Ada Chili and Beer Festival 2017

Chili and beer, sounds like a good Saturday afternoon to me.

Every year, folks from the Community Church in Ada and Ronald McDonald House organize a chili cook-off. Most of the entrants are from local restaurants and brewpubs, who also bring their beers and ciders along.

Doing an outdoor event so late in the year in Michigan is a bit risky, but the weather cooperated this year. No major snowstorms and it wasn't even all that cold. Though with as many people as were crowded into the big tent, cold wouldn't have been an issue regardless. Nice to have the option of wandering around outside a bit, though.

I didn't come close to trying every chili or beer option, way too many choices! About a half-dozen of each, I think, before I was too full to keep going. Everything was good, though! I look forward to another round next year.

Ahoy, Donuts

Ahoy, mateys, it be Talk Like a Pirate day!

The pirate face donut was a little worse for wear after the trip home. But hey, what pirate doesn't have scars?

Krispy Kreme donut stores have been celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day for the last few years with free donuts. Ask for your donuts like a pirate, get an extra donut. Dress like a pirate, get a dozen free donuts.

I generally need very little excuse to eat donuts, and not much more to say "Arrrr." So this worked out very nicely. It's a bit of a drive up to the nearest Krispy Kreme store, but I justified it to myself by running a couple of errands while I was out.

When I arrived, there was a group all dressed up as pirates picking up their dozens of donuts. Wish I'd thought to bring my camera! Once they'd claimed their booty, I picked up some of my own (pictured). I only got the one extra donut since I didn't dress up, but I did get to place my order by saying "Ahoy, matey, I be needing them pirate donuts."

It be September 19th, so go forth and talk like a pirate, me hearties!

Burger King's Mac and Cheetos

Including cheese in your terribly unhealthy fast-food creation is a great marketing strategy, at least if I'm in the target audience. I have no resistance to cheese-based attacks.

Not the greatest presentation, but then, I don't mind a few burnt spots.

I didn't have high expectations for the Mac-and-Cheetos. I like each of the individual components just fine: macaroni and cheese, deep frying, and Cheetos. But putting them together seemed to be asking for trouble, particularly the macaroni. Macaroni and cheese has to be pretty fresh to be good, in my experience. Overcook it or leave it out for a while, and bad things happen.

I'm happy to say that it seems Burger King has done a good job figuring this thing out. My Mac-and-Cheetos tasted pretty much like macaroni and cheese, with a bit of Cheeto-powder flavor added on. I think it might be a little better without the Cheeto flavor, actually - certainly less messy to eat. But I'm not complaining.

Yep, there's the macaroni. And cheese-like sauce substance.

We're still talking fast-food quality here, of course. The macaroni and cheese is Easy Mac-level, and my pieces were a little burnt. That's pretty much what I expect for a few bucks, though.

I think Burger King has a keeper with this one. I'd take the Mac-and-Cheetos over fries or onion rings any day.

Cranker's Brewery (GR)

Met a friend for dinner at Cranker's Restaurant and Brewery on the south side of Grand Rapids recently. It's decent, but I've had better for a similar price.

The building for this Cranker's location looks more like a fast food joint than a sit-down pub, complete with drive-thru. (Probably it used to be exactly that.) An attempt has been made to upgrade the interior with wall decorations and a better class of booth-tables, but it still looks fairly low-class. The service was spotty, too. There weren't many customers, but our waitress was still slow to come by our table. Several of the things we asked about on the menu weren't available, and the food took quite a while to show up. Overall it just didn't seem very professional.

The good news is that both the beer and food were pretty good. I usually like dark beers, but on hot summer nights something a bit lighter is nice. So I had a Bulldog Red Irish Ale as a kind of compromise...not too dark and heavy, but still has some body to it. No complaints on the beer front, enjoyed my pint of the Bulldog.

My meal was a pulled pork bacon cheeseburger, which is just as huge as it sounds. In retrospect, probably three different meats on the same sandwich was overkill, but it certainly tasted good. It came with sweet potato fries, which were ok, although not on the same level as the ones I had at Tip Top during my Origins trip. I wouldn't say the food is likely to win any awards, but it tasted fine and there certainly was enough of it.

I'm not sure I'd go back to this Cranker's location - it wasn't bad, exactly, just not as good as other places in the same price range. I might try one of the others if I'm in their area, though. Some of the other beers looked interesting and may be worth a try.

Happy PB&J Day

You can accidentally learn all sorts of things while poking around the Internet. On a totally unrelated search, I happened to stumble across the fact that April 2 is Peanut Butter and Jelly Day.

