September 2008 Archives

Dinners around here most week nights are generally as quick as I can throw them together, but that's no reason why they can't be tasty, nutritious, and appetizing looking.

Costco has these raviolis these days that come with a spiced cheese blend that goes with it. It's all natural, has some basic herbs along with some sage that makes it interesting. I just boil these gently until al dente, toss with some Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgene di Oliva that really gives it great flavor and a nice shine, then add the spice blend, along with some extra grated parm.

Steam up some brocolli, plate it up, and dinner is served!

Sad, yet kind or moronic all at once:

An amateur chef died the day after eating a "superhot" chilli in a bet with his friend over who could make the hottest dish, an inquest heard. ...

Andrew Lee, 33, suffered heart failure the morning after he ate the chilli.

...

Cooking was one of his main interests and he went to his girlfriend Samantha Bailey's house to make a chilli.
His father John Lee told the inquest: "He had a bet with Samantha's brother who could make the hottest chilli then went back to her house to stay."

Of course I have no room to talk after eating a cup of hot pork chile and a habanero burger in one sitting.

Happy Friday, everyone! It's back to back funny here after a busy week at Desert Island Foods®.com. I had a great time with Chilebrown and Ms. Goofy last night, and as soon as Paul sends some pictures when they get back in town I'll post a few.

Thanks to Dan for the Funny this week, and to everyone who stops by every day.

Have a great weekend! Uh, aren't you due to order some Survival Spice®? Heh heh heh..

Thanks to KC for the email! I'm off to have dinner with Chilebrown and Ms. Goofy, so a full report will follow.

Update: Epic.

Good grief:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman. "PETA's request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statement says.

No more Cherry Garcia for me if that happens! What would they call their first flavor- Mother's Breast?

Nothing like a nice snack when you're flying, I think, especially with the lack of food on planes these days. I put together this fruit plate for Julie before she left town, and I really liked the combination of kiwi, white peaches, and strawberries, though personally I'm more of a boring apple orange cherry guy, myself. I know, for a culinary school guy that's pretty lame.

What's your favorite fruit?

This was the same recipe as my last effort, only with walnuts instead of pecans. It's a terrific technique that involves no mixers, so give it a try sometime!

It's a great way to use up leftover bananas, and I going to experiment with making French toast with it.

Happy Friday, my good friends! Julie's out of town for the week, and this joke reminded of how much I miss her. The Christmas theme, of course, is irrelevant...

Have a great weekend, all. Thanks so much for your generous support of Desert Island Foods®.com. Please tell your friends about our Survival Spice® barbecue rub!!!ha

Thanks to Steve for the Funny.

Chilebrown sent along a picture of his wife and her friend taken at a chile cookoff they recently entered. "Mrs. Goofy" is sporting our stylish Desert Island Foods® apron for the world to see.

They're only $15.99 for an all cotton, Teflon® impregnated apron with our snazzy logo on it. Super comfortable, too.

I'm really looking forward to having dinner with the Dynamic Duo next week. We'll see how much energy they have after a 12 hour drive!

Okay, I used Sprouts frozen dough, but the rest is from scratch. A few tricks- when working with thawed dough, or any dough that's starting to shrink back on you as you pan it out is to let it rest, then have at it again, I've found. 10 ounces of dough will get you a 12" diameter pizza if you're patient with it. When using sliced fresh garlic, I like to add it on top of the sauce, as opposed to on top of the cheese. It keeps it from burning, and it infuses the sauce as it cooks.

It was good eating as we watched my Steelers trounce the Browns. Good times, man, good times.

Chilebrown and Michael have caught me, after violating the rules I posted on July 1st:

Okay, I'm back.

Sorry for the long absence, a combination of burnout, being crazy busy with work and life, and a death in the family just made it impossible to focus on new site content for a while. It's important to me to get back at it, and publicly challenging myself to post every weekday seems like a great way to keep the pressure on to write.

Here's a promise- I'll post something every day Monday to Friday for the rest of the year, and if you're one of the first 10 people to "bust me" in the comments for skipping a day, I'll give you a tin of Survival Spice®. Simple as that.

I'll be seeing Chilebrown next week, so he gets an extra tin! Michael, email me your current mailing info, just in case what's in the system isn't current.

In my defense, I threw my back out yesterday and spent the evening hopped up on Ibuprofen and a Bed Buddy. The promise will continue through the rest of the year, though. A deal's a deal.

Happy Friday, all you hard working folks out there! It's been a long week, so put your feet up and guzzle something nice and frosty.

Have a great weekend, rub something up with Survival Spice® and throw it on the grill, wouldja!

Thanks to Frank for the yuk.

Just to keep this fresh in your minds, and to again ask you to let your friends, family members and co-workers know that we're supporting our troops and Operation Gratitude by offering a special product! For $7.99, you can buy two tins of Survival Spice®, normally an $11.98 value. We'll then ship, at our expense, your donated tins to Operation Gratitude to be included in the packages that they ship overseas.

You can get more information about this program here. I'll be posting reminders, but just to be certain everybody's aware of this program, I've posted an ad in the right sidebar so you can order at any time! If you would like to add this sidebar ad to your blog or website, email me and I'll get send you the image and the underlying code.

Just to summarize:

• You personally will receive no tins if you order this product, you are donating them to Operation Gratitude.
• You can certainly order our regular products to be shipped to you in the same transaction as well.
• Operation Gratitude is a 501(c)(3) organization, so your donation of $7.99 is tax deductible.
• We respect your privacy and we never share customer information, so if you would like an acknowledgment of your donation directly from Operation Gratitude, just indicate this in the "Special Instructions" box during the checkout process, and we'll forward your name and email address to Carolyn, who created this wonderful organization.
• You can donate as many tins as you like!
• If you prefer to donate cash instead, you can donate directly to Operation Gratitude by visiting their website.

