The power of pizza rolls

Just got home and want a snack, ate an early dinner and craving something. Am I really hungry and do I really need to eat? Probably not, but I like to read and eat, or is it eat and read? Whatever, they are a glorious combination and I am about to do both.

Speaking of glorious combinations, I had one of my summer favorites yesterday, a batch of radishes with some salt on them and a diet coke. The combo is great together and gives you some seriously powerful burps. But you always get the one woody, extra spicy radish that just doesn’t taste right. I like them cold, and sitting in water after a while after they are clean.

Anyway, I first had some of my homemade salsa with tortilla chips while settling in to read my new Sports Illustrated. This salsa was pretty good this time. I used five medium tomatoes, half a cup of jalapenos, green onion, white onion, half a red pepper, half an orange pepper, half a green pepper, a dash of Louisiana hot sauce, and mixed it with some salsa seasoning mix. I also added some jalapeno juice which I got on my hand and later rubbed in my eye which felt oh so good burning away.

So, I still wanted to eat more and even though the food gal came home with $165 in groceries the other night, I was not quite sure what I wanted. There was a frozen pizza in the fridge, but I had pizza the night before and just wasn’t up for another (well, I was up for it but I thought I’d hold off). Looked at making a shrimp and rice dish I had the night before, but passed. Looked at some deli turkey or salami, and passed. Basically, I wanted as minimal time and effort as possible to make something.

I finally found it in the freezer, and I knew it was there but forgot – Pizza rolls!! I think food gal snuck them in behind the vanilla frozen yogurt and underneath the beef loins so she could sneak the snack for herself. But I was on to her tricks, and found the pizza rolls she had schemes with. Now that they are cooking, I don’t even know what kind they are, but no worries, it’s a pizza roll so I am not picky.

I always count out my pizza rolls when putting them on the cookie sheet. I had 18 to start, but put two away to go with 16. I got out the aluminum foil and sprayed it with Pam cooking spray before putting them on. Food gal always puts the pizza rolls right on the cookie sheet, no spray, no foil. Why? It makes no sense, because then you have to clean the cookie sheet. If you just put it on a piece of foil you just toss the foil away. Plus, with no spray, they stick to the pan. I like my pizza rolls just so the sauce and meat is oozing out a bit, not a whole lot, but just a bit. But you have to let them sit for a few minutes otherwise you will seriously burn your tongue. It’s not quite letting it sit as long as when you get soup from a restaurant like Panera, but pretty close.

Anyway, pizza rolls are a great snack, and I am glad I found them even though food gal was trying to hide them. Now it’s time to eat them.

Eat!

Can you eat breakfast twice in one day?

I got up early with Little Food Gal this morning, about 5 a.m. I had some Trail Mix crunch with almonds and raisins. Why do the boxes/advertisements for any post grape nuts/trail mix cereals act like the only people who eat these go hiking all the time? Is that their target audience? I mean, what if a guy is 317 pounds, loves to snowmobile and works part-time as a clown? Why can't he be the kind of guy who eats Trail Mix crunch? Why can't this guy be on the box or in the commercials?

Anyway, I ate the cereal, and after LFG ate and seemed to get tired, I went and laid down and went back to sleep until about 9 a.m. I got up thinking, what do I do know? Do I eat breakfast again, or do I eat lunch? Is it breakfast, or is it lunch? To make a long story short, I didn't actually eat until about 10:43, when I had an egg salad sandwich, some tortilla chips and a diet coke.

But, back to the topic of discussion. In most peoples view, 9 a.m. is still breakfast time. However, The Food Guy doesn't follow most peoples eating patterns/habits. Really, eating lunch at 9 a.m. is no different than eating lunch at noon if you have been up since 5. How so? Well, there is a four hour difference, similar to many people who eat breakfast at 8 and lunch at Noon. Therefore, if you get up at 5 and eat, then eat four hours later, it's just like the person on the 8/Noon schedule. So, what does a person do - do they eat breakfast or do they eat lunch?

And if you eat lunch at 9 a.m., then do you have dinner at about 1 or 2, or is it lunch again?

Tough dilemma to figure out. You decide.

A-Rod and a Pound of Cod!

What’s up with no diet Mello Yello? I mean, they have diet Mountain dew, but why no diet mello yello?

I ate a pound of cod last night. I brushed each side with olive oil, then added a rosemary garlic seasoning, and baked it. The pound was the pre-cooked weight, by the time it was cooked and I ate it (with a baked potato), it had shrunk down into about five pieces, about two bites a piece.

If that was really a pound, it got me thinking, how many pounds of cod have you ate in one sitting? If you think about those VFW fish fry’s or any fish fry that you just demolish the fish, I bet on a good night many of us have pounded down 4-5 pounds of cod. Add in the breading and tartar sauce, and you got some serious caloric intake there. They should just bring the fish in and throw them out to everyone to eat like you are in a Seattle fish market, then you could just eat it and take chunks right out of it.

