Pork Tenderloin

Monday was to be my friend's last day at work. So, in honor of her leaving, I planned to do up a nice goodbye lunch. I tossed a big pork tenderloin into the crock pot late Sunday night / early Monday morning:

Along with the tenderloin, there was some salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, sage, Worcestershire sauce, some Dale's seasoning sauce, and meat tenderizer powder. I let this baby cook on low all night (2a - 9a, told you I had to stay up late). This is what I was greeted to Monday morning:

I know you can't see it too well, but trust me, it looked and smelled great. Now, to go along with this bad boy, I tossed some Sister Schubert's Parker House yeast rolls into the oven (after applying some butter to the tops), made some instant creamed potatoes, corn and green beans:

While those were cooking, I drained the juices from the crock pot into a sauce pan, added a mixture of flour and water, and made that into gravy:

Once the gravy was made, I added it back to the crock pot and tenderloin, and transported it all to work (where the last 2 pics were taken).

That was the tenderloin all cut up and ready to be tossed onto a plate, with the rolls above them. And here's what was on my plate:

Everyone loved it, and raved about how tasty it was. I'm glad they all enjoyed it.

Sunday experiments

On Sunday, I tried 2 food experiments. #1 was attempt #3 on the fried rice. It turned out ok.

This time, I added too much water to the rice cooker. The rice was a bit mushy, but still perfectly edible, more so than when I added too little water. I didn't have any eggs this time, though. Still, I did good with the seasoning, and I ate more of it than I expected.

I had dinner late, as I had to stay up late to do prep work on the contents of the next post. I tried out some new chicken nuggets. I believe they're a store brand, but I don't remember offhand whether it was from Walmart or Kroger, and I'm going to pretend that the bag isn't in the freezer downstairs as I don't feel like going and checking it out. Anyway, the nuggets were pretty good:

The breading on them was just ok, but the meat (or meat like filling) was really good. If I could get the Tyson breading with this one's filling, it'd be a very good nugget, but no where near as good as the mythical ones I told you about earlier. And unfortunately, I was out of ketchup, as that would've helped out a ton.

Saturday at the Crack House

Saturday was a pretty decent lazy day. I hung out with Mom, we went to Cracker Barrel, then watched Captain America and Mission Impossible 3.

At the Crack House (as we affectionately call Cracker Barrel), I had my usual, which is to say: Chicken Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes (both of those doused in their country gravy), fried okra, and dumplings. You've gotta love a place that has chicken broth drenched biscuits as not only a side, but a veggie.

This was an outstanding lunch. It was better than it's been prepared by them in a long time. The weakest part of the lunch was the dumplings (which have already been eaten in that photo so the okra could take their place), and since you don't see the dumplings, that should tell you they weren't bad. The okra was the best I've ever had at a Cracker Barrel. Not the best I've had period, but pretty high up there. The chicken filet was cooked well and seasoned well, as was the gravy.

Beef

Beef, it's what's for dinner. Or at least, mine. I stopped by Arby's on the way home, and after the last time, I knew better than to get the onion rings, so I went with my usual potato cakes.

The sandwich was good, much better than the pic gives makes it look. The potato cakes were pretty good too, and their sweet tea, as usual, was good also.

Soup and Chinese

So, for today's culinary adventure... I was going to have the leftover steak from last night for lunch. Until I forgot to take it to work (after reminding myself 1 too few times). Nothing in the cafeteria caught my attention, so I had some soup for lunch:

This was the pre-pic, and trust me, you didn't really wanna see it in the cup I cooked it in. It wasn't that great, but not the worst. I find that the Campbell's chunky soups have way too much carrot in them for my liking. So much so, that the carrot flavor ends up mellowing out the other stronger flavors that should be enhancing the carrots. =/

And for dinner, I went with Chinese, as a buddy of mine had some, and it smelled and looked good. I went to a different place than he did, and got a bunch of appetizers. I had some fried wontons, fried dumplings, shrimp rolls and some wonton soup. It was all pretty tasty, as usual. And as usual for a Tuesday/Thursday night, I forgot to get a pic for you all. Sorry 'bout that.

