'Q Freebies

I went to the Safeway barbecue cookoff in DC today, near the Archives/Navy Memorial station.

Since DC law prevented the competitors from handing out free samples (or paid samples), it was mostly an opportunity to get free stuff from vendors. And did I ever:

FREE FOOD

• Smoked sausage and pulled pork sandwich from Stubb's barbecue sauce
• Sample of Kraft Homestyle Mac n' Cheese
• Sample of Safeway's "Rancher Reserve" beef cooked in pepper and olive oil
• Claussen's pickle
• A really, really tasty slice of watermelon
• GEICO Gecko Pez dispenser
• Sample packs of Mrs. Dash from the DASH NGO for prevention of domestic violence
• Margarita mix
• bloody mary mix
• 5 spice bloody mary mix
• two free packages of Kraft Homestyle mac n' cheese

FREE NOT FOOD

• Tote bag from winning Bingo from the DC Lottery
• Tote bag for taking a survey from Benjamin Moore paint
• Luggage tag from Greyhound Bus Lines
• Flimsy water bottle from Greyhound Bus Lines
• Magnets with a Clausen's pickle theme
• Magnets with the Dunkin' Donuts logo
• Magnetic shopping list with the Dunkin Donuts logo
• climbing-unsafe carabiner from Oscar Meyer Lunchables

All this, and plenty of coupons. I feel like I got my $11 admission's worth, even after buying some ribs with coleslaw and potato salad from the Midwestern place that played early Michael Jackson on a loop (and gave cups of free iced tea to people in line).

Because This Blog Is Named That Way

The "no-knead" bread last night, with a substitution of one cup whole wheat flour for all-purpose, was very tasty, especially with a reheat of the vegetable soup from Sunday with the addition of a cup of water and 4 oz. Barilla Piccolinni® tiny pastas.

But today I want to make my own tonic water, because the Washington Post tells me I can. The only challenge? The Sherbs prefers diet tonic water.

So, the next question is, will Splenda® work? It needs to become a syrup. McNeil Nutritionals, the makers of Splenda® and possibly the sibling company of a pharmaceutical firm I used to sue all the time (nothing you need to worry about), says that it works in caramel sauces, but it dissolves and browns quickly.

Am I up to the challenge? I think so.

Now I just need gin. Or the Post's suggestion, homemade spiced rum.

Oh, also, while I'm also blathering about bread, cooking a fried egg in between pieces of sage bread (couldn't cut a hole in it) in a pan filled with cooking spray and paprika, with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes and sea salt, tastes awesome.

Don't that beet all?

The Sherbs has pretty much covered all of our meal at Founding Farmers, save two things:

1) My salad, which had pretty much everything in it. Mixed greens, slivered almonds, tomatoes, grapes, olives, cheese, and a champagne vinaigrette. Really delicious.

2) My closing cocktail, which was a Hemingway-inspired mix of champagne and absinthe. It was green and thujone-tastic. Seriously, though, it was cool, crisp, and would make a great apertif at parties, although, given its combination of anise flavors and tartness, less is probably more.

Last night we had a salad from one of my new favorite cookbooks, Twelve Months of Monastery Salads Where You Can Totally Halve the Amount of Oil in the Dressing. One of the more attractive Benedictine salad recipes was a "Dutch egg salad," which we had to try.

The salad involves beets, endive, cheese, shallots, and hard-boiled eggs in a dijon/yogurt dressing. Other than painting half the kitchen pink while chopping and boiling the beets, the food prep was uneventful. The end result: tasty, save for one too-sharp shallot. A keeper of a salad.

Tapas Success!

The party went well.

The best tortilla española recipe is the one with the cheese and spinach in it. It was super-tasty.

Also, the Sherbs is the new household queen of patatas bravas. She makes great spicy potatoes.

As for me, let me share my recipe for sangria:

• 1 ½ bottles red wine,
• ½ bottle cherry wine,
• 2 shots triple sec,
• 2 shots brandy,
• 2 cups lemon-lime soda,
• assorted fruit.

Everyone thought it was pretty awesome.

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.

Eating, Drinking, and Merriment

The Sherbs has already mostly dealt with Sette Bello; my only contribution is to add my meal there, which was a seafood medley on squid ink pasta (pretty good, although basically just stuff in a garlic-butter sauce; not exceptional) and the veal with saffron risotto entree (veal: slightly dry. Risotto: good).