On an unrelated note, I tried trading A-rod in my fantasy baseball league yesterday, no takers yet.

On another side note: If you could insert music into a blog, I would insert a Motley Crue cowbell session right now. Speaking of Motley Crue, The last 1:41 of the song Get a Piece of Your Action – from the Crue’s first tape (yes tape, the one with the pic of the dude and his waist/belt on the cover) is one of the most underrated Crue songs of all time. Check it out.

Back to the topic, food gal asked me this morning at 4 a.m.: Have you ever ate a butter and peanut butter sandwich. It got me thinking, again, that butter is often forgotten item when it comes to making a sandwich. We all know that sometimes there is nothing better than a buttered meat sandwich. But the restaurants, they never give you the option of butter on your sandwich. How come Subway doesn’t have that condiment item, right next to the mayo, southwest chipotle, ranch, and other sauces. They should have a container of butter ready to squirt right on the sandwich at each customers request. My favorite buttered meat sandwich is bologna, and then I like to dip into chicken noodle soup. I loved that lunch in school and have it on occasion now.

Speaking of school lunches, I always ate two hot lunches a day, and one day a year I would have three – that’s when we had turkey/gravy over biscuits. I would then fall asleep in some boring history class after.

Anyway, it got me thinking, again, that one of the favorite things I do when eating was developed at school lunch. I would never drink my milk until I was done with a lunch. I wouldn’t take a few bites, drink a couple of drinks, take a few bites, and so on. I would wait until the lunch was completely done, and then I would chug the milk. Then, I’d go get my second lunch, and then I would eat it all, then chug the milk. If I got thirsty while eating, I went and got some water until I could chug the milk.

Is there anything better than chugging a nice cold glass of milk? I drink skim, but sometimes, it’s even good to throw in some 2 percent or whole milk, now we’re talking. That is pure milk pleasure.

I had a dilemma the other day. I wanted a big glass of milk, but only had s small cup left. Do you drink it all, or do you save some for later, say, if you need it for cooking, or to just have as a security blanket? I drank the cup and put the rest, about ½ a cup, back in the fridge. Maybe this stems from my childhood when Father of Food Guy would freak out if there was no milk in the house. I could drink the last glass of milk at 9:30 right before bed, and if I did, I’d have to go to the store to get another gallon of milk. If the power ever went out, if the roof caved in, if the washer overflowed, it could be dealt with, but if there was no milk, holy cripes, look out!

Speaking of no milk, since I drank that milk, I still don’t have any more in the house. I could crave some right now. I just ate a tuna sandwich and am a bit parched. I have horrible breath too. The other day though, I may have had the worst breath. It was a combination of pepperoni pizza and milk breath. MMMM..sounds appealing doesn’t it? What other combos of food/drink give you bad breath?

One thing I like to eat and drink is Coca-Cola and radishes, it gives you some of the best, most powerful and explosive burps humanly possible. Try it out sometime.

Gotta go, time to grab a snack and try to trade A-rod (he’s on the DL - douchey list - now because he’s hurt so it could be tough).

EAT!

Happy Eat Day!!

What do you get when you take the r and h out of earth?

Eat

That's why, in correlation with the recent Earth Day celebration, I have announced that the first Tuesday after Earth Day will be National Eat Day!

So, Happy Eat Day to all. To celebrate Eat Day, let's do what we do best - talk about food.

Thursday I had one of those eat anything you can days, for some reason. I missed breakfast (been hitting the Coccoa Puffs, Coccoa Pebbles and Crunch Berries lately, all you health freaks, back off, you can only eat so many bananas, hard-boiled eggs, yogurt cups and toast before it gets stale).

So, I didn't get a chance to eat until 10 a.m., and had an asiago cheese bagel with sun dried tomato cream cheese and washed it down with an ice cold Diet Coke. It was good, but a little late to eat a bagel. After 10 a.m. I am looking forward to lunch. But, it worked for the time being and since I missed breakfast, anything would have sufficed.

But here's where it went for a loop. When I was back getting my 25 cent Diet Coke from the pop machine at work, I checked out the company fridge. In it I saw a bunch of left over box lunches from a company function (on a related note, there were plain cheese subs available in one box, who the heck just gets a plain cheese sub? The funny part was, I didn't really believe it was just cheese, so I opened it, opened the sub and sure enough, it was just cheese. I put it back in the box. I wonder if anyone ever ate that, or if they would like to know my hands were on it before they ate it). So, I checked the rest of the box lunches out, and noticed one chicken sandwich with chips and a cookie in it. This was on Foccacia bread, which I am not a fan of unless I want to hurt my mouth chewing and risk chipping a tooth with the hard bread. Bread should not be hard.

