Topic: What are you eating / What did you eat.

[6pairsofshoes]

Happy birthday, 8ully!

Glad your burger was good.  I've never heard of fried cheese curds.  We used to get fresh cheese curds when I lived in Wisconsin.  They had them at the farmer's market.  When they're fresh, they squeak when you chew them.  They're really delicious.  It's always nicer to be able to wear casual clothes and not have to worry about being in a place where you have to worry about making a mess when you eat.  A relaxed meal is better than a stressful one and I think a trip to the French Laundry or similar would be kind of intense and probably not in a good way by comparison.

In the midwest they like to deep fry stuff.  Not quite to the level of Mars bars, but they will bread and deep fry mushrooms.  I'm not a fan of that.  A Japanese fried of mine once made me a dinner of tempura.  She had the batter sitting in a bowl of ice and an electric fryer with hot oil to dip the ingredients into.  It was lovely, but it's rare that you find it so well prepared.  She was from Yokohama.  She'd have us make sushi and then we'd eat it.  A group of us.  But we always had to photograph it first.  I  have a bunch of polaroids of sushi dinners we made.  She'd fan the rice to cool it before we used it.  She had a Tower Records Tokyo fan.  Tower Records is long gone but I still have those polaroids.  She was a treasure.  I lost track of her after she returned to Japan.

[smokester]

I'm sorry for your pain smokes.

For my birthday, I negotiated DOWN. Instead of a fancy dinner I just wanted a burger and fries. So, we went to culvers.
I got the double bacon butter burger. Burger was fantastic, bacon sucked. I got the cheese curds because crinkle fries bless'ed suck, most of the other guests got the fish dinner.  ....

Many Happy Returns, 8ully.

I had to look up ASDA and see that it's a WalMart subsidiary.  Some of the Walmarts in the U.S. have a reasonable food selection with a deli that sells lunchmeats and rotisserie chickens, that sort of thing.  They also have frozen foods but nothing that would fit the description of what you were able to buy there.  Still, we have Trader Joes and they have some really good offerings of frozen ethnic entrees that won't break the bank.  Eating out can be expensive and if the food isn't great, it's a real disappointment when you realize you could have stayed home and enjoyed the meal for a fraction of the cost.

They have a whole Panku street food aisle. It's better than some takeaways, to be honest.

https://www.asda.com/instore/panku-streetfood/

[6pairsofshoes]

I think that the Canadians have the best idea for cheese curds: pile them on top of freedom fries (preferably deep fried in used engine oil, apparently), and then slathered in gravy. (They call the resulting mess poutine)

Not skimping on the calories, either.

I just had some nice maple walnut ice cream for the first time in many years.  It was just delicious.  They don't have it on the West Coast.

[smokester]

From the neck up I've never met a calorie I didn't like. But from the neck down hates them.

[smokester]

In my experience, flavour has calories.

Not that it matter to you as you're stick thin, brother.

[8ullfrog]

3 day water boil notice. UGH.

We bought paper bowls and plastic cutlery, but things are gonna be rough.

Turns out the big convection oven is dying because the top coils turn on when they feel like it. So we can do a frozen pizza, but it will take a while. As to a turkey, no dice.

We picked up a couple of soups and our last night with water we did mac and cheese with melinda's sriracha. It's good. Not fishy like huy fong, and not as sweet either. One funny thing, I found out my Melinda green sauce is 1 torch, and the sriracha is 2 torch.

I also watched a fascinating video on hot sauce that employed a test I've never heard of, the paper towel test.

The way the paper towel test works is you dab a drop of your hot sauce on a piece of paper towel and watch it bloom. The more red at the center, the more "mash" your sauce is made of. If it's got a giant halo? Vinegar or water.

I'm hemming and hawing over a sauce, it's $3 an ounce, and it's from the other side of the state. I'm leaning towards no unless it shows up in a liquidation center.

The vid:

[6pairsofshoes]

Franks is really pretty bad.  I was given some several years ago and my husband refused to eat it, as it was like spicy vinegar.

We buy Tapatio.  I'll eat the McIhenny jalapeno as I like green sauce, but it's hardly stellar.  I'd have to try Rickey's before slapping down cold hard cash for it.  Next time I'm in FL maybe.

