Tag: Bob Sloan

Cheezus

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Is it just me, or do those look like tiny orange … uh … never mind.

Earlier this month, when Wirecutter ran a piece headlined “The Best Boxed Macaroni and Cheese,” I knew it was only the first course.

Today, behold the return of (drumroll, please) … Hamburger Helper!

Writing in The New York Times, proprietor of Wirecutter, food-industry reporter Julie Creswell tells us:

While most food companies are seeing declines in consumer demand for their products, sales of Hamburger Helper are up 14.5 percent in the year through August, getting an extra bump from its appearance on an episode of “The Bear” in June, according to the company that owns the brand, Eagle Foods.

And it’s not just because people are nostalgic for the good old Seventies, Creswell observes. Now, as then, the cost of food consumed at home is up considerably — 21 percent from four years ago — and the prices of beef, coffee, and many fruits and vegetables are likewise rising.

Thus Hungry America returns to Bullshit in a Box to keep their guts from greasing their backbones. Here’s Sally Lyons Wyatt, who advises packaged food companies at the research firm Circana:

“Cost-of-living expenses are up. Eating and drinking expenses are up. Consumers are looking for foods that fill them up for the least amount of money.”

More reporting like this, please. Americans may not care whether Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel still have jobs, but they might get sick of (or from) eating Yellow No. 5 with Extra Sodium three meals a day.

If you’re trying to cut corners as our “leaders” focus on the culture wars rather than cuisine, might I recommend Pierre Franey’s turkey chili? Herself and I can get three or four meals out of that one, spooned atop bowls of rice and sprinkled with crushed corn chips, cilantro, a sharpish cheddar, and a squeeze of lime.

Likewise this simple bolognese from Giada de Laurentiis. We got three servings apiece out of that one this week, over egg noodles, and then spread the remainder on a couple of corn pizza shells from Vicolo. Topped it with grated mozzarella and parmesan with a scattering of crushed red pepper.

But if you simply must have mac and cheese, well, take a whack at Bob Sloan’s recipe from “Dad’s Own Cookbook.”

And then tell the Dick Tater that he can eat shit. Hell, he already does.

Cooking, cameras and cutbacks

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Ol’ Blue Eyes observes the paparazzi from the brick patio.

December days are like a short fuse. You light one at dark-thirty every morning and before you know it, boom! It’s bedtime.

The backyard maple crowds a shot of sunrise peeping over the Sandias.

It remains a constant source of astonishment how little a guy with no job can accomplish during one of these speed runs.

I’ve been revisiting a few recipes (among them Martha Rose Shulman’s orecchiette with basil-pistachio pesto and green beans) and sampling some new ones (a minestrone from “Dad’s Own Cookbook” by Bob Sloan was particularly well received).

I’ve also been playing with a new camera, a Sony RX100 III, after hearing nothing but raves about the series from pros and amateurs alike, including my man Hal up Weirdcliffe way, who has an RX100 base model. These shots came from the new toy.

Too, the Adventurous Cyclists and I have been chasing down review bikes for the new year, with varying degrees of success. And I just finished a “Shop Talk” cartoon for the January 2018 issue of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, which for the first time in a couple decades will not include a snarky “Mad Dog Unleashed” column by Your Humble Narrator.

Money is tight in the bike biz these days, and I’m not the first person to feel the pinch. Nor will I be the last.

Via Twitter, a reader expressed sympathy but not surprise, to which I replied, “The surprise is that it took so long for the damn’ dogcatcher to throw his loop over me. Send Milk-Bones and plenty of ’em, they gave me a real big cellmate. Looks to be part Neapolitan mastiff, part Baskerville hound.”

 

Poultry slam

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

When a cold comes into the house, you've got to give it the bird.
When a cold comes into the house, you’ve got to give it the bird.

There is catarrh in the house, curse its name.

A terrorist assault on the snotlocker has laid Herself low, and with the Horse of Pestilence thus having escaped her boogered-up beezer barn I am belatedly barring the door to my own by preparing a massive tureen of chicken noodle soup.

Oh, she gets a bowl, too. Just in case you were wondering.

The recipe can be found in “Dad’s Own Cookbook,” by Bob Sloan, and it is the foundation of any number of other meals, among them chicken quesadillas, chicken chilaquiles, and chicken eaten with the fingers straight out of the pot before you make anything other than a big-ass pot of simmered chicken.

And when I say “big-ass,” I do not lie. This sucker starts with a 4.5-pound bird, plus four extra drumsticks, and adds four quarts of water, four carrots, two turnips, a large onion, a leek, a dollop of honey, salt, dill, egg noodles, peas and parsley.

As chicken soups go, this is the equivalent of Rolling Thunder, a culinary carpet-bombing, a real poultry slam. I just hope it’s not too late. Some doughty little bug in green pajamas could be out there right now, pushing his Ah Choo Minh bicycle loaded with deadly bacteria through the triple-canopy jungle of my nose hairs.