In which Tab has a heart attack

I finally managed to get that salad for lunch:

It's whatever the salad mix they had at the cafeteria was, which looked like lettuce, carrots, red cabbage or lettuce. I added ham chunks, chicken chunks, bacon bits and a little bit of Italian dressing.

For dinner, I went with a flat iron steak (seasoned with olive oil, salt, pepper and some all purpose seasoning) and a zucchini squash cut up and fried in the steak's juices along with some butter and soy sauce:

And here's how it looked after cooking (in which I got the squash a little too done on one side):

All in all, I did a pretty good job. The steak was nice and tender, and I got the squash pretty well cooked this time.

Memorial Day Cookout

The gang did a Memorial Day cookout, but we did it on Sunday evening. There were hamburgers, hotdogs, chips, fries, potato salad, home made burger buns, and a lot of dessert. I went with a couple of burgers, a hotdog and some fries for my breakfast / lunch /dinner combo:

They were very well cooked, and I managed to not get enough ketchup on the burgers, and then too much. Oh well, they were still tasty.

As for the desserts, here what they looked like:

Kevin brought the pie, I made the yellow cake with chocolate frosting, Dave brought the chocolate pudding cake (in the plastic cover) and Greg brought the super brownie. As for which was on my plate? I went with my own cake.

Saturday at Sweet Pea's

Saturday night I met some friends at Sweet Pea's. I went with the pork cutlet (think chicken fried steak, but a boneless pork chop instead of beef), mashed potatoes and gravy and some fried okra. And a roll to top it off:

It was good. Their pork is cooked very well, usually the only downside is if you get a bad cut of it. I didn't this time, all the fat & connective tissue was at one end. The fried okra was cooked pretty well, not quite done enough for me, but the mashed potatoes made up for it.

Chinese Food

On Wednesday, I had some Chinese chicken fried rice and a pork egg roll for lunch. The cafeteria usually does a pretty good job on those 2 dishes, and this occasion was no different.

I generally don't care for egg rolls, but the ones they serve at the cafeteria is more meat than veggies and what have you, plus it's seasoned very well. They prepare the rice when you order it, so it may take a little longer in line, but it's very much worth it.

I tried to be good

I had planned on having a salad for lunch today. But, I kept going past the salad area to the hot food area. And there it was, staring at me. I knew at that point I was doomed, so I got into the stupidly short line there (it's usually the longest and was the shortest today). It was chicken fried steak day.

I've gone on about how good the cafeteria's brown gravy is, and how it enhances whatever it's draped across. Well, their chicken fried steak is almost always good. I think this is only the third or fourth time I've been in there when they've had it, and it's been at least good each time. And then add that stuff to it. Nope, salad never had a chance against this. The potatoes were pretty good today also.

For dinner, there is no picture, not because I forgot, but because I ate it on the way home. I stopped in at Chick-fil-a and got a #1 combo (Chicken sammich no pickles, fries and a Sprite). It was good. I've not been to one in a while, as I had hit that point where you eat something so much, it kinda loses that great taste that made you like it in the first place. I'm happy to report, that didn't happen this time, it had that same great flavor that made me love their chicken in the beginning.

Mardi Gras

Not really as in the celebration, but let's face it, the French can make most things sound better in their language than in English. Fat Tuesday begins with a snack for lunch, I had a piece of fried chicken from the cafeteria:

It looks pretty good, but this was in that area I talked about in the other post where it wasn't BAD, but it wasn't really all that Good. Lots of crust, not much flavor in it, nor in the meat, but the meat was cooked really well, nice and juicy.

I had no idea what I was going to do for dinner, and had about given up on the idea. I was almost home, when it struck me, I'd hit up the old Waffle House. So, I did, and got my usual, which is a waffle:

It was pretty tasty, the lady didn't over cook it (I don't like my waffles in the crunchy neighborhood) nor did she undercook it. The other part of my meal was a chicken sandwich and some hashbrowns:

As you can see by the pic, I was so looking forward to it, I dug into it before remembering the picture. So, I did the best I could and turned the munched on bits away, sorry if it's too graphic for you all.

The hashbrowns were ok, I couldn't get them salty enough, but the chicken sandwich was pretty much as good as WH can get it, mostly why I had ate a third of it before the pic was taken.

Monday Meat and Potatoes with a guest star

Monday was a meat and potatoes kind of day. I started it off with having that for lunch, from the cafeteria. They had some rotisserie chicken, which I teamed up with the potatoes and gravy, and today's guest star, some corn:

Their chicken comes in quarters, so it was a breast and wing, which I had attacked before remembering to get the photo.