Whatever your politics, our troops are overseas, and sadly will be there for some time yet. Operation Gratitude's collections for the big holiday shipments will begin in a few months, and their goal is to put together at least 70,000 packages on their next drive. I'd like to include a tin of Survival Spice™ in every one, but until we can afford to do it on our own, I need your help!

I got an email blast from Dave DeWitt announcing that the new Fiery Foods site upgrades are done.

Check it out, the old site was a great resource for Chile Heads, I'm sure the new one is even better! I'm going to spend some time over there over the next few days, I'll post some links to extra great stuff.

Wow. I mean, I'd just about shoot anyone who would try to steal the recipe for Survival Spice® but me, but this is excessive:

Colonel Harland Sanders' handwritten recipe of 11 herbs and spices was removed Tuesday from safekeeping at KFC's corporate offices for the first time in decades. The temporary relocation is allowing KFC to revamp security around a yellowing sheet of paper that contains one of the country's most famous corporate secrets.

...

The recipe that launched the chicken chain was placed in a lock box that was handcuffed to security expert Bo Dietl, who climbed aboard an armored car that whisked away with an escort from off-duty police officers.

I think the real secret is that 6 of the 11 ingredients are salt.

Bob sent me a quick email raving about a quart of BBQ sauce a friend brought him from Texas:

JUST RECEIVED A SPECIAL DELIVERY OF A LARGE BOTTLE OF RUDY’S BBQ SAUCE FROM AUSTIN, TX. THOUGHT I WOULD USE SOME TONIGHT. I ATTACHED A COUPLE OF PICTURES. YUMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looks promising in progress, and the kebabs look great. Say, that chicken could've used a little Survival Spice®, don't you think? Hopefully I'll be able to do a no-sodium version one of these days. It does have a lot less sodium than the vast majority of rubs out there, though.

I've been cooking a lot of skinless chicken at home lately myself, mostly out of convenience. What's your favorite- boneless/skinless, or au natural?

Happy, happy Friday, all. We've put a few more miles behind us this week, so I hope everyone's really to put their feet up and relax a bit this weekend. And cook, of course. With, uh, our Survival Spice® barbecue rub, and all the other nifty stuff over at Desert Island Foods®.com, of course...

Here's a quick laugh from Steve, I tip my cap to you, sir.

Have a great weekend! Cook something good, please, and if you care to email me a photo to post, glad to do it.

Congratulations, Chile. You beat me at my own Spam pizza game! I don't know what happened to all the other entries this time, but I'll hook you up big time.

Here's Chilebrown's winning entry, more pictures over at Mad Meat Genius:

The Frugal Gourmet

The Frugal Gourmet was the ‘Emeril’ of the eighties on PBS. Jeff Smith was his name. He was entertaining, funny and frugal. I always enjoyed watching him. I also had a suspicion that there was something a little odd about him. He would travel to Europe with his young male assistant and leave his wife home. Some people made some accusations against him and PBS dropped him like a Hot Potato. Today I am dedicating my entry to Jeff Smith. My first plan was to make a fruitcake. That probably would not be appropriate and not very frugal. I am going to make a pizza with ingredients that I have on hand.

My garden is in full swing so I can make some pizza sauce with fresh picked tomato’s. I checked the cupboard and found a can of Spam from The Pragmatic Chef’s last contest. There is some cheese in the refrigerator. The pizza will be cooked in the Beehive Oven fueled by almond wood. Let’s start by making the dough.

Pizza Dough

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar (I use Honey)
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
3/4 cup warm water
2 cups bread flour (1 cup more as needed)
1 teaspoon instant yeast
Combine water, honey, and yeast. Let sit for 5 minutes until yeast starts to bloom. In a food processor combine all ingredients and mix until dough forms ball and pulls away from side of bowl. You may have to add a little more flour. Knead on a floured board for 10 minutes. Place in Ziploc bag and put in refrigerator for 24 hours.

Sauce
1 slice of bacon diced
7 or 8 tomatoes peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
Salt & Pepper
1 small onion diced
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp sugar

Cook the diced bacon in large sauté pan for 5 minutes. Add the onions and sauté for another couple of minutes. Add the paste cook for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, sugar, oregano, salt and pepper. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Arrange all your ingredients. Roll out the dough and assemble the pizza pie. Cook in oven at very high temperature for several minutes.

I think Jeff Smith would be proud. The Spam was actually very good I was surprised. I do not think I am going to run out and buy anymore unless there is another contest.

Apparently shoppers are continuing to change their shopping behavior:

COLUMBUS, Sept. 2, 2008—Shoppers have shifted their shopping patterns as gasoline and food continue to grab a larger share of wallet. In American ShopperScape™ 2008, TNS Retail Forward reports that shoppers are trading down to save money and seeking one-stop shopping venues and stores closer to home to save time and gasoline. Discount and value retailers are benefiting from an influx of cost-conscious shoppers at the expense of conventional and high-end retailers. And, store brands are benefiting at the expense of national brands.

Hey- I happen to know a great place to buy food stuff online!!! *hint hint*

I'll post our Food Fight winner tomorrow, sorry. Today was just nuts.

To be announced tomorrow...

Whatever you're grilling, it's better with Survival Spice™ on it! Hope you've got some handy.

Whether you need to work or not, thanks for your support of Desert Island Foods™.com.