Food.

Da Dip.

One of my favorite snacks is plain Ruffles potato chips with a bit of dip. It can’t be just any dip, but it must be Heluva Good! French Onion dip. This dip is legendary.

Originally from Upstate New York, there’s just something very delightful about Heluva Good! French Onion dip, though I also very much enjoy their bacon horseradish dip. When combined with Ruffles, I’m in snacky heaven. As a quick sidebar, it’s not a well known fact, but I can not roll my Rs. I have never mastered the art of rolling my Rs in such a way, and my sister often teased me when we were kids, because she could do this nifty thing with ease and every time I ate my favorite chips she would incessantly roll her Rs, exclaiming “Ruffles have ridges” all over the house.

As I typed that paragraph I just tried to roll my Rs again and had absolutely no success in the endeavor.

I have mentioned before that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Back when I was young (and my sister was exclaiming “Ruffles have ridges!” every five seconds), after Thanksgiving dinner and the football games at Grandpa and Grandma Country’s house, Dad and I would do the chores and the other cousins would follow along with the merriment, as they did not see feeding the cattle on a daily basis as we did. My extent of the chores at the time was taking a couple of scoops of grain and putting it in the troughs, but I still did that part. Anyways, after the chores was done, we’d have leftover turkey on homemade bread. I’d load up my plate with Ruffles and Heluva Good! French Onion dip, and then put a healthy amount of salt on the turkey and mayonnaise sandwich. It was sheer culinary delight. Earl was kind enough to indulge my enjoyment of this activity this past Thanksgiving. The only difference is we had Best Foods Mayonnaise instead of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, because after all, we live west of the Rockies.

Small wonder I take blood pressure medicine 50 years later. It’s probably because I’m still trying to roll my Rs.

11 December 2024 by Food. Ponderings and Musings 0

Delish.

The key to happiness is through a man’s stomach. Or something like that. One of my grandfathers highly recommended to me that I marry someone that can cook and I did just that. There’s a reason I have a dad bod. My husband is an excellent cook.

Chris and Mike made steak, broccoli, and rice bowls for the family and it was absolutely delicious. Not only did I marry an excellent cook, we have plenty of skilled folks in the kitchen in the family.

The dad bod shall continue.

28 June 2023 by Food. 0

Bulk.

When I was a kid we had two grocery store chains in town: Acme Markets and P&C Foods. In those days the stores were considered quite modern. The P&C was a little bigger than the Acme, as it had five checkout lanes and one express lane that was never used. The Acme had four checkout lanes, but friendly meat folks that would pop their head out the mirrored windows behind the meat counter. Mom would do a lot of her daily shopping at the smaller Red and White market that was locally owned close to home. Their they wrapped meat in paper and wrote the price on the paper with a grease pen.

I find Costco and the like to be overwhelming and unnecessary. For years I have mercifully been able to avoid going to Costco with any of our other family members as I complete despise the experience. I just find it to be way “too much”.

Tonight I was asked to accompany my husband to the local Costco. I was not amused. I was not happy. And we’ll leave it at that.

30 May 2023 by Food. 0

Sonoran Hot Dogs.

Back when we lived in Chicago we would enjoy Chicago-style Hot Dogs. No one ever had to slap the hot dog out of my hand because I never put ketchup on a hot dog. (That’s a no-no in Chicago).

We’ve found Chicago-style hot dogs here in Tucson but we’ve also discovered Sonoran Style Hot Dogs. Oh my universe. I’ll let the recipe speak for itself.

24 June 2021 by Food. 1

Preparations.

We are having a small Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. My husband has already baked multiple pies, carved up the first of an assortment of turkeys, and apparently has five loaves of bread waiting for something spectacular tomorrow.

25 November 2020 by Food. 0

Blue Apron.

Earl and I are a couple of busy guys. I like to think of us as a “Power Couple”, however, neither of us wear “Power Pearls”, which many of the women I worked with did back in the 1980s.

Even though I work from home, I don’t have a lot of time to devote to meal preparation. Earl is rarely in the mood to cook a gourmet meal after ten or so hours at the office. In the past, we’ve ended up eating a lot, which hit our budget quite hard and hit our waist lines even harder.

Enter Blue Apron. We subscribed to the service back in January and have been thoroughly pleased with the experience.

If you’re not familiar with Blue Apron, here’s how it works. Earl chooses three meals for a menu presented at each week. Blue Apron recommends the three meals based on our profile. Every Thursday morning we get a box with all the ingredients, pre-measured but not fully prepared, for the three meals we have selected. They include everything. If you need a tablespoon of sugar, there’s a little bag with a tablespoon of sugar.