The chicken was ok, the flavor managed to penetrate into the meat fairly well. The corn was really good and the potatoes were just ok, but the gravy managed to save them, as usual.

For dinner, I cooked a beef roast in the crock pot. This is what it looked like when I was leaving for work:

And I forgot to get an after photo of the whole thing. But, I whipped some gravy up from its juices and some instant potatoes to accompany it:

The gravy was nice and thick and REALLY rich, more so than I intended, but still tasty. And here's what was on my plate for dinner:

It was great and I was stuffed.

Saturday Night MPC run

On Saturday night, I met the gang at the local MPC, or Memphis Pizza Cafe. While I love me some pizza, MPC is not my first choice for the food, but my friend Greg LOVES this place like I love mashed potatoes and gravy, so I don't complain too much. I dislike it because the pizza is usually largely flavorless to me, and there's never a lot of toppings. And I mean ALL toppings, from sauce to cheese to meats. They do thin crust pizza with what seems like just enough sauce to turn it slightly orange, and then a layer of cheese so thing that my sausage toppings usually almost fall off the piece as I'm trying to eat it.

I usually go with either a couple of slices of sausage and some other meat (pepperoni this time) or a calzone with sausage and some other meat in it. This visit's slices were some of the best I've had there, so it wasn't too bad. I had intended on following it up with some dessert on the way home, but managed to talk my self out of it, somehow.

And yes, I once again forgot to get a picture.

Friday Rice

Friday, was a short day at work. I went home and then started playing Diablo 3, in earnest for the first time. I had piddled around in it earlier in the week, but now I had a Lot of time to devote to it, so I did. I looked up somewhere around 5:30 or 5:45 pm and discovered that it had gotten that late. So, I tossed some emails out to see if the usual Friday gang were doing anything, and we weren't. So, I went back to work on D3 some more. An hour or so later, I decided that I was indeed hungry and needed to work on that. So I got some of the frozen shrimp out of the freezer and tossed them in some warm water to thaw up, and tossed some rice in the rice cooker.

Yep, Monday's Bad Idea time had finally come.

So, I attempted to make some shrimp fried rice.

I let the rice finish cooking, then tossed some olive oil into the frying pan, and then some butter and garlic powder. I then added the shrimp (forgetting to de-tail them). Once they were good and mostly done, I went to get the rice out of the cooker. And discovered that I had, once again, over watered it, yay me.

So, I got as much rice as I could mange into the frying pan, and didn't get anywhere near enough salt or soy sauce while I tried to cook it.

This is what I had, and it was actually almost tasty, more so than it had any right to be. I think next time I try this, I will just get Andrew to do the rice part for me, then I can fry it up well.

Huey's!

Thursday is one of the game nights, and I didn't feel like BWW (Buffalo Wild Wings) or any other fast food in general, so I talked Jesse into meeting me at Huey's. I also didn't really want a burger (thanks to 5 Guys on Tuesday), so I went with their steak stick dinner. This is basically a steak, cut up and grilled kebab style, minus the veggies. Then they'll bring the three sticks of juicy steak out on a bed of whatever side dish you like, which I (of course) go with fries. About 7 out of 10 times, these are outstanding, but sometimes you'll get some bad cuts of steak and they're almost impossible to chew up (2 of the 3 times) and super rarely it'll just be a bad job on the marinade or cooking and they taste horrible (the remaining 1 time). Luckily, I was in the 7 neighborhood, as they were OUTSTANDING. It was almost as if I was wanting that and didn't even know it. We also had an appetizer of their fried mozzarella cheese sticks, and they were incredibly tasty also.

And I forgot to take a picture of any of it.

Meatballs, Pt 3

Well, third time's the charm, is how the old saying goes. And in this case, it was correct. This was my third attempt at making meatballs, and they turned out great:

I did a pound of Italian sausage and a pound of ground beef, a bunch of garlic powder, some onion powder, panko bread crumbs, Italian seasonings, salt, pepper and an egg. Mixed that all together for a while till it seemed pretty homogeneous, then balled them up and stuck them in a pan that I had spread olive oil and some garlic powder into. I then doused them in Prego Meat Sauce and tossed them into the oven on 335 for about an hour and fifteen minutes. Now, that's a fairly sweet tomato based sauce, if you like your "gravy" not as sweet, feel free to use some other brand or make your own. I'm not that comfortable yet to make my own. Oh yeah, fair warning, these suckers fill the house up with the most amazingly tasty aroma as they're cooking.

