Carol Rutz’s Annexe

This week’s Farktography is a very good one: the theme is about food on a dish or plate. The results are stunning.

Many of the entries featured homemade dishes, others were made in a restaurant.

I spent 8 hours Tuesday at the internship and on lunch break, picked up Shrimp Alfredo for the prof. She loved the shrimp, but the pasta was lackluster. If only Mopsy had a restaurant in Fort Wayne so I can serve Ms Heise this instead:

Here is EveryoneLovesCleanUndies’ breakfast pic of cinnamon bread french toast with apples and caramel.

And this is what I feel like eating right now, this steak and potato dish by Alyna_jf …it will clog up your arteries, it will add meat to your ribs, but your taste buds will thank you for it:

You are a guy (or an Honorary Male)…and there will be times when you are not at your best. You need something comforting and cheap. And chocolate won’t cut it. That’s for the fluctuating estrogen crowd. Booze gives you a hangover and maybe more trouble. Guys in big cities (especially in California and the Southwest) know where to go.

(ACHTUNG: Contains some cursing by an angry girlfriend. And a dude who failed at getting pre-marital sex, but that’s another issue entirely. The late night burrito place, being under the Kingdom of the Left Hand, does not care about the nature of your sins and errors BUT it cares whether you have enough cash to pay for your meal.)

Right now, the guys at Voodoo is having a parade from their West Burnside area location to their second shop at 1501 NE Davis. I heard that the Mayor as well as a group of syncopated drummers and various bicyclists will be marching.

Wish I was there, with a Memphis Mafia fritter on hand. At least I’ll be there this July when OSCON rolls around!

Area Mom Could Have Made Same Meal At Home For Much Cheaper

NAPERVILLE, IL-During an outing to Chisholm’s Family Restaurant Monday, Sandy Wiersma, 43, repeatedly told her family that she could have made the same food at home for significantly less money.

My rice cooker has been wonderful. The rice is fluffy and not overcooked. It’s perfect. And then for dinner, I’ve used it as a slow cooker and made scalloped potatoes with ham. And it’s easy to clean unlike the crock-pot. It has really r0×0red my s0×0rs. I got the stuff for chicken fried rice tomorrow. That will be another thing on my “I’ve Could Made That for Much Cheaper” list.

Now…if I could convince the Prediger to allow me to build an outdoor Tandoori oven, I’ll have it made. At least right now I can learn to make Vindaloo to go with my steamed rice.

PS: I bet that fictional housewife is bloody hard to shop for birthday presents. And forget about taking her out for anniversary dinners!

I was looking for some new outdoor lights for the house at Big Lots when I stumbled upon a blue box of Barbara Dee Winter Holiday Mints. It looked like the Thin Mints, and it cost me only a dollar. And then, I ate one and realized it tasted like a Thin Mint, but the cookie part is vanilla-colored not imbued with cocoa powder. So…I went home and gave the Prediger a Barbara Dee mint. He said: “Man, the Girl Scouts won’t be pleased with that! It’s just like the Thin Mint!”

And I say to myself…I’m going to Google up some info on Barbara Dee and its mints…and I’ve found the following information from the Ardmoreite Online:

The Keebler Company owns President Enterprises Corp, which is based in Georgia. President is responsible for 60 percent of the production of Girl Scout Cookies. And what’s more, they also produced under different brands– including Barbara Dee.

From the article:

Other registered trademark brands of President include Marietta’s, Greg’s, Barbara Dee, Chadwick Farms, Jack’s, Jackson’s, Mother’s, Bishop’s and Olde New England. President officers are Eric Wen, vice chairman and CEO, and Jerry Cavitt and Bill Bayers, biscuit and specialty division presidents, respectively.

And if this is not the smoking gun…look at Plunkett’s Food Industry Almanac 2007, in which the Girl Scout-Barbara Dee connection is confirmed. That’s right! With a few cosmetic differences, Holiday Mints are the Thin Mints’ fraternal twin.

Next time you are at Big Lots, ask for Barbara Dee Winter Holiday Mints. That will tide you cookie freaks over until the next cookie drive!