A birthday dinner and an oops

I just realized I forgot to talk about the other part of Monday's food extravaganza. I made "pigs in a blanket" for the office, and then about half the office didn't show up. =P In their defense, they had very valid reasons for not showing up, and it was only two people, but that is just about half the office.

Most people think of pigs in a blanket as a pancake wrapped around a breakfast sausage link, and while that is perfectly valid, it's not my version of pigs in a blanket, which I learned from Mom. Nope, our are little cocktail sausages wrapped up in half a biscuit, like this:

and like this:

One packet of cocktail sausages takes about 2 cans of biscuits (well the 10 count biscuits), and they look like this when they're done:

The ladies I work with love these things.

So, that catches us up on Monday, so now on to tonight.

Today was Dad's birthday, the big 62. I had offered to take the family out to dinner (Dad's choice) for his birthday, but as he's been sick with a cold for the last week or so, he decided that he'd rather stay in and cook some steaks on the grill. So, I stopped by good old Charlie's Meat Market and got steaks for everyone. Here's how mine looked once Dad got done with it, and I got done with preparing my potato:

It was good, but not one of the best steaks I've gotten from there. That said, Dad did an excellent job, as usual, in its preparation and cooking, it just wasn't a great steak. That said, I'll be finishing it for lunch tomorrow.

Tuesday fail

Tuesdays, how annoying you are. I once again forgot to get a pic of mah food. I stopped in at 5 Guys Burgers and got a double bacon burger and a regular order of fries. The burger was, as usual, outstanding, and they always give you more fries than you can eat. Seriously, if you have a 5 Guys within an hour of you, go eat there.

Monday night RAW!

Ok, not really raw, but not all that great either. I didn't get hungry until late Monday night, so I had a TV Dinner. I think I've gone over it before, but here's the after it was done cooking, and before going in my gullet shot:

It was tasty, and did it's job.

Sunday FEAST!

Well, for Sunday, I took it easy throughout the day, didn't do much but watch tv and play some video games. Somewhere in the middle of that, I had a lunch of the uber nutritious chicken nuggets and french fries:

They weren't that good, but it was filling at least. Later that evening, I went to church, and on the way home, I stopped in at Krystal's and got a #1 combo (4 krystal burgers, fries and a drink) and as I ate it on the way home, I didn't get a picture of it.

For those of you not in this neck of the woods, you may be wondering what Krystal's are. They're kind of a Southern version of White Castles, but I'm told not as tasty. As the only White Castles I've got access to are the frozen variety in the grocer's freezer, I'm waiting till I can actually try a fresh one for comparison.

Blogger Fail

Welp, another few days have slipped through my grasp. I did eat, but not a whole lot. And even worse, I forgot to take pics of everything I did eat. So, to catch you all up to me...

On Thursday, I had some Red Lobster for dinner. I went with the potato soup for the starter (not a big salad fan, I know that's a shock). The soup is usually REALLY good, second only to Outback's potato soup (which is nigh impossible to get around Memphis anymore, they never serve it when I go) but this day's soup was the worst I've had from there. That's not to say it was the worst I've ever had (that still goes to O'Charley's which used to be good, but the last 4 or 5 times I've had it, stretched out over about that many years, it's routinely bad with the potato chunks pretty much ice cold and the soup luke warm) but it wasn't very good. The potato chunks had the texture of over microwaved potatoes and the soup wasn't very warm. It was just warm enough, but the flavor was good, so I pretty much avoided the larger potato chunks. The biscuits were outstanding, as usual. I ordered the ultimate feast, which consisted of a split lobster tail (it was ok), shrimp scampi (over cooked, but good flavor), steamed crab legs (cooked well, but not a good set of legs), and fried shrimp (outstanding). I went with mashed potatoes for the side, and they were pretty good.