As they were finishing up their cooking, I tossed what was left of the ziti I had into some salted boiling water and once they were done, I tossed some meatballs and sauce on top of them:

That meal was amazing, some would even say "amazeballs".

Fried Chicken and Five Guys

Tuesdays are Fried Chicken days in the cafeteria. Unfortunately, they NEVER have the proper side dish for fried chicken, which here in the South, is mashed potatoes and gravy. They have rice and gravy, and some kind of au gratin potatoes or something else that just doesn't go well with it, so I usually skip the chicken. However, I was fairly hungry on this Tuesday (see the Dump Day post for my lack of a filling dinner), so I went with a white meat portion, which is a breast and wing. All connected like:

It might not look that great in the pic, but they usually do a pretty good job on their chicken. The breading/crust is VERY flavorful and tasty, and if you get there fairly early, you've got about a 70/30 chance of the meat having gotten the flavor into it, where as if you go later in the afternoon it's more of a 30/70 chance. I was on the upper end of luck today, the meat was just about as tasty as the crust.

Not a very nutritious lunch, I know, but I was treating it more like a snack, as I was going to be having a burger and fries from 5 Guys Burgers and Fries for dinner that night. And not only did I plan to, but I actually stuck with it.

You can make an account on their website and then order early and schedule your pickup, and pay for it online, thereby skipping the (sometimes really long) line. They also have an app for both Android and iDevices. I downloaded that bad boy and tested it out, and I'm happy to report that it worked like a champ. Burgers (picked one up for Jesse also) were ready when I got there and just had to wait a minute or two on the fries to get done, which gave me plenty of time to get the drinks ready. And, as I alluded to in the previous post, I forgot to get pictures of the delicious Bacon Burger and fries. But I assure you, it looked good and tasted even better.

Dump Day!

On the Monday after Mother's Day, the cafeteria had their version of chicken and dumplings as one of the choices, and it was the most appetizing, so I went with it. The chicken they use is their cubed up chicken breast that they use in a lot of stuff, and the dumplings themselves are similar to what you'd get in canned dumplings. Which doesn't sound too appetizing, but the broth that they do it in does wonders for it. The chicken is really good and the dumplings are on the upper side of OK. They don't hold a candle to Cracker Barrel's, mine, let alone Mom's or my Aunt's. But not bad for a quick lunch:

As you can see, I went with the omnipresent mashed potatoes and gravy for the side dish. Unfortunately, the potatoes were pretty much unseasoned at all, and even their outstanding gravy could hardly make up for it.

I had planned on doing something stupid for dinner (homemade shrimp fried rice) but luckily Mom called and invited me to stop in for dinner. She had made.... chicken and dumplings. So, I said sure, beat what I was going to try. She called back a little bit later and said to not worry about stopping in, they were horrible. Knowing how bad some cooks can be on themselves, I assured her I was sure they couldn't be horrible, and I'd still be stopping by.

Unfortunately, she wasn't too far off the mark. While they weren't horrible, they weren't good. They were edible however, so I ate some, and a baked chicken breast. Which (much like the next handful of posts) I forgot to get a picture of.

Mother's Day

Well, it was a pretty laid back Mother's Day. Since I had taken her out on Friday, she spent most of the day with Dad down at Tunica playing on some free money and such. I spent the afternoon hanging with them. While waiting on them to get home, I treated myself to a chicken and ham sandwich, which I didn't get a pic of. Since they weren't going to do anything for dinner, and what I wanted would've taken me WAY to long to cook (didn't have any of the meat thawed out) I stopped at the old standby, Arby's. I went with a medium sandwich, some potato wedges and cheese sticks:

The sandwich was just ok, I think the meat was a tad dry, the potato cakes and cheese sticks were good and the tea was pretty great as usual.

Celebratory Saturday

Saturday night was a night for celebration. My friends, who run the @peachgrenade twitter account (an account which they make jokes) surpassed 2000 followers. In celebration, we hit up a local Mexican join (Casa Mexicana, different location than the one I had the pork tacos at a couple of weeks ago) and then a cake and some cookies.

For dinner, I went with a beef burrito and some beef nachos (minus the cheese), to which I added some of the salsa they provide for the chips:

The sauce for the burrito, as you may surmise, was a bit much. If it had been drizzled on top, instead of swimming in it, it would've been much better. It was simply a case of too much of a good thing. The nachos were very good though, and as you might can guess, I forgot to get a pic of them when they first got delivered.

