133 replies to this topic

[Shelby]

Ok, you had me at hello (what movie is that from? ;) )

Anyone that says the following makes me swoon:


"I think I spontaneously broke out into "the robot" the first time I tried it."


My mom is coming to visit in the next few weeks and I'm going to make the bacon jam with the poppers. I guess I should make a batch first, though, to make sure I can do it as well as you do.

[meredith h.]

This would be the perfect topic for my wife to chime in, because she has done a lot of different recipes that take very well to the freezer.

Mrs. Zee chiming in...my main motivation for freezer friendly dinners is pure laziness. I always say I'm a functional cook--I can keep us fed day to day, and it will taste decent, but there is a certain level of difficulty where I will just give up and run for takeout. Jerry is just the opposite, so things even out nicely when he's sweating it out over a vat of fried chicken while I'm sipping iced tea and slathering bacon jam on my second (which really means third) cheese biscuit.

Anyway, I have to meal plan to keep from wandering our local Price Chopper and weeping every night trying to figure out what to feed us. And it's just as easy to make two meatloaves or an extra pan of baked ziti and pop one in the freezer. Our supply of homemade veggie burgers has dwindled, so I'll probably make those sometime this week and freeze the rest for quick lunches or dinners down the road. Not fancy, but it's too darn hot and I'm not as nice as my chicken frying husband.

Thanks everyone for all the nice comments!

[Shelby]

This would be the perfect topic for my wife to chime in, because she has done a lot of different recipes that take very well to the freezer.

Mrs. Zee chiming in...my main motivation for freezer friendly dinners is pure laziness. I always say I'm a functional cook--I can keep us fed day to day, and it will taste decent, but there is a certain level of difficulty where I will just give up and run for takeout. Jerry is just the opposite, so things even out nicely when he's sweating it out over a vat of fried chicken while I'm sipping iced tea and slathering bacon jam on my second (which really means third) cheese biscuit.

Anyway, I have to meal plan to keep from wandering our local Price Chopper and weeping every night trying to figure out what to feed us. And it's just as easy to make two meatloaves or an extra pan of baked ziti and pop one in the freezer. Our supply of homemade veggie burgers has dwindled, so I'll probably make those sometime this week and freeze the rest for quick lunches or dinners down the road. Not fancy, but it's too darn hot and I'm not as nice as my chicken frying husband.

Thanks everyone for all the nice comments!

Very smart to plan ahead as you do.

I can't count the times I'd have to be at work by 6:30 a.m. and would plan on leaving by 4 p.m. which happened most of the time..but I'd still be pooped by the time we drove the 30 mins. home. I LOVED when I had a slow cooker going or something frozen to take out to make dinner relaxing..but fast.

[Zeemanb]

My mom is coming to visit in the next few weeks and I'm going to make the bacon jam with the poppers. I guess I should make a batch first, though, to make sure I can do it as well as you do.

The poppers might take a little practice if you're baking-challenged like me. If you bake much at it should be like making those pre-cut dough Tollhouse cookies, lol. Bacon jam is really, really easy, just takes a whlle. You hit a point where you think it will never get done, but it comes together nicely.

As far as Meredith's planning, it's a lifesaver. We both drive about 45 minutes each way to work, and when cooking starts to cut into our Bravo Network tv viewing, things start getting weird. She's great at coming up with ideas, and I don't think she's come up with anything yet I won't eat. The veggie burger experimentation has always paid off. For people who love pork, steak, etc., we manage to work ton of veggie dishes into our diet. Ooooh, another thing- Judy/moosnsqrl got us a panini maker for a wedding gift, and oh my that thing has come in a close third to the freezer and foodsaver as far as overall use.

I'm finishing up some coffee roasting, and reading some of Douglas Baldwin's sous vide book....may end up doing something new later in the week, who knows! This heat is just unreal, so sous vide is a pretty smart choice.

Plan number one for tomorrow is lunch at Lidia Bastianich's KC outpost.....

