A cafeteria miracle

I worked on Saturday the 4th. And it was a good thing I did. For the only time our cafeteria does what EVERY OTHER PLACE that does Southern Fried Chicken does normally is on the weekends:

I present to you all: Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, and corn on the cob.

EVERY TUESDAY, our cafeteria has Fried Chicken. And NEVER does it do mashed potatoes with their fried chicken on Tuesdays. NEVER. It's always rice, and some kind of odious potato concoction. But, because I wanted to make some hours up, I got lucky and got what everyone should get whenever they go someplace with fried chicken. /end rant

The chicken was pretty good, the flavor was confined to the skin for the most part. The potatoes were tasty, the gravy great as usual. The corn was merely ok, it had a flavor in there I couldn't really identify, as I was really just expecting corn, butter and salt. It definitely needed more butter, which I didn't think to get at the time and we didn't have any in the office fridge.

On the to Greg's, I stopped off at McD's and grabbed some nuggets and fries. The nuggets were really good and the fries were pretty good. I had to add some salt, as apparently that location was going easy on it.

A Birthday Party

On Saturday, I had some crappy chicken nuggets for a light lunch (didn't eat them all, but it did finish that bag off). The fries were marginally better (we ran out of salt earlier in the week and I kept forgetting to pick some up).

That evening, I attended a birthday party for my friend and supervisor. His parents had it catered by Crepemaker. First time I've had their food, and it was pretty good. I had a ... steak milanese I think is what it was called. I had steak, ham, red onions, romain lettuce and some A-1 in a toasted crepe (I had them hold the tomatoes and cheese). It was good, kinda like a wrap, but the egg flavor of the crepe handily slaps flour tortillas in my opinion. I could've gotten one of their dessert crepes, but I chose to go with the chocolate mousse birthday cake instead. And I found out that night that Pepsi Max is one of the worst tasting soft drinks I've ever had the displeasure to taste.

Trying to climb out of the hole

So, after Tuesday's wallowing in unhealthy tastiness, I went with a salad for lunch:

We've got 2 types of lettuce, some spinach, carrots, some purple stuff (not sure if it's lettuce or cabbage), ham, chicken, bacon bits and italian dressing. It was pretty good, I didn't get the dressing mixed around enough though.

For dinner, I finished off the chicken strips and supplemented it with a couple of nuggets and fries:

It was ok, the strips were pretty good, the nuggets are passable.

The trip home

On the trip home, I only stopped to fill the car up. On the first mid trip fill up, it was lunch time, so I hit up old McD's and got some chicken nuggets and fries. No pic of them, as I ate them on the way. The nuggets were really good, and the fries, while tasty and fresh, weren't salted near enough for my taste. Which is probably a good thing for my health.

While we were out Saturday getting stuff for the party, Furey, Ike and I stopped to get the crab for the boil. The crab place also had scallops. I love scallops and have never cooked them, so I bought a couple pound of them. I left them in the freezer while I was there, and got one of those cheap Styrofoam coolers and a bag of ice to keep them frozen on the way home. It worked better than I had hoped, the ice was still mostly there after the 12 hr drive and the scallops were still mostly frozen.

I took the ones that had thawed out and ended up sauteing them as my searing of them didn't work out like I wanted. I prepared them in an olive oil, butter and garlic powdered concoction. As I didn't have any good veggies handy (did this after getting home and didn't feel like stopping to get any or going back out), I went with the instant potatoes (garliced them up too) and some biscuits:

They came out fairly well. Or very well, if you account for a first attempt ever.

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.

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.

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.

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.