Friday, I had Mexican for lunch. It's a little restaurant my boss found shortly after they arrived in the Memphis area called Salsa. According to him, it's more like a Californian style Mexican, instead of the Tex-Mex style that most places around here serve. Either way, it's pretty good, and that's from someone who's not a big fan of Mexican. I'm pretty basic, give me a tortilla with some seasoned meat stuffed in it. Keep your beans and rice and most of the vegetation. I get the #3 combo almost every time I go there, which is 3 tacos. They use shredded beef instead of ground, and it has a wonderful seasoning. Then they drench is in finely shredded lettuce, a bit of their salsa and then sprinkle it with Parmesan cheese (or a Parmesan-like one). Veddy tasty.

For dinner that night, I grabbed a corn dog and frozen coke at the movie theater when we went to catch The Raid: Redemption. It was good, better than the last one I got. And if you find yourself in the mood to see a solid action flick, find The Raid.

Today, I had some of my leftover chicken dumpling soup for lunch. Takes forever to warm up in the microwave (somewhere around 6 mins), but was worth it. And for dinner, I went to another Mexican place with my friends Greg & Linzie and David. As I wasn't too hungry from the late lunch, I went with some beef nachos (minus the melted cheese, due to the lactose intolerance thing and lack of lactaid to counteract it). The nachos were good, but between the late lunch and the massive quantities of tea I had, I wasn't able to do much more than moderately dent the pile of them.

So, that's pretty much caught up, hopefully I'll be able to remember to get some pics tomorrow and the following days, so it'll be a bit more interesting.

Catchup!

No, not as in ketchup or catsup. Catch up.

Sunday, I noticed an incisor was starting to get a hair sensitive. As Monday went on about its business, the tooth didn't get much more sensitive, but the gum above it did. As I was irritable and not in the mood for anything that would tax having to take a frontal bite, I decided to try my hand at fried rice, again. The last time I tried this was ... well last century. One doesn't get make time references like that often, so I take great joy in getting to use it. It was probably in '99 that I last tried to make fried rice. Seeing as it was that long ago, I hope you can infer how well it went.

Luckily, this time went much better. The one problem I had this time was very similar to what went wrong last time, except kind of opposite. I discovered, after this attempt, that what went wrong last time was that I had overcooked the rice before trying to fry it up. This time, it was mostly under cooked. Last time I tried some kind of usual boil rice or something like that and it was just horrible. This time, I used my roommate's rice cooker. It did a fine job, I place the blame solely on me not  adding enough water to the contraption. But the rice was cooked enough for me to attempt frying it up:

I used a bit of olive oil, jasmine rice, salt, pepper, parkay, garlic salt,soy sauce, and a scrambled egg. It came out looking very similar to what it was in the skillet:

And it tasted a lot better than I had expected. Other than the under cooked crunchy kernels, it was really good, I somehow nailed a good combination of seasonings in my rookie attempt. Next time though, I'll make sure there's enough water so the rice is fully cooked, so I can eat it all.

I took a hydrocodone around 11, feel asleep around 2, then the tooth woke me back up at 5:30, so I took another pill. These pills happen to be left over from the last abscessed tooth I had (oh yeah, spoiler alert). Once I got up on Tuesday, I called the dentist, they got me in and yes it was abscessed. Had the first part of the root canal yesterday. It went pretty well, except for when he had to deaden the nerve. In order to do that, he had to pretty much jab the needle right into it. Luckily, it was worth it, by 1pm my mouth didn't hurt anymore and I ate at Genghis Grill around 5:15 for a combined breakfast lunch and dinner.

This is a bunch of chicken, a little bit of pork and some steak with some squash, bean sprouts and a few chucnks of potato with their udon noodles and a combination of 3 different sauces. It was tasty, not the best concoction I've had from their, but far from the worst.

And that brings us to today. I stayed home today, my throat got irritated, as did my sinuses. I'm not sure if it's fall out from the gunk getting released in the root canal or the drastic weather change we've had here, but either way I felt like crap for most of the day. So, I finally got around to making another batch of chicken dumpling soup. And this one was better than the last.

Andrew had a bowl of it also, once he got home and he loved it.

