The "Hard Ways"

So, inspired by my sister, for breakfast this morning I made the vegetarian kosher version of the KFC Double Down:

I call it the "Hard Ways," because I wanted to keep with the gambling metaphors, and I like craps.

What is it? Two Morningstar Farms "Chik" Patties, Morningstar Farms fake bacon, Haolam jack cheese, and a smear of light mayo.

How does it taste? Eh. Not bad, but really sort of one note - meaty/salty, with a little tang from the mayo. I'm glad I didn't try the real thing; I had a bad experience with a "famous bowl."

Let Me Ruin Your Meal

Fun fact of the night: Ba-tampte pickled bell peppers, when just taken from the jar, look disturbingly like preserved mammalian hearts.

I made this discovery while working on my lunches for the week. Having created two breads, I needed to justify them by making sandwiches. The brown bread, which was pareve, was made into sandwiches with Empire turkey bologna and French's mustard with horseradish; the horseradish mustard helped compete with the strong flavors of the bread, which was made with (among other things) bran cereal and cocoa powder.

But I also made "Anadama" bread, which is dairy (as well as containing plenty o' molasses), and I needed a sandwich for that. Enter my eternal quest for the perfect tuna fish sandwich.

As regular readers of this blog know, I am always trying to make canned tuna into something better than a mayonnaise-y mass tasty only for tasting mostly like mayonnaise. I've had limited luck with mustard-based concoctions, so today I tried a base of olive oil, dehydrated onions, garlic powder, and crushed red pepper. I added to that tuna and chopped pickled red bell pepper, the latter for extra taste and texture.

It tasted pretty good right out of the bowl, but the important thing is for it to be palatable after a day or so in the fridge. My mustard tuna sandwiches were merely adequate to that task, and gave off a pungent vinegar/tuna odor which few others could stand. We'll see how these do.

Chicken Salad Success!

I had a bunch of roast chicken that my mom gave me after dinner Friday. I had a bunch of kosher-for-Passover mayo that wasn't getting any more shelf stable in the back of my fridge.

So I made chicken salad. I also added one whole onion and a whole mess o' pepper.

The salad came out great, so I distributed it onto a number of Pepperidge Farm® Deli Flats for future lunch consumption. Deli Flats are not only pareve, as mentioned before, but are quite good as not-a-lot-of-bread which still tastes like bread. I got the 7 Grain, because they're more fiber and less fat than the Whole Wheat. Go figure.

New Fun Facts

What I learned last night:

1) It is very hard to get the last bits of mayo out of a squeezy bottle of mayonnaise.

2) A Wusthof chef's knife, properly honed, will easily cut through the side of a squeezy bottle of mayonnaise.

Assorted Yucks

According to the blog Slashfood, Paula Deen advocates sandwiching industrial canned cranberry sauce around a mix of hot sauce, mayonnaise, and cream cheese. Paula Deen has officially one-upped all who would parody her cooking as fried butter in lard.

Went to a Lebanese restaurant last night; the Sherbs and I thought it was nice, but one of us got sick afterwards, so there won't be a review from me.

Tomato and Mayo - "World's Best"?

A commentator on the Huffington Post says that a sandwich of thick-sliced tomatoes, white bread, and mayonnaise is "the world's cheapest and best sandwich."

Neither of these claims are necessarily true (PB&J is cheaper), but the sandwich does sound tasty. However, I still stand by thin-sliced tomatoes, served open face on toasted pumpernickel spread with hummus.

While I lambasted The Pedant this morning for his post about a party my sister and I threw for my parents, I did tend to agree with his thoughts about the food. I should also point out that his help was unparalleled, and without him we wouldn't have known what to serve, had a delicious sangria, and had a generally jovial person there. The food was bought from a local supermarket with sufficient Jewy value and served Whitefish Salad, Salmon Salad, Tuna Salad and Egg Salad, bagels and the sides: coleslaw, potato salad, pasta salad, pickles. And I agree that the salads were all too mayo-y. And I like mayo, so for me to say that...wow.

I did get to cook a bunch for this weekend. For a Friday evening dinner, I made a three bean salad, which was quite tasty. I think the key was lemon juice, basil and edamame. I love me some edamame! I also spent all of Thursday night baking chocolate chip cookies and butterscotch brownies (with chocolate chips). And, they were a H-I-T hit. Mmmm...

Starch n' Mayo - The Possibilities

Sherbs and I had a party today, and included in the prefab party platters we got (we were kinda lazy, unlike the last time, where we ended up baking for a half hour after the guests came and I was burning my fingers on mini pizza bagels - such delicious pain) were bowls of macaroni salad.

"Macaroni salad," in this instance, meaning elbow macaroni, shredded carrots, and mayonnaise. It was fair; a better than industrial mayo would have put it into the "almost good" category.

Still, at its best, it was British food bland. I initially suggested to improve it to add red onions and olives, but the Sherbs, she does not love the olives.

So, instead, I think we should start from scratch with the macaroni salad, and make it more like a German potato salad. Not the Oscar Meyer kind, which is all vinegar and bacon (although Bobby Flay's version of the same, with a smoky meat substitute instead of the bacon, added at the end, might be okay), but the sauce in the version I found on Chow.com, which has mustard, is more what I'm looking for.

Evidently, all German potato salad recipes on the 'net have bacon. I buy mine from the supermarket, and they don't put it in there, possibly so that Jews and Muslims can share in the Teutonic salady goodness.

So, anyway, other than the bacon, that's what I'd mix with the macaroni - a mustard/vinegar mixture with red onions and green onions. If we needed texture, I'd also add sweet bell pepper bits, I think.