Mysstwalker

I dont normally comment a lot on posts, but I am so excited to see this blog? I had my gastric bypass in January of this year and so far am about 90 pounds down. I know the feeling of nothing working, thats why I eventually took the plunge too. Maybe I can get some fresh ideas from this blog. I am on the total protein and nothing else diet from hell till 75% of my excess weight is gone, so eagerly looking forward to you cooking!

Rachel, have your son in California check the Chick Fil A website, we have them out here in Cali too! I have two of them about 20 minutes away, thats what we had for a quick convenient dinner last week. I had missed it so badly after I left Texas and was overjoyed that they were coming here!

Racheld, you were so sweet to me in my first post about pot luck horror, this unfortunately TRUE story is for you! The Saga of Mystery Meat Mountain I like meat. Lots of people like meat. What I fail to understand, is how some people can be so CRUEL to meat! Cooking it well-done, pairing it with items that are just so fundamentally opposite that they risk the world imploding from some kind of protein-based paradox. My mother cooks. I cannot say she cooks well, about the best I can say is that I survived my childhood. Now, as my parents are aging, I am partial caretaker for them, and reside with them and my daughter. Most of the time I do the cooking. This has two benefits.... 1) I get to cook, and 2) My mother does NOT. The story I am going to relate to you took place last Easter. Unfortunately, the horror of it has not receded from memory....I'm still waiting. My mother decided to have meatloaf for Easter dinner. Great, I love meatloaf! A well-made meatloaf is yummy, wholesome, and makes awesome sandwiches. I was foolish enough to think this dinner would go all right, even though a small voice inside was screaming "It can go SOOOOOO wrong, RUN WHILE YOU CAN!!!!". I came home from taking my grandmother her Easter basket, and my mother was already in the kitchen. Most of you out there would find a sense of comfort, of happiness and well-being upon finding your mother in the kitchen making a holiday dinner. Around this house, its a feeling of foreboding, and anticipatory nausea. She came into the living room, sat down with the rest of us, and we relaxed. I asked her about the meatloaf, what she was putting in it. She proceeded to reel off the following list of ingredients that were part of the meatloaf. -- 5 (YES! I said FIVE) pounds of hamburger -- half a box of Cheezit crackers -- a jar of mild salsa -- two cans of mushroom stems and pieces -- half a package of provolone cheese -- ketchup -- a chopped onion -- italian breadcrumbs -- worchestershire sauce -- some chopped green spanish olives with the pimentos stuffed in them -- and....for a lovely glistening surface, and a touch of sweetness....a few packets of Sweet N' Low I was speechless for a moment, just taking in the list of ingredients, but something was scratching at the back of my mind, a thought that she had left out something important. Then, it hit me......no EGGS! No binding agent, nothing. I asked my mom "Did'nt you put in any eggs????" She stared at me for a moment, then said "oh NO, I forgot the eggs!" She then proceeded to get up out of her chair. I asked her where she was going, she said she was going to go add eggs to the meatloaf. Only one problem, the meatloaf had already been in the oven for 35 minutes! I told her NOOOOOOOO if you add them now, you are going to end up with something looking like a large pile of chunky cat barf!! I told her, its too late, we are just going to have to see how things come out. The timer went off....90 minutes later. Yes, she cooked this monstrosity for TWO hours. Mmmmmm home cooking....NOT!!! It was taken from the oven and placed on the table. She didnt put it in a dish to bake it, she covered a cookie sheet with foil, and formed the mound of ick into a large blob. Of course, being the person I am, I immediately christened this meat.....item....as MYSTERY MEAT MOUNTAIN!! Also known as a UMO. UMO being an Unidentified Meat Object. It deserved both names. She used a spoon to cut into the loaf of mystery, and it promptly began to crumble and ooze across the cookie sheet. When you looked at its innards, you could see large chunks of greasy Cheezit crackers peeking out from alongside khaki-colored spanish olive bits. I went and sat back down and waited....... Dinner was plated up, and delivered to each diner with not much fanfare. On the plate, you could tell what the color theme for this Easter was.....RED!! My mother served a heaping helping of the Loaf of Mystery, which had a deep, lurid reddish tone to it. Alongside, a puddle of canned pork and beans, cold. And a couple of slices of tomato. It looked like dinner from the movie SAW. I tried the Loaf of Mystery. I chewed it, and it disentegrated in my mouth. The strangest thing was, there was a very strong taste of mustard to it....but no mustard was in it. There was no mustard in the house. How in the name of all that is holy can there be a mustard taste to this inedible abomination IF MUSTARD WAS NEVER AROUND IT?????? The Loaf of Mystery, Mystery Meat Mountain, the UMO, was borne outside by my daughter, and set out for the neighborhood crows to consume. They flocked about it, pecked at it, then flew away. As they flew, I thought I could make out words in the middle of the frantic cawing of the crows. It sounded like "It just goes to prove my point dear, those humans will eat anything! Let's head over to the dump for a decent tasty dinner." The Loaf languished in the yard for a day. The crows did not want it. The stray dogs and cats crossed to the other side of the street to avoid it. It was finally given the fitting burial it so richly deserved in the maw of the trash truck that released us from the horror of........MYSTERY MEAT MOUNTAIN!!! <cue creepy music crescendo)