[FrogPrincesse]

As we all know, the real reason anyone ever has people over for dinner is because it forces them to finally clean the house.

So, so true!


Jerry- I am enjoying your blog tremendously. I love your exuberant style and endless enthusiasm. And your writing is just great.

Thanks for sharing your week with us, I can't wait to read what's next!

[Zeemanb]

As we all know, the real reason anyone ever has people over for dinner is because it forces them to finally clean the house.

So, so true!


Jerry- I am enjoying your blog tremendously. I love your exuberant style and endless enthusiasm. And your writing is just great.

Thanks for sharing your week with us, I can't wait to read what's next!

Thank you! I really enjoyed reading your blog as well...it gave me some good homework- my therapist has been helping me not to view people who have immediate access to fresh seafood as evil step-siblings, .

My wife and I were both dying over the Bali Hai photos....if I say we are "sushi people", what I really mean is we live for biggest, most non-traditional and fully loaded rolls we can find.

[chileheadmike]

Jerry, that pork looks incredible. Nicely done with the pollo too. Wish I was there. Mrs CHM and I are in Charleston, SC for the week so I can't keep up as much as I'd like. I'll post something over on the Southeast board about our adventures. I will say that I had the best steak of my life last night in a seafood town.

[Zeemanb]

Jerry, that pork looks incredible. Nicely done with the pollo too. Wish I was there. Mrs CHM and I are in Charleston, SC for the week so I can't keep up as much as I'd like. I'll post something over on the Southeast board about our adventures. I will say that I had the best steak of my life last night in a seafood town.

They serve steak at Cheddar's? OH! In your FACE!

Yeah, we both know our pork and that thing was just....indescribable. When you are in town, a stop by the Port Fonda trailer for tacos will be at the top of the list.

[Zeemanb]

And here is today’s breakfast...the last of the pork from Port Fonda.



I was thinking last night on the way home that it may seem crazy if it looks like I’m eating a ton of food if I’ve had gastric bypass. To put things in perspective, one of those pork tacos is definitely enough for my meal…protein is key once you’ve had surgery because with your limited capacity, it processes very slowly and provides the satiety that carbs won’t. I’m still a big guy, but at my lowest weight I’d taken off about 150-160 pounds. It has bumped up about 20 pounds in the last 2 years, which is definitely a concern, but can be corrected almost immediately when I reduce carbs and just get off of my sedentary butt. You lose a bunch of weight, start feeling good, shopping at “normal” clothing stores, and you get comfortable...which is very dangerous. And carbs are what we refer to as “slider foods”, because when you eat them they go through the new stomach almost immediately and you can just keep on eating. In a nutshell, that is how people who have had surgery put so much weight back on. The surgery is just a tool, it’s not a magic bullet, you still have to work like a fiend at staying healthy…you can just get full quicker and stay full longer than everyone else. Some bypass patients can’t eat certain things...spicy foods, rice, bread, etc. I can eat pretty much anything, but MY special little superpower is how my body processes large amounts of fat. It does NOT like excessive fat intake in a short period of time. That is a good thing, in my opinion, because it puts the brakes on in a very intense way when I’m chowing down on things I shouldn’t…potato chips, fries, ice cream. Frozen custard should have a skull and crossbones on it….three bites and “it” happens. “It” is an almost immediate blanket of sweat, flushed face, and a feeling like a very bad, nauseous hangover has been dropped on me. Lasts for about ten minutes. Ten crappy, crappy minutes. The cool thing is, if you’re ever curious about the fat content of different restaurant foods, I’m like the canary in the mineshaft. The first time I met my wife’s dad, he took us all to Outback Steakhouse (now we all know each other well enough where I can just say “MAN! You know I’m not going to Outback!). One bite of an Awesome Blossom and two bites of my burger, and my wife looks over at me and my face is white as cigarette ash and I’m just drenched in sweat. Good times.

