Kent D

eh...haven't had any reports here in Kansas, sounds like it's safe for me to eat some...oh, wait, I don't eat spinach, and apparently, it's not a very good time to start eating spinach.

My Momma always browned off a roast on Saturday night, and dropped it into the crock pot on low with a pack of onion soup and 2 cups of water...and Sunday after church we'd have a nice, well-done chunk of roast beef with some rather tasty gravy (after she'd stir in some Kitchen Bouquet and some cornstarch). I, on the other hand, eliminate the browning, drop the roast, the soup mix, a cup of wine and a handful of chopped carrot and celery, some bay leaf and cracked black pepper into the slowwwww cooker, and I cook it to a nice, pink medium. Oh, and I like to add a 1/2 package of onion soup mix to my wheat bread dough, and make rolls. Great to soak up the gravy...

Aside from my nearly-yearly giant muffaleta for the Super Bowl party or Mardi Gras, just dripping with olive relish, nothing beats a height-of-summer BLT with garden-fresh tomatoes, one nice leaf of lettuce, and a hearty smear of Mayo-naise....on toasted Wonder Bread.

I'm thinking of reviving my Oktoberfest "thing" that I've held for my family in year's past, but I'm not going to be tied to "authentic German" food, because my "German" food has always had a more continental influence. Some of it's Austrian, some of it's Hungarian, some of it's Polish...and no one ever complains. But I'll probably smoke and grill some weisswurst and bratwurst, maybe make a pork roast with mushroom gravy, might haul out the spaetzle maker or just make some potatoes with paprika and onion (my spaetzle generally's a disaster, anyway), maybe an apple cake or a ricotta cheesecake. It's more about celebrating fall, having a nice German beer or wine, and eating way too much. From a recipe standpoint, I'm not much help, because even when I have one, I just don't stick to it. And our local German restaurant here in Wichita, Imbiss Grille, has donner kebab on the menu, so it's spread to even here.

Everything I eat is a nasty little habit. But ever since my neighborhood burger stand - Terri's Take Out - with it's fried onion double burgers and homemade potato chips closed, when my wife's out of the house and I feel I need to be bad, I go around the corner to Taco Rio, a long-standing family-owned local restaurant for the #3 combo - taco, burrito, and beef enchilada, with rice and green chili sauce. I eat the taco and burrito for lunch, and then put the enchilada on a bed of rice and eat that for supper. But you can find me at any number of all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants on a weekly basis. Gotta have my black pepper chicken, gotta have my CiCi's Spinach Alfredo pizza...

I regret EVERY cookbook I don't buy, but I've tried to keep my purchases down to a minimum - I've run out of shelves to store them. There was a really neat Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook at a booksale held here in the hospital a few months ago, and I said "Well, maybe next time", and the next time it wasn't there, and now they've changed book vendors. But you just KNOW that they'll still be carrying copies of "Walter, the Farting Dog"...

Anything in the room not designated as "for a fee" and not a permanent part of the room (mugs, glasses, Gideon Bibles, etc.) is fair game, especially if it comes up with room service, like condiments. Obviously, I don't take the single-brew packets of room coffee, but the individually-wrapped plastic cups are handy for in-the-car use. I still can't believe when we're staying in a room that has a couple 1-liter bottles of water sitting there, with a tag that says "for your convenience, this water can be drank for only $3.00/bottle". It's not even chilled, and I can walk 30 feet down to a machine and buy a bottle of the same stuff chilled for $1.25. Or drink from the tap for FREE! I figure if they can mark up water to that price, I'm going to help myself to some pens and notepads... And in a related note, I heard on the news the other day 3 guys walked into a Taco Bell with 3 trash bags fulls of sauce packets they had taken and stored in their car trunk, and then they felt guilty and brought them back.

Shame they don't do that anymore -- years ago, when I was in high school and working my first job at McD's, although it wasn't listed on the menu, we DID have a grilled cheese -- we just reversed the bun, stuck 2 slices of cheese between the bun, and put the whole shebang in the regular bun toaster. Really good sandwich, and we charged $0.35 for it. But now, something like that would probably be too complicated for the kitchen staff -- they often can't comprehend simple directions like "NO KETCHUP, PLEASE!".