So, I wasn't sure if these boxed lunches were for a company function for later, so I had to be sneaky. I quickly took the food out of the box lunch - the sandwich, cookie and chips, and stuffed it into my Panera bag, so when I walked the long hallway back to my desk, or if someone came into the lunch room while I was transferring food people would just think "oh, Panera, huh?" They would have no suspicion that I was possibly eating someone else's lunch. However, when I tried the sandwich later (shortly after I ate my bagel), I realized this sandwich was leftover, possibly even a couple days. I had two bites and tossed it. All the discretionary food plot was for not.

Anyway, around 12:39 I went out for a stroll with a goal of getting food in mind. I stopped at an Au Bon Pain and was impressed with the pic of the cajun shrimp wrap outside the restaurant. I am a big fan of cajun flavors, and of shrimp. It was wrapped in a tortilla with rice and a cajun sauce, some peppers - seemed fantastic. But, again, I was disappointed, as there were only two pieces of shrimp, and hardly any seasoning/peppers as indicated on the picture. It was basically a tortilla stuffed with white rice. I immediately went to the Au Bon Pain corporate web site, got on the feedback section and told them there sandwich was terrible. Weak

About two hours later I heard someone walk by and say to another person "Did you goget some food?"

That meant one thing - head to the lunch room. Sure enough, there was leftover chinese sitting out. While it was pretty picked through, I did find one leftover egg roll and some fried rice. It was one of those deals where I wasn't hungry, but I ate it because it was there. I clearly didn't need it, and it wasn't that good, but I ate it. The worst part was, I ate the egg roll with no dipping sauce, such as sweet and sour. Dipping sauce is key to egg rolls, which can be rather plain if not dipped in sauce, especially after sitting out for a few hours. I tried dipping it in the salad dressing that was left over from the chinese spread, but that just didn't cut it. I searched my famous top left drawer and found plenty of other items and condiments, but no egg roll sauce. Very disappointing.

I got home from work and wasn't really hungry, and Food Gal and Little Food Gal and I had to be off in a hurry. We had an event until about 9 p.m. so I was good on food for the day- or so I thought.

After the event, Little Food Gal was konked out, and sleeping hard, but Food Gal and I went on a mission for.......Wendy's! We wanted to go somewhere and sit down but it was late, LFG was sleeping, and we knew after eating late we wanted to be close to home.

So we did one of the worst things one can do - we ate fast food after 9 p.m.. There should be an unwritten rule that if you ever go to a fast food restaurant after 9 p.m. and there are fewer than three cars in the parking lot, you should leave immediately. Why? Because you end up with stale and old french fries. There were two cars in the lot when we got there. If no one is ordering anything they can't run out, and they can't make fresh food. I wasn't overly concerned about the fries though, but it would have been a plus if they tasted better. I ordered a classic cheeseburger, junior cheeseburger and 5 piece chicken nugget with a diet coke.

We ate while driving, and if you've ever ate a Wendy's hamburger, it's tough to eat while driving. With the lettuce, tomato, onions, and sauce, it can get messy. So, I pulled over before driving, and took a couple of bites of the burger before driving. That way, it allowed me to see where the potential trouble spots where - like where ketchup and mustard could squeeze out onto my hand or steering wheel while driving - potential hazards indeed. So, by identifying trouble spots it helped me drive safer. And then, it also helped me get a better handle on the burger. It wasn't as big and hard to hold, it was smaller, and I could control it more while I drove. I could move it around without worrying about sauce falling out, or the tomato squishing out, etc. Food Gal then took out the dipping sauce (I like saying that - dipping sauce - say it a few times, and imagine dipping your favorite app into your favorite sauce - nice ring to it) - and placed one nugget in the sauce for me to pick at at my convenience, such as when we were at a stop light. I thought it was a nice gesture by FG. I ate, and she repeated.

We had a short ride home but I polished off the cheeseburger, junior cheeseburger (note: junior cheeseburgers from Wendy's are about the perfect driving size, you are pretty safe taking a bite into it if you forget to do your burger/driving prep out of the drive through) and nuggets.

I got home...and immediately felt like crap.

I looked back at the food choices I made that day, and knew they weren't the best, but it was just one of those days. It happens, and when it does, you have to go all out, no in-between.

And, I was thinking, it will soon be Eat Day, and in honor of Eat day, I just celebrated a bit earlier than most people.

So, this Tuesday, grab your favorite food and celebrate one of the greatest things in this world - food and eating!

Happy Eat Day!

- TFG

Welcome To The All New Food Guy

Welcome to the all new Food Guy Eats blog. It's all food, all the time.

Check back soon for updated tales from a foodaholic.

"Without Food, We Fail as a Society"

- The Food Guy