As I've mentioned previously, I like simple foods, and it doesn't get a lot simpler than the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'll have at least a couple every week, often more. I've even been known to go out of my way in the Detroit airport to hit the PB&J shop there, although sadly I think it closed down last year.

I prefer the basic PB&J sandwich: smooth peanut butter, strawberry or grape jelly, sandwich bread. People will make all kinds of additions, though. Grilling, deep-frying, multiple types of peanut butter and/or jelly, interesting breads, bananas, potato chips, and so on. And it's not just sandwich day. I've seen recommendations for PB&J used with cupcakes, waffles, pancakes, crackers...all kinds of variations.

There are people who use peanut butter and jelly as more than just a food. The PB&J Campaign is a project within A Well-Fed World, a group concerned about providing food for the world in an environmentally-friendly manner. The campaign uses the PB&J sandwich as an example of how eating more food products from plants and fewer from animals is a smaller environmental impact. Environmental impact isn't my main reason for eating PB&J sandwiches, but it's a nice bonus.

It's not clear from my cursory Google searching where Peanut Butter and Jelly day started, but it sure seems to have caught on. Even has a Twitter account. Happy to do my part to celebrate.

Spaghetti

When I ran in the Irish Jig this year, one of the things that came in the participant's goodie bag was spaghetti. Carb loading is a thing for serious runners (which is not a set of which I consider myself a member), but it still surprised me that they'd hand out boxes of uncooked spaghetti. Anyway, once I had it, I had to decide what to make with it.

The obvious thing to do is cook up the spaghetti and sauce it, and this I did. Got some Ragu Homestyle meat sauce, which worked nicely.

Seems kind of silly to cook less than half a pound of the spaghetti at a time, so I had basically an entire day of eating nothing else. Wouldn't do it every day, but it's fine as a change of pace. Probably get some meatballs to add in next time, too.

The other half-pound of spaghetti from that box went toward trying out spaghetti au gratin. The recipe was on the box, so I figured I'd give it a shot. It contains large amounts of pasta and cheese, which is highly relevant to my interests. Took about an hour of preparation and cooking time.

The pan I had available was a little larger than recommended, so the result was thinner and crunchier than I'd like. Nothing wrong with the taste, though. Just fine when refrigerated and then warmed up, too, which is important since that pan is about 2 days worth of food for me. Not bad for a first attempt.

All that, and I still have another box of spaghetti to use up. Think I'll wait a couple of weeks before doing something like this again. Much as I like my pasta, several days of basically nothing but spaghetti is a bit of an overload.

Burger King's Hot Dogs

Burger King is serving hot dogs, and I ate one.

I like me some hot dogs. Happy to eat them when I was a kid, like most people I know. Never grew out of it. The usual preparation of dog-in-a-bun is fine, though I often end up chopping a few dogs up to add to things like mac-and-cheese. Get all-beef (or occasionally all-turkey) hot dogs and they taste just fine, no worry about mystery meat.

When I was working at Amway, there was a hot dog place across the street that was a weekly lunch destination. After it shut down, we made our own dogs for the whole department once a month or so. It got to be a big enough deal that the bosses bought us a grill and bought the supplies, treating it as a "team activity." That had mostly died off by the time I left, but it was fun while it lasted.

So when Burger King decided to serve hot dogs, I had to try one. I got the chili-and-cheese dog meal, which I almost immediately regretted because the fries were pretty bad. For future reference, better to get the dog alone (or maybe with onion rings). The hot dog itself was just fine, though. I wouldn't call it a gourmet experience, and I've had better hot dogs at specialty places, but as far as fast food goes it was perfectly fine.

Is the hot dog going to be a fast food hit? Early reports are promising. Maybe we'll see more traffic at the local Sonic (or whatever hot-dog-serving local chain you have) once people get used to the idea. I'm not going out of my way for Burger King, but if I end up there, I'm more likely to get another dog than any of their grilled patties.

Spam, Spam, and Spam

I ate some Spam.

I probably should Internet-shout SPAM^® instead of saying Spam, by the way. The official website has the name in all caps. But I do have some manners.

Normally, I wouldn't pick up one can of Spam at the market, much less three. But there was a coupon, and it had been years since I ate any Spam, and...OK, none of that actually matters. I just couldn't resist the idea, once seeing that coupon put it in my head.

That was weeks ago, but that doesn't really matter with Spam. They tell you to check the expiration date, but really, what could go wrong with it? Anyway, a few weeks is well within shelf life in any event.

Buying Spam is one thing, but deciding what to do with it is another thing entirely. Most of it got fried in a skillet, chopped, and mixed into various pasta. Mostly mac-and-cheese, and some penne with red sauce. Some ended up in a sandwich after the frying, which was surprisingly good on cheese bread with mustard.

