Category: Food

“Hmmmmmm.. food!”

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Last Night’s Dinner

You know how you sometimes make dinner based solely on what ingredients you have lying around? That was dinner for me last night. I knew that I had rice, eggs, and a couple of hamburger patties… so I threw this together:

loco moco

It’s called loco moco, and it’s a popular dish in Hawaii. You just make a base of white rice, then put one (or more) hamburger patties on top of that. Put one (or more) fried eggs on top of the burger(s), then pour brown gravy over the whole thing.

It ain’t pretty, but it’s amazingly delicious! It would normally be served with a side of Hawaiian macaroni salad, but I haven’t found a good recipe yet. Can anyone help with that?

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Turkey Noodle Soup

When you think of “holiday traditions”, it’s easy to think of long-established ones instead of newer ones. When I think of Christmas, for example, one of the first things I think about are sausage balls, a Christmas morning treat my mom has been making as far back as I can remember. But I’m really starting to look forward to one of my newest traditions: turkey noodle soup!

turkey_noodle_soup

For the past two years, Lisa and I have been tasked with making the turkey for the Wilson family Thanksgiving. Following Alton Brown’s foolproof recipe, I’ve made a delicious bird each time. And since the turkey is “ours”, I get to take home all the leftovers. Last year I was puzzling over what to do with the giant turkey carcass, when I noticed that we had a lot of leftover celery and carrots too. Soup instantly popped in my mind… and it was so good!

It sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn’t. To make your own turkey noodle soup from scratch, all you need is some leftover turkey, some vegetables, a few spices, some spare time, and a little bit of love.

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Krispy Kreme FAIL

Lisa and I were out shopping last night when her blood sugar started to fall. She needed something sweet, and when she saw the “Hot Doughnuts Now” sign lit up at our local Krispy Kreme, she decided that a hot glazed doughnut would do the trick.

I pulled up to the drive-through and started to order a dozen glazed… but then I saw this adorable little guy on the menu:

Krispy Kreme Snowman

Awww! Cute, huh? I couldn’t say no to his cute lil’ snowman charms, so I added one to our order. Imagine my surprise when I carefully opened the bag and saw this:

Crappy Snowman

Folks, I swear on a stack of King James Bibles (the good ones, with the Apocrypha) that I didn’t alter the doughnut or photoshop this picture in any way. There was a small smear of icing on the inside of the bag (you can see it at the lower right of the doughnut); this would seem to correspond to the poor lil’ snowman’s face. Other than that, it looks as if the rest of him hasn’t been altered at all.

I’m glad I don’t have a young child who eagerly wanted one of these doughnuts… the one I ended up with looks more like a Halloween snowman than a Christmas one!

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Food Network Geography Fail!

Like me, Lisa thinks Food Network is all kinds of ridiculous. But she still watches an episode of something here and there if the dishes mentioned in the program guide interest her. She also sometimes DVRs stuff she thinks I might like.

She recently recorded an episode of Meat and Potatoes (what the hell is this show and where did it come from?). I was watching the intro, and noticed a huge geography fail in it. Towards the end of the credits, a bunch of steak knives fly into a map of the US, and names of the cities appear underneath them, presumably to show you where the show has been. The only problem is that the knife for “Atlanta, Georgia” lands in northwestern Alabama:

fn geo fail 008
(click to embiggen)

I emailed this to the folks over at FoodNetworkHumor.com and they ran it! So now I’m an INTERNET SUPER STAR… although I don’t like how they said I was “one of the only 7 people in America” who watches the show. I don’t “watch” the show.. Lisa thought I might like this particular episode based on what the program guide said. I’m not a regular viewer of the show.

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TIP OF THE DAY: Pizza Hut

By now you’ve probably seen the commercials: Pizza Hut is now offering any large, three-topping pizza for only $10, with their famous “specialty pizzas” costing “just $2 more”.

But here’s the thing: many of their specialty pizzas only have three toppings. So instead of ordering the “Hawaiian pizza” for $12, you can order a large pizza with ham, bacon and pineapple for $10. Instead of paying $12 for a large “Pepperoni Lovers”, order a large with double pepperoni and extra cheese for $10. Instead of paying $12 for a large “Triple Meat Italiano”, get a large with pepperoni, Italian sausage and ham for $10.

I realize this isn’t going to save folks a lot of money, but I figure it might help folks with kids who might order pizza once a week or so.

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Why KFC runs out of chicken

I’ve written about this before on this site, but the “why does KFC run out of chicken?” question just keeps popping up all over the Internet. I figured I’d do a recap of that old post, in hopes that the new post title might show up in search engines and spread some answers. Also, keep in mind that I worked for KFC over twenty years ago, so things obviously might have changed since then.

There are two instances where your local KFC might be out of chicken.

In the first case, they’re simply out of cooked chicken. This is actually a common occurrence.

Original Recipe chicken is cooked in a huge pressure cooker. It’s a giant machine, and every KFC I’ve ever been in only had one cooker. I don’t remember the exact capacity of the cooker, but it was something like 12 pieces of chicken per rack, with 5 racks total per batch. Each batch took around 16 minutes to cook, so therefore your average KFC can cook somewhere around 240 pieces of Original Recipe chicken per hour.

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