I Will Have the Tan Flavor Please....

As I stated before, the motivation for involved cooking/experimental/review type posts is conspicuously absent. However, I still thought I would share some quick thingys that I spy in my daily travels.

Isn't it always weird (but amusing) that food is sometimes differentiated by color as opposed to ingredients or flavor? For example, as a child I remember loving the blue juice that came in plastic gallon jugs way more than the green or red juice. Don't think there was any significant difference in flavor profile between the lot, but it was blue juice that delighted my child's palate.

Anyhow, pictured above we have an interesting example of a similar phenomenon care of the Bob Evans line of packaged foods. We have "White" and "Tan" sausage gravies. I looked them both up in the product section of the website and no difference is described other than the fact that the tan is their "restaurant gravy." Oh yeah, tan is "homestyle" and white is "original." I was very tempted to purchase both to attempt to figure out the difference, but both the products are overpriced and fat laden. Interesting that the tan sausage gravy is 10 cents more than the white. Cost of food dye? Brown meat juice? I am left to ponder.

Grater Plater. Don't Know Why, But This Made Me Sad.

Pictured above is a fairly harmless piece of pottery. It is the type of thing that you might find in any random French knick-knack shop. This item is a small, textured plate useful for grating garlic, or maybe a hard cheese. Heck, in Japan I believe they have similar devices for grating wasabi. A simple and useful kitchen item without a doubt. So you may be asking yourself, what exactly makes you sad about this Mr. Dave?

Well, here you go-



Check out the "Grater Plater" at the "As Seen on TV" website. "Grate cheese with ease" they tell you, "for zest it is the best" they swear. The product is billed as a "new innovative grating system." I don't know why, but I hate this. Something about the packaging of such a simple, useful, and time tested apparatus in such a slick and smarmy manner puts me off. It is like taking a mortar and pestle, renaming it the Crush-o-matic 2000, and advertising that the "Crush-o-matic 2000 is the latest in spice obliterating technology." Billy Mays, I'm sorry that you are dead and all, but this was a lame idea. For shame.

Today's Snow on a Hudson Valley Apple Orchard

Out a car window, with my camera phone. Sometimes I wish I had a good camera and skill, these don't do the scene justice.



I wonder what the landscape must have looked like before some desperate folks allowed their ma' and pa's farms to be sold and turned into shabby subdivisions. I had to work hard not to get power lines in the photos. Sigh.



I love snow in New York. The whiteness is so fleeting, it will be drab and gray by morning. There is beauty, but the stuff will kill you. I spun the truck on 32 tonight and missed a telephone pole by an angel's breath.



I won't name the town, this could really be anywhere in the Valley, but the road is called Old Indian. I wonder what those old Indians would have to say.

Follow Up (Had to Come out of Seasonal Retirement to Share)

Please click "Ginger Boy Doll Riding and 8-Point Buck" for context. Now we have a young Native American lass (with a fiercely butch mullet) riding a freakin' puma (side saddle, of course)! Huzzah!

Bored With Blogging

Winter melancholy has set in. Be back when it is a little warmer and life is worth living again. Miss me?

4 Men and a Pig

Four Men and A Pig

The above series is probably the best piece I have seen on pig butchery. Purely instructional material for my fellow arch-meatsmen out there.

By the way, for any linguists who might be watching. Isn't the English treatment of the Italian sibilants amusing?

This...is...SASQUATCH!!!

Blogger is telling me that this is my 300th post, hence the lame 300 reference in the title. I find it hard to believe that I have foisted so much banal drivel on the internet at large. What more fitting for my tri-centennial offering then a post about some abnormally large, strangely named, processed meat sticks that I found at a gas station?

"The Sasquatch Big Stick," care of Jack's Links, is of mighty proportions. Here is a picture demonstrating that the thing is nearly as long as my cat, just for perspective.



The Sasquatch Big Stick comes in two flavors, Mild (happy faced Sasquatch) and Original (mean, nasty faced Sasquatch. Bad, naughty Sasquatch.).



Now, I am sure you have been waiting this whole post for the obvious joke inherent in this product. Here it is- Checking the ingredients, and much to my disappointment, I found that the product is not, in fact, made with real Sasquatch. Ba-dum-pow, rimshot, hey-yooo! Anyways, most organic, free range, Sasquatch goes straight to restaurants these days.

In the spirit of my earlier 300 reference, here is me wielding the meat stick in the manner of a spatha, ready to smite my enemies.



After spending a fair amount of time writing hack jokes about this product, I got down to business and took a hearty bite.



If biting through a snappy synthetic casing into a mushy center of vaguely spicy/sour meat slime is your idea of a good time, then I encourage you to plunk down the two fitty' at your local Hess mart and go to town on one of these bad boys.

I am fully satisfied with this as a 300th post, I feel this post is thoroughly representative of my blog at large.

"The Albany Collection"- Delightfully Weird. (An Open Dare Included)

I have been meaning to post about this cookbook for quite a while. It is "The Albany Collection: Treasures and Treasured Recipes" which is "Compiled by the Women's Council of the Albany Institute of History and Art." It was published in 1997 with an initial run of 5000 copies. I picked up mine at the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza (same place where I found the oddly titled Applehood and Mother Pie Upstate NY cookbook).

I am going to go ahead and take a shot in the dark and guess that "The Albany Collection" may have been put together by some ladies not still in the flower of their youths. The recipes have a decidedly 50s-60s vibe to them. You know what I am talking about, strange combinations of curry powder, fruit, and mayonnaise. Lots of recipes for "salads", molds, logs and things like that. Beware of anything in the tome labeled "Gourmet" it is usually something scary (Gourmet Tuna Spread has apples and vanilla yogurt in it...) The book speaks to the working class, down home, no frills cooking to which our home region owes so much. This is the stuff that Grandma would have been serving up to our parents back when and maybe the grim nature of some of the food added to the stoic and crotchety nature of our local forefathers.

There are some gems in the book, a simple recipe for Tourtiere is something I might even try. However, there are some unspeakable horrors. Next I will present two recipes from the book that I outright dare anybody out there in foodblog land to prepare and tell me how it turned out. I can't bring myself to attempt either.

First, "CHICKEN BREASTS PROVENCAL"

4 chicken breasts, skinned, boned, quartered
2 medium zucchini, sliced
3-4 tomatoes, sliced
5-6 green onions, chopped
2-3 tablespoons parsley
3 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons chicken broth
salt and pepper

(Bet you don't think those ingredients sound so bad, eh? Wait my friend, wait until we get to the cooking method.)

Directions-

Place chicken breasts in microwave dish with zucchini and tomatoes. Sprinkle with remaining ingredients. Cover with clear plastic wrap and microwave 18-20 minutes.

(I have heard that the microwave is a traditional Provencal cooking method from way back.)

Second, "VARIEGATED SALAD" (what does that even mean??)

SALAD

2 Golden Delicious Apples
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 cups spinach
4 cups red leaf lettuce
1/2 cup cashews, pecans, or walnuts
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
6 slices cooked, crumbled bacon

DRESSING

1/4 up red wine vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons steak sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder

Chop ingredients, toss, dress, barf. (abbreviated)

Anyone out there have the stomach for some nuked chicken breast? Apples, blue cheese, and bacon with steak sauce? Anyone?