In Portugal, I was impressed with the food:
little custard tarts, (Pasteis de Nata); roast cuttlefish with smashed potatoes with butter and parsley; amazing mushroom risotto; tiny crispy fried sardines; grilled shrimp in butter and garlic; we were sitting around near the Mosteiro de Jeronimos in Lisbon when an American gap year group showed up.  Their director had a freshly baked box of Pasteis de Belem (a local variant on the custard tarts).  She passed them out to the kids.   They were nice and spoke to us for a while, trading experiences of the country.  Their director came by and gave us each a tart, and my god, they were so warm and rich and delicious.  It was like a religious experience. 

[8ullfrog]

I hate the mix dogs, which are hotdogs where they mix some portion of chicken, pork, and beef. I've obviously had "all pork" in the form of sausage, but... huh I guess I have had "all chicken" in the form of aidels. completely blanked that.

anyway my aunt's dog split my thumb like a hot dog so I can't open or prep anything. It's clean and I had it liquid stitched in seconds, but I didn't have any gauze so I'm cutting up cotton ovals.

That was not a fun medicine chest empty spot moment. I used to have a TON of gauze, but apparently mom gave a lot of my kit to the roommate when we left.

Not a fun way to find out. Did still have my waterproof tape though, so it's sealed good.

Opening a beer is now a challenge. I never realized I'd become left dominant for opening stuff, but I know now. Thankfully butter and bread are easy open. And I just bought a butter dish. 

[6pairsofshoes]

I'm sorry to hear about the dog bite and the split thumb.  I hope it heals quickly.
There's a local pizzaria that has $3/slice Wednesdays and so we went by yesterday and got 4 slices.  For us that's two whole meals.  I had half a slice for lunch with mozzarella, tomatoes, pesto, and portobello mushrooms and fresh basil on top.  It was pretty tasty.  Not the best pizza ever but for the price and with it being so close, it was hard to resist.  What to eat when you are too tired to cook?  This is one of those things.  Heat and eat.

It's a weird thing to have to use the non dominant hand to do basic tasks.  I hope this remains a short lived thing.  Bad doggie.  I don't know if I'd hold onto a dog that would bite people like that.  Your aunt doesn't seem the type to really care, though.

[8ullfrog]

I've had mixed feelings about being "right handed" since I was a kid, things weren't remotely appropriate, but from what I've read about sinister, things honestly could have been worse. I had left/right issues throughout childhood, so I was probably a lefty forced to write right.

Do have a happy add though. Simek's frozen Ziti. Frozen, cheesy, delicious. The twist is instead of a classic red, it uses vodka sauce. It makes for a delicious frozen ziti.

We had a different frozen ziti for dinner tonight, and I won't bother to drop the brand. The meatballs were good, the ziti was poo.

I honestly think I prefer a white meatless ziti, something closer to mac and cheese than lasagna.

Hell, if we're dropping truths, I prefered the spinich lasagna because it didn't have red sauce. But don't tell nobody.

Also ouch, you kinda nailed the aunt to the wall. That dog is incredibly sad and mistempered. I did what I could to welcome him and he was literally under my desk when he flipped. He's just got that panic switch where he goes from sweetheart to maybe euthanize. I wouldn't ask for that, but the dog is not happy.

Mom took our yoshi boy over to her condo and they played today. I taught her what I call the blanket method. If things go bad, drop a towel over OUR dog, and lift him up out of the madness so he keeps his eyes.

[6pairsofshoes]

Yeah.  I'd really have to rethink whether it would be advisable to keep a dog that attacked people like that.  It's one thing for a dog to feel threatened and to protect itself, its turf, owners, etc.  It's quite another thing for it to flip out and go on the attack like that.

There's a whole book called "Born Under Saturn" about famous left handed artists, one of the most prominent being Leonardo da Vinci.  Left handed people are special, just because they're different.  I wonder that being inclined that way gives one an entirely different spacial orientation.  I once took a modern dance class and was astonished at what a clutz I was just trying to do moves that were simple and easy to the right when I attempted to replicate them to the left.  It's odd how our brains get structured by repetition of bodily tasks.

The Covid has taken away much of my motivation to cook, so we've been eating what my dear husband wants to fix.  Last night it was a big salad.  That's fine with me since it's been kind of warm here lately.

I like a variety of pasta sauces although I tend to stay away from the creamy white sauces due to the heavy calorie load.  The vodka sauce ziti sounds pretty good.  I was surprised to find that the Safeway (Albertsons and its many subsidiaries carry this) Signature Select Vodka sauce is cheap and tasty.  It's an odd mix of tomatoes and cream.  If there's vodka in it, it's pretty much cooked off all the alcohol.