Cheese Please
Without looking: baby swiss, pepperjack, shredded cheddar, shredded mozzarella, parmesan, American, and a tub of gorgonzola.
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The Ten Most Recent Comments By TaraTot
What's your perfect comfort food/ drink?
mac & cheese
egg sandwich
pb&j
It's all nostalgia...
Grossest thing found in restaurant food
Hehe, I love these stories... Hair doesn't bother me anymore. I've seen way worse! I've seen a little caterpillar in my broccoli, nail in a salad, bugs in lettuce, and glass in pasta. The latter were from a place I worked. Stuff happens!
Once at a freshly opened chain steakhouse, my friends and I were dining and we kept finding these little black beetles in our food, drinks, etc. Evidently, they were literally coming out of the wood and falling everywhere. We got our alcohol and food comped, along with pretty much everyone else in the place that night.
I screwed up making bread =(
I was going to ask if perhaps it was cooked too long? When I cook mine, it only takes about 25 minutes in a loaf pan. You can check it and when you tap on the top, it should sound hollow.
I also only let mine rise for about 2-3 hours and then punch it down, let it rise again for 30 minutes and then let it cook.
Let us know how it goes! I think that the no-knead recipe is by far the easiest thing next to a bread machine, if you want to try it after this batch.
Weird parental food preparation
Between my mom and stepdad, they had 5 children. Mom stayed home so money was tight sometimes...
Her go-to meal: canned baked beans (sweet flavored variety most times), Veg-All, and hamburger meat served over some kind of starch. I secretly called it poop on a plate and tried be at a friend's house when I saw the hamburger meat thawing. Ick!
She also went through what I call her "Californian" phase - everything had sprouts, avocado, and white cheese of some sort.
Amazing feats of teenage consumption...
My hubs is the most impressive eater I know... In high-school he ate like a linebacker but was 140 lbs dripping wet.
He ate 27 pieces of pizza at Cici's once. I also think he ate a 12 patty cheeseburger and FF to get on the wall at a local burger joint. His normal McD's order was 6 cheeseburgers or 2 quarter pounders.
He's still a big eater but I make sure it's healthy stuff now.
What do you do with a bunch of bananas?
Old-fashioned, Nilla wafer style, banana pudding....
Yum!
Savoury Breakfasts on-the-go
I love breakfast! Here are a few things I bring to work with me:
-tortilla wrap with eggs or whatever you want
-bagel with eggs, avocado, and pepperjack
-dry cereal like Oatmeal squares
-egg sandwich of many sorts: on toast or a biscuit with cheese
-breakfast tacos with leftover meat from the night before, scrambled with eggs, salsa, and cheese
-waffles with peanut butter
I also like any kind of leftovers for breakfast. I'll eat whatever was for dinner in the morning - pasta, sushi, pizza - doesn't matter if it's reheated or cold.
Teach me how to make bread (by hand)
I make bread almost every weekend and I don't use a recipe. I found a blurp on a blog somewhere along the way that gave simple instructions with no real measurements and the bread always turns out good.
Take some yeast (I use a tsp) and add it to a cup of slightly warm water in a bowl. Add some sugar or honey. Let it sit for 5 minutes.
Add some flour. Keep adding flour until you get a firm, doughy consistency. Add more water if you need to. Knead the dough for a few minutes until it gets soft and smooth. Put it back in a floured bowl and cover with a towel.
Let it rest for 2 hours. Knead the dough again and let it rise for another 10 minutes.
Heat your oven to 425*F.
I either bake it in a loaf pan or on a cooking stone. Cook until perfectly brown and sounds hollow when you tap on it.
You can make different variations of this. Add cheese or herbs. Add some oil and roll it out for pizza dough. Make it into foccacia.
It's very forgiving and once you start playing with it, you won't want to stop.
Fish tacos...what makes them authentic?
I make fish tacos at home with grilled tilapia or mahi mahi, cabbage, lime aioli, and tomatoes.
I've also used whole battered fillets (frozen, from a box) when I want the fried kind.
Responses to Comments by TaraTot
Weird parental food preparation
@Jerzee: You are reading my mind. I wanted to start a thread just like this...My co-workers and I had this conversation last week. Bunch of laughs during that conversation since they know how picky I am.
My mom was a wonderful cook. Very lucky to have her for guidance whenever I have a question. Anyway, there are just two occassions I can think of where meals went wrong. Once (and it was only once) my mom put mysteriousness on the table. I asked what it was-she stated Chicken Nuggets. I grabbed a couple and put one in my mouth. Promptly, it came right out. It was awful. She laughed while saying they were, in fact, brussel sprouts. How awful. She breaded and baked them (which is what she would do with chicken at times). No good.
There was one dinner I hated. Seriously. I couldn't handle it. It was called "Chicken Snack" and my dad would request it. I wanted to die when I knew it was coming...Buttered toast on the bottom, with a mix of chicken cut up, gravy, and the white part of a hard boiled egg. With the side of green beans. I want to yack thinking about it. I didn't/don't like gravy and who likes soggy bread? I hated it. That night I went to bed early and hungry because I couldn't eat it. The green beans I would eat, but that's about it
Weird parental food preparation
My mom, the woman of true comfort food! She taught me how to cook. Luckily she didn't learn anything from my Grandmother. In fact she went to "cooking school" before she got married (missed the last class cause she was on her honeymoon). I have that cookbook from the 1940's. She made the best meatloaf (a recipe I follow to this day) that is awesome. Strange cooking - I thought I invented peanut butter and butter sandwiches. You should have seen my mom's face the day I asked her to make it for me. Mom always asked what we wanted for lunch (back in the day when we went home for lunch during school). I also ate Peanut butter and lettuce sandwiches (I had a weird palette). Peanut butter and bacon was a staple in our house. To this day one of my favorite sandwiches. The weirdest thing I ever took to school for lunch (which was a rare occasion) was cold baked beans. The kids ribbed me all afternoon about it but I loved every morsel. My mom made baked beans from scratch, soaked the beans over night (always on the back porch in her "special" baked bean pot). She used a leftover ham bone and I really don't know what else. Sad to say a recipe I never learned from her. Not much was ever written down just passed on.
