This way

What do you think your unit cost on the sandwich turned out to be? Definitely not nine bucks, right? Cooking for yourself is soothing and saves money. Well, not for me because my time is supposedly worth $650 an hour, but you get the gist.

And Alex, the sandwich was 1000% more appealing than the previous "dish" immediately prior in this thread. That was an abomination.

So far it is $5.45 (bread, meats, cheese and chips) less the sauce and veggies.

You didnt like the summer sausage sandwiches?

How you make $650/hour? That's like $1,326,000/year.

The $650 doesn't go into my pocket. It's what my firm charges for my time. After the rent and staff are paid, I'm only keeping about $800,000. Then I pay the taxman. My firm is a California partnership, and as a partner I'm an owner which means I get to pay self-employment taxes (i.e., both parts of Medicare and Social Security) and California income tax on top of what the Federal government takes. All told it's nearly 60%. And I don't even live in California!

Jon Lovitz was right. If you think the rich aren't paying their fair share, you're a fucking asshole.

I see. What kind of practice is that? Defense?

I ate lunch at the best soul food place in my city today. I had a fried chicken breast, green beans, creamed corn, macaroni casserole (we call it macaroni pie down here), cornbread, and homemade strawberry shortcake to finish things off. The slice of fatback was the only seasoning I needed with the meal.

This place is a buffet...all you can eat for $9.00 including your drink. I can't abuse the buffet privileges because I'm watching my figure so I had very small portions of everything except the one chicken breast which was huge. I did go back for seconds on the beans and corn.

I passed on chicken livers and bbq ribs, turnip greens and mashed potatos and gravy and about 6 other desserts. If they'd had egg custard pie like they sometimes do I would have been in for a small slice of that.

^^^ The best fried chicken I've ever had was at a place like that. It was a cajun spot that also did buffet lunches. The lady running the line would just dish out a bit of everything, including liver. I didn't want to come back up with a half-eaten plate, so that is the one and only time I ever ate chicken liver. I would REALLY love to know what there is about liver that some people enjoy. I had to just close my eyes and swallow each piece without chewing. Blech! But the fried chicken refill was worth it.

Did you happen to see his "gyro" from a while back? It was on a pita, I'll give it that. But it was topped with cole slaw & ranch dressing, plus the meat looked like Mexican chicken stolen from a Qdoba.

wait,jon lovitz is rich?

I'm the same way with chicken livers. What's strange is that I will eat chicken gizzards like they were popcorn but I don't like livers.

I make all kinds of gyros. I never wash my hands before I prep them .

Yes, I saw them. They're all horrible, just horrible. All those random, gnarly ingredients.

I wouldn't mind having one of those Coke can glasses though. Is that a current McDonald's promotion, Alex? I haven't had anything other than breakfast at McDonalds since the last Coke glass promotion, but that was a promotion for a replica of the the old-style Coke glasses.

At the very least he needs to try a tzatziki. Ranch dressing!

I like the version from Michael Psilakis' cookbook, "How to Roast a Lamb." It uses both garlic & shallots. I make mine almost as garlicky as skordalia. I also like that it only uses dill as an herb. I don't really like mint in my tzatziki.

Makes 1 quart (1 litre)

1 English cucumber, peeled

10 cloves garlic, smashed and finely chopped

1 cup (250 mL) distilled white vinegar

4 shallots, thickly sliced

1 cup (250 mL) small dill sprigs

2 1/2 cups (625 mL) strained or Greek yogourt or labne spread

2 tablespoons (30 mL) extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons (30 mL) fresh lemon juice

Kosher salt and cracked black pepper

Quarter the cucumber lengthwise and trim off the triangular wedge of seeds. Cut the cucumber into very small, even dice. Transfer it to a mixing bowl.

In a food processor, combine the garlic, vinegar, shallots and dill. Pulse until finely chopped but not puréed. Add the mixture to the cucumber; add the yogourt. Fold together with a rubber spatula, adding the olive oil and lemon juice. Season liberally with kosher salt and pepper, starting off with 1 tablespoon (15 mL) salt. Taste for seasoning. You can store tzatziki in a covered, clean jar in the refrigerator for up to one week.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Cook...l#ixzz1vMtmK6Fx

You don't like mint? Mint really makes it for me.

Anyway, I guess we can be in agreement that Panzer is some kind of amusing malakas.

Maybe just a little mint, but I like lots and lots of dill. I cheat and use this stuff:




Agreed!

I have to say, I'm kind of fond of this kid Panzer. It's weird to say it, but I see him making real, albeit small, progress in many facets of his life.

I occasionally enjoy a post or two of his. To repay him, I wish I could find a link to a pirate copy of that book about how to reproduce the menu items at popular fast food restaurants, "Top Secret Recipes."

Any of ya'll ever had "ramps"? The season is just over up in the NC mountains.

Ramps

A green onion stuck in a bloody mary?

These are basically wild leeks, and powerful stuff. An entire mystique has risen around them.

At the very least, if you are married and going to eat them you better have your spouse eat them too, or she will not have anything to do with you for over a week after you eat them. They taste great but are like super garlic in their effect on your breath and perspiration smell.

I had an Asian neighbor in my apartment building at college who must've had a hidden ramp farm, I guess.

A ramp is much stinkier than a supermarket leek, that's for sure. It's more of an extra-pungent spring onion. We had them growing all over the place when I was a kid growing up in Kentucky. Ramps will make your normal springtime perspiration smell like a week without a shower, and your bowel movements will seem like Saddam has come to finish off your village. However they are tasty.

Sounds like they would go good in some kind of cream cheese, real cheese, zesty spread like shit that you can make in da' blender.

Chinese food:

why didnt you mix it with the rice?

I don't like plain rice, only pork fried rice (yellow color rice), but it was extra.

