What I eat, apparently

I will do many things for free food. I am also always interested in a good excuse to dress up and look ridiculous. Therefore, Cow Appreciation Day, a.k.a. the day all Chick-fil-a locations give a free combo meal to anyone who dresses up like a cow, was right up my alley. If you at least wore a cow related item, like a cow print hat, you’d get a free entree, but as far as I was concerned, that was for the wusses who couldn’t handle being a real cow (err real person-dressed-as-cow).

The cow regalia in full, along with an obviously much better dressed cow:

Now, the best way to go about this day is to figure out how to hit as many Chick-fil-a restaurants as possible. Unfortunately, this idea did not strike me and Christine, my partner in crime for the night, until about 6:30 pm. So we ended up hitting 5 of them. There was an elusive duo of guys dressed as cows who’d come down from Baltimore, according to rumor at least, and were in the process of going to 30 Chick-fil-as. That’s a serious commitment right there. We never managed to run into them, though, just passing rumors.

And there seems to be a strategy to doing this. First off, after the first meal that wasn’t designed to be eaten that night, I stopped getting any combo that came with lettuce and tomato, as both would surely get wilted and shriveled by the next day. Also, no more sodas. Bottled water was is the way to go. The real problem was the fries. Fries just don’t last well as leftovers. The sides that you don’t have to pay extra for (cole slaw, or carrot and raisin salad) just don’t do much for me. Sadly it never occurred to me until after it all that the $.25 extra to get a fruit cup side might have been covered in the ‘free combo’ price. I’ll have to remember that for next year, as fruit cups can go a long way.

I ended up with about 80% of both of our waffle fries, I compiled them all into this conveniently large container:

All in all, it was quite fun to hit all of those restaurants, next year I may even take the day off just to try to hit as many as I can, for there are few things better in this world then free chicken.

At entirely too many restaurants, a serving is defined as the average amount of food eaten in the average meal of a 6 1/2 foot person who weighs 300 lbs (give or take a few lbs). For those who are shorter and smaller, this means a much larger then average meal by far. And it’s unfortunate for those of us that grew up with ‘eat everything on your plate’ ideas pounded into us. At least, I know I spent a large portion of my life, when in restaurants, in eating to the point of being rather physically uncomfortable, because I just thought that’s how things worked.

Luckily, at some point in all those years my brain took over. Now, part of the joy at eating out at places with portions of eating contest proportions is the fact that you’ll get two meals out of it instead of just one.

For example, take this here cheesesteak, which this rooster lustfully gazes upon. It is indeed the remnant cheesesteak of an earlier meal.

Once upon a time, there were about 3 more inches at the end of that cheesesteak. That, plus eating all of the fries, plus a bonus slice of pizza that came my way, made for a quite filling meal, with this quite large cheesesteak remnant for dinner later on.

The only downside of eating your meals this way, though, is the strategy involved can lead to a bit of an imbalance. See, this cheesesteak came with a quite large serving of fries. Reheated fries are disgusting more often then not, so as far as I was concerned, it was a given that all of the fries would need to be eaten the first go-around. This, of course, left less room for the cheesesteak, which is what I really wanted in the first place. But, such are the sacrifices one must make for efficiency!

Let’s be honest here. There are few problems in life that a nicely charred wiener wouldn’t fix. Especially a big fat wiener. And, it being July 5th, it’s about one day after the ideal time for such wieners.

And boy, are they some fat wieners!

I must confess, that as much of a cheap bastard as I am, I have ethical difficulties with being cheap when it comes to hot dogs and similar wieners. Well, ‘cheaper’, as the case may be. Generally, the cheapest you can go is a 10 pack of short little wieners. These will not only inevitably leave an extra 2+ inches at the end of your bun that is bun-only, but you’ll have 2 wieners left over after all the buns are gone. Were I really thrifty, I could hack those last 2 dogs into fourths, and place each piece in that 2 inch space at the end of the other 2 hot dogs on buns. But, that whole ‘effort and foresight’ thing just kind of eludes me sometimes. Also, there’s the fact that purchasing these measly wieners in 10 packs will only encourage the manufacturers to make more. This, the cheapest I go is the ‘bun length’ types in the 8 pack, and if I’m feeling saucy, I’ll straight up go for the bratwursts or Italian sausage.

