POOPULA?!?!  ARE YOU COOKING POOP??  WHAT THE FUCK??

Relax, there’s no poop involved, these are just old family dishes.  My great-grandmother used to call all of the kids her little poopulas, so there you go.  No poop.

WOW, THAT MUST HAVE BEEN WEIRD TO BE CALLED POOP!!

It’s not poo…yeah it was funny, we all looked at each other and tried to keep from laughing out loud about grandma Bessie saying poop.

THAT EXPLAINS A LOT!

Shut up.

 

WHATEVER POOPFACE.  SO WHAT’RE WE COOKING TODAY?

Oh, so you noticed poop in the title, but you didn’t see what the dish is…Jesus…it’s baked chicken and kasha with bowtie noodles.

KASHA??  WHAT THE FUCK…IS THIS THAT ANCIENT GRAIN SHIT THEY TALK ABOUT ON THOSE DAMNED COOKING SHOWS?  ARE YOU GOING HIPPIE ON ME??

Ancient grains is just marketing bullshit for stuff that people already ate anyways.  But, yeah, kasha is a type of buckwheat, and buckwheat is considered an ancient grain, so…

KASHA IS BUCKWHEAT??  WHO HARVESTS IT, JOHN DAVID STUTTS??

That’s…damn, that’s good.

I KNOW.

So where were we.  Oh, yeah, family dishes.  The kasha is an old Jewish dish, it’s very comforting.  The kasha gets sautéed so it tastes nutty but still has some bite to it.  And the caramelized onions add a soft sweetness to the dish, and the bow tie noodles are just fun to eat.

BOWTIE NOODLES, HA!  DID YOU MAKE THOSE ON #BOWTIETUESDAY?

[sigh] Actually, I did.

NICE JOB, DORK!  SO CARAMELIZED ONIONS, HOW DOES THAT WORK?

It takes a ton of patience.  You have to cook them on low heat for a long time, mine took about an hour to cook down.

I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN DO THAT, I CAN’T FOCUS ON ANYTHING FOR MORE THAN 3 MINUTES.

Suck it up, it’s worth it.  And you really don’t have to do much else for this dish.  The chicken is super simple, you just throw sliced onions on top of chicken breasts, cut a stick of butter into the pan, and baste it as you bake.  The kasha, it cooks pretty easily as well, you just have to boil the noodles separately.

THAT’S A LOT OF MULTI-TASKING.  I ONCE BROKE A POT WHILE BOILING WATER.

I give up.

 

This is my first Christmas season with my lady.  This is the 44th year that I have been Jewish, and have done nothing to celebrate Christmas other than watching A Christmas Story.

Even though neither one of us is religious, I thought it would be nice to make a Christmas dinner.  And since Kroger was practically creating cows on demand to slaughter for rib roasts, I figured that would be an excellent dinner for us.

At least I did until I got up to the cashier.  And then I realized that the roast I was about to purchase was $71, and not $17.  I don’t know where I got the idea that rib roasts went for $2/pound, even with my shopper card that lets me get six 12 packs of Coke in exchange for my entire purchase history so they know whether I buy prefer the generic or brand version of Preparation-H oh I just said too much.

So I went back to the lying priced rib roast bin, and found a ribeye roast that was an actual $17 piece of meat, which is a plenty reasonable substitute for prime rib that will say whatever you want to trick you into buying it.

I decided to make some mushrooms as a side, because that’s just what we do here.  And I tried to make Yorkshire pudding as the other side, which I have never made or eaten.

Why did I decide that Yorkshire pudding would be an appropriate Christmas side dish?  Fuck, I don’t know, it just sounds like something people would have at a Christmas dinner.

“My dear Poopsie, could you pass me the Yorkshire pudding, it looks divine!  Such a shame about cousin Blaine, getting disqualified from the crew finals at Brighton Town is going to destroy his chances of getting into Stratford-on-Stratfordshire University.  Why don’t we go down for a few chuckers at polo grounds after dinner and take his mind off of it?”

(I have no idea why my vision of the typical Christmas dinner is some douchy British or old-money New England family, just go with it.)