Thank you for your kind welcome! Actually, she had made up this recipe, she said her kids LOVE it <gag>. Fortunately, tomorrow is my last day, as it was a temp contract position re-writing software tech manuals, so she can continue to torture the rest of the people there with her "specialities"....ahem. Anyway, I will be happy to keep posting, I have lots more stories, next time, I shall post "The Saga of Mystery Meat Mountain" and "Project CFB" also known as Project Chicken-Fried Bacon heh.

My first post, please be gentle with me Ok, we are had a potluck here at work today. Pretty good, I wandered into the breakroom with my dish of stuffed mushrooms, checked out the spread. Most of the stuff, pretty much run-of-the-mill items: fried chicken, spaghetti, different salads, sandwich tray, veggie tray, fruit and cheese tray, brownie bites, etc. There was a particularly excellent ham also. My coworker and I get down to the end of the table, and what to our hungry eyes does appear----a pan of enchiladas. They were the ones done with a white sour cream looking sauce….mmmm…love that kind. So, we decide to try them. I lift one from the pan, place it next to the other items on my plate, coworker does the same. We go back to our desks to eat and chat a bit. On the way there, a most peculiar aroma began assailing my nose, wafting up from one of the items on the plate…..hmmmm…..smells like…..like……fish or something! At my desk, upon closer inspection of said enchilada, I come to the realization that it is not a chicken enchilada, but a fish enchilada….ok, this doesn’t freak me out….that comes in just a moment. Looking intently at the enchilada, I start to notice some un-enchilada like qualities of the above-mentioned enchilada. The jack-o-lantern orange cheese-like matter on the top of the enchilada is not melted, but lays there in a semi-congealed blob of tepid goo. Underneath the cheese is the sauce….I slowly come to the realization that I have NEVER seen an enchilada sauce…with bits of PICKLE in it! Yes, you heard me right…BITS O' PICKLE! I bring my nose closer to the plate, and my olfactory senses start beating a hasty retreat, around to the back of my head, where they huddle, quivering and whimpering at the hairline of the back of my neck. I realize just what the sauce on the pseudo-enchiladas is……tartar sauce…yes, as much as it pains me to type it….tartar sauce. Such an inoffensive word, turned oh so terribly wrong with one swing of a spatula. I am curious now, I HAVE to know what is lurking in the middle of the corn tortilla of the pseudo-enchilada. I use my fork and try to cut it in half. It slowly gives up the fight, with a curious “crunching” sensation as my fork penetrates the outer shell of this monstrosity. I pull the halves apart and for the first time in my life, I am totally speechless. She made seafood enchiladas, topped with tartar sauce, a jar of Cheez Whiz, I don’t know why I had the optimism to expect anything different. She had gone to the local Long John Silvers, purchased fried fish fillets there…..cut them up in long pieces, coated them with a mixture of mayonnaise, dried onions and chili powder (information later provided quite readily by the cook, as I just HAD to find out what she did to make such FABULOUS enchiladas). So, here we are. LJS fish that is covered with a palate-wrenching combination of condiments rolled in corn tortillas, then covered with the contents of a jar of Best Foods tartar sauce, then a jar of Cheez Whiz covering it all. At the time of inspection, I didn’t know what lurked in these little rolls of anguish, and neither did my coworker. I turned to tell her what I had realized, just as she placed a forkful of it in her mouth. As much as I like this woman to work with, I just couldn’t bring myself to lunge at her, pry her jaws open and make her spit it out before the realization that her tastebuds would never be the same struck her. I watched, as she started to chew, then she stopped dead, looked at me, her face growing whiter by the second, then lunged for the trash can between our desks to spit out the horror. She then proceeded to take a napkin, and furiously wiped her tongue with it between drinks of water and soda till the taste went away. We might not have been super close friends before, but now that we have shared in the “experience”, I think we will be a team. United against bad, wrong, socially inedible, scrape your tongue and blow chunks, bad, nasty potluck food made by people who OBVIOUSLY don’t have a clue.