And, to counterbalance the wiener situation, an often appropriate accompaniment is said to be the raw veggie tray:

(Ooh, it’s an action shot! It’s like you can feel that green thing getting dipped!)

I actually struggle with the concept of veggie tray as ‘appropriate accompaniment’. Mind you, it beats potato salad any day, but nonetheless, the majority of vegetables on such things are unacceptable. Raw broccoli? Raw carrots? Raw cauliflower?! I’ll happily down all the cherry tomatoes, mind you, and also nibble a bit on the celery and whatever peppers might be found. But there’s some things that are just not meant to be consumed raw. Or at all. I mean, cauliflower? Really.

And of course, an excellent counterpart to the veggie tray (and, by extension, an artery-clogging partner in crime with the hot dogs) is the massive pile of brownies. At the point of this photograph, they had diminished to the minor pile, which is why I defaulted to Über Closeup Time to achieve the proper effect.

These were mildly experimental, in that, while in the process of making said brownies, I was overtaken by a fit of hysterics and immediately threw in 10 caramel pieces. It worked out quite well, I think, assuming we define ‘quite well’ as ‘there were several times when one would bite into a brownie and find their jaws stuck together, but in a good way’. But then again, if there are brownies involved, is the concept of ‘bad way’ even possible?

I’ve been thinking about meat pies lately. That, and a Hot Pocket that was actually satisfying. Sadly, they are no longer the furtive pleasure they once were at age 16 or thereabouts, they’ve evolved to this sad sad pocket filled with more air then anything else. So I’m all like ‘I can beat that, I’ll make an Awesome Pocket!’

So, first the dough.

This baby took two sticks of butter! Well, Blue Bonnet, AKA Pseudo Margarine Non-Butter. It’s so cheap though, I can’t help it! (Maybe cheaper then your mom, even!) Anyhow, the recipe is for empanada dough. I’m, uh, actually not sure I’ve eaten an empanada before, to be completely honest. I’ve read a few Isabel Allende lately, and they totally made me all hungry for them, nonetheless!

So, the innards. They started as a well meant attempt at spinach and feta, but ended up also including chicken, cilantro, tomatoes, almonds, raisins, as well as garlic, cinnamon, cumin, and a few too many red peppers. Err, and probably plus other things I’ve since blocked out. Ah yes! Sour cream. It is sour and creamy and delicious in my gaping maw.

So then I dun rolled the dough. Yeah, I’m not too up on that. I’ve done it, bitterly, a few times with sugar cookies, before I vowed cookie cutters were a Waste of Life. Seemed necessary for this, though. Albeit, I have no rolling pin. So I just rolled out balls into flatter, larger balls using a random bottle from the ole Liquor Corner. Look, they’re purdy!

And then they had a magical oven adventure. Yay! I captured this one as it was trying to escape.

They ended up looking, as well as tasting, better then I’d anticipated, especially considering my lack of experience with pocket-like substances. Actually, I would have been mildly pissed if they’d have come out badly, considering the amount of labor that went into these wee laddies. I’ll do this again another time, except make twice as much dough and freeze 1/2 of it. Dear God, that would be like an entire box of butter, err pseudo-butter. Ah, artery-clogging good times.

Oh yeah, here’s the final result, all hacked open.

The picture is horrific, I was apparently shaking from hunger at the time. I would have added a lens flare or something, just to sparkle it up, but that requires a thing called motivation coupled with this other thing called ambition, both of which are a little sparse in these lazy pocket-filled days of mine. D’oh!

So I got this chicken, see. And I’ve been fantasizing about things involving coconut milk for awhile, now. And I had all this basil that was just rarin’ to get gnawed upon. So it follows that, despite all my best intentions, a chicken curry would be made.

And I think I figured it out - I gotta start using a wok more. The vegetables were in much better moods then they would otherwise typically be. Also, I used a teeny 5.5 oz can of coconut milk, rather then the behemoth can I usually use. Apparently ingredients get cranky when they spend too much time swimming around in unnecessarily thick fluids. Aside from that and a bit of curry, I used pretty much exactly the same seasonings used in the green papaya salad - insanity!

This may have been the best curry I’ve ever made, in fact. Here is a picture high in contrast and low on detail!

Actually, I’m still not sure what makes something a curry, and what doesn’t. Does something become curry simply by adding curry powder or paste to it? Even if it’s not a lot? I just don’t know!