Christopher Setterlund, In My Footsteps : food

Showing posts with label food. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 9, 2026

In My Footsteps Podcast Mixtape #5: Blink and You'll Miss It Retro Segments(9-9-2026)

Happy Labor Day! When this episode premieres, I will be on location producing my first feature film, The Cabin. Thank you to everyone who donated to the fundraiser and helped to get this project made!

Being on location means that in place of a new podcast episode, you get Mixtape #5

All of the Blink and You'll Miss It retro segments are here in chronological order.

They contain foods, toys, television shows, miscellaneous products, and more that were here and gone in a relative flash. If you weren't around when they came out, you might have no memory of them ever existing.

You will laugh. You will shake your head. Maybe you'll go scouring your basement to see if you have any of the items mentioned, as they might fetch a few bucks on eBay.

Enjoy some memories in mixtape form on the podcast. Happy Labor Day weekend, and thank you again for all of the support for the podcast and my other creative ventures!

To support me and the show, become a member on Patreon.

Or you can support my work and Buy Me A Coffee!

Helpful Links from this Episode

Listen to Episode 259 here

Monday, August 24, 2026

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #135: A Big Success, Glitter Face, Pack An Extra Chin, etc.

1. I was so grateful and a bit overwhelmed to see the budget goals for my feature film debut, The Cabin, get met through GoFundMe. I wanted to say ‘we’ did it, but in all honesty it was my family, friends, and total strangers that came through. In the end, I kicked in a little to get us over the hump, but the vast majority was from others. In a fun twist, one of the locations we’re going to shoot at is now going to be ours free of charge. Yes, that means our budget has dropped, which is a good problem. I said if, after everything, there is a little money left, I will just absorb it back into my bank account. However, with the budget set comes the actual action. I am thankful but also feel a bit of good pressure to help to make a film worthy of all of those who have shown their support. In the back of my mind, I had a fear that the fundraiser would be a bust and I’d have to cough up thousands of dollars to make my dream come true. I would have done it, but I am so much happier that I don’t. There will be so much more to come in terms of updates about The Cabin. For now, all I can say is thank you to those who donated to the fundraiser. Your support means the world to me.

2. In life, you need to try to learn to not get too high on good days and not too low on bad ones. I say that because after a string of amazing days, capped off by reaching the budget goal on The Cabin, I had a cold slap of reality in the face. Nothing will dull your good vibes quicker than a text from your bank saying there was an attempted fraudulent purchase on your debit card. I went from a peaceful, easy feeling to sitting in the sad cafe, sorry that was a couple of Eagles puns. Luckily, I am so regimented and boring with what I spend money on that my bank instantly caught it. Some ass hat tried to charge $350 for some crap but got foiled. So I didn’t lose any money but had to immediately cancel my debit card. Next is the process of getting a new one sent, which could take until the middle of next week. I am working on getting a digital card and finally starting to use Apple Pay through my phone. The only issue with that is that I am forced to have a passcode on my phone to protect that debit card. That’s right, I have had my phone without a passcode for years. It is never far from me, so I never felt the need. On one hand, I am so pissed that some scumbag tried to get my money. Get a job, you waste of human life. On the other hand, I am so grateful that my bank foiled this attempt. In some ways, and this might be the middle-aged man talking, but I miss the days of everything being cash and digital banking not being everywhere.

3. One interesting scenario when it comes to the filming of The Cabin has to do with actually getting there. Do I drive my car, or do I rent one? On one hand, driving my own car saves hundreds of dollars over renting one. On the other hand, I just had some exhaust work done on my car, and although I trust driving it locally, and probably up to an hour from home, I don’t know if I trust driving it eight hours each way. I know my car needs some more work done on it to get it to closer to 100%, or at least as close as a car nearing 170K miles can get. I don’t want to have that work done until the new year, so it does make sense to spend the money to drive 1,000+ miles in total over the course of a week. I was hopeful that my AAA membership would give me some great discounts on renting a car. Nope. I guess I thought renting cars was cheaper than it is. Renting a vehicle for what would be six days costs the same as the hotel room I’ll be getting out there. That includes whatever discounts AAA would give me, which isn’t much. The funny part is that of all of the vehicles I’ve been looking at to rent, the cheapest are SUVs. It’s funny because, thanks to gas prices being as high as they have been in years, any savings I’d get on renting an SUV would immediately go out the window when I had to pay close to $5 a gallon for gas on a vehicle that gets half as many miles per gallon as my car. Update: Yes, I ended up renting a car.