Okay, THAT was not the tangent I was looking for...on the way into work I was thinking about that pork, which made me think about what MANY of us must experience in the workplace. Chances are, your perspective on food and dining makes you an alien. I’m not a preachy evangelist at all...to each his own foodwise, I know my priorities are skewed. I’m rockin’ the 2000 Chevy Blazer that has been paid off forever, and I didn’t fall for it when my realtor told me I could afford a bigger house than the one I bought...so I can enjoy a decent meal from time to time. Granted, if you want to get into a really good food discussion with me at the office, you’re signing on for a decent sized task. I’ll wear you down. And then word gets around, and it’s always “Oh, ask Jerry where to eat, he’s the food guy”. Which is fine, I mean, if it’s food, movies or making fun of Westboro Baptist Church which is just fifty miles down the road, I am IN as far as sharing what I know. But there is that very fine line.

Recommending restaurants to co-workers...it may have already been chronicled on this site, no idea, but for me it’s a sticky predicament. I don’t ever want to come off as snobbish, because I hate those people...they don’t really enjoy food, dining out is just another way they can feel the control they crave. BUT I also don’t want to screw over one of my favorite restaurants by sending over a doofus. OR, have them come back saying the food was a rip-off because it didn’t fill them up, or it sucked because they can’t believe three scallops cost them twenty bucks. I generally try to gauge who the person is foodwise, and at the very least point them to a place that is local and dependable. It’s usually not the place they heard me raving to a friend about, which can also raise questions or hurt feelings (because people treat work too much like life, and you are their spouse or sibling...another topic entirely). I’m just protective of the places I love...I want the people I send there to be the type of folks who like to build relationships with restaurants like I do, and when you work someplace where a “normal” lunch outing is gorging at the local Chinese Buffet or the 5.99 salad and breadsticks at Olive Garden, those people are rare. Again, to each his own, General Tso’s chicken is awesome, I love Red Lobster, but the bottom line is “value” is important to everyone but it also happens to have one of the most subjective definitions on earth. I “value” bringing my lunch to work 99% of the time and having one really nice weekend dinner at one of my favorite joints a couple of times per month, vs. an array of $5-$8 lunchtime chowfests that probably end up costing about as much as my one dinner. Anyway, just throwing all of that out there. Rambling to impress myself at how I’ve written this much without letting Profanity Jerry off the chain...

[patti]

Love this blog, love your writing, love your attitude and I would love the profanity, but I understand that you have to show restraint. I had a vertical sleeve gastrectomy 10 months ago, so I am also very interested in that aspect of your eating and cooking and LIVING.

[gfweb]

Right on about all the crappy lunches (and dinners) you can blow money on. So not worth it.

[Zeemanb]

patti- Thanks for the encouragement, what I'll probably end up doing after the carpal tunnel dies down next week, is spoof myself over on my blog by writing one of the same food reviews in my native tongue.

gfweb- It's actually pretty amazing, and I'm assuming not limited to the midwest...a ton of bad food that costs less than eight bucks makes it great food. And I obviously LOVE trashy, fatty food, but geez....

Oh man, it is hot out today. Normally the only thing that would get me out of the office in this crap is if our new Trader Joe's was running a two for one special on jars of Toffee Coated Human Souls. BUUUTTT due diligence beckons....off to Lidia's in a minute...come on Blazer, I know you have it in you.

[gfweb]

When I look at the proportion of wages that landscapers and secretaries and tradesmen spend on take out lunches I am always amazed. They must work about 3/4 day a week just to feed themselves lunch. And its not even that good and its not even a fun experience like going out to dinner or happy hour might be.

[moosnsqrl]

Jerry, that pork looks incredible. Nicely done with the pollo too. Wish I was there. Mrs CHM and I are in Charleston, SC for the week so I can't keep up as much as I'd like. I'll post something over on the Southeast board about our adventures. I will say that I had the best steak of my life last night in a seafood town.

That pork *IS* incredible. And, for the record, Nick and I lobbied him to have you and Breann (sp?) join us for the first meal in the tin can. So now you know who your real friends in KC are

[sadistick]

Really enjoying this blog thus far.