As for the cake and cookies, I'll provide a pic of them, even though I was too full to partake, but I thought about it a lot:

Forgetful Friday

Thursday was Mom's birthday, so I took Friday off (as did she) and spent most of it with her. We went to lunch a Sweetpea's Table in Olive Branch, which is a country cooking place. And I forgot to get pictures of the food.

I went with the fried chicken breast, mashed potatoes, fried okra and a roll, while she did hamburger steak, pinto beans and ... I'm not sure what her other veggie was. She enjoyed the place, and said we'd have to come back and bring Dad (which I've been trying to get them to try the place for a while now). After that, I took her to see Dark Shadows (she loved the show growing up) and was curious to see the movie. I can happily say that we both enjoyed the movie. It was not as comedic as the previews made it out to be (more dark with lots of comedic bits as opposed to comedy with a few dark bits).

For dinner that night, I went with some friends to a local sammich / pizza place here in Hernando called Buon Cibo. Not my favorite place, but as I was still mostly full from lunch, I didn't have a problem with it. And I got really lucky, as the soup of the day was their potato soup. First time I got to try it, and it was pretty good, although it had no chunks of potato in it. At least not in the bowl I got. And yes, I forgot to get a pic of it also.

Thursday!

For lunch today, I went with the Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and a roll from the cafeteria. The steak was a bit tougher than I feel Salisbury should be, it was more like a hamburger steak, IMO. Still, was tasty, esp with the gravy they make.

For dinner, my buddy Jesse and I got some pizza from Papa John's. He went with a pepperoni and chicken and an all the meats. Both were tasty.

Hump Day

Well, Wednesday was pretty nondescript. For lunch I had some oatmeal, and as usual, no pic was taken, cause really, it doesn't look that great, especially in a Styrofoam cup. For dinner, I had a corn dog and a frozen coke, as I (once again) went and saw The Avengers. This time in 3D. No pic, as I was fairly close to some other people and I didn't feel like bugging them by taking a pic on the phone and having the flash go off.

I can't really recommend seeing it 3D over 2D, but all the nifty flying scenes were REALLY sharp in the extra dimension. You could really tell the sense of depth as Tony (and aliens) were zipping through the skies and buildings and such. But I can recommend going to see the movie, period.

Junk Food

Tuesday was a day of junk food. To give some insight on my lunch selection, let me tell you about my movie watching preference. The theater I usually attend has some really good corn dogs. They also have frozen coke (Coke Icee / Slurpee for those that haven't heard of Frozen Coke). I usually get one of each of these, and eat the corn dog before the movie and work on the Frozen Coke before and during the movie.

This past weekend Marvel's The Avengers opened up to record breaking numbers. I'm part of the reason for that. I knew going in that the movie was two and a half hours long. And lately, my kidneys have been working on overdrive, so I didn't feel like testing them out by having my usual Frozen Coke before the flick started. For in order to get a decent seat, I'd have to be there very early. So, forewent my movie snack. Plus, I saw the flick twice this weekend, on Friday with my friends and took Mom and Sis on Sunday. If that doesn't tell you how much I liked the movie, well, tough luck.

So, today I gave in to half my craving and went with a corn dog for lunch, from the cafeteria:

It's not as good as the ones at the theater, as the cafeteria uses frozen ones that they then deep fry, where as the theaters are freshly made, I think. And by that I mean they're not as uniformly done up as these are, I've seen a LOT of variation in their thickness and overall presentation. But these are pretty good, the deep frying definitely helps the corn dog out, as opposed to baking in the oven or (gasp) nuking it in the microwave. Their fries are pretty good also, but they usually have a hard time keeping salt on them, without flat out wiping them in it.

For dinner, my buddy Jesse was partial to BWW (Buffalo Wild Wings) so I went with some Honey BBQ boneless wings and potato wedges:

They did a good job in dousing the "wings" in sauce and the wedges were cooked pretty well. All in all one of the better dining experiences from them.

Monday Pork and Leftovers

For Monday's lunch, I got some of the pork tenderloin and mashed potatoes from the cafeteria. They were both good, but neither anywhere near as good as mine.

Their tenderloin isn't as tender, nor as well seasoned as mine. And their potatoes are anywhere from pretty good (like today's) to horribly inedible. But their brown gravy is almost always good, as was today's.

For dinner, I was craving some more of that lasagna from last night. Then on the way home, I got to craving some of those new chicken nuggets. I was trying to decide which I'd eat, when, as I was almost home it hit me, why did I HAVE to choose one or the other?

