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.