Though I would encourage you to treat us to some of your KC BBQ, I understand if you feel it is too 'overdone' (the subject, not the Q!) - I am preparing for our new house and my inevitable (though yet to be purchased) smoker (though perhaps I may just settle for a Gas BBQ (Napolean - purchased) and a Webber Kettle charcoal grill), and I can use all the insight I can get!

Cheers.

[Zeemanb]

Really enjoying this blog thus far.

Though I would encourage you to treat us to some of your KC BBQ, I understand if you feel it is too 'overdone' (the subject, not the Q!) - I am preparing for our new house and my inevitable (though yet to be purchased) smoker (though perhaps I may just settle for a Gas BBQ (Napolean - purchased) and a Webber Kettle charcoal grill), and I can use all the insight I can get!

Cheers.

Oh, no problem at all sharing some BBQ info. You just know how it can go around here...far less involved conversations can result in a “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” free for all, lol. So everything from this point forward is just in MY experience and opinion, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, caveat, caveat, caveat....

Basically, everyone has to answer questions about how much will I cook, how often will I cook, and how much do I want to spend, for themselves. I know there are tons and tons of BBQ discussions on eGullet, but I can absolutely give you a brief synopsis of how I do it and have done it for about ten or so years. I own three Weber Smokey Mountain bullet smokers. I rarely ever have to fire up more than one to accomplish what I need for the groups I feed (if necessary I’ll prepare longer cooking meats like brisket and pork butt the day before, and then do ribs, chicken, sausage, etc. the day of). I know people with $2000 Hasty Bakes who only fire them up once or twice per year, but they look awfully cool out on the patio, so again, the sky is the limit if you’re wanting to get a cool rig. If I were going to go all out and buy a larger rig it would probably be a Good One “Rodeo”.

If I were going to tell you “hey, buy this one”, I’d recommend the newer 22.5 inch Weber Smokey Mountain. More space, same principle. You can get them for around $350 on Amazon, and with virtualweberbullet.com you’ve got a massive amount of tested and trustworthy information specific to Weber bullets. I don’t grill very often, but I do have the Weber 22.5 inch grill which I’ve enjoyed when I’ve needed it. I don’t use gas grills, probably never will, just the stubborn curmudgeon in me.

When you start smoking meat, go with chicken and country style ribs (thickly sliced Boston butt/pork shoulder)...play around with rubs, burn it, under cook it, destroy it, just take time to learn about how your specific smoker retains heat, how often you need to add coals, whether you like water in the water pan or do like a lot of us and just fill it with sand (there’s an angels/head of a pin topic). Use more wood, less wood, see which wood you like...most of the time I just use a combo of hickory and either apple or cherry. Once you get comfortable with how it all works and start cooking edible meat, practice on ribs when you find them on sale for your short cooks, and pork butt for the longer cooks. Leave brisket alone for a while, that is just my advice. It’s way easier to make a horrible brisket than it is a moderately just-okay pork butt.

Berkshire pork butt is a favorite thing of mine to smoke, and now that my butcher will get brisket points for me I only cook burnt ends...no sliced brisket. In my opinion, a proper burnt end is the height of bbq, so I don’t want to use smoker space on brisket flats. I’m happy to cook ribs, but I don’t like to buy ribs. I’m pretty anti-sauce with my bbq, and I know I’m in a pretty small minority there. And if what I cooked was ever only as good as the best restaurant at this point...I would be absolutely inconsolable.

With bbq, it’s all about your personal taste and it takes a ton of practice to dial it in. But once you get used to it, it’s remedial-level easy. Total muscle memory. No clue if all of that even approaches valuable info for you, but if you ever have any general or specific questions I’m always happy to share how I do it.

[weinoo]

And every now and then, even one of us city folk (when you have a friend with a backyard in Brooklyn) can smoke up some decent ribs on a good old fashioned Weber kettle ...

[Zeemanb]

And every now and then, even one of us city folk (when you have a friend with a backyard in Brooklyn) can smoke up some decent ribs on a good old fashioned Weber kettle ...