I was kind of disappointed to find out that Yorkshire pudding is just eggs, flour, and whole milk – or, as the rest of the world calls them, popovers.  You’re supposed to cook them with beef drippings, but I didn’t have any of that.  I did, however, have bacon fat, which I would say is far better.

The best part of making this dish was putting a teaspoon of bacon fat into each muffin tin, and having my lady look at them and say “what the fuck is that??”, and seeing the look on her face when she found out that all of that was going to be frying her side dish.

Anyways, no one gives a shit about the poser popovers when you have a 3 pound piece of beef cooking.  After 30 minutes I took it out to take its temperature, and got all sorts of crazy readings – like 140, 150 degrees.  I panicked – as I am wont to do – until I was able to find one around 110.  I put it back in, and went through the same thing 10 minutes later, and was worried that I just ruined a perfectly good ribeye and our Christmas and every Christmas after.

After having faith and letting it roast 10 more minutes, and then waiting an agonizing 10 more minutes to cut it, I ended up with this:

Not to brag, but I have to brag, that looked pretty fucking awesome!  And it tastes fantastic, so humblebrag.  Is that how a humblebrag works?  Look at me, I’m so humble I don’t even know how to humblebrag.

The yorkshire pudding, it might be the most British food that Britain ever Britained.  I cobbled something together (ha, cobbled, British!) from a series of recipes I found, and most called for 1/2 teaspoon of salt.  You would need 1/2 cup to make these bland posers flavorful.  And they came out kind of dense, which was not what I had expected, but since I kind of made up my own, I can only blame myself.

(Incidentally, there is a recipe out there that allegedly was Alfred Hitchcock’s.  I’m sure he shows up every time someone uses it.  Actually, I’m going to blame my popover failure on M. Night Shyamalan.)

The mushrooms were pretty great too, and probably would be in most meals, but again…beef…

CAN I MAKE A MESS WITH THIS RECIPE?

You’re going to have to make a batter for the uppity muffins, which gets a bit sloppy, and searing the meat is going to cause some grease splatters, so I would say yes.

SIGN ME UP, LET’S GO!!

 

Hot and sour soup is one of my favorite things to eat in this world.  There’s something about the combination of vinegar and chili peppers, and the soft texture of the egg and tofu, and the crack/MSG they slip into it, that makes me extremely happy.

I also believe that it has magical healing powers.  Whenever I’m sick, it makes me feel at least 50% better.  Many years ago, I had a debilitating case of strep throat.  Like, I came home from the doctor (after picking up an order of hot and sour soup) and almost passed out.  It was actually pretty scary.

Then I had my hot and sour soup, and a half hour later I was as good as new!

(Also, I took a Zithromax right before I had the soup.  I don’t give that any credit for healing me.  As my ENT once said, any self-respecting bacteria can find a way around Zithromax.)

I like dishes that are straight-forward, and you don’t have to ask a lot of questions about what it’s like.  Who am I kidding, I waited tables for three years, of course people will ask what it’s like.

CUSTOMER: This hot and sour soup sounds interesting, but I don’t like spicy things.  Is it spicy?

SERVER: Yes, that’s the hot part of the hot and sour soup.

CUSTOMER: Ok, but you still haven’t dissuaded me from it, I like things a little sweet, does this have a sour taste to it?

SERVER: Yes, that’s the sour part of the hot and sour soup.

CUSTOMER: Alright, well I’m still going to get a bowl of it.  Can I send it back if I don’t like it?

SERVER: Yes, I’ll have a bowl of egg drop soup ready to go.

I’d been looking for a good recipe for hot and sour soup for a while, and finally settled on this one.

Why this one?  Because every other recipe I saw called for a half-pound of ground pork or sliced pork shoulder.

Have you ever seen a package of a half-pound of any meat?  No, which means you have to go to the butcher counter to get it, and that leads to a very awkward conversation, where I ask for a half-pound of ground pork, and he’s like “wow, really going wild there, you must be on your cheat day, what’re you getting with this, tofu”, and I would say “why yes, I’m making hot and sou…” “GET OUT OF MY STORE YOU VEGAN HIPPIE!!”

