Category: Food

Meat Boats

It’s time for some lockdown cooking! As with most of the world we’re eating every meal at home, and as a result my culinary skills have evolved to the next level. Today I’ll share a new recipe I’m calling meat boats!

Here’s what you need:

As you can see, we don’t skimp on quality in this house! As the name suggests this recipe requires a fifth ingredient as well, and you start by heating it in a pan:

I’m using 1/4 lb of 93% ground beef. That’s enough for one person, but the recipe is of course scalable if you want to host a dinner party. Cook the meat on high until it’s done, adding a trace (a few atoms is enough) of taco seasoning so as not to cloud the meaty taste.

While the beef is simmering heat the tortilla bowls in a microwave, then add a light dusting of cheese:

Carefully add the meat while it’s steaming hot to melt the cheese. Never forget taste is half visual, so make sure it looks good:

The last ingredient is the lettuce. Don’t overdo this; again you don’t want to overwhelm the beef experience:

And you’re done! Here’s the final restaurant-quality dish with a side of lime corn chips:

Looks delicious doesn’t it!?! But the truth is in the tasting and…

They got the thumbs up! They were beefy and dry, like little meat sandwiches. Easy to make; easier to eat.

Meat Boats: why not try them yourself?

Bricklaying

Like everyone else, we’re baking in lockdown! The first time was a bit of a failure and this weekend was attempt two.

Here’s the ingredients for kaiser rolls:

Activate the yeast, then toss most of the above into the mixer for 8 minutes:

Until it looks like this:

Then let it sit for an hour to rise:

Then form the rolls, which will then sit for another hour before cooking:

Then it was time to bake for 15 minutes at 425F. Here’s the before/after:

They look ok don’t they!?! But they were a bit dense and even – dare I say – rubbery.

They tasted like a scone and not a roll. And they got hard quickly. By the end of the day they were doorstops! KLS managed to salvage one for breakfast this morning but they’ll be squirrel food!

Next time she’ll try another recipe. Any suggestions?

Twelve Things We Saw At The Fair

We we to The Big E yesterday, the mega-fair one state over. We went with Jim and Joyce and saw many things! Here’s a sample.

That’s my view from the top of the McDonalds super slide. It was faster than I expected, and I momentarily broke my finger as I careened down out of control!

The butter sculpture was astonishingly vertical and we were skeptical it was made entirely of butter. The child was about a meter tall.

Tater-tot cosplay.

It turns out Pez are made only a few hours from where we live! They had a shop in one of the state pavilions selling a mind-boggling array of the things. If I actually liked Pez I may have bought some…

This is a cute horsey-thing with fuzzy ears like mine. If you look closely at his eye though, you’ll see the spark of madness.

The winning pumpkin was over 590 kg! If you hollowed it out I could easily have fit inside. Imagine carrying this to the fair??!

Here I am eating my lunch. It was great, but the second one I got was even better! In addition to this, between us we ate baked potatoes, lobster rolls, finnish pancakes, mac and cheese, lemon ice and cream puffs.

Joyce spent time watching horseplay in the arena. While she did this we walked through the pavilion of hucksters selling endless ‘as-seen-on-TV’ stuff. It’s a fair staple I can even remember from the fairs of my youth.

Speaking of memories, the last fair ride I actually rode was one of these. It was a couple of years back and made me horribly sick. I rode nothing yesterday, but I still love watching all of them. (Lest you think I’m a chicken I’ll remind you of this!)

The art on some of the rides was next-level strange. The one on the top left was taken from a funhouse attraction that was the thing of nightmares. The top right was a zombie themed ghost train that I probably should have ridden 🙂

Some fool making a fool of himself…

In the afternoon the rain came in and ultimately we had to leave. But it was a full and tiring day and – as with last year – we didn’t see everything! I guess we’ll have to return again one time 🙂