What You Should Have Eaten #51

Chili Dog Bacon Cheeseburgers and Fiery Fries

Pernod. Gah. It’s like death. If I hadn’t spent so much on this bottle, I’d dump it in the sink. The vodka and the cognac don’t help. It’s all yellow licorice death.

I was looking forward to this. Chopped up hotdogs mixed in with ground beef? Plus bacon? Oh my God.

I’m starting to do these recipes on somewhat of a smaller budget, so I might be making some substitutes with various ingredients in the recipes to come. I got thick-cut bacon, but my budget bacon didn’t come in a center-cut or smoky option.

I went with these cheapo Kroger frozen shoestring fries. This giant bag, which usually lasts about three weeks between me and the kids, costs less than a buck fifty.

I had a difficult time with the hot dogs. I wanted to get all-beef ones, maybe even brats, but the budget didn’t allow it. Next time, though, and I promise there will be a next time for these burgers. And rather than getting some super-special deli cheese, I went with some generic pre-packaged slices.

Hot sauce, no. Chili powder, yes.

I didn’t follow the directions 100% when it came to the fries. I baked them like the package said. I melted some butter in the microwave and mixed it with the garlic. When the fries were done, I poured the butter over the fries, mixed everything up a bit, then popped them back in the oven for a bit. I’d never made garlic fries before, but these were awesome.

It may not have been pretty, but this was a damn fine meal. It’s burgers and fries, so what more do I need to say? This is enough of an American staple that you know if you like them or not. Adding bacon or hot dogs probably won’t change your mind, even though they do make a tasty regular burger into a super-tasty awesome burger.

Y’know, maybe that’ll be my new thing. Rachel Ray on a budget. If you’re reading this and have any thoughts, please leave them in the comment section. These are mostly extremely good recipes, but sometimes my heart stops, just for a second, when I see that grocery bill. Let’s see what I can do with these recipes on a budget.

Also, in case you've forgotten: When I can remember to add this to the bottom of my posts, I’m going to whore myself out with an impassioned plea: click on the ads. PLEASE click on the ads. I don’t care if you exit out of it immediately or actually look around. This isn’t some professional blog where I believe in the products I’m shilling. These are automatic ads placed by Google. But when you click ads, I get a little bit of money, and as a single father of three, every penny from every source helps...especially with Christmas bills here and an unsure/shaky work situation. So I’m going to keep this tiny bit of begging at the bottom of my posts, and I hope you’ll take an extra 10 seconds after reading my blog to click on an ad. The only thing it costs you is time. :) Thanks so much!

What You Should Have Eaten #50

Ham and Swiss Crepes with Chopped Salad

As all good conversations tend to do, talk between me and a buddy ended up turning to beer and bacon the other day. He wondered if anybody had brewed a chocolate bacon stout. I Googled it, and this was the second link that popped up. Challenge accepted! Oh, and in case you’re wondering, this brewery has made a stout with chocolate and bacon. I must try it.

I used two bottle of Left Hand Milk Stout for the recipe. It’s what I had in my fridge. That’s why I went with tiny marshmallows instead of the big ones: availability.

 My biggest recommendation for you if you’re going to bake one of these is to make sure you’re got a big mixing bowl; this is a lot of batter. I ended up making the bunt cake and 12 cupcakes with enough batter left over for probably at least six more cupcakes.

After a little Mario Kart and Pokemon with my son, it was time to get started on dinner. Dinner, of course, also means a cocktail. Tonight it was a New Yorker Apple. Calvados (well, Applejack) and red vermouth. It was sweet, but not sugary sweet. I don’t really like mixing with vermouth all that much because of the…offness…of it. Like I said, sweet but not sugary, and it cuts out the bit of any stronger liquor it’s mixed with.

I forgot to take a picture of the recipe. Here’s a link to another blog that’s got it.

I went with one container of red cherry tomatoes instead of two containers, one each of red and yellow, because a) I couldn’t find any yellow and b) they were damned expensive. I also went with a regular cucumber instead of a seedless one. I’ve never had a problem with the seeds in cucumbers, and neither have my kids.

Whenever I splurge on sliced ham from the deli instead of the pre-packaged stuff, I always go with Boar’s Head Maple Glazed Honey Coat Ham. It’s the best lunchmeat I’ve ever had.

I did not enjoy making the crepes. I’m thinking that I used to much batter as I tried to make each one. They were impossible to successfully flip and keep together.

The entire meal was…decent. Good, but I probably wouldn’t take the time to make any of it again. The salad wasn’t what I usually go for. I like leafier lettuces. I agree with the blog I linked to. This would have been much better with spinach instead of watercress, and I’d probably leave the parsley out altogether.