So yeah, this is much easier and tastier.

CAN I MAKE A MESS WITH THIS RECIPE?

Not really, there’s no sautéing or cutting messy stuff.

HMMPH!

 

Don’t you just hate when you get all dressed up and prep for an interview, show up on time, and then find out that the interview is on Thursday, and not Tuesday?

No?  Never happened to you?  Ummmm…me neither…

But let’s just say that I did.  And after that, I had more free time than I thought I would.  And I would realize, hey, I live in a city where they’re advanced enough to have a Shake Shack, which people absolutely lose their shit over.  And I would say, I’m in the mood for an overpriced burger, why don’t I check that out?

And this, this is how my visit started.  I mean, would have started, if, you know, everything above was true.

THE LINE

You always hear how long the lines are to get these burgers.  Like it’s some sort of mid-20th century communist Russia food line, and this might be the only food you get all week, except instead of plain stale bread it’s a burger made from prime beef.  It’s totally the same.

This is the line.  At noon.  In the biggest mall in Houston.  The Tuesday before Christmas.

So I’m not at all impressed.  This is not a good start.

THE MENU

I couldn’t get a good picture of the whole menu, but here’s the basic rundown of the burger options:

• the basic burger
• the Shack Burger with “Shack Sauce” (which is of course in no way described anywhere on the menu)
• the ‘Shroom Burger for your vegetarian friend that whines “well I don’t understand why I can’t get something at the burger restaurant shouldn’t they put something on the menu at the burger restaurant without meat this is so unfair VEG LIVES MATTER!!!”
• the Lockhart Link Burger, which is their obligatory nod to the local cuisine to show you that they’re toooootally part of your community
• the Chick’n Shack, for your friend that’s fine with eating animals, but not cows because that is just a bridge too far, and why are you still friends with this person?

I decide I’m going to get a double cheeseburger, for one because I’m afraid a single might not be enough, and I also don’t want the taste of this burger to be obscured by the triple jalapeño cheddar reindeer/goat/wild boar sausage that they put on the Lockhart burger.

Also, being the good customer that I am, I see that there is no “add cheese” option on the menu, because apparently no one has ever wanted cheese on a burger, so I make a note to ask specifically for cheese and blow the cashier’s mind!

After seven minutes in line (or about 3 hours and 23 minutes shorter than the typical Franklin BBQ line), I get to the cashier, and prepare to rock his world with my whole cheese on a burger thing.

CASHIER: So you want a cheeseburger then?

(Holy shit!!  They had a name for this thing all along??  How was I not aware of this before?  My whole life has changed!!)

ME: Hell yeah, gimme one of those!

CASHIER: You want Shake Sauce on that?

(What am I, a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal??  Of course I want it on there!  Don’t even tell me what it is, just slap it on, make it a double order for all I care!!  Ten billion customers can’t be wrong!)

ME: Sure, that sounds good.

THE WAIT

I then sidle up to one of those community tables, where all the people with no friends sit so the couples can have their own private space.

While I’m waiting, a couple guys sit down next to me, both of them lawyers.  And they’re talking about the 18 cases they’ve got, and as I’m taking pictures, one of them gives me a look.  And I know he’s saying it in his head.

“OOOH, look at you!  Are you one of those snarky food blogger people I heard about?  I bet you think you’re so big, you’ve probably got 113 people following you on Facebook, and you’re going to write things like “I would have preferred this burger if it was an 82/18 blend instead of 80/20, and the bun should have been an artisan brioche from Mrs. Foo-Foo-Stein’s Bakery instead of the mass-produced potato one they serve it on”.  Why don’t you take a picture of me snarling at you, I bet that would make your day!”

13 minutes later…

THE ARRIVAL

I have to say, this looks pretty damned awesome.  I’m going to have to work hard to snark on this.

THE BURGER ($8.69, I think, because I have no idea how much cheese was for this mysterious cheeseburger thing)

Look at it, the thing can’t even stand upright!  I’m already thinking a double might have been too much.

Decent amount of toppings, nothing overwhelming.

