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.

Diced Tomatoes = Improv Food Awesomeness

I have now improved two improvised meals with diced tomatoes, and I come sharing my newfound wisdom.

1) "Real America" Tuna a la Tomato

As everyone knows, left to my own devices, I eat horrible things. This is why, since we had a coupon long ago, a box of Tuna Helper stood on our shelf in the pantry. I decided to make it for at-work lunches.

After a horrible experience with Hamburger Helper and Morningstar Farms Grillers (tastes like a very bad idea), I resolved always to add other things to "Helper" meals so that they have some taste and nutritional value.

This time, on top of Costco canned sliced mushrooms, I added a can of diced tomatoes, as well as the sauce packet.

The result: not bad. The diced tomatoes turned a plain cream-saucy dish (I used skim milk) into something closer to an Italian pasta. Definitely edible.

2) The Pedant Succeeds With Goat Cheese

Today, the Sherbs and I managed to find ourselves with an unplanned dinner, so I promised to make something. I had in my head the Amateur Gourmet's blog post about a penne alla vodka recipe from Lydia Bastianich, the Sherbs's favorite WETA Create food personality.

It was, of course, horrible with cold and rain outside, so we didn't want to buy anything. Which meant that we had no cream and no vodka.

However, after an excellent risotto last week, we had some leftover goat cheese. This was the inspiration.

I started with a can of Muir Glen diced tomatoes, which Cook's Illustrated considers the best brand of canned tomatoes, and a can of Hunt's diced tomatoes with random junk in it, which Cook's Illustrated did not rank highly but was on sale when I was stocking up on emergency pantry goods at the Teet (did you make out like a bandit on triple coupon weekend? We did!). Added to that the remainder of some vegetable stock, a healthy dump of garlic powder, Italian seasoning, and grated parmesan, not to mention more canned mushrooms, and it started to seem like sauce.

Then, in went the cheese and two small spoon scoops of low-fat sour cream. It creamed up just enough for true tastiness when we added the Barilla Plus rigatoni (I was too lazy to reach back further on the shelf for penne). The Sherbs and I both liked it a lot.

Do You Drink the Muffin Drink?

Since the news today is filled with cows attacking bears and the McCain campaign's baseless slurs against Dungeons and Dragons, I thought it would be a good idea for a similarly frivolous post, based on a prior conversation I had with the Sherbs.

How do you make a mixed drink that tastes like a muffin?

We have some cheap blackberry wine (as mentioned before, purchased at a sale at the Teet), and I think with Cointreau, vodka, and a butterscotch schnapps in the right quantities, it can approach muffin-tasting (I think it would be better with blueberries, but the Sherbs doesn't like blueberries).

With bourbon and blackcurrant liquor, you might be able to approach "raisin bran." Or create something vomitrocious (a neologism that I find not as good, but more useful, than my new favorite non-word "baconostalgia"; furthermore, it turns out that I didn't invent it; "vomitrocious" has been used in such cultural touchstones as an episode of Arthur, the PBS cartoon about an aardvark that does not look at all like an aardvark).

"Chocolate muffins" are actually cupcakes, and so those suggesting Godiva liqueur recipes should take note. Vermeer is better for most mixed drinks, anyway; it's like the Cocio of chocolate booze.

Man, I wish I knew of a place that sold Cocio around here. It's not only better than Nesquick and Yoo-hoo (not hard, especially since Yoo-hoo is one step removed from the weird marsupial-equivalent-in-evolution beverage that is Ovaltine), but from the stuff you make at home with chocolate syrup. It is tasty-riffic.