There are three different varieties in that picture, but I can't say I really noticed the "bacon" and "turkey" flavor differences. Maybe if I'd eaten just the Spam, it would have been more obvious? Not an experiment I really cared to make. What I did notice is how much salt is in those cans. You need quite a bit of other stuff...like the aforementioned mustard, or pasta sauces...to balance it out.

The Spam is all gone, and I think I'm good now for a few years. Once a decade or so seems about right to revisit this particular taste experience.

Simple Food

I've been accused of having very pedestrian tastes when it comes to my food. This is generally true, though I have tried all sorts of cuisine at various times, and found quite a bit of it to be to my taste - Thai and Chinese particularly. But as a general rule, the simple things are what I want day in and day out.

Not quite done grilled cheese. Needs to be mostly black.

Sandwiches are high on my list of regular foods, especially peanut butter and jelly, and grilled cheese. I like hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese - often both together. Cereal is great for both breakfast and dessert, when the latter isn't coming from the cookie jar. I eat plenty of soup (have to get vegetables from somewhere) and Chef Boyardee ravioli, both of which go great with the sandwiches. And pizza, though not nearly as often as the other stuff I've listed.

Some assembly required for complete PB&J sandwich.

I know that sounds like a third-grader's list of favorite foods. I guess I never really grew up, when it comes to staple meals. I tend to eat more "grown-up" when I'm out, and I do enjoy a well-crafted meal of just about any variety. But left at home to my own devices, I can live on the simplest choices pretty much indefinitely.

Apparently, it's National Pizza Week

No, seriously. The second week of January is National Pizza Week.

The National Pizza Week special from the pizza place down the road.

At least, the Internet says it is. It's on this list of January Food Holidays, and pops up in various places around the Internet. Local news stations with nothing better to report have pizza week segments. The one in Chicago kind of makes sense, but San Diego...is the news really that slow out west? And of course all sorts of pizza providers are happy to make sure you know they can help you celebrate. The week had barely started before the first pizza week ad email arrived in my inbox.

Sadly, National Pizza Week has not been recognized by presidential proclamation. Can't compete with National Poison Prevention Week or National Forest Products Week - although I'd argue that I've had some bad pizza that could be a cautionary example for the former, and pizza toppings that represent the latter.

The second week of January seems an odd time to choose for National Pizza Week. Wouldn't a lot of folks be avoiding pizza while trying to lose the extra holiday pounds? Or still holding to the illusion that their New Year's Resolution to eat healthier will last? The cynic in me says picking this week is an effort to thwart those good intentions, but surely pizza industry marketing wouldn't be that heartless. Right?

Well, heartless marketing or merely the creation of grease-loving eaters, National Pizza Week is apparently a thing. Which I will celebrate, because who wants to miss an excuse to get a pizza?

Further Adventures in Bread Making

I started out using my bread machine for basic French bread and sandwich bread, which has worked out very well. Those are still my favorites, but I felt the need to branch out for some more bread variety.

I'm sure no one who knows me is surprised to find that I first tried banana bread. It doesn't fit nicely into any of the pre-set mixing-and-cooking programs on the machine, so I followed this recipe and used the dough mix setting, followed by manually setting the bake time. My first attempt didn't completely mix all the ingredients properly, resulting in some small pockets where the dry ingredients had baked into a sort of crumbly mess. Easily remedied on future attempts by using a spatula to assist the machine's stir paddle, making sure everything got mixed up properly.

Bread of bananas.

That turned out nicely, with a bit over an hour of cook time. Slice it up, add butter, great snack or dessert.

Next I attempted a recipe from the bread machine's booklet, honey and almond bread. I'm not a big fan of nuts in bread, but they're OK as long as they're chopped up small enough. That part I was able to handle, but unfortunately the actual bread part didn't work too well. It didn't rise much at all, which in turn meant it didn't cook properly.

Hard to tell by looking, but trust me, that honey-and-almond loaf turned out dense and doughy.

I tried the recipe twice, just in case I screwed it up the first time, but got the same result. I suspect the issue lies with the yeast...either not enough of it, not the right temperature, or the wrong mix of other ingredients for it to activate properly. So I gave up on the honey bread for now. I may try it again someday, but I'll be finding another recipe to use.

Next, I decided on another bread machine booklet recipe, whole wheat bread. It was more similar to the successful recipes than the honey bread one, so I felt fairly confident that it would work. The main difference is using whole wheat flour, and sunflower oil/water rather than milk/eggs. And indeed, it turned out nicely. 

Wheat bread. Very brown.