I took my first bite (I would have taken a picture after it to prove that I did take a first bite, but I didn’t want to grease up the phone)

Holy shit this is a really good burger!  It was pretty good sized, I’m thinking 6-8 ounces.  The meat was a perfect blend of beef and fat – this cow died with a purpose.  The edges were super crispy.  The bun was just right, it held everything together without getting in the way of the burger.

The toppings were fine, the pickles didn’t do much for it.  The onion was a pretty sharp white onion, but not strong enough to mess it up.  The Shake Sauce…I noticed nothing other than a mayo-like texture.  I would probably leave it off next time and just put a little ketchup and mustard on it.

I am definitely a fan.  At $8.69, it’s a little pricey, but it’s well beyond twice as good as any other fast food burger.

Then we get to…

THE FRIES ($2.99)

I like Ore-Ida crinkle-cut fries.  They’re a good fry.  Nothing special, but they’re a good fry.

I would not pay $2.99 for Ore-Ida fries in a restaurant that is supposedly going to change my life.

If they are going to use Ore-Ida fries, the least they could have done was ask Ore-Ida to make them look less like they were from Ore-Ida.

Or maybe Ore-Ida has only one machine that cuts their fries.

They were fine, they were Ore-Ida, they weren’t worth $2.99, let’s just leave it at that.

THE SHAKE ($5.79)

one

I’m not coming to a place called Shake Shack and not get a shake.  It’s like going to IHOP and not getting…P…

I’m not going to lie.  This is easily the best fast food shake I’ve ever had.  I got the holiday-themed chocolate peppermint shake.  If the holidays were as good as this shake, the world would be a far better place.

Thick, but not so thick that you can’t use a straw to drink/eat it.  Minty, but not overwhelming.  And at least a half cup of whipped cream on top.

For $5.79, it’s well worth the price.  It’s every bit as good as  you would get from a craft ice cream shop that’s at least $8-9.

THE VERDICT

My total bill was $18.37 after tax.  That’s a pretty hefty bill, but when you deduct the $3 or so for the Ore-Ida fries, it’s not quite as bad.  It’s also not the lightest food either – I think the burger and shake have about 1,600-1,800 calories between them.

For an every now and again meal, I’d totally do it.

But fuck their fries.  Seriously.

Dateline, December 17th, 2016 – Houston, TX – woke up to a lovely morning.  The sun was shining, 73 degrees.  My dog and I took an extra long stroll, and looked forward to a beautiful day.

Dateline, December 18th, 2016 – Ice Planet Hoth, 6th Planet, Hoth System – I opened the front door of my house for our daily dog walk, and my dog and I were confronted with the fact that we had been transported to the remote solar system of Hoth.  Your breath froze almost instantly after leaving your mouth.  There was ice as far as the ice could see, with not a speck of green in sight.  Realizing that we could not navigate the terrain on foot and paw, I summoned the nearest tauntaun to find the closest space where my dog could quickly relieve herself.  We were intercepted by Imperial AT-AT’s, and had to scurry to the closest cave for safety.  Worrying that we might die from hypothermia, we were relieved to find a wounded Wampa.  Using the light saber that mysteriously appeared in my pocket, we slashed open the belly of the beast, and huddled inside it to absorb its heat until the winter storm passed.

Ok, so the windchill was only 25 degrees, but COME ON!!!

I spent an entire summer living through an average heat index of 110 (this is not an exaggeration).  I don’t really care that the northern half of America is blanketed with 13 feet of snow, my blood has thinned out so much that a 25 degree windchill feels like there’s a constant Arctic blast hovering above my head.

So, when it’s -68 outside, there really is only one meal to make: chili!!

HOLD UP, YOU JUST MADE CHILI A COUPLE WEEKS AGO, YOU’RE ALREADY RECYCLING???

Ok, as you remember, that was fancy-pants upscale chili that was as much pot roast as chili.  This is straight forward, ground beef and chuck steak red chili.

FINE, I’LL LET IT SLIDE.

Wonderful, thanks.

You’ll be amazed at how hard it is to find a straight forward chili recipe online.  Wild boar chili?  Lots of them.  Vegetarian chili?  Sure.  Peanut butter chili?  Oh fuck’s sake I just made that up off the top of my head and sure enough…(although to be fair, the most prominent recipe comes from Robert Irvine, who has his own issues with fabrication, so this might all be an elaborate hoax to piss me off).