At least as tasty was the pasta dish the Sherbs cooked up last night, which was spinach and garlic on whole wheat rigatoni, topped with parmesan and chopped walnuts. Really tasty.

We also made sangria yesterday to get rid of the half-bottles of cranberry wine and cheap red wine we had lying around (especially since they had a sale on fruit wines at the Teet, and we stocked up). The fruit part was contributed by a frozen fruit medley we were initially going to use in smoothies, but then we used the yogurt for something else...I can't remember what.

Tonight I am going to try to rock the wok with a paella. Wish me luck!

Land of the Wine Beverages!

So the Sherbs and I bit off more than we could chew with a Mark Bittman recipe involving roasted vegetables and yogurt - possibly because A) our broiler sucks and B) we don't have a broiler-safe casserole dish even if it didn't.

Also: it takes freaking forever to char tomatoes. Should I just put them over an open flame or what?

To counterbalance our not-quite success with the roasted eggplant, peppers, and yogurt, we made sangria - and stumbled upon a not too bad recipe. I don't think we'd use Weinstock kosher red wine again (it is so tannic), but a mix of red wine and cranberry wine, with chunks of granny smith apples, was tart and refreshing and did not taste as if we were trying to make Bartles & Jaymes (speaking of which - now that we have Mike's Hard Lemonade and such, does anyone drink Bartles & Jaymes anymore?).

We had a goodly amount of the sangria watching the Joan Collins film Land of the Pharoahs, which is sort of a telling of how the Pyramid of Giza was built, if you can allow for glaring failures in plausibility such as Joan Collins playing a deceptive and murderous Cypriot. There are some supporting characters who are interesting, but they take up only about a half hour of the hundred-minute plot, about as much time is taken for long pans across Egypt watching extras pretend to haul or build things.

Bagels and Manhattans

I had some Kraft Bagel-fuls® recently. I had a coupon and the Teet had them at two-for-one.

They taste like Lender's with industrial cream cheese in them. Not bad, per se, but not real bagels.

A couple weeks ago, I had a conversation with some of my friends and the topic of bagels came up. The friend said that one could get New York grade bagels in Virginia. When I corrected this friend that no, you absolutely cannot get a New York bagel in the DC Metro Area, the friend then asked why people think things are so great from New York.

If you do not think New York bagels are better than other bagels, you are a bagel philistine. You are standing there in bagel Philistia, continually invading us bagel Israelites, and hopefully bagel Samson will come and gut you with the bagel jawbone of an ass.

I don't care if you personally like your steak well-done, your whipped topping non-fat non-dairy, or your cheese whizzed, but to claim that those preferences are better than the established consensus of people who care about food is culinary know-nothingism. Mimi Sheraton hates you, and I just think you're wrong.

So, my friend, please enjoy the Bagel-fuls® as the pinnacle of bagel achievement you so clearly believe them to be. Philistine.

* * *

On the other side of the Israelite/Philistine coin, do not make a manhattan with Kedem brand sweet vermouth. I had the aforementioned drink at a wedding last weekend, and there is really a difference that no maraschino cherry can cover up.

Free Beer Thing in the Mail

So, the Sherbs and I sorted through our mail after our Israel jaunt, and we found a mysterious brown package in the mail. It was too small to be a bomb, but we just had no idea what it actually was. I opened it up, and found a triangular piece of metal.

Since I do not live in a Dan Brown novel, it was not the key to an ancient treasure, but instead, I said,

"Hey, it's the free beer thing I ordered!"

A while back, Bass Ale had a promotion for a "beer brolly" which allegedly aided in the creation of black-and-tans. (It, sadly, expired yesterday.) All you had to do was sign up and eventually you get a metal device which makes the beer strata of the black-and-tan more likely. Which I just did.

Users of the brolly have had mixed results, to say the least. And the Sherbs doesn't drink beer, much less "the stout of your choice" (as Bass's parent company does not own Guinness). So we won't be trying it out immediately. But it's cool to have; it sits on our booze shelf next to the Patron Silver and the butterscotch schnapps we got in duty free.

Most Delicious Treif Cocktail Ever!

The bacon-infused Old Fashioned.

For more mixed-drink variety, you can always make bacon-infused vodka.

