basics.  It’s great. But enough about Ubuntu, this is about home postage services like Stamps.com, Endicia, and Pitney Bowes.  Honestly, I hate the concept that our own US postal service doesn’t allow you to print first class mail or first class international mail on its website.  It’s complete bullshit.  Instead the postal service is in bed with these other companies making it so that if you need to print anything other than Priority mail or Express, you will need to join one of these sites, pay a monthly fee, and also pay for the postage.  Again, it’s total shit.  When I sell from my ebay or etsy store, that cost is configured into the final value fees I pay with each sale, so I can print this type of postage within their sites.  If I sell anything on my main website, I am shit out of luck and need one of these services. 
   When I was a windows user for many years, I was a stamps.com customer.  It wasn’t a service I was nuts about but it worked for what I needed it to do.  They made you install their software to be able to print anything.  The software was horrendous and looked like something you ran on a 1995 Gateway Computer. It crashed constantly and was terrible at telling you if you were doing anything wrong trying to print postage.  It was terrible but I learned how to use it on the rare occasion that I needed it.  Well I got to the point where I switched over to Ubuntu, and what do you know?  Stamps.com ancient software does not run on Linux.  Having faced this issue with my tax software, I did some research.  Unless I wanted to install a virtual OS, it wasn’t going to run.  So I went online to cancel my account.  Of course you can’t cancel on the website, you need to call so that some asshole can try and convince you to stay.  Luckily my reason was pretty cut and dry, there would really be nothing to argue….so I thought…(I’ll get to that later).   Stamps.com business hours were closed during this so I was going to have to cancel the next day.  In the mean time, I joined Endicia.  This service was a little cheaper for what I needed, $9.99 a month.  Endicia was extremely annoying right out of the box!  I signed up for my account, downloaded the horrific software (actually worse than stamps.com) and tried to log in.  I was greeted with “Account not active.”  No further information mind you, just “Account not Active.”  So I called the tech support line.  After waiting about 10 minutes on hold, the customer service rep told me my account wasn’t active because my IP address wasn’t coinciding with my home address.  You know…..because businesses don’t use VPN’s for security, or travel.  Ridiculous.  Also, they didn’t like the password I chose (a valid excuse).  My problem is more with the fact that instead of prompting you of these issues, they give you a generic message and no details!  At this point I was livid and extremely annoyed.  After that was all squared away, I finally logged into the ancient software and tried to print an international label.  I was then greeted with yet another error message.  This time it was just some weird codes, etc.  Again, no real reason.  I used the online tech support via chat.  The representative was such an idiot that I quit the chat session and canceled the account.

  I decided to try one more option.

    Pitney Bowes offered something that was truly cutting edge compared to the other services.  Something unheard of.  A web based client.  No ridiculous software to install.  It was a few dollars more expensive a month but they also throw in a free USB scale which was awesome.  I badly wanted a web based service, so I signed up.  I had a few minor hiccups signing up, but nothing major.  Basically after I signed up, it wouldn’t let me add funds to buy postage.  This was fixed with a quick phone call.  All in all the service works great.  I got my scale in the mail insanely quick and the interface looks like something you would see in 2014 not 1995. 
    If you get stuck having to use one of these services, I highly suggest Pitney Bowes.  The others were so bad in so many ways, that it amazed me that they were even in business.
    This should technically be the end of this post, however I still needed to cancel my stamps.com account.  I called them up during regular business hours.  The poor bastard on the phone tried to use all of the lines provided for him to keep me as a customer, none making any sense at all as my sole reason for leaving was because they wouldn’t provide linux support.  He finally put me on hold for 15 minutes while he “went to check something out” quick.  When he returned, he sounded confident, “Do you have explorer?”  I chose not to scream, and politely said “No, but I really just need to cancel this now please.”  Finally I was able to.

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