It doesn't slice quite as easily as the white sandwich bread, so I probably won't make it too often, but it goes really well with soup or stew. Might use it more in the winter when hot soup sounds better than a sandwich.

There are tons of additional recipes out there, so I expect to try more bread types in the future. Already got my eye on a cheddar cheese bread recipe.

Pizza Hut's Triple Treat Box

Occasionally, I let a stupid marketing trick get the better of me. When I saw Pizza Hut's Triple Treat Box, I decided I had to try one.

Treat? Maybe. Threat...to your waistline? Definitely.

There are no good reasons to order one of these, and lots of reasons not to. I know it won't look anything like that neat little drawers-of-pizza picture. It's a ridiculous amount of food, which I'll probably be eating all weekend as leftovers. And yet, something about it just speaks to me. (I'm pretty sure it's saying "impending heart failure.")

I generally don't bother with this sort of marketing ploy. I avoided the hot-dog-bites pizza, and the chicken taco shells, and the chicken-as-bread sandwich, and any number of other weird attempts to get me to buy food. But every once in a while, one grabs my attention.

That's about as close as I can get to the original drawers-of-pizza look.

Lest it appear that I'm totally taken in here, let me state for the record that I actually enjoy Pizza Hut's pizza. It's not going to win any awards (at least, not when compared against non-fast-food pizza), but it's good as an occasional thing. Warms up nicely as leftovers within a couple of days, so getting extra isn't a big deal. Their breadsticks are fine, too; basically the pan crust without toppings. And it's hard to go wrong with a giant chocolate chip cookie. So when I bring a Triple Treat Box home, it's not completely nonsensical. Just mostly.

Not pictured: the other pizza. Ran out of room for easy display.

The verdict: it's not bad. Nothing surprising about the pizzas: standard wow-that's-a-lot-of-grease-but-damn-it-tastes-good pan crust, pepperoni on one and bacon on the other, and a Parmesan cheese crust topping. Those bread sticks are topped with cheddar cheese, which I hadn't tried before. Interesting, but I think I still like the regular bread sticks (topped with Parmesan) better. And the giant cookie is really good, to the point that it might be the first part of the box to be consumed completely.

OK, I got that out of my system. Back to sustainable eating habits...once all this is gone.

Refill Time at the Cookie Jar

Every couple of weeks, I head to the cookie jar and am disappointed.

Poor thing, looks so lonely. Don't worry, it was eaten quickly.

My standard response is a trip to Meijer for some of the basic store-brand sandwich cookies. But occasionally, I'll feel the need for something slightly more interesting. Last time I went shopping, there was some peanut butter cookie mix on sale. Since all three things mentioned there (peanut butter, cookie, sale) are relevant to my interests, the mix came home with me. The empty cookie jar says today was its big day.

Cookie Components

One egg and half a stick of butter didn't seem like a lot of damp stuff to go with all that dry cookie mix. But the people who design these things usually know better than me, and that was the case here. It took a lot of mixing to work all the dry stuff into the dough, but eventually it looked good. Worked out to 29 dough balls for cooking, each of which ended up as a more-or-less-round cookie between 2 and 3 inches across.

On the way out of the oven

Considering these came from a mix, I'm very happy with the taste. A little on the dry side, perhaps, but no significant issues. Quite a bit less work than mixing up all the ingredients separately, mostly since I didn't have to deal with the sticky peanut butter.

27 > 1 (I had to try a couple to make sure they were good!)

The size of the batch is just about right for me; should keep me in cookies for a couple of weeks. All things considered, a successful cookie operation!

Summon Bread!

As most anyone who knows me can attest, I'm not much of a cook. I most definitely like to eat, though, with bread right at the top of my favorite foods list. (Or maybe second. I like cheese a whole lot.) Also, I like tech toys.

Enter the bread machine. This is exactly my kind of cooking. Put ingredients in, set the program, push start, come back in a few hours...bread!

The machine I have is a "T-fal Actibread" that I bought from Amazon.com. It can make up to a 2-lb loaf, but normally that's too much to eat in a few days (even for me), so I usually make the 1.5-lb recipes. That's what causes the weird looking top of the loaf...with the smaller size, there's empty space in the machine so it isn't smooth coming out. No big deal.

There's a ton of different kinds of bread you can make in a bread machine. I've only really done French and normal sandwich bread to this point, but there's another dozen or so recipes in the bread machine's recipe booklet, and a nearly infinite variety on the Internet. Way too many of them are "gluten free," which holds zero interest for me, but those can be ignored easily enough. I'm thinking about trying possibly my favorite bread flavor ever next - banana bread.

With fresh bread available twice a week with almost no effort, it's hard to imagine why I'd ever go back to eating store bread!