What I eat, apparently

Leftover Chinese fried rice is generally not all it’s cracked up to be. First off, it doesn’t help that fresh fried rice, when made properly, is made from day-old rice anyhow. Secondly, things can be even worse if the fried rice wasn’t full of tons of fabulous ingredients from the start. There are far too many restaurants out there who put far too few vegetables into their fried rice. However, I have discovered the key to making fried rice fabulous again, and it apparently involves lots of peppers.

So I had leftover chicken fried rice. I dumped it into a plate and sprinkled on some water, then microwaved until hot. The water allows the rice to attempt to regain a semblance of it’s former plumpness. I also plopped down a few pieces of bonus sesame chicken, just to liven things up a bit. Then, I piled on some chopped yellow and orange sweet peppers, basil, green onion, and a generous pile of ground peppercorns. It was really good, and made fabulous what would have otherwise been a rather mediocre pile of leftover fried rice.

So I eat burgers on a semi-regular basis, but not hugely often, I guess about once a month. About 2/5 of these will be homemade burgers, 1/5 of them will be a burger from a delicious eating establishment a la Carytown Burger and Fries or other such places, and the last 2/5 will come from McDonalds. I’ll admit this with a bit of sadness, as I refused to eat at McDonalds for many years. It was the only job I was ever fired from, and so I engaged in some serious boycott action. However, Drew and his nefarious eating habits sucked me back in at some point or another. In any case, what we get from them usually consist of greasepods. A greasepod is a double cheeseburger (or a McDouble). It wants you to think it’s an actual burger, but in reality it pales in both comparison and taste to what a real burger is like. A greasepod is simply an effective means to transport grease into your mouth. One thing I haven’t experienced up until recently, though, is the mini-burger trend (sliders or shooters or greasepellets or whathaveyou).

I am cheap and ingredients like me to play with them, so I decided to try making them. I happened to have a lovely package of potato rolls that wanted accompaniment. Quite conveniently, I also happened to have a lovely package of ground beef hiding out in the freezer, awaiting such an opportunity. So little burgers got made, and they were indeed tasty.

I rather like having smaller burgers, as it makes portion control a little bit easier. Two small burgers are a little bit less then one large burger (they way I ended up making them, at least), and so I can eat them and still have room for dessert (which is way too important to give up!). The trend itself is a curious thing, I wonder how much of it is a societal + restaurant response to the trend several years back of super-sizing things and as a response to Fast Food Nation and such. They have the appearance of being smaller portions combined with the fact that there’s probably less meat used on them then on a regular burger (thus making them cheaper to produce).

Also, do you know what the best reason is to make one’s burgers at home? Full tomato control. I personally think that tomatoes are a very integral part of a good burger. In particular, there’s something truly luscious about the mingling of beefy juices plus fresh tomato juices plus mustard. I had the experience of eating at a Ruby Tuesday recently, something I haven’t done for about four years or so. While the burger I got was good, it still ended up being lacking, due to the fact that the tomatoes on the burger were rather puny roma-like things buried in the middle of the bun. Seriously, I need full tomato coverage, I need at least 80% of that meat patty covered in tomato, otherwise it’s just not going to be truly satisfactory.

So Drew and I have a friend who has recently traveled off to Australia. Drew wanted to make him a going-away dessert of some sort. And so I wonder, “What’s the best way to fit as many calories in as small of a space as possible?” Well, to be honest that wasn’t really how my thought process went, but it might as well have considering what we ended up making: peanut butter brownies.

We used this brownie recipe, and it turned out magically. Now, I was not actually going to be around for the going-away shindig, so, as the brownies were going to be iced anyhow, I took it upon myself to pick at the top layer until satiated with the deliciousness. Here’s the top layer before I assaulted it:

I did the decorating, which mostly involved dumping on the remainer of the chocolate frosting/icing from the cake I posted about last. After that, it got a nice dose of sprinkles, then some illustrative decoration. Both the kangaroo and Australia were indeed necessary.

A few of them made it back to me after the party, and they were really good, as well as really heavy. The addition of the peanut butter really makes these extra dense, and I had a hard time eating more then one brownie at a time. Then again, considering the addition of the peanut butter plus frosting, I suspect one brownie’s worth of these is like two regular brownies! In any case, I’d totally make these again, especially for a peanut butter lover.

I like cake. Cake is indeed not a lie as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think I’ve ever made a cake I didn’t like. This is because the vast majority of cakes I make involve a Cake Doctor book whereupon I follow the easy instructions that are really just slight alterations to a tried and tested box cake. The rare times I make a cake from scratch, it’s generally a recipe from the internet where 2837923 other people have given the recipe a good rating. When making cake (and most baked goods, for that matter), I do not have the problems with authority that I have all the time with cooking recipes. I respect my cake superiors, following a recipe as much to the letter as possible, only veering off the beaten path with inconsequential things, of the “Hey, I’ll dump in strawberries!” variety. Mind you, I’ll totally ignore a recipe for frosting, or simply decide that it is in my power to make up a frosting recipe on the spot. However, as screwing up a frosting recipe really just means, “Hmm, it’s too runny…time for another cup of powdered sugar!”, tastewise it won’t matter too much. This is because sugar is delicious. It can still be a bad idea, however.

See, I have this Chocolate Cake Doctor book. In the back, there are a plethora of various recipes for frosting and icing and such. So I bake a cake, and decide to use the fluffy chocolate frosting. After following the recipe perfectly, it’s like a super-runny icing. So I dump in more powdered sugar. Then I dump in some more powdered sugar. After that, I added powdered sugar. The recipe was advertising itself as being super chocolatey. By this point though, it was like super sugar icing that is chocolate flavored. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you, it’s just a bit disappointing when you were expecting super chocolate.

As it turned out, this was not a problem. The frosting icing poured on great and spread out nice and smooth. Then, after it had dried, I accomplished an amazing feat. I actually made it look like I wanted it to, possibly even slightly better. See, I have horrible luck with frosting things. I’ll get all crazy and use a frosting I’ve never used before, and I’ll decide to try techniques I’m not all that familiar with. Then, when I get frustrated when things don’t work, I’ll throw a spatula in anger, getting frosting all over the ceiling, and then decide to make the entire cake blue as a consolation for not being able to make that perfect border. Anyhow, I really liked how this cake came out.

It took me a few tries to get that rose working, and it’s still not exactly the best rose. The frosting required multiple sessions of sitting in the freezer to get things to not get entirely too squishy on me. But persevere I did! Mmm…cake.