4. So I had to cancel my debit card and ask for a new one to be sent to me. Fine. Not much I can do but wait, right? Wrong. An interesting little side quest in this latest fraud saga was learning about digital debit cards and also learning how to use Apple Pay. The debit card took seconds to get, so that was good. Next was setting up Apple Pay to include that card. I have had iPhones since 2011 and have never used the Wallet app for digital payments or storing cards, passports, etc. I figured approaching fifty was the right time to learn. It turns out it is way easier than I could have imagined. The literal next day after canceling my old debit card, I was able to use the new card to get gas via Apple Pay. Sure, swiping my card or using the chip reader didn’t take long, but Apple Pay cuts that time down even more. In less time than it takes to sneeze, I had my card accepted and was pumping the very overpriced but very needed gas into my car. One funny little twist to the Apple Pay story is that it has forced me to start using a passcode to open my phone. What’s that? You can’t believe I never used a passcode? My phone in the past 15 years has rarely been out of my sight, so it never seemed necessary. I grew up in a time when the majority of people still left their doors unlocked, so I guess I’m old-fashioned. Anyway, in order to have Apple Pay working, you have no choice but to use a passcode to protect your money, which makes total sense. I’m just getting used to the major inconvenience of typing six numbers in two seconds to open my phone. In the end, though, if it keeps my money safe, I can deal with it.

5. I think I have earned my reputation as the ‘fun uncle’ in my 27 years of being one. I tend to let my nieces and nephews do whatever they feel like, unless it’s super dangerous. Five of my six nieces and nephews are grown up to a point where they have their own friends and lives, and my time has been reduced a lot. It’s just what happens in life. So when I get the chance to spend some time with my youngest niece, Sylvie, you can bet I am taking advantage of the chance to be fun and foolish. The latest such chance was this week. My mom had gotten Sylvie some glitter makeup, and once she saw what it looked like, I knew it was only a matter of time until I was wearing it. Sure enough, she laughed while coating my face in glitter. This was accompanied by a 2nd place medal she had won at summer camp. Not wanting her to feel bad, I kept the medal and the glitter on even after she left. I went to the store after I left my mom’s, and even though I took the medal off, I did go inside complete with a glitter face. Seeing how much my face shined at my mom’s, I can only imagine what people thought seeing me in the store. Oh well, the price you pay for being the fun uncle is walking into public places with glittery makeup on your face. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

No, I wasn't this glittery, but there is always next time.

6. Sadly, I am now at the age where I can end up with some sort of pain or injury and have no memory of what caused it. This week it is my right shoulder. It has been painful to fully extend overhead. Tracing steps backward, I threw a pair of 10# slam balls with a client at work one day this week, but that wasn’t the cause. I also demonstrated a kettlebell windmill exercise with another client (this involves keeping your arm fully extended overhead while simultaneously hinging your body sideways away from that arm). That also wasn’t the cause. All I can think of is that I slept on that shoulder awkwardly, woke up with some pain, but didn’t pay attention and kept going about my day. I wish I had a better injury story. I wish I had tackled some guy that stole a woman’s purse, or hurt it dragging a stranded dolphin back into the ocean. Nope. I slept wrong. Yay, soon it will be that I threw out my back coughing or something dumb like that. Oh wait, it was only a few years ago that I threw my back out leaning forward to look at sliced meats in a deli, so yeah, we’re already there.

7. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: If you can’t figure out how to use self-checkout at the supermarket, go to a register with an actual person. This ends up being an older person most of the time. Lo and behold, it was again this week. A guy who had to be in his mid-70s had invariably messed up scanning his items at self-checkout. The store seemed to be short-staffed, so as the light was blinking, there wasn’t anyone immediately coming over to help. Then it happened at the next register, which was shockingly being operated by another old person. Rather than walking over to the service desk, which was about ten steps away, or, I don’t know, being patient for a few moments, these old bags started waving their arms like they were signaling a passing plane while stuck on a deserted island. God forbid an old person show sympathy for the short-staffed store. After a few seconds of waving like idiots, the old man started whistling like he was calling his dog at the park. Seriously, it was incredibly annoying and embarrassing. I was scanning my items with no issue since I had a good grasp on technology. All the while, this pair of old bags were doing a talent show routine. I wanted to tell them they should go to a regular register, but I’m sure they’d have just blamed the machine instead of their own incompetence. After an employee came over and sorted things out, one of the old people immediately caused the register to go off again. Naturally, they blamed the machine. I’d say they should do home delivery, but they’d probably give the wrong address and never get their stuff.

8. Three weeks ago I first shot a video of the current demolition of the Bass River Bridge on Cape Cod. They are slowly removing the westbound lane. That lane will be totally rebuilt wider. Once finished, work will begin on the eastbound lane. All the while, the bridge will still be in operation, which feels a bit shaky. I have heard the bridge is safe to stay in use even while being torn down. As of this week, half of the side barriers of the westbound lane have been removed. I stopped at the neighboring river park during a run so I could get some video of it. Since it’s still the heat of summer, the traffic gets pretty crazy on the bridge. I was able to run across the bridge faster than most vehicles could cross. I am not sure how long it will take to finish removing the barriers, but I am curious as to what the next step in the demolition process will be. The bridge functions fine without the barriers. However, once they start removing the pavement, then what? Regardless of the progress, it appears as though it will be about five years until the entirely new Bass River Bridge opens. Here is a video I shot this week so you can see how far they’ve gotten.

9. Filming unofficially began for The Cabin this week. I recorded three audio-only scenes with my buddy Steve, who plays the main character’s best friend. The setup was simple. Steve sat in front of the microphone with a soundproof box around it. It’s the same setup I use for my podcast. I was in charge of recording on my laptop and read the other lines in each scene. The awkward part came when intentionally placing spaces in between dialogue. After each character spoke, we would pause for a second or two. The reason for this is so that in post-production it will be easier for the editor to remove my voice and put in the actual actor playing the main character. It ended up being a pretty easy read-through and took maybe a half-hour total. I will be interested in hearing the finished product, as I was tempted to edit Steve’s dialogue to make it sound like he was on a phone. I’ll leave that stuff to whoever the editor will be. There are still two scenes to film before going off on location. Both of those are on video. I will end up standing behind the camera to run lines and also just rein in my excitement over this dream project starting to take shape.

10. Naturally, as I draw closer to heading out to Pennsylvania for The Cabin and get my hotel reservation set, I begin scoping out the area to see what there is to do and see. Now, with the town being small, there aren’t tons of attractions, but there are tons of places to eat. I am staying in one town, and we will be doing a lot of shooting in the next town over. There are lots of great-looking restaurants there as well. It’s a strange combination, as I technically am going on vacation, but in reality will be working more hours than I do in a typical work week on Cape Cod. I won’t have loads of time to explore, so I am guessing most of the adventures I have away from the movie shoot will consist of eating. I have already resigned myself to the fact that I will be in need of a serious cleanse upon my return. I mean, there is a Chinese food buffet a five-minute walk from my hotel, so why fight it? My hope is that the 12+ hour shooting days will help me keep burning calories, but I’m not getting my hopes up. The main souvenir I bring back from the filming may be an extra chin.