I am just like General MacArthur

As promised, we have returned. Massive amounts of environmental toxins have been sprayed into the corners of our apartment, and even though the Sherbs and I still see the isolated pest, we still have more spray, and our courage.

Anyway, about food, because that's more fun. Mostly from my archives, due to the bug issue.

1) Bartenders love to treif up drinks with bacon fat. Note to readers: does not go well with Dr. Pepper.

2) Make pizza in your Dutch oven! If you're Jewish, you can omit the bacon, unlike Rachael Ray, who gets mad cash from the American Applewood Smoked Bacon Producers Association.

3) Hell's Kitchen - the video game! I am so sorry that I always miss this show on TV.

4) Wikipedia: it's what's for dinner.

More as we settle back into our routine and have more bug destruction.

I'm a Pepper, You're a Pepper, Blog a Pepper...

I haven't blogged about Dr. Pepper recently. So here's a post.

The Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas has a shiny new website.

I'd provide new drink recipes, but other than variations on the Flaming Dr. Pepper (which uses no Dr. Pepper), there aren't any popping up on my Google Alerts. I am, for some reasons, getting links that, from the URLs, appear to be of videos of men having sex with other men. I am not sure why Google thinks this is related to Dr. Pepper. "Dr. Pepper makes men gay" is a googlenope.

Okay, that's not entirely true. I did find this recipe supposedly for "cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper" which involves no cherries. Just amaretto, which is almonds and apricot pits in liquor.

The recipe also calls for vanilla extract. Who are you that you're so desperate for hooch that you have to use vanilla extract instead of one of the eight brands of vanilla vodka out there? I know a fair-sized bottle of Stoli Vanil can be had for not that much money.

National Oatmeal Day!

Today, I ate oatmeal for breakfast. Turns out, it's National Oatmeal Day! (I learned this from Slashfood.com, a new fun website added to my Google reader, a fantastic Google product.) I made it on the stove top since the last few times, when I did it in the microwave, it bubbled over. Milk'll do that...and then I lose half my oatmeal and I get sad.

My favorite way to make it: with milk, and then a teaspoon of splenda brown sugar mix and dash of cinnamon.

Also, this is interesting: what chefs would eat for their last meal. It's mildly depressing (after watching a marathon of bad vampire movies this weekend, I now know life can be taken over by the undead quickly) but mostly interesting.

Turns out, I missed National Chocolate Day. Guess I'll have to make up for it today...plus this hot cocoa recipe sounds super yummy. Better than the beer with chocolate undertones I had last night.

Your Unimportant Food News Update

New in the world of food:

1) Beef magazine has perhaps one of the most fascinating opening sentences in industry writing:

In the past, if you asked me which factor is the most important in determining profitability in the cow/calf sector, I would have said supply and demand.

Turns out that geopolitical considerations are more and more important in the cattle industry, leading the writer to advise:

This is the time of year when ranchers are preconditioning, weaning and preg-checking. Maybe calls to our congressman, attending state and national cattlemen meetings and donating dollars to our industry's PACs will be just as important on our planning calendars.

I know what I'm doing this season in between my preconditioning and preg-checking!

2) Molly Laas, a commentator on the Huffington Post website, says that you shouldn't eat apples when they can be turned into sweet, soothing alcohol. My response is that you need to eat a lot more apples (as opposed to drinks) before you lose gross motor control and start puking.

3) I love tomato juice. But I don't drink it around sensitive electronics. Fark.com alerted me to the fact that LaGuardia Airport's security personnel are not so diligent - someone managed to spill juice on a baggage scanner, disrupting the checkpoint for hours.

Although it is interesting that this happened at LaGuardia - pretty much the only time I drink tomato juice, instead of the cheap gazpacho base that Campbell's calls "V8," is on airplanes. Why I do this, when "V8" sounds much more like Werner Von Braun's aeronautical invention, I cannot tell you.

4) Finally, Slashfood clues me in to an automatic marshmallow rotator for toasting your marshmallow in the fire.

Personally, I like to put the marshmallow directly into the fire, and watch the exterior light up like the detonation of the Genesis Device, or, more recently, the introduction for every Universal Pictures movie. A light char on the outside is tasty, and gets the interior properly melty.

Foulest Dr. Pepper Drink Yet!

The "Algae" - vodka, Dr. Pepper, and Hawaiian Punch.

I'd rather have "Punchy" sock me one.