(It could happen.)

I really like this one.  It has both ground beef and chuck steak, which gives it a pretty cool texture.  It’s not really spicy, and kind of a little sweet, if you want it spicier you could add some cayenne pepper to heat it up.  Really you can tweak this however you want, this is an excellent base to start from.

CAN I MAKE A MESS WITH THIS RECIPE?

Not really, other than cooking the beef there’s not too much to get messy with.

THAT’S OK, YOU’VE DONE PRETTY WELL WITH SLOPPINESS RECENTLY, I’LL GIVE YOU A PASS!

You’re full of generosity today.

THANKS, MY THERAPIST SAID IT WOULD DO ME GOOD TO CHILL OUT!

Good to know, keep up the meds.

FUCK OFF!!

 

My lady doesn’t really like chicken thighs.  Which, I get, they’re a bit fatty and have a different texture than breasts, and if it’s not your thing, well then your mouth is broken, but to each their own.

She told me this as I was starting to make this dish.  Which is a bad time to be finding it out, since the nearest grocery is ten minutes away, kind of far for an emergency breast run.

Also, emergency breast run is an excellent euphemism.

“So how did the party go last night?”

“Oh it was the best!  I had a few Bud Light Limes, then I started talking to this totally hot chick, and we were feeling it, and next thing you know we’re in the spare bedroom making an emergency breast run.”

“Dude, what the fuck??  You were drinking Bud Light Lime??  What is wrong with you?  Nice job scoring though.”

Anyways, this takes a little work, but it’s definitely worth it.  Definitely follow the recipe and make the mushrooms before you start breading the chicken, you don’t want to be doing both at the same time.  Also, pounding out the thighs is helpful and will probably give you a more consistent product, but I forgot to do that and they turned out just fine.

CAN I MAKE A MESS WITH THIS RECIPE?

Absolutely!

SWEET, HOW?

Pounding out the chicken is a pain, if you put them in a plastic bag it’s far less messy and is probably better for the chicken anyways.

WUSS!  STILL WAITING…

Ok, have you ever pan-fried anything?

NO!  YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION!!

So you have to set up a whole breading station…

HOLY SHIT!!!  YOU COULD COMPLETELY BURY YOUR COUNTER IN BREAD CRUMBS!

Pretty much.  And you’re going to get club hand.

WHAT’S THAT?

So you hand gets a little flour on it, and then a little egg, and then the bread crumbs stick to it.

FUCKING AWESOME!!

You just have to make sure you use the same hand, otherwise you risk getting yourself sick through cross-contamination.

DUDE, THAT’S NOT COOL, MESSY IS COOL, SICK ISN’T.  55 STAY ALIVE, ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES.

Whatever, let’s get to cooking.

 

Most food bloggers will do promoted posts, where a company will pay them to create a recipe using their product, and then post about it while gushing about how amazing it made their recipe, and they couldn’t imagine using anything else unless they were paid triple the fee in which case fuck this thing.

I have a feeling I won’t be getting that opportunity after this post.

I went to Kroger (not affiliated with this post) last week to get some goodies to make crockpot ribs.  I can’t remember where I got the idea, I probably saw that baby back ribs on sale in the weekly circular, at the same time as I stumbled across a Buzzfeed post of the “377 crockpot rib recipes that you should me making right now!!!!”

Anyways, I figured I would make them Asian style, and make my own BBQ sauce.  I wanted to use honey, soy sauce, garlic, and ketchup.  That’s a good sauce!

And then I saw the bottle of ketchup above, just sitting on a grocery shelf, saying “come get me, you’ve always wanted to have me, buy me and I will make sweet BBQ love to your ribs”.

So of course I had to get it, not just because you always have to buy talking food, but because these two things are awesome.  Ketchup is awesome (shut up you little hipster fuck ketchup is delicious and anyone that tells you otherwise is lying or someone you should not hang around with especially if they call it catsup what is wrong with those people).  Sriracha is awesome.  So this has to be a perfect match.