Me when I get home from the movie shoot

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

In My Footsteps Podcast Episode 252: 60 Years of Doritos, Live Aid Concert Event, Family Feud, Rebranded Sports Teams(7-15-2026)

Donate to the GoFundMe for my feature-length film, The Cabin!

The tasty history of Doritos. The historic Live Aid concert event. Sports teams that were rebranded as others.

Episode 252 is chock full of GenX nostalgia to try to keep you cool in the July heat.

It starts with one of the most historic music events ever. Live Aid was a one-day event featuring many legends of the day. Taking place in 1985 and on two separate continents, it raised money for famine relief while also creating some enduring musical memories.

Six decades of snacking. We celebrate Doritos, which burst onto the scene in 1966. From simple toasted corn tortilla chips to more than 100 flavors worldwide, Doritos have been a staple of after school, sporting event gatherings, teenage parties, and more for most of many of our lives.

Countless sports franchises have been in the same city for decades. Some have left their original cities but kept their name. For this Top 5, we are looking at teams that not only left their original city but also were rebranded. Growing up in New England, the Hartford Whalers hockey team was front and center on this list. Do you have any favorite rebranded sports teams?

Survey says we have a brand-new This Week In History and Time Capsule, looking at the 50-year legacy of the game show Family Feud.

To support me and the show, become a member on Patreon.

Or you can support my work and Buy Me A Coffee!

Helpful Links from this Episode

Listen to Episode 251 here

Monday, July 6, 2026

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #128: Mall Rat Reboot, Heat Dome, Hey A Loveseat, etc.

1. Those of you who regularly read this blog know that over the last few months, I have had several dreams involving friends and family. The common denominator of these dreams is that they all have taken place at a mall. It feels like it was the Cape Cod Mall in the 1990s, at least in my dreaming mind. I mentioned after the last one that maybe the dreams were telling me something. Like maybe I needed to go to the mall to find an answer to some question. Well, this week I bit the bullet. While out for a drive, I took a detour and went to the mall. I wandered the corridors from one end to the other for the first time in years. Did I find some meaningful answer to some important question? Nope. Did I see anyone I knew? Nope. Did I stop and find some amazing deal on some product I didn’t know I needed? Nope again. I got some steps in, but all in all, it turned out to be me feeling old walking around, seeing mostly teenagers hanging out. It did make me happy that kids still carry on the tradition of being mall rats. Oh, and I did get some tasty Chinese food from a place called Ruby Thai, which I hadn’t had in a while. If that was the meaning of the dreams, then mission accomplished.

2. Maybe I’m different, but it’s never crossed my mind to take trash from where I live and go leave it outside somewhere. Sadly, it’s common to see full bags of trash left on the side of the road by people who are the definition of worthless. The ones that take the cake are those who bring furniture somewhere and just drop it off. Seriously? If it’s too much money to pay to bring it to the dump, maybe switch to cheaper beer or cigarettes. I guarantee people who drop a loveseat in the parking lot of an abandoned school have an open pack of cigarettes and an open can of some crap beer in the center console of their beat-up, rusty pickup truck. I say all of this because, yes, on Monday Runday this week, I found a discarded loveseat in the parking lot. Next up, it’ll be mattresses and televisions littering the school grounds.

Have a seat

3. Normally, Monday Runday is pretty self-explanatory. We run. We go home. That’s it. This week had a few interesting developments. I just mentioned the loveseat. Besides that, there was a conversation with an osprey. Where we run is a slowly decaying track at an abandoned school, as I mentioned. Located behind the school is a wooden platform commandeered by a family of osprey as a home. As I was running my first lap around the back of the school, I spotted one of the parents sitting in the nest and sharing many high-pitched squeaks. I made sure to stop and explain to it that I didn’t have any fish and also didn’t speak osprey, but sadly it didn’t understand. The second time around, I got to see a pair of the young ones. Their heads popped up and were bobbing all around. I had to be 30 to 40 feet away, plus the tower was probably 30 feet high as well, so I never felt in danger. Although when the other parent returned carrying dinner in its talons, I did make a hasty return to running.