Frozen Pizza

There are pretty much 2 brands of frozen pizza that I partake in. 1. Totino's 2. Red Baron's Pan Pizza 

Tonight's dinner was the latter. I go with the meat trio, which I'm going to guess isn't much of a surprise for you readers by this point.

I love the seasoning they use on this thing. The cheese is very good and just the right amount. The meat toppings are plentiful and tasty and the crust has an almost buttery taste. It also gets crisp on the bottom, but still has a nice somewhat chewy interior. All in all, this is my favorite frozen pizza. Plus, it's size makes it plenty large for 2 people, unlike the Totino's.

A night out

Saturday night's dinner was a night out at the Kooky Canuk. It's a Canadian themed restaurant in Downtown Memphis. It was featured on Man vs. Food (for a huge hamburger challenge) when it was under another name, I think the Bigfoot Lodge. Apparently there was another place that had that name, they sued and the Memphis location lost. Now they're the Kooky Canuk. We hit this place up in celebration of Kim's birthday, which was earlier this week. And, for this post, I'll have a couple of things that weren't technically on my plate, but were close enough and impressive enough, to be included.

First up, Dave's root beer float:

He said it was pretty good. You're not really getting the full effect, so I want you to realize that mug is HUGE.

Next up were some appetizers. I went with the standard mozzarella cheese sticks, here they're called Cheese Logs:

 

They were pretty good, cheese had a good flavor, wasn't too hot or cold, but the breading was a bit salty. And that red sauce isn't marinara, it's actually a "strawberry jalapeno bbq sauce". It was a bit warm for my tastes, but Kevin said it had a really good flavor behind that heat. I usually have my cheese sticks with either marinara or honey mustard, the latter of which the waiter was kind enough to provide.

Dave's appetizer was the poutine. For those not "in the know" this Canadian ... delicacy... is a plate of french fries, doused in cheese curds and gravy (although less authentic versions will just have cheese drizzled over them ala cheese fries and then pour gravy over that).

As I'm super picky about my cheese intake, I skipped the curds and just went with gravy drenched french fries. I'm happy to report, it's as tasty as I had hoped, but this dish ultimately hinges on the gravy. If it's not good, or rather, to your taste, then no fry on the planet can save it. Luckily, I really liked the gravy they used.

And for the main dish, I went with one of their burgers. I had them add some bacon to it, then added ketchup. Yep, only thing I like on my burgers is ketchup, and sometimes (ok, usually) bacon.

Pretty good burger, not the best I've had, but more than serviceable. I couldn't eat it all, after the appetizers and 2 glasses of sweet tea, but I got through about 3/4 of it, and maybe 1/4 of the fries.

Friday Night Light

For dinner tonight, I stayed in and went with something stupidly easy. Preheated the oven, then stuck this badboy into it for 40 mins:

And after 40 mins, this is what I got out of the oven, and put into my mouth:

Tasty, yes; healthy, most assuredly not. But it was an easy Friday night dinner.

Thursday Game Night and Movie Friday

On Tuesdays and Thursday evenings, I hang out and do some tabletop gaming with some friends. Last night, Jesse and I opted for Buffalo Wild Wings, as I was starving and didn't care and he wanted their nachos. So, I went with the ribs and boneless wings combo. They were supposed to sub potato wedges for fries, but either they were feeling generous or screwed up and I got both:

I realize it doesn't look very appetizing, and to be honest, it's probably the second worst presentation of this meal I've gotten from them, but I will assure you, it tasted a LOT better than it looks. Except for the fries, they were pretty cold, which is why I usually opt for the wedges, cause their fries almost always suck.

Today, for "lunch" Shawn and I left early and went to see Cabin in the Woods. Most people love a Coke and popcorn for their movie snacks, but for the theater I go to 95% of the time, they have corn dogs. And not premade frozen ones. These puppies (pun definitely intended) are fairly to VERY fresh, and almost always good. Since I've cut out around 90 - 95% of my caffeine intake (as well as Coke intake) this is one of the few times I splurge and get a frozen coke. And what good corn dog doesn't have mustard all over it?

The movie was as good as the food, btw.