I pulled the ingredients together and started cooking, and about 10 minutes later I tasted everything and realized something was very off.

Now here’s where I have to confess my cardinal sin: I didn’t know what the ketchup tasted like before I started making the sauce.  I know, it’s terrible, I should never have done it.  Gordon Ramsay would cast me on Hell’s Kitchen just so he could make an example out of me and berate me in front of millions of people.

So I said to myself, the honey tasted good, the soy sauce is fine, the garlic is great oh fuck no it can’t be the magical talking ketchup can it?

And that’s where I found out that Heinz needs to fire their entire product development staff.

Sriracha has a very bright, spicy, garlicky flavor, with just a hint of sweetness.

Apparently the product development people at Heinz tasted Sriracha sauce and their taste buds were so broken that they said, “hey this tastes like a bunch of wood chips took a shit in my mouth, let’s see if we can work that into a ketchup.”

I’m not kidding, this was awful.  Like, it’s ketchup, and it’s got some ketchup flavor, but it’s all elbowed out by this rotten smokiness that ruins everything.

And that’s when I discovered something that – again – I should have noticed earlier.

THERE IS NO ACTUAL SRIRACHA IN THEIR SRIRACHA KETCHUP!!!

Nope, none.  It’s right there on the label, I know.  “Sriracha flavor”.  Couldn’t put actual Sriracha in it.  Maybe Big Sriracha doesn’t want to have anything to do with Big Ketchup.  Maybe Heinz did call them and it got sent straight to voicemail, and Big Sriracha lost its password and never got the message.

Now, this “Sriracha flavor”.  I looked through the ingredients of this abominable chip turd catsup, and compared them with those of delicious tomato-y sweet real ketchup.  The additional ingredient to the wood poop one: paprika.

Paprika adds a smoky flavor to things (hence the wood chip turd taste).  There is no smoky flavor in Sriracha.  None.

Here are some items or flavors that I would more closely associate with Sriracha than paprika:

• Chocolate sauce
• Peas
• Yorkshire pudding
• Actual pudding
• Kimchi
• Non-smoky poop

If you want to have Sriracha-flavored ketchup, buy some ketchup, buy some Sriracha, and mix the two together in whatever proportion you want.  You will have a tasty condiment that you can use on just about anything.

Do not buy this product if you ever want to use it on food.  This product is good on absolutely nothing.  If, by some chance, someone gives this to you, or it gets bequeathed to you in the will of your racist uncle that gave you noogies and never really cared for you, here is what you should do:

1. Take the bottle from them, smile politely, and thank them (i.e. lie).
2. Remove the cap from the bottle.
3. Pull off the protective seal from the top.
4. Screw the top back on about 2/3 of the way, so it’s not totally locked on.
5. Throw the bottle at them.
6. Watch the bottle contents explode all over them.
7. Scream “HOW’S IT FEEL TO BE A BIG SMOKY TURDFACE HAHA LOOK AT THE SMOKE TURD!!!”

My lady: hey honey, whatcha doing?

(ok, sometimes “whatcha doing” is a totally innocuous and enjoyable phrase, and sometimes it’s a precursor to don’t get mad at me but I signed us up for an interpretive dance class with Carl and Suzanne you just need to get to know them just because he’s a racist doesn’t mean he’s all bad can you please learn to get along with him I really need this promotion why don’t you love me?!?!)

Adam (suspiciously): ummm, nothing, what’s going on?

My lady (batting her eyes adorably): so you know how everyone at work looooves your cooking?

(oh shit, the volume and intensity of the eye bats is directly proportional to the favor that is about to be asked.  And my lady is the queen of eye bats.  Like Jedi master level.)

Adam: yes, you’ve told me that.

My lady: well, every day until the end of the year someone is bringing in food for the entire department, and our day is Wednesday.

(ok, so first off, we don’t work together, so technically it’s not our day, but we’re a team, so ok yeah it is get off my back.

Second, my lady has told me that the only thing she makes in the kitchen is mashed potatoes – she makes very good ones, btw.  So, unless we are making three tons of mashed potatoes, I’m going to be doing a fair amount of work in the kitchen pretty soon.)