4. My brain still believes I am 30, but my body will vehemently disagree sometimes. Monday Runday was a huge success. Granted, I only ran about half of the time, but it was 4 miles in total, and my body felt good. I felt the mix of exhaustion and energy that I love about running. The next morning though, I had to pay the piper. My body wasn’t really sore, just really tired. My knees, especially, felt like they needed a few extra hours of rest to work normally. I felt like a crushed bag of potato chips. I definitely don’t regret running more than I have in a few months. Still, I am glad that I was smart and held myself back during that run. If it were 7-8 years ago, I’d have run way too much since I felt good and ended up injured. Now I held myself back and yet still felt like a half-eaten rotisserie chicken tossed in a dumpster. Forgive me, I was trying to find the funniest food-related descriptions for some moderate soreness. I was gonna say a pizza flipped upside down on a hot street, but the chicken one was funnier, at least to me.

My body felt like one of these things

5. As the week got going, there was a foreboding sense of dread in the air in the northeast. Something called a ‘heat dome’ was approaching. Temperatures were set to be higher than they had been in many years. Predictions ranged from the low 90s to the mid-100s, depending on where you lived. I am very familiar with heat waves. They are prolonged stretches of hot weather that vary depending on where you live. I just find it kind of funny how language changes over the years. When I was a kid, there were no heat domes, there were no bomb cyclones. There were heat waves, Nor’easters, and blizzards. I know that things evolve. Maybe I am now the old man saying things were different in my day? I feel a bit like meteorologists think weather can be boring, so they invent new, scarier-sounding types of weather so that they get attention. Honestly, what sounds more impactful, a heat wave or a heat dome? It sounds like we’re going to be sitting in a rotisserie. Don’t get me started on other weird ones like atmospheric river and polar vortex.

6. Amazingly, despite it being in the low 90s to kick off the heat wave this week. We had two people signed up to use our infrared sauna at my work. The sauna is great for overall health, but not on one of the hottest days of the year. Of course, inside our office it’s a comfy 72 degrees, so it’s doable. I said that we should just put a lawn chair outside in the sun and place a sign next to it that says ‘sauna.’ Maybe we could shine red lights in their faces to make them feel more like a real sauna. Once it got up over 90 degrees, though, both people ended up calling in to cancel. I guess they built their own lawn chair saunas in their yards.

7. You don’t realize how much you depend on your phone until you go home from work for the weekend and realize that you forgot your charger in the office. There was no chance I’d be driving back into work to get it, so I decided to go the following morning and buy a backup charger. I know I’ll always need one. I went to Ocean State Job Lot since it was close and cheap. Just a reminder that it was Fourth of July Weekend, so everywhere was packed, and outside it felt like standing in an oven. I was thrilled to just get into the a/c and wander the aisles at Job Lot. Once it got to be ten minutes and I had wandered nearly every square inch of the store without finding charging cables, I broke down and actually asked an employee where they were. As you might figure, they were located in the one place I hadn’t checked. Oh well. Then it was option overload. Instead of choosing a typical cord, I got a fancy charging pad. Granted, it was $7.99, but still fancy for Job Lot. What I thought was that it was a pad with a plug so you could have it on your desk out of the way. In a way, it was. In another way, it was a pad with a USB cord to plug into a laptop. Of course, that defeated the purpose of the charging pad. It also came with the same USB I’d have needed for my phone anyway. I am guessing the charging pad will collect dust while I just use the cord. Nice.

8. Stepping outside into the soupy air on a day when the heat index got up as high as 107 is not fun. The sun was brutal even just walking across a parking lot. In fact, it was so unbelievably hot that the asphalt smelled like it had just been laid in certain areas. I was only outside for a handful of minutes on the hottest day of the bunch, but that was enough. It was capped off by seeing the hydrangeas outside of the front door where I live totally wilted. They literally looked like they had melted. Sadly, I wish I had gotten a photo of them when they were still fresh and alive. You can see for yourself the damage the heat wave did. The good news was that they recovered fairly well when the temperatures got a little more seasonable.

