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.