Stuff I hated - sausage and peppers. She cooked it to death and the peppers were slimy. Not really a weird preperation my dad loved it. It really wasn't Italian either.
Leftovers were usually really good. Mom could make a meal for 6 out of a whole lot of nothing. Typical question when I got home from school was "What's for dinner?". And the reply was "food". I would ask "what kind of food?". She would say "good food.". All leftovers had a name like Slumgullion or her version of Choy Mein (a can of LaChoy veggies and what ever was leftover) with chinese noodles on top. Then there was always Worchestershire sauce, it went into everything.
She was Irish and Dad Italian but she was taught Italian food from my aunt. Fantastic sauce, lasagna, meatballs, manicotti, and every Tuesday (except in the summer when it was too hot) we had "macaroni" for dinner. Before anyone called it pasta and Mom made gravy (not sauce). Try this one - seriously sear pork chops (boneless or bone in) in the pot with some olive oil, remove and then start your tomato sauce. Add chops and simmer till thickened and pork chops are tender. That's my favorite sauce and meat.
Oh, gotta go and make a shopping list, I want that sauce and pork chops with rigatoni.
Weird parental food preparation
My Mother-in-Law, who is usually a fantastic cook, made a dish called 'goop' for my husband and his siblings when they were growing up. Goop consisted of a can of oil packed tuna stirred into a can of mushroom soup, then poured over leftover mashed potatoes. I can't even think about it without gagging, but my husband loved it when he was little.
Weird parental food preparation
My grandma on my dad's side is a very insane lady. One year we were off to her house in Hartford, CT all the way from Proctorsville, VT, for thanksgiving dinner. We got there a 1/2 hour before she said food would be ready, and the turkey was raw on the counter. RAW. no spices, or marinade, just a turkey.
My dad said, " Mom, I thought you said we would eat for 12:30." she said "O yes, that's when we eat!"
What do you plan on doing with the turkey?? he asked . Oh, we're going to nuke it with our new microwave!! she announced, and proceded to shove the whole thing in the microwave.
needless to say, my mom always made sure she fed us to bursting before we went to that house. I'm just glad i was to young to remember. **shudder**
Weird parental food preparation
My mom had a Pennsylvania-Dutch Gramma and we had some strange stuff that i still wish i could make as well as mom did-- She watched a lot of Julia Child and Graham Kerr when i was growing up and i remember stealing her Gourmet magazines as soon as they came in the mail--tis was heady stuff for a girl growing up in the 60's in Jackson, Mississippi! The Penn-Dutch stuff ranged from cooked iceberg lettuce "hot lettuce salad", a creamy corn soup called corn soup with rivels- i used to ask for the soup with "rivets", a noodle dish with sliced boiled eggs, a kinda sweet-clove spiced tomato sauce, bacon and these awfully fatty cooked in bacon grease croutons, the best sloppy joes you ever ate! When she got experimental, she went all the way. Beef wellington from scratch.Handmade pasta for fettucine alfredo. Double cut pork chops baked with granny smith apples and calvados. Calvados?!! You think anyone in Mississippi even could pronounce Calvados much less stock it in a liquor store? My father had to bring it back from France via Germany on one of his amny National Guard trips. Anyhow, Mom was a great cook, an adventurous cook, and an inspiring cook. Probably why i pursued the profession myself, just on a different level. There is, however, a part of me that wishes i could have been a stay at home mom and wife who had, as her daily challenge, trying to find ingredients for Julia's Coq au Vin or Graham's Gratin Dauphinois...
Weird parental food preparation
Growing up I hated asparagus, lima beans and peas because my mom cooked and served them in hot milk with butter and pepper. It makes me about gag just thinking about it. I still can't stand limas. She also made a pot roast that we called 'Stringy Beef'. She was a great baker though. My dad used to feed us his famous Baloney Cups which were fried slices of baloney that would curl up in the pan. Then he'd dump a mixture of Minute rice and wax beans into the 'cup' and call it dinner.
Weird parental food preparation
Oh man. I can add to the whole ketchup/spaghetti thing, but with a twist -- my mother (AND aunt) would serve me and my cousins cooked and drained instant ramen noodles with ketchup as a "poor man's spaghetti". She said she couldnt' trust what was in those little ramen flavoring packets, so instead we got commercial ketchup and reconstituted fried noodles. Go figure.
Another good one was spinach fettuccini with fried diced bologna and a sauce of heavy cream thickened with an egg. Sounds weird but its actually pretty tasty.
Then there were the SPAM sandwiches, which we made European-style, almost like a charcuterie plate, with little slices displayed on a plate and rounds of french bread to put them on.
The funny thing is, despite all the weird stuff we ate growing up, the ONLY thing i refused to eat as a kid was creamed spinach. As in steakhouse creamed spinach, which of course now i love. Best part was that i wasn't allowed to leave the table until i finished my "vegetables". Hah!
Weird parental food preparation
My dad would eat PB, Cheese and Mayo sandwiches...gag
Also- when he would diet, his fav meal would be a huge bowl of white rice with a can of tuna on top.
Weird parental food preparation
@GretchinF peanut butter and bacon sandwiches are awesome.
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