9. For all of the injuries over the years, I am at heart still a runner, and still foolish despite my increasing age. That meant that even though the heat index was over 100, I had to get some miles in outside on the 4th of July. It’s a bit of a tradition to run or walk to the water and feel good about myself because I can run faster than the cars stuck in traffic can move. This was not like other years, when I ran a lot of fast miles. I wanted to experience the full heat as safely as I could. This naturally meant running in the sun for stretches of my time outdoors. Even relatively early in the morning, it felt like I was inside a pizza oven. I never worried about myself, though. For years, I ran in extreme conditions, and to be honest, I kind of enjoy the idea of being out in weather others would avoid. I ended up doing five total miles of running and walking. There was a lot of beautiful scenery along rivers, and I made sure to wave to as many people as possible. Except not to those stuck in traffic, they were having a hard enough time as it was.

10. Every year on July 4th, they have the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. That’s all fine and dandy as long as nobody tries to refer to people who gorge themselves on food as athletes. Training to eat dozens of hot dogs is not the same as training for anything athletic. I would never attempt to do a hot dog eating contest. I like hot dogs and could probably down several in a sitting without issue. My reason is that I want to enjoy my food. Jamming bread and meat into a glass of water to slide it down my throat doesn’t sound enjoyable. That being said, I did have my own eating contest on the 4th. My mom made her typically excellent pasta and meatballs. She made me a gigantic plate to take home. Rather than divide it up into two medium-sized meals, I figured, why not try to be a champion and eat all of it? The photo of my plate is below. All you need to know is that in the process of getting all of that food from the container to the plate, I managed to spill some on my table. It was quite a mess, but hey, that’s what soap and paper towels are for. Yes, I finished all of it and quickly fell into a food coma after. I might not have the ‘prestige’ of winning a hot dog eating contest, but I guarantee you the food my mother made was light-years better.

11. And then the bubble burst. After three days of 90+ degree heat and soupy levels of humidity, the heat dome finally cracked. The rain came pouring in overnight on Saturday. I was thrilled to wake up the following morning with the temperature only being 67. My air conditioner got to sleep in. To celebrate the heat wave ending, I took my tired legs out on the bike trail in the morning. Yes, it was still raining, but only lightly. Plus, after having dealt with a heat index of over 100 for a few days, running in the drizzle was heavenly. I chose to go down the bike trail extension, which when completed, will lead the Cape Cod Rail Trail from Yarmouth west into Hyannis. It is pretty much all paved, but the final step is the bridge set to be placed over the busy Willow Street. The footings of the eventual bridge have been built. I am figuring that they are going to wait until after summer or even until the end of the year before they finish the project. That’s my guess, although judging by the Barnstable town website, it might not be done until 2031. By that logic, it probably really won’t be done until the day after I die, yay.

12. I have been sharing and promoting the fundraiser for the feature film I will be producing called The Cabin. It’s been a month, and as of this writing, I am 1/3 of the way to the proposed budget. At this point, I am looking outside of the box for places to share the fundraiser. It had never dawned on me to look for fundraiser groups on Facebook. My friend, producer Frank Durant, suggested that, as he’s done it before. One such group has nearly 300K members. I’m not setting my expectations too high, but even a few new donors from that page would be great. The actual GoFundMe page on Facebook has 2.5 million followers. It’s a huge number, and you can message them to get support for your fundraiser. My issue is that even though this project is extremely important to me, it is not important in the grand scheme of things. What I mean is the fundraisers they share on the GoFundMe page deal with medical bills, housing, and things that are far more serious. I haven’t shared my fundraiser because, next to fighting cancer, donating to a small indie film fund doesn’t seem that meaningful. I’ve still got five weeks until I close the page. I’m thinking sometime in the second week of August to give me and the crew a little time to shore up all of the budgetary needs. It’s all new and out of my comfort zone, but that’s what makes it exciting.

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