Yeah, I actually started by using an offset configuration on the same Weber Kettle I still own. Good BBQ is definitely possible on a Kettle...and you can probably figure out by using one if BBQ is enjoyable enough for you personally to take the leap get a smoker. I just tell EVERYONE to get a smoker right out of the chute, because when garage sale season starts....boy....my collection grows exponentially, .

[Zeemanb]

Man, when they expect you to work at work, that is just outrageous. Very long day learning an antiquated mainframe system from someone who retires next Friday. We were planning on BLT's with some nice heirloom tomatoes I got at the market this weekend, but we realized...no thawed bacon. Yeah, we could have done a quick thaw, but then...who wants to fry that stuff in this heat?

Sooooo...here is some reality dining for you tonight. And later I'll come back and post everything from lunch today.

Perfectly ripe Crum's heirloom tomato and Farm to Market Grains Galore sandwiches, and a "fresh from the freezer" bowl of chickpea and kale soup. The soup is fantastic, it has whole wheat shell pasta and ground turkey in it as well. Huge contender for precious freezer space We have eaten a ton of fresh kale this season, I just love it. Hey, I'll bet a little dollop of bacon jam on top of some slow cooked kale wouldn't suck.







Hanging out in the cool basement, watching the best of what Bravo Network has to offer after a long day. I want to star on a Bravo show where I live with Jeff Lewis from Flipping Out and all we do is try to think of something to say that makes the other person cry. That would be the most brutal show ever. Back in a little while with some Lidia's. I have to go sit under a tree like Hazel from Cannery Row, and think about what direction to take with an evening meal to come. I can either do a REALISTIC Friday dinner where we jockey for position on who is choosing and pickng up the carryout, OR I could cook something I've never tried before.

[heidih]

Count me in the kale fan club. I am curious about the freezing of that soup. So often I hear people say that freezing soups containing pasta results in major mush upon reheating. Do you purposely undercook the pasta, or has your experience been different? As to the bacon issue on the BLTs- I always have some sort of salami product in the fridge and find it a nice stand in.

[meredith h.]

Count me in the kale fan club. I am curious about the freezing of that soup. So often I hear people say that freezing soups containing pasta results in major mush upon reheating. Do you purposely undercook the pasta, or has your experience been different?

Hi, Heidi--that was actually an oops moment on my part. I usually cook the pasta separately, but I just dumped it in that last batch without thinking. It was definitely softer than I prefer, but not too mushy--maybe because it was wheat pasta it held up better?

[Zeemanb]

Had a great lunch earlier today. I had to fit Lidia's in at some point because other than the great food and service, it's pretty much where I began the part time job of serious dining over ten years ago. Feels weird to realize I've been eating there for that long. It was the first place where I became a "regular" and began my habit of having a go-to server, and usually a backup go-to server for anyplace that has entered my "rotation". Lidia's will always be in the rotation. Way before I was married and still had a couple of Manhattans before dinner and however much wine I could afford with dinner, I really took it to the wall eating there almost every weekend. Awesome credit card debt seed money. After I had gastric bypass I didn't go back for a long time, and by the time I had dinner there again I'd also quit drinking. I figured, oh great, they will have forgotten me and I'll be a pariah now that I'm not plunking down the wine money. Open arms, a warm welcome back from many familiar faces, like I'd still been there every weekend, great table on a weekend evening. Gracious and fun folks.

Probably the best memory I have is from the night my grandfather got to meet his all-time, numero uno food hero of all time...Mario Batali. Mario was in town for a promotional dinner and we took him down there for Father's Day. Grandpa passed away a couple of years ago, and that story still comes up when the family gets together. Way more heartwarming but not nearly as funny as the first time I met Mario....it was back in the Po days, and I remember saying to him "Yeah, I think my mom is still in there", when he was trying to force the bathroom door open because he didn't think anyone was in there.