A couple of dinners

Hey there! There was only one meaningful meal on Tuesday, and I forgot to get a pic of it. I met a couple of buddies at one of the Huey's in the area. And with all the talking and such, I just forgot to get a pic of my VERY delicious Steak Stick Dinner. This is basically a steak, cut up into chunks and impaled on 3 skewers. Served atop a bed of steak fries. It's usually seasoned/marinated well, it's just the quality of the steak bits are sometimes a bit ... chewy, shall we say. This was not a problem this time, they were outstanding.

For tonight's dinner, I roasted/baked some chicken breasts. I seasoned them with salt, pepper and garlic powder, buttered them up, tossed them in a 450 degree oven for about 20 mins, then turned it down to 325 for about an hour.

 I finished off the english peas from the other night and whipped up some potatoes to go with them.

A couple of them will probably be had by my roommate for lunch and/or dinner tomorrow, and one other one (lower right hand corner) and the juices will be used to make some chicken dumpling soup hopefully this weekend.

The Old Reliable

Tonight's dinner was a staple dinner in my "diet" (and I mean that in the sense of what I eat, not trying to watch what I eat) for a LONG time. Tonight's meal was the first time I've had it ... probably at least this year so far, which 4 and a half months is a LONG time for me to have not had it.

Chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes and gravy.

I went with the fairly standard Tyson nuggets.

These nuggets are ok. They aren't the best I've had, unfortunately, every time that my favorite nugget type shows up in a store, it's never around for long. But if I luck up and ever find them again, now that I've got this here blog, I'm putting a pic of them up, so you all can benefit from my YEARS of formed chicken nugget taste research. Hmmm, wonder if I can get a grant to pay me back for all that.

Anyway, on to the potatoes and gravy. It occurred to me that I've shown you the before and after on the main dishes, but not on my instant potato technique. Well, I've got the during and after shots for you tonight, maybe one of these days when I feel really saucy I'll get you a full post on them, maybe with video.

Hungry Jack Instant Potatoes are what I go with, and the gravy for tonight is McCormick's Brown Gravy:

I did fine on the potatoes and got the gravy a hair too thin, basically I rushed it and had to let it sit for a little while longer to thicken up properly. Luckily, you can't tell that from this pic:

So, there you have it, nuggets and potatoes, this used to be my go to meal.

Lazy Sunday

I had intended on roasting or baking some chicken breasts, and then using some of them as a base for another round of chicken dumpling soup for tomorrow, and the other breasts for dinner tonight.

BUT

I forgot to stop by the store on the way home from church this morning afternoon. And since that left me with pretty much only the chicken and no fixings (save for some type of bread), I scrapped that idea.

So, I finally went and grabbed some Arby's for dinner. I hadn't tried their onion rings out, so I opted for those instead of the usual potato cakes, and went with the usual #2 (Medium roast beef sammich) option:

Doesn't look that appetizing, but that sammich was outstanding. The onion rings were ok. They don't use sweet onions like Sonic or The Dip or other places, so I really should've gone downstairs and gotten some ketchup to go with it, but, well look a the name of this post.

Saturday Night Steak Dinner

For Saturday night, I prepared myself and my roommate a couple of steaks, filet mignon. I did the old skillet method that I went over in the previous steak post. And much like that one, here's some pics:

Steaks oiled, salted and peppered:

Now that they've been prepped, onto searing them!

And now that both sides have been seared, they get to finish cooking:

And once that was done, here's what was on C's plate last night:

Yep, filet mignon, mashed potatoes, english peas and some crescent rolls. The steak was outstandingly tender, and everything else was pretty good too.

Abbay's Road(house)

I couldn't resist making some kind of pun for the title. I had dinner at Abbay's (fast food version of Cracker Barrel) with some friends. I went with the hamburger steak & gravy with mashed potatoes & gravy and fried okra.

It was good. The steak was very tender, almost more like a meatloaf than hamburger steak. The potatoes were well mashed & the gravy was very tasty. Okra could've been a bit more done, but I prefer it pretty crunchy. Overall, the best meal I've had from there.