My lady: and did I mention how handsome you are?

(at this point, unless she said, so would you mind going downtown to meet Tuco Salamanca to buy the weapons-grade anthrax he promised he would get me, I’m pretty much going to do whatever she wants.  I’m a boy, I’m putty in her hands when she says things like that.)

So now, what to make.  Before we moved to Houston, I saved a bunch of breakfast recipes onto my Paprika app, since I figured I could have actual breakfasts working from home.  I also forgot to account for the fact that I am really lazy and would rather pour a bowl of cereal than spend more than four seconds beating an egg or warming up a pan at 6:30 a.m.

I did, however, try out a few recipes during evening hours.  These maple muffins were the clear winner of the few I gave a shot.  I like them because they’re actual muffins, and not the overgrown dough monstrosities that Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts bake and try to pass off as muffins.  “Oh, you did not want to consume 75% of your RDA of calories in this gigantomuffin?  Mixing all the chocolate and three pounds of blueberries into your breakfast pastry does not sound appealing to you?  What do you have against America?  Commie!!”

But these are great, they almost taste like little pancakes with the syrup baked into them, and they’re pretty easy to make.  Plus, the recipe comes from a Canadian site, and they know their maple syrup.

As with all baking recipes, don’t mess around with the ingredients and volumes unless you really know what you’re doing.  You’re reading my blog.  You don’t know what you’re doing.

ENOUGH ALREADY, CAN I MAKE A MESS WITH THIS RECIPE??

Anything related to baking has the potential for a mess.

OOH, HOW SO?

Well, if you pick too small of a bowl to mix everything together in, then the flour is going to fly everywhere.  Also, when you sprinkle the topping on, there’s about a 0% chance that it will all land on the muffins themselves – personally, I would cut back on the amount of flour and sugar in it.

WAIT, YOU JUST TOLD ME NOT TO MESS WITH THE RECIPE?

Yeah, I know, it’s just for the topping, it’s not going to mess up the muffin itself.  Forget I mentioned it.

 

So I had totally planned on having multiple nights worth of the chili I had made last night…and then I woke up and realized that we had never taken the chili out of the slow cooker from the night before…so between getting norovirus or whatever bacterial infection you get from eating food that’s sat out for too long and making dinner from scratch, the latter was the only real option.

Going through the fridge, I see feta cheese, I see olives, I see baby spinach, I see Roger, I see Susan, I see Jason…

So I’ve easily got enough ingredients for a quick Greek chicken recipe…except, you know, the chicken.  Not to worry, chicken thighs are cheap, and so much better than chicken breasts.

(Do not even try to argue this with me.  2016 chicken breasts are just flavorless sacks of rubber injected with 20 gallons of broth to ensure that you can’t fuck them up too badly when you put them in the oven and NO FLUFFY DO NOT DO YOUR BUSINESS ON THE CARPET JUNIOR DO YOUR HOMEWORK I AM NOT HAVING ANOTHER PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE HONEY WILL YOU PLEASE STOP OGGLING MEGYN KELLY AND SET THE TABLE OH MY GOD THE CHICKEN BREASTS HAVE BEEN IN THE OVEN FOR 180 MINUTES!!!)

And it’s a one pot recipe, which is great, because my lady hates it when I dirty up tons of pans and skillets and pots to make a simple dinner.  I mean, who doesn’t use seven bowls and six plates and a skillet and a stockpot to make dinner?

Nobody?

Never mind.

CAN I MAKE A MESS WITH THIS RECIPE?

Oh sure.

FINALLY!!

Any time you cook with chicken, you have to clean the board over and over again so you don’t get TB of the trichinosis of the eyeball.  And you have to trim the fat and throw that out, which is icky, but it will taste more appealing and saves on grease spatters.

WAIT, YOU’RE TELLING ME TO MAKE IT LESS MESSY?

Settle down Chachi.  It’s going to spatter regardless, and the extra far is going to have this really weird texture to it.  You’re better off trimming them up.

BUT THAT’S IT?  NOTHING MORE THAN THAT?  YOU’RE REALLY LETTING ME DOWN!