A very distant second greatest Lidia's memory was a meal my mom and I had up in the loft, hosted by the queen herself. Lidia told a funny story about sneakng a very large stash of fresh white truffles into the country that morning. Then she took those same truffles around the room to show everyone as the servers sat a plate of risotto in front of each of us. After the risotto was in place she walked around to every diner and shaved the white truffles down onto the warm rice. She used an obscenely decadent amount of truffles on each dish, and it pretty much ruined me for truffles for life. The all-encompassing funk, like a wild rotting carcass in the very best way possible, it was sooooo far over the top. And the smell freaked my mom out. So I got to eat hers too. And I also got to eat her foie gras. Big points for mom. Mario kicking in the door on her, and ending up minus two courses in Lidia's loft.

I probably don't have to say much as far as explaining who Lidia Bastianich is, or the ties that she and her unlikable son Joe have to Mario and a good sized New York restaurant empire. Lidia's Kansas City is modeled after Becco. Upscale casual, and it is located in an old freighthouse building in the crossroads art district.

In all the years I've been dining at Lidia's, I've probably eaten lunch there less than ten times. Solid menu. Met a friend to catch up over some grub and maximize the number of photos....







Bread service- all made in-house...




Their famous Caesar Salad, truly my favorite version ever...




Most pointless photo ever, but very tasty potato leek soup with saffron broth...




The pasta trio...servers roam the floors with big pans of this all you can eat Lidia's favorite. The housemade filled pasta today was beef, pork and chicken agnolotti, cavatappi with heirloom tomatoes, and housemade fettucine with one of the cured Italian meats I'm not remembering and some other stuff....




The lunch entree special of the day was this beautiful piece of barramundi over an heirloom tomato and cucumber salad...




I'm not a big dessert person, and to be honest, for long time the desserts at Lidia's were JUST okay. With Danica Pollard in the pastry kitchen now, the desserts are dynamite. A perfect mix of tradition and creativity. When it's available, her basil ice cream is just the best stuff.

Dessert today was a lemon cake (texture more like a biscuit) with blueberry jam in the middle, fresh blueberries, orange blossom ice cream and cardamom streusel...






And that is IT for Tuesday. Hoping to pull off a fieldtrip of sorts tomorrow afternoon if we can both skip out of the office and are emotionally prepared to handle one of my favorite stretches of KC.

[Pierogi]

I “value” bringing my lunch to work 99% of the time and having one really nice weekend dinner at one of my favorite joints a couple of times per month, vs. an array of $5-$8 lunchtime chowfests that probably end up costing about as much as my one dinner.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOO true ! And what so many people don't realize.

When I was working at any one of my many soul-sucking, pour-all-my-being-into-the-work-for-little-reward jobs (which I *thought* was building my career...but that's a digression) and being too drained and burnt to cook at night, I never realized how much money I was spending "popping into TJ's for one of their prepared meals for lunch or dinner (or both)" or "swinging by Pavilions on the way home for something for dinner" or "running over to Del Taco/Carl's Jr./Taco Bell for lunch". Or how many empty CALORIES I was ingesting.

Until I stopped and forced myself to cook something each night (no matter how simple) and take leftovers for lunch. Suddenly I had walkin' around money I didn't before, and I dropped 10 pounds without even trying. It was amazing.

[Pierogi]

....I can either do a REALISTIC Friday dinner where we jockey for position on who is choosing and pickng up the carryout, OR I could cook something I've never tried before.

*I* vote for something you've never cooked before !

[gfweb]

I “value” bringing my lunch to work 99% of the time and having one really nice weekend dinner at one of my favorite joints a couple of times per month, vs. an array of $5-$8 lunchtime chowfests that probably end up costing about as much as my one dinner.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOO true ! And what so many people don't realize.
I never realized how much money I was spending "popping into TJ's for one of their prepared meals for lunch or dinner (or both)" or "swinging by Pavilions on the way home for something for dinner" or "running over to Del Taco/Carl's Jr./Taco Bell for lunch". Or how many empty CALORIES I was ingesting.