The crepes were good, but they weren’t what I was expecting. I told my kids they would be like thin pancakes, but instead they were like thick omelets. I would have enjoyed them more had they been fully one thing or the other, either pancakes or omelets.

The cake/cupcakes took some getting used to, but in the end I really enjoyed it. The bacon taste is pretty subtle, but you really have to be prepared for it when you’re eating the cake and all of the sudden you bite into a chunk of bacon. Once you get past that shock, though, prepare to enjoy yourself. I didn’t put any of the icing on cupcakes, instead using it all for the cake (which was unusually heavy, something I wasn’t prepared for). I took the cupcakes to work, and they seemed to be a big hit. My kids also really liked it.

Also, in case you've forgotten: When I can remember to add this to the bottom of my posts, I’m going to whore myself out with an impassioned plea: click on the ads. PLEASE click on the ads. I don’t care if you exit out of it immediately or actually look around. This isn’t some professional blog where I believe in the products I’m shilling. These are automatic ads placed by Google. But when you click ads, I get a little bit of money, and as a single father of three, every penny from every source helps...especially with Christmas bills looming on the horizon. So I’m going to keep this tiny bit of begging at the bottom of my posts, and I hope you’ll take an extra 10 seconds after reading my blog to click on an ad. The only thing it costs you is time. :) Thanks so much!

What You Should Have Eaten #47

Creamy Broccoli Soup with Cheddar and Chive Toast

Grilled Bacon and Smoked Gouda Sandwiches

Tonight’s drink is a Beanblossom Strawberry Hard Cider from Oliver Winery in Bloomington, Ind. My sister went to school in Bloomington, so she brought over this bottle that she found. When I drink beer, I don’t always like it when it’s too sweet, but when I drink wine, I like to lean on the sweet side. This drink was a perfect blend of that, sweet but not too sweet, and the strawberry wasn’t overpowering. I would really like to try the other ciders that the Winery offers.

This was a very easy meal to make, and a very tasty one at that. There were a few changes/substitutions, though.

Obviously, no onion. And the bacon wasn’t used correctly. Since I didn’t read the recipe ahead of time, I didn’t know that the bacon was for the toast, which I wasn’t making (more on that later). I bought it, I chopped it, I cooked it…then I got to the part of the recipe where I was supposed to add it to the cheese for the toast. Since I wasn’t making the toast, I dumped the bacon into the soup. No harm there, right? Right.

No hot sauce. See last week’s entry for the reason.

Whenever I eat soup, I love a sandwich with it, usually a grilled cheese. So I thought I’d do something fancy this time. Grilled smoked gouda and bacon sandwiches. Yeah, sounds awesome, right? Right.

So this was a crazy good dinner. The soup was enhanced by the bacon, and I sprinkled a bit of cheddar on it since I had a bag of it that wasn’t used for the toast. Combined with the amazingly awesome grilled cheese sandwiches, this was an unbeatable winter meal.

Also, in case you've forgotten: When I can remember to add this to the bottom of my posts, I’m going to whore myself out with an impassioned plea: click on the ads. PLEASE click on the ads. I don’t care if you exit out of it immediately or actually look around. This isn’t some professional blog where I believe in the products I’m shilling. These are automatic ads placed by Google. But when you click ads, I get a little bit of money, and as a single father of three, every penny from every source helps...especially with Christmas looming on the horizon. So I’m going to keep this tiny bit of begging at the bottom of my posts, and I hope you’ll take an extra 10 seconds after reading my blog to click on an ad. The only thing it costs you is time. :) Thanks so much!

What You Should Have Eaten #28

Bacon-Makes-It-BetterCorn Chowder
with bacon and Colby-Jack Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

 

I had to omit the Tomato and Ricotta Salata Salad because my local grocery store does not carry ricotta salata, and I read that it was quite different from regular ricotta. No substitutions!

 

I got a new knife today at the grocery store (it’s the black-handled one on top). It was on clearance and I didn’t have one like it, so I bought it. It came in pretty handy tonight. It was great for cutting the kernels off of the cobs of corn.

 

I got the idea for the bacon and grilled cheese sandwiches from my oldest son. He didn’t want any of the soup, but he wanted some of the bacon I was using. I had some extra, so they went on the grilled cheese. Tasty!

 

Actually, the whole damn thing was tasty. I left the onions and hot sauce out of the soup because they do bad things to me. The flavor provided by the thyme and corn were plenty for a chowder. And then with the bacon crumbled on top? Perfect. And I don’t think I’ll ever again eat grilled cheese without bacon.