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

[6pairsofshoes]

Somebody gave me lots and lots of carrots.  I roasted some of them and had them with roast potatoes and sausages.  Then the rest I grated (in a food processor) and made carrot cake muffins.  We had them for breakfast for a week.  So that's what I just ate, and am still having tea, because I don't want to face the day without caffeine.

I have given up caffeine for as much as 2 years but I always come back.  It seems harmless.

[8ullfrog]

I made manwich with ground turkey.

I actually don't mind the turkey meat, but the resulting concoction was bland as hell.

So I'm dumping a ton of hot sauce in to make up for the lack of flavor.

[8ullfrog]

Hot sauce appears to be a running theme lately.

I had a boring pastrami sandwich for lunch, just two slices of pastrami, a wedge of provolone, and some doctored yum yum sauce (I put sriracha in it) with some shredded lettuce.  bev was that marshmello's coke. I didn't care for the mello coke.

Dinner was an experiment, I've been making tacos for a while, but decided to follow the directions on one of those premixed spice packets. It's... alright. Not amazing, and I had to add sauce, but it was inoffensive.

Used a brand-new frying pan and it burned in the same spot as the old one. I think I'll have to call maintenance.

One weird thing, my area seems to have experienced a shortage of Ortega sauce, so I've been using dollar store taco sauce... and I prefer the dollar store one. It's more bold than the ortega, which tastes kind of washed out in comparison. Plus with Ortega at $2.98, it doesn't really stack up from a price standpoint either.

[6pairsofshoes]

Hot sauce can be good or mediocre.

Don't much like Franks.  We usually keep Tapatio in the fridge for when we want it.  There are better hot sauces, but they are remote and hard to obtain if they are still in business at all.

If you want something done right, do it yourself.  We don't eat enough for it to be worth experimenting with homemade.  I suspect it's basically salt, vinegar and peppers, maybe with some water, perhaps garlic.  Some people ferment it, some don't.  But the ingredients are cheap.   Why not take the plunge?  You seem curious and willing to experiment with cooking.  You might come up with a million dollar recipe.

I'm drinking a cup of tea, trying to wake up and waiting for the muffin to heat so I can put something on top of these antibiotics.

[8ullfrog]

You got the ingredients spot on.
Cholula is the one that has garlic.

I don't much care for Tapatio, but you can't argue with the price.
Frank's might be more of a hot sauce for chicken, one probably wouldn't use it on tacos.

  I want to try Gringo Bandito, Dexter Holland's brand, but can't find it anywhere.
I've actually got a backlog of hot sauces. I'm currently using tabasco, but after that I've got Cholula, Victoria, Crystal's, and Texas Pete's.
They separate, but don't really go bad so long as you keep the neck of the bottle clean and watch out for discoloration. A brown hot sauce has in fact hit it's toss out date.

Taco sauce is a little different than hot sauce, a bit sweeter, less concentrated, and more liquid than paste like.

[6pairsofshoes]

Gringo bandito is available via amazon.  It's hard to imagine what isn't available via amazon.

[8ullfrog]

I've never bought food online, closest thing to it is when Walmart was offering $30 off a $100 ticket if you filled in your order online, then picked it up at the store.

I made out like a bandit because they had to make a bunch of substitutions but honored the price of the original items. I'm still surprised we got through a 48-ounce tub of sour cream without it going moldy.
The one downside was the produce. Whoever picked it gave zero shits. Bruised, wilted, nearly unusable.

I did find out why I prefer the dollar store taco sauce to the Ortega. Dollar store uses four different peppers, none of them green.

Ortega uses one, green.

I've never been a fan of bell.

Tonight I made stunt tacos. The taco chain from Demolition Man is trying to get people to use their app to vote on a returning menu item, either the double decker taco or the enchirito.

I've got a ton of taco supplies, so I made the double decker.

Didn't care for it. The double tortilla really carbs the thing out, to an unpleasant degree. I've really been enjoying this taco phase, even if my waistline doesn't, and this one was definitely a pothole.

I might try the enchirito next, I've got a ton of sauces I can try, plus I have the flour tortillas now.

Come to think of it, they're both essentially the same thing, just swap lettuce for onion and drop the corn tortilla. 

Crap! I forgot to explain the double decker. Essentially you take a taco in a corn tortilla, and then put refried beans on a second, flour tortilla, then wrap that around the taco.

Enchirito is essentially just a wet burrito with red sauce.