Winner, Winner, Pizza Dinner!

Last night, on C's Plate:

PAPA JOHN's!

Nope, it wasn't really all that impressive, but it was tasty and it did get delivered to game night in a decent amount of time, unlike last week's over an hour time of Pizza Hut's order. We got a "Meats!" from Papa, and it was good. This pic doesn't really do it justice, but here it is anyway:

After the game night, 3 of us (Jody, Grynner and myself) made our way to the local IHOP. I had every intention of getting a short stack of pancakes, BUT, they had an addition to their menu. 7 combos for $7 bucks. One of these combos was "Hash Brown Crusted Chicken and Biscuit". This was one of their chicken breast fillets crusted in hashbrown like potatoes, deep fried and then served with 2 eggs (your choice) a biscuit cut in half and a bowl of gravy. How in the name of breakfast could I pass this up? I couldn't. So I ordered it, and a pancake (which the waitress forgot, probably saving my life).

I forgot to take a picture of the food.

BLOGGER FAIL.

So, I've done the next best thing, for you, my dear readers, no, friends. I asked the Google to find me a picture, and I now share with you the fruits of Google's love for us:

Imagine that, but with scrambled eggs, and then the eggs and the biscuits drowned in gravy, instead of a little dollop on the biscuits. The stuff not on the plate are some of the other combos and not relevant to this topic.

It was pretty good, the chicken was nice and salty, almost too salty actually. I salt McDonald's fries, so if I say something is salty, you can take my word for it. The eggs were REALLY well done and the gravy magnificently complimented them, and the biscuits were a little over buttered, but pretty good.

I should probably add that as tasty as this stuff was to eat, it's still sitting in my gut at the time of me typing this wondrous tale. And even though we were done eating around 1, and continued hanging out and talking to around 2, this stuff is still here. I'm hoping I'll be able to eat dinner tonight, so I can give you fine readers another post today.

Lunch

Today's super nutritious lunch is leftover pork chops.

Crock Pot

Here's the crock pot I use. It's a Rival slow cooker, I think I got it as a (requested) gift, if not, I bought it myself, probably at Walmart.

Dinner for 4/4/2012

Welp, so ends the first day (ok, afternoon) of the blog. Tonight's dinner was originally going to be a roast beef sandwich from Arby's, but I changed my mind on the way home, and stopped at the local Japanese steak house / sushi bar, Kyoto (yes, another finely crafted FB link).

I had a bowl of soup:

It was tasty, as always. And the main course was a crunch shrimp roll and some chicken fried rice:

They were good as well, although I came this | | close to over soy saucing the fried rice.

Pork Chops

Last Sunday, I fixed some pork chops for dinner. They were boneless and butterflied, nice thick chops. I dipped them in an eggwash (2 eggs scrambled with salt and pepper), then a flour mixture (flour, salt, pepper, garlic salt, meat tenderizer), then tossed them in a big deep frying pan with some vegetable oil. First time frying any this thick, but they came out REALLY great. The best pork chop I've ever ate great, and I'm usually not that generous with my cooking.

Unfortunately, I screwed the creamed potatoes up by horrendously over-salting them.

Steaks

I've told you how I love beef roast, pork tenderloins, and chicken. Well, here is another of my top foods: Steak.

I've cooked a few of these and I've gotten pretty good at it, at least on the stove. Haven't done one on the grill yet. And to be honest, here's the guides I've done my steak cooking by. Both are by Daniel Howell, who WoW fans might know better as Big Red Kitty. This man is an outstanding WoW player and a hilarious (albeit sporadic) blogger. Check his stuff out. Anyway Guide 1 and Guide 2. I sometimes go by one, the other or mix and match stuff. I normally go with #1, personally.

This was the first one I ever made, it's a filet mignon from Charlie's Meat Market (another FB link), and I followed #1. I love a medium rare steak, and I don't have a problem if it's a little bit on the rarer side of that:

Here is another steak I did.
Before:

After:

And here's the last one I made, I tried to do some zucchini like they do at the japanese places (and was mildly successful):