Yum?

I normally like to keep a bag of those Tennessee Pride mini sausage biscuits in the freezer. So few foods from my adolescence and early twenties have remained palatable in my Pretentious Hipster Foodie Douchebag adulthood, but the little nuclear sausage biscuits still have.

The serving size is just right, and it's easy to pull out a two-pack, toss them on a paper plate, stick 'em in the microwave for 45 seconds, and it's a quick brekkie at my desk while blogging or doing the morning crossword with zero cleanup afterward. Just toss the plate and napkin in the lidded trash can in the corner of the office and get back to writing.

Anyhow, last time I was at the grocery store I saw these Jimmie Dean biscuit rollups (with sausage, egg, and cheese!) on sale and thought "Well, heck, let's give those a try. How bad can they be?"

For starters, they're not individually wrapped, nor are they in little two-sammich pouches like the Tennessee Pride fare. Instead there's just a big plastic envelope with a dozen frozen nutrient pucks sliding around loose in there.

I gotta say, when I slid a couple out onto a plate, they did not look like the picture on the box.

I definitely felt like I was in some dystopian sci-fi future, about to put two "RATION BARS, FROZEN, BREAKFAST, SOUTHERN STYLE" into the food reheater.

Taste report? Well, they weren't awful, but they're no Tennessee Pride comfort food, either. The idea seemed sound: Take breakfast burrito fixins and wrap them in biscuit dough rather than a tortilla. The execution was a little weaksauce, though.

Don't think I'll be repeating this particular purchase.

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Thanksgiving Dinner

Bobbi did the by-now traditional Roseholme Cottage turducken over hardwood charcoal on the little grill out back.

It was droolworthy as usual.

The turnip, apple, and fennel bulb in which the turducken was cooked.

The feature attraction itself.

The best gravy I've ever had, bar none.

Yummy.

Bobbi has the deets of the preparation over at her blog, in case you were looking for Christmas feast ideas.

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Overheard in the Office...

[TAMARA enters the room holding a plate with two Tennessee Pride sausage biscuits]

Me: "Yay! When you remember to put a packet of these in the fridge to thaw the day before, they only take 25 seconds to nuke instead of 45 seconds."

RX: "So you save twenty seconds. And they taste better?"

Me: "Oh, they taste better, too. At least they say they taste better."

RX: "So you don't know they taste better."

Me: "Well, I seem to remember they taste better. But I also remembered that Spaghetti-O's tasted good, so..."

RX: "Children don't taste sugar the same way."

FWIW, they do in fact taste better.

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Pedaling to Protein

Saturday afternoon Bobbi and I saddled up the bicycles and pedaled down the Monon Trail to the intersection of 46th & College for an early dinner on the patio at Root & Bone.

I had the carpaccio mac, described on the menu as "thin sliced beef, soft egg remoulade, herb crouton, crunchy iceberg, pickled shallot & crunch capers", and it was absolutely delicious.

Bobbi ordered the Fried Green Tomato "BLT", which was basically a BLT sammich, sans the bread. It, too, looked yummy and I made a note to get back there and try it myself some time.

On the way home, we pulled off the Monon at Half Liter BBQ because Sunday was the last day of Devour Indy Summerfest 2023 and I wanted Bobbi to try one of the special desserts that Half Liter was featuring for the event. Knowing how much she likes bread pudding, she didn't want to miss out on the Buffalo Trace bread pudding (Homemade bread baked with cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla and topped with a Buffalo Trace bourbon cream sauce.)

From there we pedaled home and chilled out and read for the remainder of Saturday evening.

(Well, I tried to watch Frankenstein on MeTV's Svengoolie, but I was too full of good chow and kept dozing off.)

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Yum!

Bobbi has pics and a cooking description of yesterday's delicious roast, which we ate while watching the finale of the first season of The Lincoln Lawyer. 

She has really got the process of doing those on the grill down to a science.

I really, really enjoyed The Lincoln Lawyer. Good television, and I hope the second season holds up to the first.