So, I didn't, I went with both. Also, that 7 was completely unintentional.

I didn't really mix the nuggets into what was left of the lasagna, but they were good, and the lasagna was pretty good for nuked leftovers.

Lasagna

Sunday I got a craving for lasagna. The upside of this was that I had a Marie Callender's meat lasagna in the freezer, so I was covered. After the 2.5 hrs of cooking and cooling (from a frozen state), this is what I was greeted with:

And I fixed some biscuits to go with it, per the roommate's request:

As far as premade lasagnas go, it was really good. Not as gut bustingly filling as the Stouffer's, nor as sweet, but very good. I like them both equally, but for different tastes.

More Mexican and a Birthday

Saturday evening we celebrated my friend, Kevin's, birthday. One of his favorite restaurants is On the Border. For those playing along at home, let me do some math for you: Saturday was Cinqo de Mayo, and we went to a Mexican restaurant. Luckily, we 1. went early enough, 2. it was Musicfest weekend here in Memphis, and 3. OtB happens to be doing a month long celebration for the holiday, so we got in without a problem.

For my dinner, I chose the Ultimate Fajita as I was very hungry. And it was surprisingly good and filling:

The steak was just ok, as were the shrimp. The chicken was really good and the pork was outstanding. I'm usually not used to getting stuffed at a Mexican restaurant, as I don't like beans or Mexican style rice, but I got pleasantly stuffed on this dish.

Afterwards, we hung out at Greg and Linzie's and had some cake and ice cream for Kevin's birthday:

It was a chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream and some kind of chocolate and peanut butter moose tracks ice cream. They were both really good also.

Steak Escape

Friday evening, I hit up the local Steak Escape with a couple of friends. Funny enough, as much as I love steak, I really don't care for this place. As such, I forgot to get a pic of my sammich till I was almost done:

The sandwich was ok, but their fries are usually pretty good, since they're made fresh.

Pork Tacos

So, Thursday morning I read an article on Yahoo! in which food critics from various cities talked about their favorite tacos in their towns. This got me really wanting some tacos, and not the kind available at Taco Bell. Luckily, a couple of my Thursday night gaming buddies were already planning on hitting up the Casa Mexicana by the house for dinner and invited me along. I got some kind of marinated pulled pork tacos, that also have cilantro, onions and avocado in them. I found out I don't like avocado, nor their homemade hot sauce:

But, other than that, they were pretty good. Not really what I was wanting, but they were still good.

Burger and Tots and Leftovers

For lunch today, I had some left over pork tenderloin and a few rolls (made little sammiches out of them). Still tasted outstanding:

For dinner, I had intended on finishing off, or attempting to, the left over pizza from yesterday. BUT, on the way home, I got hit with a burger craving, so I stopped in at "The Dip". Tonight's order was a bacon burger and tater tots, with a small hot fudge shake for dessert. Once at home, I added an IBC Root Beer to top it off:

That mountain of tater tots was obscene, and you all should know how I feel about potatoes by now. I barely made a dent in it, but I did manage to finish that monster of a burger off. I will be in a meat coma in about an hour, I think.

New York Style Pizza

When it comes to pizza, most people fall into 2 categories: Thin or Thick crust. I'm pretty firmly into the latter category. I love lots of tasty thick crust and a ton of flavorful mozzarella cheese. But occasionally, I like a nice bit of New York style thin crust pizza. As I was watching Bones the other night, Booth brought such a pie to Bones for dinner as she was working late in her office. It put the taste for that into my brain. So, yesterday for a late lunch / early dinner, my friend Jesse and I ventured to Johnny Brusco's New York Style Pizza to so I could quench that craving. There used to be one of these just around the corner from his place, which I ate at fairly regularly (usually a Stromboli, mmmm) but it's been closed now for a few years. But there is one on Germantown, not too far from where I work. I ordered a medium (12") with sausage and pepperoni. As usual, I forgot to get a pic of it when it was first brought to the table, but as I didn't eat the whole thing, here's what it looked like in its box back at the house:

Was it as good as I was hoping it'd be? No, but most things you have a craving like that for aren't. It was good though, as you can see I did eat half of it. And I will probably finish it off for dinner tonight.

Fish and chips

Well, technically, it's not really, but it's a lazy man's version. I tossed some Gorton's fish patties and some fries into the oven for dinner last night, and this is what came out:

It was pretty good, would've been much better with ketchup. I should be able to hit up the grocery store on Wednesday, hopefully.