Food Network to make you drink

First, another person vindicates my view of Sandra Lee. "Diner Girl" at the blog French Laundry at Home, while discussing the making of a beautiful vegetable tart, also disses Sandra Lee for her clear cultural cluelessness.

I must say, though, that Sandra Lee is infinitely better than Giada de Laurentis, who only acts dumb. On her travel show she pretended not to know how to shell a crab with a mallet, despite the fact that everyone else in the restaurant was visibly doing the same. I think that was her way of flirting with the waiter. It was both phony and creepy.

Which brings us to the next subject: new Dr. Pepper mixed drinks.

Someone recently posted a high-proof rum/amaretto/Dr. Pepper beverage called the "Howling Dingo" which has nothing to do with Australia but will probably eat your baby. My gosh, that's a lot of alcohol in a small package.

Then there is the charmingly simple "Dr. Jack #2": one shot of Jack Daniels into a can's worth of Dr. Pepper. Sadly, Dr. Jack is not the kind of creativity encouraged by Dr. Fad, although one wonders how long one can milk being the inventor of the wacky wall-walker.

Desperately Trying to Become the World's Repository of Dr. Pepper Recipes

People who tell you that dropping a shot into beer makes it taste like Dr. Pepper are lying to you. Also, why are people making Coca-Cola® and liquor taste like Dr. Pepper when they could just buy Dr. Pepper?

In Dr. Pepper food adventures news, the Dr. Pepper steak marinade (which, as you'd know if you clicked on the link, is primarily Dr. Pepper, lime juice, soy sauce, and "hot sauce") might work if the author told us what "hot sauce" meant. Some people think it means Tabasco®. I, personally, prefer Crystal Louisiana Hot Sauce, which as far as I can tell is basically cayenne peppers and vinegar. However, the more I think about it, the more it's probably a good idea for this marinade to go with a chili paste from your local Asian market.

In my mind, the flavor you'd get then is like the sweet but hot and spicy beef jerky I ate in Hong Kong, whose name I don't think I ever knew. I just referred to it as "Chinese Death Jerky." It had whole hot pepper seeds clinging to the sides, under the sugar crust.

Anyone know its real name?

The Internet Lies to You

Drinknation.com has a mixed drink consisting of Bailey's Irish Cream and Dr. Pepper.

As you may remember, I've done that once. It is super-foul as the Bailey's curdles.

I know the recipe says to shoot it, but still, yuck.

So, kids - don't try every mixed drink recipe off the internet.

Mixed Drinks Dancing Around the Concept of Dr. Pepper

The Google Alert troll has brought in a significant number of items about beverages, of which a selection follows.

A blogger named Laurel has been kumquat-infusing vodka. I'm not sure how much I love kumquats, although I haven't had a flavored vodka I hated (although the cheap coconut-flavored vodka I picked up last week for a party was way too strong on the coconut). There was a place in Union Square I used to go to for Korean food (the Sherbs may remember it) where they infused their own rice liquor with lychee or ginger. I preferred the ginger, personally.

Someone else does what I used to do at fast food places, which is pour three or four drink types into the same cup at the fountain. Here, the mix was half fruit punch, half Dr. Pepper. I used to tolerate that, then I realized that it tastes horrific.

Finally, it turns out that commercial maraschino cherries, which I used last weekend to top brownie sundaes, have one of the ingredients of Dr. Pepper. Therefore, the link just mentioned shows you how to make ones that are closer to fruit than lab experiment.

I'm still interested in Dr. Pepper hot wings, though.

Ok, it's time. The last few weeks have been increasingly boring, and I'm sure our small readership has plummeted to an even smaller number due to the heavier work loads of your amazing bloggers. So I will give you a subject everyone adores:

Martinis!

I personally love chocolate martinis. Why? Because it's a great deal of alcohol that doesn't taste at all like alcohol. And it's absurdly sweet, which is a qualifier for anything yummy to go in my tummy. I also recently had a tasty variation.

Recently I have been visiting many, many places in order to host a very fancy and classy (because that's the only way TP and I roll) affair and the new fad: Martini Bars. I have no problem with this idea, and am quite looking forward to it. However, I wonder about the recent fascination with Martinis. Could it be a relatively new fad of having Cosmos because of Sex and the City? Could it be the crazy variations of the types of liquor you could put in it? Could it be the super fancy and spill-prone glasses they are in?