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Yummy!

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Happy Turkey Day!

As usual, I am thankful for Bobbi and her tasty, tasty cooking: Turducken, veggies, mashed potatoes, and bacon-onion gravy.

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Chewy Humor

A poster on a forum noted that "[r]anchers and butchers have been laughing their asses off over the "bone broth" trend. For generations that stuff was nothing but scrap, and waste, given free to dogs."

I guess finding out that you'd been throwing money away and thinking it was hilarious must be some sort of cowboy humor.

Bone broth & marrow have been a thing for a long long time down South as poor people food, but Southern Cooking got faddish there for a bit and here we are.

You know, the way poor cowboys (and urban Jewish & Irish people) came up with ways to cook brisket, which was junk meat, to make it edible.

I mean, I think oxtail is a key ingredient for the ideal stew, and that was outright poverty food. 

Corned beef, pastrami, and slow smoking are all ways of making brisket edible. 

(And nobody tell these guys that eating a roast chicken was conspicuous consumption for wealthy folks, because what kind of normal person could afford to eat an egg layer until it was too old for anything but the stewpot.)

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Superfood

Bobbi pointed out that if I could find a way to easily caffeinate that beef broth, I'd have my ideal morning beverage.

She's not wrong.

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Beef Tea, But Seriously This Time

I had jokingly referred to the broth in some dehydrated "Vietnamese Beef Phở"-style soup-in-a-cup as beef tea before.

Then I discovered that the corner market sells literal beef tea, by which I mean powdered beef bone broth in single serving packets to mix with 8oz of hot water in a mug and sip like carnivore's coffee. And you don't have to eat a mess of noodles first to get at it. It's like fifty calories, all protein and no carbs.

This stuff is delicious... I mean, if you dig beef bone broth. Bobbi's been using it for cooking, too.

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Sunday Dinner Theater

Yesterday evening was unseasonably warm, near sixty degrees here in Indy.

Bobbi started some lump hardwood charcoal in the grill and did up a couple of New York strips and some red potatoes...

She then added some nuke-in-the-bag pre-seasoned asparagus from Fresh Market...

...and it made for a delicious Sunday dinner while we watched the "USS Callister" episode from Season 4 of Black Mirror.

I hadn't seen any of Black Mirror before we started watching it recently and this is some really good stuff. The hype seems to have been justified.

The worst kind of snow...almost.

What I'd forgotten to take into account about yesterday's snowpocalypse was Wednesday's weather.

See, from pretty much sunup to sundown on Wednesday we had a long, steady, soaking rain. This prevented DPW and INDOT from treating the roads since any brine they put down would be immediately washed into the sewers.

Fortunately the temperature dropped like a rock after sundown on Wednesday so we only had a brief period of sleet and freezing rain before it transitioned more or less directly to snow. I understand that the south side of Indy and down toward Columbus and Bloomington had it a lot worse, getting an inch or more of real ice before the snow started.

So the roads were untreated when it started snowing, and it came down all day yesterday at rates up to an inch an hour.

Indianapolis is prepared for snow, compared to other places I've lived, but it ain't New Hampshire or upstate New York. Without being able to pre-treat the roads and a steady day-long snow, the plows were doing well to keep a sort-of-clear travel lane on major arteries. Indy was pretty well shut down yesterday.

I walked over to Fat Dan's for lunch... you can't call yourself a "Chicago-Style Deli" and shut down for a bit of snow, so I knew they'd be open ...and then to Fresh Market for groceries.

They'd shoveled and salted the walk once already...

I walked the neighborhood again at 4PM and even Fresh Market had packed it in and sent the employees home. (Their parking lot had been freshly plowed when I walked through it on the way to lunch and you couldn't hardly tell it just four hours later.)

Chicago Combo: ½ beef + ½ Italian sausage, hot peppers, dipped roll

Carne de vinha d'alhos

It means "meat in wine and garlic" and it originated in Madeira and the Azores. Sailors from these Portuguese Atlantic islands brought the dish to the Americas, where it's known as "Calvinadage" in Trinidad & Tobago.