Until I stopped and forced myself to cook something each night (no matter how simple) and take leftovers for lunch. Suddenly I had walkin' around money I didn't before, and I dropped 10 pounds without even trying. It was amazing.

Me too. Except the weight loss part.

[Zeemanb]

Pierogi- Good point, apathy and ease are big traps. I know a lot of people who simply cut out sugar sodas and lost a lot of weight. I don't know what it's like in the rest of the country or the world, but it's pretty shocking what people (including myself prior to the stapling) consider a portion size. We've got some home cookin' type restaurants that are just wild, and of course The Cheesecake Factory has more than one location. The scariest thing....people walking out WITHOUT to-go containers, lol. Quantity equals quality....you know how that goes.

I'm torn, but I probably should attempt something other than just the chicken on Sunday. I have a tri-tip and a slab of beef ribs in the freezer. May consult the sous vide gods and give it some thought....

[Shelby]

Man, when they expect you to work at work, that is just outrageous. Very long day learning an antiquated mainframe system from someone who retires next Friday. We were planning on BLT's with some nice heirloom tomatoes I got at the market this weekend, but we realized...no thawed bacon. Yeah, we could have done a quick thaw, but then...who wants to fry that stuff in this heat?

Sooooo...here is some reality dining for you tonight. And later I'll come back and post everything from lunch today.

Perfectly ripe Crum's heirloom tomato and Farm to Market Grains Galore sandwiches, and a "fresh from the freezer" bowl of chickpea and kale soup. The soup is fantastic, it has whole wheat shell pasta and ground turkey in it as well. Huge contender for precious freezer space We have eaten a ton of fresh kale this season, I just love it. Hey, I'll bet a little dollop of bacon jam on top of some slow cooked kale wouldn't suck.







Hanging out in the cool basement, watching the best of what Bravo Network has to offer after a long day. I want to star on a Bravo show where I live with Jeff Lewis from Flipping Out and all we do is try to think of something to say that makes the other person cry. That would be the most brutal show ever. Back in a little while with some Lidia's. I have to go sit under a tree like Hazel from Cannery Row, and think about what direction to take with an evening meal to come. I can either do a REALISTIC Friday dinner where we jockey for position on who is choosing and pickng up the carryout, OR I could cook something I've never tried before.

I just love Jeff Lewis. If I wasn't married....and he didn't bat for the other team, I know we'd be together forever.

[johnnyd]

Love your blog, zeemanb.
Engaging writing, compelling life story, abundant dry wit and necessarily appropriate culinary obsessions. I'm on board.

This is literally one of the easiest and most cost effective food-nerd hobbies you can get into. And once you roast your own, that's it for you. So be warned.

I'm screwed.

[Zeemanb]

Shelby- LOL...oh man, we love him too. As far as food goes with that crew, THERE is a fine example of excessive fast food dining. It always cracks me up to see any kind of celebrity who I assume to be too rich or above such things just chowing down on some Taco Bell. And when you find out the guilty pleasures of your favorite local James Beard award chefs...you don't feel so bad about your yearly journey to Red Lobster. Chefs eat real garbage, and I love that with all my heart.

johnnyd- It's The Matrix red pill decision here man...if you start roasting your own, it is the end your coffee reality. An Extinction Level Event resides in that popcorn popper. And thanks very much for the compliments, it is genuinely appreciated.

[Shelby]

Shelby- LOL...oh man, we love him too. As far as food goes with that crew, THERE is a fine example of excessive fast food dining. It always cracks me up to see any kind of celebrity who I assume to be too rich or above such things just chowing down on some Taco Bell. And when you find out the guilty pleasures of your favorite local James Beard award chefs...you don't feel so bad about your yearly journey to Red Lobster. Chefs eat real garbage, and I love that with all my heart.

johnnyd- It's The Matrix red pill decision here man...if you start roasting your own, it is the end your coffee reality. An Extinction Level Event resides in that popcorn popper. And thanks very much for the compliments, it is genuinely appreciated.

I know, right? And, God forbid, whoever he sends after the El Pollo Loco better get enough sauce!