[6pairsofshoes]

I don't think I'd like a double tortilla thing as I often have trouble getting through just one.

I only ordered food online from Instacart once because they gave me some crazy discount on my order, but their produce selection was terrible and they went to a great produce store, so how they managed to screw that up is just a mystery.

I sometimes get stuff from amazon that I can't find around here.  Like baby butter beans.  Nobody sells them locally, so we have to get them from the behemoth.  Once they delivered a case that had lots of bent cans so I complained and they sent me another case free of charge.  I'm still working my way through those.

I had a turkey sandwich on whole grain bread with some fresh tomato, dijon and mayo.  Now I want a nap.

[8ullfrog]

I don't know who sets these things, but microsoft informs me that it is Grilled Cheese Day.

So I made a spicy grilled cheese. I used the five cheese blend from grocery outlet, some Blue Top Lime Jalepeno creamy hot sauce, and used mayonnaise instead of butter. Surprisingly, it results in a LESS greasy sandwich than if you use butter.

cooking directions are set it open face in a toaster oven and leave it alone until it's golden.

Mayonnaise is an annoying word to remember how to spell, it's the second "n" and the "i" that get me.

[6pairsofshoes]

I love a good grilled cheese sandwich, although I don't often indulge, due to the fatty nature of the delicacy.

[8ullfrog]

Tonight, I made a box dinner, but I cut the meat by half. It was the right choice.
I also added a bag of steamed broccoli.

One funny thing is I was using a plastic measuring cup to work the meal, and ended up eating my dinner out of it, so I got portion control too!

The company messed with the ingredients in their cheese packet, so I won't even name them. Jerks.

Instead of being creamy, it was pasty, like glue. It honestly felt like I was stirring glue into my meal. Who knows what it will do to my insides.

I normally name and shame when products go to poo, but this one will remain nameless.

[6pairsofshoes]

Wow.  Boxed dinner.  Hamburger helper?  Other than that, I've got nothing.

Please.  The suspense is killing us.  Don't make us eat glue.

[8ullfrog]

fine, I cave like a house of cards.

It was one of the velveeta dinners.

One of my cheat codes for meals has been buying the velveeta cheese packets at the dollar store, but I stopped because they had this issue.

The fact that the packets are nearly identical are unsurprising.

Cutting the meat portion in half made the dish less greasy. Also grocery outlet is now selling 93% / 7%, so the fat is lessened even more.

I'd despair if I was making burgers. You need some fat for a good burger.

[6pairsofshoes]

I appreciate that they are striving for convenience, but making cheese sauce is really simple and takes only a few ingredients.  Keep a box or two of pasta on hand and combining the other ingredients (meat, vegs) is equally easy.  My grandmother used to make mac n cheese with velveeta and I loved it as a child, but I doubt I'd opt for that now.  GO often has inexpensive real cheese that keeps for months under refrigeration for pretty reasonable prices.  I'd purchased some Kraft blocks from there that were in our fridge for over a year (while we were away) and when we got back, they were still fine.  No mold; still perfectly edible.  Go figure.

[8ullfrog]

Mom flips out over Roux, but she's not here, so why not? I've got a lot of cheese. I've also heard you can buy powdered cheese, so you don't have to use the packets that come with the instant boxes. I was recently advertised to by a powdered peanut butter company, but they wanted TWENTY DOLLARS for a jar. No thanks.

Last night and tonight I made enchirito's. Might upload the pics to smokesterbucket later.

First night I did it to spec, which meant red sauce and beef.

Tonight I modified my favorite Las Palmas green enchilada recipe. I don't like cooking chicken, so I got a tube of ground turkey. Didn't realize Turkey takes about 14 minutes to cook, but hey, it's all going in my stomach anyway. I put on Orion and got to stirring.

So, I browned that up and made the enchilada innards sauce.

Essentially for a single burrito it's 2 TBs Sour Cream, 3 oz Green Enchilada sauce, 1/4 cup onion, and stir that up until fully mixed. The resulting mixture is not visually appealing in the slightest, but it is delicious.

Next you spoon the mix into your tortilla, then put it in a glass dish. I use the square ones you can get at grocery outlet. (Original recipe calls for baking pan and specific rolling instructions.)

Top with shredded cheese and another 2 oz of Green Enchilada sauce, microwave 1 minute. Enjoy.

I eyeballed the cheese; it was about four pinches.