For bake sales, I invent an interesting bread dough, portion it off in oven-safe soup bowls, and bake off a run of "snack-sized" bread loaves. Slice them, wrap them up in some nice cellophane with a tie-on tag to identify the type of loaf. I've made multi-grain, rye, jalepeno cheese, freckle bread, tomato basil...and they never last.

Well, since this thread's in Adventures in Eating, I'll forego the cracks taken at minivans and Cracker Barrel (which despite being a chain always seems to feed my family well at a reasonable price, and my wife happens to like their carrot cake), and just say that finding a good non-chain family restaurant is a crapshoot no matter where you are. Most of them don't have a web presence that can be easily researched outside of sites like this and roadfood.com, and if you ask locally, you will likely be referred to whatever chain restaurant is nearby. We were vacationing in Branson, MO, last weekend for Labor Day (not something I'll do again soon - it makes California traffic look tame...), and we wanted to avoid the chains and "all-you-can-eat" buffets which clog Branson like a syringe of lard to the jugular, so we just drove around...and around...and finally found this Danna's BBQ and Burgers. I figured any place with a couple Highway Patrol cars parked there had to be good, right? And it was good, incredibly good. My daughters both finished off their patty melts (on Jewish Rye, with sauteed onions, swiss cheese, and thousand island dressing) my wife had a well-made 1/3 lb burger with onion rings, and I had the most tender pulled-pork sandwich I have ever eaten, smoky and rich with piggy goodness. After I got home, I did some research and found a couple published reviews on-line that called it the best pulled pork in the Ozarks. I wouldn't dispute that claim. But if you're just passing through a city, without local knowledge and resources, you're always going to be at the mercy of whatever's located within sight of the interstate. But after all, traveling is an adventure, and what doesn't kill you or make you deathly ill makes for an amusing anectdote on e-gullet, doesn't it?

Ahh...I shouldn't poke around here before dinner -- I'm drooling in my keyboard again. I'd try to make some at home, but I'm the only one who likes pepperoni, so I'd have to eat the whole batch myself...now, wait a minute...

Well, the worst thing about black olives is you can't use them to make a martini, or at least not one you'd want to drink. But you got to have some black olives on the Thanksgiving relish tray, or the kids won't have anything to jam on their fingertips and wave about while they wait for dinner to be ready. I still think black olives have their place (on top of pizza, as part of my olive relish for muffaleta sandwiches, etc.), but I really prefer big, nasty green olives for salads, snacking, or the aforementioned martinis, dirty with a nice splash of brine.

Now what would be silly would be for the chefs/kitchen staff to dress like the maitre d. Or for everyone on staff to wear tight half-t-shirts and short shorts...or fuzzy purple dinosaur costumes. At our hospital, the cleaning staff wear the same scrub shirts that most of the doctors wear, and no one ever gets the two confused. Well, hardly anyone...

I've been making tomatillo sauce for a while, using tomatillos I grow in my garden. Once you plant a couple plants, they spread across the garden each succesive year, so I cook them up, pour them in a ziplock freezer bag, drop them in the freezer, and thaw out and finish the sauce when needed. I generally use a habanero for the pepper (1/2 seeded for the weaker members of my family) and the juice of a lime, along with garlic, salt, and cilantro. And don't forget fruit salsas or chutneys with those peppers...and jerk marinades...

Out here on the lonesome prairie, when we go into our supermarket, where we buy much of our produce and produce accesories, right next to the corn display is a big barrel to shuck and clean your corn, for those who don't want corn hair all over their kitchen. They almost "encourage" you to inspect your corn in this way, and I take advantage of it. I don't care if worms like the best corn, I don't want them munching on my ears before I do. yecch.

Pretty boring -- left-over hail-stones in a ziplock bag from our spring hailstorm that got us a new roof, and most of a 5-lb bag of yellow corn grits, which I never seem to get around to cooking.

It might be easier to ask what DON'T I dip my fries in, which would probably be...strawberry jelly. Depending on where I'm eating them and what condiments are available, I prefer, in order: 1) mayo 2) tartar sauce 3) mustard 4) barbecue sauce 5) white gravy 6) cheese sauce 7) a ketchup/hot sauce combination 8) ordinary ketchup, maybe with some mustard swirled in for color/texture My daughters saw me poking my fries into my hamburgers with mayo, and now my hamburgers are rendered dry well before the fries run out. I have to keep extra mayo on hand to replenish my hamburger.