I’m sure they have plenty of room for hecklers over at the pioneer woman’s site.

WHATEVER…JUST GET TO COOKING.

 

WHAT’RE WE MAKING TODAY?

Chili!!

WHY ARE WE MAKING CHILI?

Is this is a serious question?  Why would you ever not make chili?

DUDE, CHILL!  I’M JUST GIVING YOU A SEGUE TO TELL YOUR STORY.

Ok, fine, props to you for using the right spelling of segue.  You’re already better than the kids that hold up signs at Gameday like “Saturday’s Are For Penn State”.

Anyways, my fiancé loves chili.  Like, she told me that she could eat it every night and be happy.

WHOA, THAT’S PRETTY COOL!

Yeah, I hit the jackpot of smart/beautiful/funny/football fan.

I DON’T BELIEVE THAT.  IS SHE A ROBOT YOU BUILT IN YOUR BASEMENT?

I have never been able to put together a table or desk from Target that didn’t end up wobbling back and forth like a drunken leprechaun, there’s no way I could build a robot.

I’VE NEVER SEEN A DRUNKEN LEPRECHAUN.

Me either, but I’m sure if I did, I would say, hey that looks like every Target table or desk I ever tried to put together.

OK, SO CHILI!

Yes, thanks for getting me back on track.

Chili is great, because you can just go through your pantry and say “oh look, I have a can of tomatoes, a couple onions, and where did this extract of antelope come from”, and you have the base for a good chili.

ALRIGHTY THEN.  THERE’S NO ANTELOPE IN THIS CHILI, RIGHT?

No, breathe easy.

I make a pot of chili every few weeks, trying new recipes to find my favorite.  I even bought The Chili Cookbook to try and come up with some ideas.

YEAH, SO WHO’S THIS JAMES BEARD FELLA?

He was this old timey cookbook author and teacher, and people seemed to like him because they named cooking awards after him, and the only people that get them are ones that run restaurants that charge you $300 for an eleven course meal, each of which consists of one shrimp, and they look at you funny if you use the forks out of order.

I WOULDN’T FIT IN AT THOSE PLACES, I WAS KICKED OUT OF APPLEBEE’S FOR THROWING SPINACH AND ARTICHOKE DIP AT MY DATE.

Moving on…

This recipe is suppose to “elevate” chili, which is the term that chefs use when they want to eat like the rest of the unwashed masses but still hold fancy chef street creed.  “Ooooohhh, look at the baby back ribs that I smoked with green tea hibiscus leaves, and glazed with Romanian guava jelly and dusted with coffee powder ground from African beans that came out of a civet’s buttonhole.”

OH LORD, THERE’S NOT GOING TO BE BEANS IN IT, ARE THERE?  YOU’RE ONE OF THOSE FUCKWADS THAT TELLS PEOPLE THAT THEY CAN’T HAVE BEANS IN CHILI, RIGHT?

Oh no.  People should have whatever they want in their chili.  If people don’t want beans in their chili, fine.  People that say that your chili isn’t chili because it has beans in it can go fuck themselves.  When I become president in 2036, the 1st thing I will do is legalize capital punishment for anyone that tells someone that their chili can’t have beans if they want it to be “authentic Texas chili”.

WHEW, OK THEN.

That said…

OH SHIT, WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?

I wouldn’t put beans in this version of chili.  This one really should be just the beef and sauce, because the beef is pretty spectacular in large chunks, and the beans I think would get in the way of that.  But I wouldn’t judge if you threw in a can or two of beans at the end.

OK, I’LL TRUST YOU…THIS ONCE…NOW THE IMPORTANT QUESTION…

CAN I MAKE A MESS WITH THIS RECIPE?

It’s a pretty straight-forward recipe, but there are a few opportunities to get a little messy.

FUCK’S SAKE…WHY AM I EVEN BOTHERING????

So searing the beef at the beginning is going to spray oil and grease.  When you blend the sauce at the end, if you’re not careful, you can get that all over the place.

FINE, I’LL WORK WITH THAT, GIMME THE RECIPE!

You’re very demanding.