Hardy Ham Sandwich:

Shaved hickory smoked ham (about a fifth of a pound), two thick slices of sharp cheddar cheese, four lightly salted then peppered slices of tomato, two layers of baby spinach instead of lettuce (top and bottom), with chipolte mayo, and served between two over sized thick slices of grainy 100% whole wheat bread. Washed down with unsweetened iced tea.

sounds great and healthy^.

Salmon on the gas grill. I set one side to high and the other to low. First I seared the salmon on the high heat and then switched it to a cedar plank that was on the low-heat side and put a smoke box full of alder on as well. It cooked for about 20 more minutes on the cedar plank and I occasionally basted it with a mixture of: melted butter, grade B maple syrup & a pinch or two of cayenne. Boy this tasted great.



I shut the grill down after I took off the salmon, but the cedar plank still caught fire from all the salmon fat that had cooked out onto the wood. I'm glad I heard the wood crackling so I could go out and quickly extinguish the fire, otherwise the back side of my house might currently be ablaze.

If you only knew how fucking easy it was to make your own goddamn fried rice. A serving of that shit costs the Chinks about a nickel, and it could cost you about a nickel to make your own.

I'm with the Admiral on the fried rice thing. The next time you get one of those plain cartons of white rice with your food, don't throw it away. Let it sit in your fridge for a day to get a little bit stale/hard. Then use that to make your own fried rice. Trust the Greeks on food. We're like the Mexicans of Europe.

Steez.. I hope the salmon tasted better than it looked.

Today's lunch should have come with a pillow. I regretted eating it almost immediately after I was finished.

Tasted great.

whats on the other slice?is that lettuce?

and before any wise jews come in im not opposed to vegetables,i had a veggie sub on flatbread the other week and loved it.extra veggies please dickhead.

Fresh basil. It was tomato, onion, mushroom, basil, garlic and whatever else they may have piled on. I just asked for a veggie slice. The slices were huge.

Hmmm...I thought it still looked kind of OK, but maybe my perspective is skewed a bit. It would've looked a whole lot better if the meat hadn't stuck to the grill when I was searing it. All of the dark, seared grill marks got ripped away from the meat, even though I seared it on a super hot, well-cleaned, well-oiled grill. Oh well. And it did taste quite awesome.

I don't disagree with what you say, but my Turkish friends curl their noses and say. "Of course, they learned after thousands of years as slaves cooking our food for us".

i guess thats the whole hard on between greeks and turks.the grandma in my big fat greek wedding was senile and always yelling at people accusing them of being invading turks.

Buy a bag of rice and cook it up yourself. A 10-lb bag of rice costs, what, six bucks? You can cook it in a covered bowl in the microwave, or get a rice cooker for $15. Ten pounds of rice will last a single guy a full year, even eating rice with every meal. Twenty bucks is four orders of fried rice.

To get the yellow color, add a dash of turmeric. A little garlic, soy sauce, some frozen mixed vegetables and an egg, you've got something that matches up with the Chinese takeaway and costs less than twenty-five cents per serving, probably less. Could be a nickel as I wrote above, depending on what you pay for the mixins. At any rate, a monkey could do it.

^ I'm doing this tomorrow. Not even shit'n ya. Though I'm not buying a 10lb bag of rice. I'll try a box. Pics to come.

Thanks.

How do I fry the rice like the Chinese joint does? I tried doing it a couple of times, but its not the same...not even close to them.

Probably the ingredient they're using that you don't have at home is a dash of oyster sauce. I usually skip it, but if you're saying your home-made fried rice doesn't stack up, it's probably the oyster sauce which puts the tang on it that you like. Or maybe it's the garlic. Are you using garlic? I use enough garlic that I buy it chopped up in a jar. But it's pretty cheap out here.

Also, Steezo is correct that you get best results using not freshly-cooked rice, but day-old leftover stuff. Fried rice is a peasant concoction to avoid waste of any food.

Just a little squirt of vegetable oil, not too much. Are you using a wok? The benefit of the wok is that a little bit of oil gets the job done. You're not really frying the rice, per se, but rather tossing the whole concoction around while it's reheated. The oil's job is to keep things moving.

Yeah, using day old rice is what gives fried rice the proper texture. Using fresh rice will result in mushy fried rice. The following recipe neglects to mention that, but the rest of the instructions sound just about right:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/fried-rice-recipe2/index.html

And if all else fails, fry up some bacon first and then cook everything in the bacon fat.

I guess I will go against any popular dietary cultists and make some pasta with champignons, onions and cream. Cheese, Pecorino or something tasty, tasty is a bit much on top, but had its uses in the past.

The good thing is that when I feel like it, it is not hard to top almost anything around, fast food or moderately fast food while keeping it organic and cheaper. Actual restaurants to speak of with a kitchen to trust do not come along so often.

The turmeric, or saffron if you're feeling spendy, goes in when you first cook the rice, not in the frying pan. I forgot for a moment what kind of idiots we have here.

Yeah, I use wok, and all kinds of oils and that Jamaican curry powder, but the rice is just too soft and smelly.

Saving bacon grease or porkfat is a good idea for any cook. Lard is, of course, porkfat. Porkfat heated just to the smoke point imparts a nice smoky flavor to fried rice. It also stinks up your whole house.

I don't know, but the local Chinese places does fried rice like no one else does it. Same thing with their Lo Mein noodles and Chicken Nooodle Soup.

In the coming days I will upload a review of Perdue's frozen General Tso's Chicken. When I took the pics of it a week ago, I layed them out on a bed of Pork Fried Rice from the local Chinese joint. That stuff is very anti-value at $9.99 for a 1.56-pound bag of frozen chicken pieces.

Panzer, do you think value is the only thing you buy with the stuff you eat?