Just look at that lovely picture above. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
I know you are thinking to yourself, what is something like that doing on Friday Fuck Ups? How could something fried suck so much? Add the fact that what is inside that fried oil casing is avocado and feta cheese.
Hate to break your collective hearts, but these were downright terrible. The complete sad tale after the jump.
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– Did you ever say to yourself, ‘man, chex mix is such a damn good snack, I don’t think it could possibly get any better?’ Well it did. If you know me at all, you have one guess what the secret ingredient is. [SF Gate] (via Serious Eats)
Photo: Hellospuntnik
As ES’s resident microwave expert, I’m constantly looking for shortcuts to make cooking faster because frankly, sometimes I come home after work and I just don’t want to devote 1 or 2 hours to prepping and cooking dinner.
So recently, we were sent some of Bertolli’s new Skillet Meals, and let me tell you, in complete seriousness, they are AWESOME!!! Located in the Frozen Food aisle (maybe my favorite aisle in the grocery store I’ll admit) the Bertolli Skillet Meal provides a complete meal for two, ranging from Shrimp Scampi Linguine to Chicken alla vodka and Farfelle to Italian Sausage and Rigatoni – and all you have to do is throw it in a Skillet for TEN MINUTES! And that’s it!! It’s ready! And I swear to you it’s soooo freaking good. I even got Vio into it (she says she CRAVES it now!!) and if she says it’s good, then believe me, it is!
I also love it because all of the meals contain vegetables, such as asparagus, tomatoes and zucchini – and the ingredient list contains no scary five syllable words that you’ve never heard of, it’s all straight forward, good ingredients. I would prefer if they offered a meal with whole wheat pasta, but for a frozen meal, this is TOPS! Plus on their website, they even provide wine pairings for each meal. Bertolli is definitely frozen food gone classy!
I totally need a food processor. Now, a few years back, when I was *just* starting to cook, one of my mom’s friends bought me a beautiful Cuisinart. Well, that was 3 apartments ago and 3 roommates ago, so um, yea, the Cuisinart is in pieces. I currently possess most of the main components—except for the blades. UGH! I’d kill to be more responsible.
I’ve had to make do with a blender and an immersion blender. And it really hasn’t been that bad. I’ve been able to make soups and sauces with much success. But, um, not this go round. If you haven’t noticed, I’m really into KOD’s “Meatless Monday” feature and with about-to-go-bad kale, I took her up on kale pesto. It’s very similar to regular pesto, she just subs in walnuts for pine nuts, and well, kale for basil. I had pine nuts on hand, so I used that. My other spins on the dish: yogurt and sage.
Well, apparently my blender had ENOUGH. It just refused to blend. I must have tried every combination of low and high and grate and pulse and chop and puree. But, nothing. Wouldn’t budge.
80, feeling heroic, tried to put together my food processor, which an old roommate brought over a few months back. This is when we discovered there were no blades.
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You all know I’m an omnivore, meaning I’ll eat just about anything that’s put in front of me, so I rarely consider a meal based on what it doesn’t have. But I do have to look out for bacon-less dishes I can make with the veggie gf. Usually these involve some kinda vegetable and a whole lot of cheese. Honestly, I don’t think I could date a vegan, I don’t know how they do it.
Anyway, on a recent visit to ES’ mid-atlantic branch, I was inspired by a menu item at the infamous Tonic, a roasted winter squash stuffed with veggies and topped with crumbled blue cheese. Our resident veggie lactard Maidelitalia tried to order it without the blue cheese but found out it was roasted with butter (see! you can’t take them anywhere!). I wanted to get it but wasn’t really hungry enough for a full meal so I just had a cup of French onion soup, and that way I got my cheese and my bacon all in one (I hope no veggies thought that one was safe, sorry to ruin it if so).
Anyway, next time we went shopping for dinner, this is what I suggested…
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Okay, so you might think I’m this super motivated person who cooks every night and then sits down and writes about it immediately after. And a lot of the time, that’s true. Freaking ES takes up like 200% of my free time, but of course I love every freaking minute of it.
Well, sometimes I do make something fabulous, or eat somewhere fabulous, take pics, but then never get around to writing about it. Well, here’s a wrap up of some food stories I just never bothered to tell you about. I mean, I guess I have to wipe the blog clean, or some other dumb end of year crap.
Fried Eggplant and Fresh Tomato Sauce
Back in the summer, I bought tons of eggplants (can this be a plural word?) and tons of tomatoes. Now, we know that 80P doesn’t eat raw tomatoes, and he just started to get into eggplant, so I had to find a way to incorporate both veggies into one dish. Yes, frying would be the way to go. Now, I don’t remember the recipe, but this was my first attempt at breading and frying eggplant. It actually didn’t work out perfectly, as I cut the eggplant too thick and had to finish them off in the oven. The sauce was awesome though. I can’t remember what secret tricks I put in it (no sugar, belmontmedina!), but it turned out really well. I normally don’t like tomato sauce, but I was surely a fan of my version.
Keep reading for gansie’s vault of forgotten posts
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