We all heard that the old school episodes of Sesame Street is deemed unsuitable for today’s preschoolers. This is why I have utter contempt of what passes for education.

It was not the gentrified suburban life that SS glorified with Elmo at the center. It was the gritty, flashy city with clips of rural agriculture and children of all colors and shapes and sizes. It was funny and folksy and silly and it faces issues as we kids must face. Mr Hooper’s legacy was that we can talk about death without couching in terms like “gone to sleep” or “gone forever”. Miles’ adoption is a wonderful way to say that families happen in many ways. Disabled people found a spot in the Street along with the Twitterbugs, the Groucheteers, and talking animals. We all know that normal people do not live in garbage cans like Oscar. I always wonder what his can looked like inside. Oscar’s home has an elephant, and vast space like Dr Who’s TARDIS. In real life, it’s just 35 gallons of trash and maggots. Chaotic imagination reigned plenty in the old school episodes. Yet, we knew that when the day is over, we can go back to our families with directives to clean up our room and to play nice.

My sibs would complain that I was too old for Sesame Street. I would watch the episodes right up to the time I left to Concordia-Irvine. By that time, Elmo took away the last 15 minutes of air time and it was no longer the Sesame Street I remembered. I want my nieces and nephews to enjoy the old school episodes. They are not fragile snowflakes and they will realize that not everything will be sanitized and dumbed down for their protection.

From the Consumerist and the nanny-riffic bowels of the Center of Science in the Public Interest, here is a video on how eating a Quarter Pounder is much better than eating at Olive Garden. Then again, anything is better than the Olive Garden.

Now a special story: It was months after my deaconess internship did not pan out, and I got an invite from my former classmates to dine at the Olive Garden. Yes, the Phoebes still love me. So I went and we ordered our food. One ordered a steak rare…but it was well done, and with lots of oil. It looks like grey carcass. How hard can it be to sear steak and cook it rare?! The food tasted like a pre-cooked microwave meal. I went home with a stomach full of FAIL.

One thing that I treasured is my Dad’s spaghetti sauce recipe. This Mexican-born man who has lived in the States more than half his life knows how to cook. He learned it when he was a cook at an mom-n-pop restaurant. The man who taught my dad has a penchant for horse racing and the Rat Pack. And my dad taught me that recipe. It was that dish that I first cooked for my Prediger whilst courting. He told me that he had not have spaghetti that good since his boyhood in Denver. Decades-old childhood memories, before my own existence!

Now…here is something to consider. I used very lean ground beef and made my stuff from scratch. What type of ingredients and preparation methods do these chains use before serving? The cost of my materials could be bought for under 10 bux and serves 6-8 servings.

Do yourselves a favor…learn to cook pasta with your own sauce.

There is a great thread at Fark.com, and it’s about the joys of the humble yet comforting Macaroni and Cheese.

From 60-cent bargain boxes to $20 gourmet lobster and mac, it brings us the fats, the starches, the warm feeling and the filling in the stomach. And the methods of making mac and cheese vary from individuals, families, regions, and circumstances. Nowadays, that is an occasional treat since it’s loaded with fatty goodness.

Growing up, I remember the old school Kraft Dinner boxen, with the powder. Here the States called it “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese”, but I prefer the more accurate Canadian interpretation of “Kraft Dinner”. I love that sooo much. I admit that today I follow Whammer’s approach of making KD:

Okay, you Kraft sinners. Admit it.

How many of you just cook the macaroni, then stir in the dry cheese powder WITHOUT the milk and butter?

Once you do it that way, and get the full, sharp flavor of the dry cheese melted into the macaroni, you can’t go back. The milk and butter just ruin it. They make it gooey, and take away the edge.

One package. 800 calories. All yours.

My family preferred the Deluxe version with the squeezable cheese packet. Meh, unless you want to eat the cheese by itself. The pasta would mess up the edge of the cheese. We also ate Stouffer’s, and that’s the closest my family had encountered to homemade mac and cheese.

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Here is my entry for the ThreadCakes contest. Hope this comes out nice.

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