Wine & Diner Fries Stuff

I made another trip over to Deleware Ave. to go to the Wine & Diner (where I previously had quite the ridiculous burger) with Mrs. Dave, the Giblet Master General, and a close associate of ours. The dinner was well received I won't bore you with a detailed description. In short, I had the Chimichurri Bang Bang which was a fairly simple affair of hanger steak, chimichurri, and fries. The wife had a '518' cheese burger, and our friend had the Turducken platter.

Although after our meals all were rightly stuffed, I decided to order a little dessert for the table. Frying odd bits of processed confections has been all the rage for a couple of years, but alas, I had yet to partake. In order to add to my repertoire of unhealthy foods consumed I ordered the fried Twinkie....also fried Oreos. I apologize for the bad quality of these photos, but I have deemed flash photography at crowded restaurants a bit gauche. Luckily, the "enhance" button in iPhoto brightens the pictures up a bit, and reminds me of this silly video from the internets.

Here is the fried Twinkie in the bowl.



The Twinkie had a Tempura type batter and was lightly fried in what seemed to be relatively clean oil. The Twinkie cream even stayed cold! I liked this, but I think it shall be a once in a life time event. I couldn't get Mrs. Dive to give it a chomp, as her pregger belly seems to be mighty fickle.



Here is the oreo bowl.



The oreos were similar in presentation, and were also fried in a light batter. My friend loved these, but I found that the frying process made the cookie oddly pasty. Different strokes for different folks.

To complete the general sugar festival, there may have also been Orange Crush, Hawaiian Punch, and Brown Shugga' beer.



Anyhow, my family has decided that the Wine & Diner has our seal of approval. There have now been multiple visits wherein nobody has looked askance at the young daughter's slightly naughty antics.

Free Bread is Old People Crack

Most Price Choppers have the free bread set up, this particular one is at the Slingerland Chops. In the bread section, inevitably, you will see a basket with some wee slices of chopped bread. Adjacent, there will also be a large blob/bar of "spread." You know, a butteresque substance that does not require refrigeration. I think this is nice of them to do, I don't usually partake, but when young Giblet (2 year old female type) is howling for satisfaction a small crust of bread is often sufficient to tame the beast. So I have become well acquainted with the complimentary bread section.

Think of the free bread area like an oasis in the Sahara, only instead of lions you have old people. If I ever need to capture a supply of senior citizens then I have discovered the perfect trap. I shall set up a free bread stand on the side of the road. When the butter knife is lifted a giant basket will fall down and capture my prey.

All kidding aside, approaching the P-Chops bread stand requires care. Invariably there will be a silver fox painstakingly applying "spread" to every nook and cranny of his slice (a process that may take 5 to 10 minutes) seemingly unawares of the growing queue of bread lovers accumulating around him. It is impressive how much space a seemingly slight old gent or dame can occupy, leaving no room for an addled father to shoot in his fist to grab a bit of dry bread for his screaming daughter. Such attempts will be treated as the height of rudeness worthy of a penetrating glare.

Maybe it is a generational thing, people of a certain generation were not often offered free consumables and understandably revel in the luxury. My generation of ingrates and simps thinks nothing of it and allow themselves to get annoyed by their wizened elders, subsequently posting about it to their lame-o foodblogs, all the while feeling guilty about it....

Ah, Colonie Center Food Court. I Knew You When...

So I was strolling through the food court at good ol' Colonie Center the other day when I spied a couple things of note. Before all that, does anyone remember when Colonie Center was the "other" mall (this is, of course, as opposed to Northway Mall which was the other, other mall)? As a child I remember that going to Colonie Center was a vaguely drab and unpleasant experience (there were still ash trays inside the mall back then!). During my halcyon childhood (late 80s) Crossgates still had a slick and shiny newness (remember the Karner Blue!). Colonie center was where you went to Sears with your dad to look at washing machines or tools. As for Northway Mall, I don't really remember why you went there. They did have a weird store that sold garishly colored flavored popcorn which delighted me as a child.

Anyhow, Colonie Center seems to be the main mall these days. When Mrs. Dave gets the rare itch to go to the mall, this is generally where we head. I don't feel the need to arm myself before I go (as with Crossgates) and Colonie Center has more of a "family friendly" feeling to it these days (slick and corporate and fake as it may be). As the wive's belly is rapidly expanding with child, she has begun to require more fuel. This necessitated a swing through the "Food Court."

The first thing I noticed is that Bettie's Cakes has a little kiosk setup. I read about this somewhere, I think it is part of the new temporary or short-term restaurant thing, i.e. it will not be there forever. As with many others, I am tiring of the cupcake craze. I hope it has run its course, but I fear that it is attempting to morph into other gimmicks. I saw the below at Bettie's, they are some sort of "cake ball."