Well, the first scrambled eggs I made were green (a couple drops of blue food coloring mixed in when I was 7) -- didn't seem to affect the taste any. But when anyone in my family makes scrambled eggs, we make them "Mom's way", also known as "Christmas Brunch Way" -- Crack about 2 eggs per adult into the Kitchen-aid mixer and let them beat for a few minutes. Add some salt and seasoned pepper. Add about a cup of shredded cheddar cheese and beat some more. Cube in 4-8 oz. cream cheese. Melt butter in large skillet (we use about 1/2 stick for a dozen eggs) over low heat. Pour in eggs. Slowly push eggs to center from sides of pan until done but moist -- don't rush this step, it'll take a while for the sausage gravy to thicken and the biscuits to bake(Oh, did I mention you should be making some sausage gravy, too?). Serve with hash brown casserole, bisquits and gravy, fruit cocktail, and lots of coffee.

I think I might have eaten in the same place when visiting Little Rock in 1999 while my wife was hospitalized down there. My mother and I were looking for someplace "different" to eat (as we had already eaten in every chain restaurant across from the hospital) and stumbled upon a barbecue restaurant in what appeared to be a residential area. It was called something like L&M or L&R barbecue. We walked in around Sunday lunchtime, and were greeted by two lovely people who when taking our order pushed us away from ordering the brisket and encouraged us to order the pork ribs. They WERE quite good, and the guy behind the counter also tried to suggest some "special" lemonade, which I can only assume must have contained the local equivalent of moonshine or rocket fuel. I ordered a Coke instead, which seemed to disappoint him. But they were friendly and welcoming to two Yankee travellers from up-river. Oh, and the walls were covered with laminated Polaroid photos of jazz musicians who must have come through town, and a laminated portrayal of the Last Supper with a black Jesus and his 12 black disciples. I wasn't going to correct them...

Absolutely no...

I can't remember the name of the first "anchor" restaurant that they've attracted to the Riverwalk development, but reading the words "mechanical bull" and "boot-shaped mugs" does not bode well for upscale dining in downtown Doodah. Wichita's a really mixed-message place -- they want to close down Cowtown Historical Museum for lack of interest while trying to lure another cowboy-themed bar/restaurant to anchor their dining and entertainment development. I guess it's to target all that convention business they're hoping to attract.

I'm not (too) ashamed to admit that I have upon occasion dined at the local CiCi's Pizza. I'm partial to the spinach alfredo pizza, which is significant because before I discovered it at CiCi's, you couldn't pay me to eat spinach in any identifiable form. After a few cracks at it, I've made my own version at home with homemade wheat crust, alfredo sauce, and chopped spinach, that my family likes even more. And there is an actual (not hypothetical) Pizza Depot in Wichita about 4 blocks from my house, but it's a neighborhood pizza place owned by a kid in his twenties who makes pizzas using those rotating countertop pizza cookers -- 2 9-inch pies for $8. Good pizza, but he might need some help with his honey-whole wheat crust -- it just doesn't rise like it should. But we're hoping he's sucessful, because there just aren't many independent pizza operations.

I heard "Mr. Wolf", and immediately flashed to "Pulp Fiction", but I was just watching it last weekend. Maybe he's hoping with a nod to Tarantino that a certain director might option one of Tony's novels for a movie project. I'm hoping for "A Cook's Tour"...

I've got one, but it just hangs next to the sink -- I keep forgetting it's there, and I've got the bacon fat burns to show for it.

No pics, because this was years ago when I was young, carefree and living off my parents at a major midwestern unversity that I somehow got kicked out of soon after.... After it's been determined that no pizza places are still open and delivering, brown 1 package of ground chuck (at least cook most of it through...). Sprinkle on it, say...a cup of flour. Wonder if you should have drained off all that grease. Stir the flour into the grease. Sprinkle on some ground black pepper and garlic salt. Add whatever's left in the milk carton (wonder if you should have smelled it, first). If it's too thick, thin it down with some beer. Serve over toasted leftover hotdog buns. Surprisingly, there were no leftovers, and no one got sick.