When the Portuguese conquered Goa on the Indian subcontinent in 1510*, the recipe followed along there, too. In India, "vinha d'alhos" became "vindaloo", staple of curry houses in Britain. 

While many Indian variations pad out the meat with cubed potatoes and 'aloo' is the Hindi word for potato, the etymology is from the Goan dish "vindalho". 

Bobbi made her second try at a vindaloo Saturday and it was excellent. Her recipe is posted on her blog.

*Even after Indian independence from Great Britain in 1948, Portugal held on to Goa until 1961, when the Indian military launched Operation Vijay and seized the remaining Portuguese colonies along its coast in two days of fighting. India's first carrier, the INS Vikrant, was deployed off the coast, but launched no sorties, serving only to deter foreign intervention with her compliment of Sea Hawk fighter bombers and Alizé anti-sub planes.

Dead Meat

Bobbi cooked a pork butt vindaloo-style on New Year's Eve...

...and then the traditional Roseholme Cottage New Year's Day dinner of corned beef and cabbage. The weather fouled her plans of doing it over hardwood charcoal on the grill like last year but it atill turned out dandy... all the more impressive for having basically winged it. We filled our bowls for seconds while watching Wandavision on the telly.

As per usual, cooking deets are up at Bobbi's blog. Enjoy!

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Pure Liquid Umame

Look at this gently simmering pot full of goodness...

What could be lurking beneath that colorful, steamy surface?

Photos shot with Fujifilm X-T2 & 18-55mm f/2.8-4

It's a huge chunk of oxtail! Somewhere in there is a large slice of beef shank as well.

Served out in a bowl, it looked like this:

Bobbi has the recipe details up at her blog

The broth was absolutely delicious, and savory beyond belief. Sometime this week the leftovers of this will join the leftovers of the bison roast from Christmas in the stew pot.

This was our Boxing Day dinner, enjoyed while watching the second half of Hogfather on the telly.

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A Honkin' Hunk o' Meat

A bison chuck roast for Christmas dinner, a gift from my friends at Lucky Gunner, done by Bobbi with her pretty well perfected charcoal grill slow-roasting method, detailed for your delectation here.

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Overheard in the Kitchen...

RX: "The Hoppin' John tonight had three kinds of meat: ham, hot Italian sausage, and an Irish banger..."

Me: "An Irish banger? Like Seamus 'Ice Dog' McGillicuddy?" 

Turducken

Here's what it looked like when Bobbi brought it in from the grill and lifted the lid off the pan:

The turducken (w/sausage stuffing!) itself was lifted out of its savory nest and sliced up:

Piled on a plate with veggies, mashed potatoes, and the whole thing slathered in bacon-mushroom gravy and waiting to be garnished with a healthy scoop of assorted mushrooms:

The photos don't do it justice. I just grabbed the D7000 & 16-80mm f/2.8-4E and tried to snap a few shots at ISO800 by available light while simultaneously not getting in the way and also lending a hand where needed. (I used the D7000 because last time I tried this I grabbed a full-frame camera and the depth-of-field was stupid shallow.)

We sat down to a hearty dinner and another episode of Netflix's live-action Cowboy Bebop. We agreed that it just continues to improve with each episode.

Bobbi has the deets on ingredients and cooking procedures at her blog, as usual. I hope your Thanksgiving stuck to your ribs as much as mine did!

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Atomic Gut Grenades

So I'd thawed a couple microwaveable jalapeño cheese White Castles in the fridge yesterday intending to use them for a late evening snack while doing laundry. I forgot about them, so I nuked them for brekkie this morning.

The wisdom of eating jalapeño cheese nuclear gut grenades first thing in the morning is yet to be determined.

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Pork Loin

Bobbi had another winner on the grill Saturday night, with a variation on her favorite theme. There are photos.

I'm beginning to think that the capers and some kind of nutty, savory fungus are the keys to the whole thing.

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