Each meal is outlined on a recipe card, complete with projected preparation time, cooking time and the like. The recipes are wicked easy to follow and so far the results have been absolutely delicious. One of the best things about this arrangement is that the meals are between 500 and 800 calories per serving. That’s a heck of a lot less than what we would eat at a restaurant, but the portions are a hearty size and enjoyable.

One of the things that I have really enjoyed is the time Earl and I are spending together in the kitchen preparing the meals. It gives me a chance to improve my cooking skills, it is yet another opportunity for the two of us to spend time together and in the old American tradition, we are able to enjoy a nice little family supper at home with relative ease (though with Jamie in Chicago, the entire family isn’t here at the moment).

The meals feature things that we wouldn’t normally eat. Last night we had Triple Pork Mazemen, which was as fun to prepare and eat as it was to pronounce.

If you’re looking for a way to improve your home meal time experience, I highly suggest Blue Apron. The cost is reasonable (around $20 per meal for the two of us), the food is delicious and together time is always a good time.

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17 March 2016 by Flickr Food. 0

Fat.

While I was in Greenville for work I ran into a former co-worker who now works for the same company that I do. Life works out that way. We shook hands and hugged on the street of the beautiful downtown area and then he commented on the fact that I had gained weight. Apparently it made him do a double-take.

I hadn’t gone on a bike ride since before my surgery during the first week of July; the comment about my weight inspired me to get back on my bike this morning. I enjoyed a nice 13 mile bike ride through the local SUNY campus and around the quiet streets of suburbia. I feel good after my bike ride and I’m planning on finding the stamina to get back into my routine this week. Hopefully my body will cooperate and not go all wonky in my sensitive parts. I’m determined to not have that surgery ever again.

On the road for work this past week I discovered that it’s nearly impossible to eat healthy at most restaurants scattered throughout this fine country of ours. Portions are gigantic and I always give into the temptation to clean my plate. Whenever I watch one of those foolish food competition programs, where the judge eats one spoonful of a gorgeous plate of food, I want to slap the taster right across the face and/or throw a living room lamp. The waste of delicious food, right there in technicolor.

I hate to admit it but the comment about my weight gain stung a bit. I’d like to think that I fit into the growing popularity of the “Dad Bod”, but to label myself in such a way would be silly since I’ve never really been that fit in my life. Yeah, I can put a thousand or so miles on my bike during a riding season, but I’ve never been one to be that muscular; I’d rather throw the aforementioned lamp instead of hurling a Volkswagen or something.

Nevertheless, I’m going to try for the bajillionth time to eat healthy again. The trend should last a day or two until I start reading another article about the acceptance of the Dad Bod.

Rationalization is beautiful.

16 August 2015 by Fitness. Food. 1

Cake.

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In the mood for a dessert I went through the cupboards to see if Old Mother Hubbard was there holding a cake mix. Though the frosting had expired long before healthcare.gov went south the cake mix was still valid for six days. What could go wrong? Right?

So it’s a carrot cake mix and one of the required ingredients is a cup of carrots. Who keeps carrots in their house on a Thursday night? We certainly don’t and it’s all because we can see things in the dark.

I’m rambling.

Anyways, no carrots but we did have tomato soup in the house and I remember a woman named Peggy that I used to work with saying something about tomato soup and carrots and I thought “whoo-hoo!” I bet a can of condensed tomato soup is the same as a cup of carrots. So I dumped in the mix and then added the two eggs and the can of soup. But the recipe called for water and condensed soup called for water, so I decided to be crazy and I added a 1/2 cup of water instead of the full cup. This made the batter into tomato soup. Ugh. So I added unbleached wheat flour because we didn’t have anything else that resembled flour. Then I figured the flour would be kind of bland so I threw in some nutmeg. Because I think in metric (we were going to switch when I was in elementary school!), I’m pretty sure that I didn’t add a hectare of nutmeg. It was a healthy amount but I didn’t sneeze because I was sure that pepper was not in the question.

The cake batter started looking like cake batter again so I mixed it up good, put it in the greased cake pan and baked this slight foray into experimental cuisine. 50 minutes later, voila! It was time for the big test.

Earl tried the cake. I tried the cake. And it turned out to be quite delicious. We now have a little dessert for the weekend.

Tomato soup cake. Excitement for an otherwise boring Thursday night.

24 October 2013 by Food. 2

Good Start.

I was a little groggy this morning as I stumbled around the house getting ready for my day.  I had just jumped on the scale, and while my weight went up, my BMI went down quite a bit. I’m a bit of a gambler, I can negotiate numbers when I need to. The most important thing is I’m feeling good and that’s what matters. Maybe my grogginess kept me from drop kicking the scale.

When I opened the refrigerator to start breakfast assembly, I instantly noticed that Earl had already prepared my lunch for the day.

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It was delicious. 🙂

3 October 2013 by Food. 3

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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