I have seen this type of thing cropping up at other places. Starbuck's is peddling weird cake balls on sticks. If there is such a demand for cake, can't we just take it in slice form and use a fork and knife like civilized persons? I kind of get cupcakes, but cake balls? What is next, cake in pill form that can be administered rectally for ease of consumption?

Of more interest to myself, I spied something different in the piles of sauce packets outside of the venerable Taco Bell. Two new colors did not escape my studied eye. Here we have two fairly recent Taco Bell sauce packet offerings, "Verde" and "Fire Roasted."



I had to give these sauces a whirl so I bought some chips. I started with the "Verde."



Not bad, not bad. A little salty, but there was a nice vinegar punch and you could catch a hint of sour tomatillo. I would have liked a bit more heat, but that is just me. Here we have the "Fire Roasted."



This just tasted like the fire or hot sauces with a hint of smoke, an interesting change but not mind blowing. I will probably use the "verde" should a Taco Bell jones hit me in the future. I do have some Taco Bell advice for you though, get the enchirito. They don't really promote it anymore, but it was one of the items that the House of Taco Bell was built upon. It is awful for you, but oddly satisfying in a weird way.

Anyhow, the wife had a Nathan's dog and I shared some fries with the little one. Soon our trio will be a quartet, so we enjoyed the relative ease of mall dining with just one small monster. That is not to say that we are not looking forward to welcoming a fresh howler into the household, we are delighted.

The Internets is a Strange and Terrible Place.

You ever check the "queries that land on your blog" thingymajigger on your statcounter? I posted about a humorous query that occurred some time ago (i.e. "deliciously hot food that makes your soul warm and doesn't give you the squirties"). Tonight I discovered a pair of somewhat more ominous searches.

Someone went on Bing and searched "cooking human boobs" and then, only seconds later, "frying human boobs" which resulted in the individual landing upon my archive from January of 2010. I would like to make a joke or something, but words kind of escape me...

Oh brave new world that has such people in it.

Black Pudding at P-Chopper

During my regular perusal of the hot dog/bacon/sausage cold case at Price Chopper (sometimes there are gems; CNY white hots and the like), I was stopped in my tracks by the inky blackness of the above pictured sausage. That right there folks is some Black (or blood) Pudding! The producer is Gaspar's Sausage who are a purveyor of fairly good Portuguese linguicas and chouricos (out of Mass.), look for their stuff next to the hot dogs at most local grocers.

Why did the Black Pudding get me all excited you ask? Simply because the fact that I could find a sausage so foreign to (most) American sensibilities at the local, white bread grocery store seems to signal a step in the right direction. That Price Chopper has risked causing housewives to gag and squeal upon sighting a blood sausage right next to their Oscar Meyer hot dogs shows a certain pluck.

I didn't buy to test on this occasion as I am in the midst of a fitness kick. I feared that some quantity of the encased pork fat/beef blood might go to waste due to present dietary concerns. Mrs. Dave would very much rather die than consume a bit of this, so sharing is out.

Anyhow, I just wanted to let other local lovers of strange tube meats know about my findings.

** EDIT **
The Slingerlands Price Chopper is where I found these black beauties.

Cadbury Creme Egg Stuffed Cookies

After having been inspired by the so-called "Inception Cookie (Oreo stuffed chocolate chip)", the idea of a Cadbury Creme egg stuffed cookie suddenly occurred to me. I don't know if this is original (I am remiss in not googling it), so if not, let the real creator step forward and be credited!

I am a Cadbury egg fanatic from way back, and have been thoroughly delighted at their recent reappearance in the local markets. Using the eggs in a cookie project felt to me a fitting way to wash the bad taste of foul February out of the mouth and to herald the coming of spring.

I started with the wee versions of the creme eggs as I thought the normal sized ones might be a little difficult to work with.



As I am an awful baker (and lazy) I purchased a tube of good ol' Price Chopper brand pre-made cookie dough.



I pretty much just sliced off a couple disks of cookie dough and smooshed them around the creme egg. This resulted in fat little flying saucer shaped raw cookies.



Into the oven for 11 minutes as per the directions on the tube and they came out looking fairly successful. The cookie dough had retracted slightly from the egg, but the egg seems to have retained its creamy integrity.



After allowing the cookies to cool thoroughly, I sliced one in half.



I was pleased to see the creme egg stayed intact, somehow I thought they were going to melt into a puddle in the center of the cookie. In fact, the cookie kind of looked like a fried egg! I think it would be neat to frost the middle yellow like a yolk, but I am not that motivated on this particular date. Anyhow, I chalk this up as a success and may recreate these a little closer to Easter.