Bacon substitutes

I found myself craving a BLT, but I've never cooked bacon and I wasn't sure we had any. But I did find a can of bacon-flavored SPAM. The result was this:

I'm sure it would have tasted just as good with regular SPAM, but I wanted the vague bacon flavor to remind me of what I wasn't actually eating.

It's worth noting that the SPAM is much more consistent to lay on the bread, as actual bacon requires time-consuming, careful placement for a comfortable-to-wield sammich. And this was one comfortable-to-wield sammich.

"Lots of Good Stuff" Giant Shell Pasta

After finding out about giant pasta, I decided to build upon my previous nutella and pasta food experiment. This time, it's giant shells, and instead of just nutella, I filled some with peanut butter, and a few with marshmallow creme. Then I poured honey all over the top. If it looks like there's not all that much nutella in some of them, that's because it's a tip of the iceberg kind of deal.

Honestly I think this is kind of too intense, and I would not eat this for dinner every day of the week. Maybe only on special occasions or when I'm not thinking clearly.

I rate this food item one out of two.

Fluffy Tapioca Cream

As someone who's only ever made instant pudding, the idea of using a 20-year-old box of Tapioca mix that requires egg and sugar and vanilla extract to be mixed in should have seemed daunting. By the way, here's the box:

It looks older in-person, not quite as vibrant, and you can see the old-fashioned type as you turn it over.

Anyways, it should have seemed daunting. Everyone was saying I should just use the instant mix, and be done in 5 minutes. But no, I wanted this:

And it tastes like tapioca! I'm hoping that when it cools it's also fluffier. That nice bowl of it was made using just three tablespoons of tapioca mix... so next time I'll use double the ingredients and take pictures of the process. Something tells me I should use up that box.

Oh, and yes, I post here now. There can never be enough food-related internotes.

Chili Ramen

Eating ramen instant noodle packets is a pretty cool thing to do. It became even cooler when I figured out that you're supposed to add hot water so the noodles become soft like real noodles. Recently, I tried replacing the water and flavor packet with a can of chili. This is pretty good, since it makes me feel okay about eating a can of chili, but I need to still add a bit of water to get the noodles hydrated fully. Oh, and an important ramen rule: always use two packets of noodles. One packet isn't enough, since food is good and you should want to eat a lot of it. Also, the can of chili wasn't very spicy, so I had to dump in a lot of cock sauce. In the end, I found this to be an interesting way to eat ramen noodles. I rate it 2 out of 2.

I Understand and I Wish to Continue

Usually I'm good at eating the foods I make and not getting sick. This was not the case last week when I decided to use a can of spam I bought (it was an accident, I swear). I started off with sourdough bread, cut it in half, and hallowed it out a bit. After pouring extra virgin olive oil on one side, I put some sort of cheese I totally don't remember the name of on it, and then pieces of spam I carved out of the block from the can. On the other side, I poured on some mushroom tomato sauce. I microwaved the whole thing for maybe half a minute, then put butter pickle slices in too. It seemed like it was going well at the time...

[a bad sandwich]

I made another sandwich a few days later. It was a meatball sub, but I didn't care for the bread. And also I was still not feeling so well from the first sandwich. Some things happened, so I didn't take a picture.

Closed Tuna Melt

Tuna melts are good, but sometimes, I'm too lazy to make them correctly. This is the result:

[Sandwich]

- hwhite bread slices
- sandwich pickle slices
- cold tuna (not for cats)
- mayonnaise
- maybe some pepper
- provolone cheese
- toasting element
- general heating element

First, open the tuna, drain out the liquid and replace it with mayonnaise by mixing. Then either cool it or hope that it was already cold so you don't have to wait. Apply toasting to the bread, and it will become two toast pieces. I don't like trouble, so I put the cheese on the bread right now and apply some heat to get it melty. Finally, slop on the tuna mix and lay the pickle slices on top then cover with the other toast piece. This sandwich is pretty good, I ate like, 3 or 4 of them.

Delicious Baconated Sandwich

I needed an intro to a food article, so I decided to list the ingredients instead of starting off a story about how I saw some impressive bacon food item or was hungry and invented a sandwich:

- 2 toasted white bread slices
- butter to cover one slice
- provolone cheese to cover the other
- glob of mayonnaise covering butter
- bacon bits dumped over cheese
- combine into one sandwich

[Baconated Sandwich]

The butter gives the sandwich the familiar taste of buttered bread, which makes me think, "I know this; it is familiar to me.", leading me on to feel safe about the forthcoming powerful taste of the provolone cheese. The more subdued buttered toast flavor has been lost around this point, which is good, because this allows the bread to not interfere with anything else but only act as the vessel for the insides. The bacon will now take effect. Since it is crumbly, it has intermingled with the mayonnaise a bit, giving it a somewhat creamy feel, but still bacony. The active flavors sort of alternate between cheese and bacon for the remainder of the sandwich. I'm not going to try to be cool and say it was disgusting eating this. It was delicious. I hope to eat more baconated food items in the future.

Toasted Rye

Rye bread is one of my favorite breads. One thing about it bothers me though: some people like to shove these caraway seeds into it. They taste terrible and I don't have the time to adjust my tastes to them, or to form any childhood memories of liking caraway seeds. So because of this, when I had a slice of carawayed rye, I needed a good way to increase the amount of flavor molecules present. After a quick toasting operation was complete, I quickly placed a few slices of unsalted butter on top then after it was melted, proceeded to sprinkle a coating of granulated sugar over it. Feel free to do this to other kinds of bread, it will make them more bearable in case you don't have any rye on hand.

[Toast]

Pizza Judgment of Article of Strong Faith

The TV suddenly started blaring upon going to commercials causing me to automatically reach for the volume button on the remote. I wished the space guy was on TV, he's a lot more fun. I would have felt bad about having the TV on and just leaving it on mute, and I didn't want quite the amount of light in the room that a lamp provides. I thought back to when I had my book light that would attach to the cover of a book and light the pages. I knew the battery for it was sitting in the closet outside my room, but I couldn't find the light itself in my memory. So naturally I preheated the oven and threw in a frozen sausage and pepperoni pizza with additional black olives and feta cheese sprinkled on top.

[Pizza]

It turned out great. The only real way to cut a pizza is to use a wicked pair of bone cleaving shears. If you're not doing it this way, you're not cutting the pizza correctly.

[Cutting Pizza Pie]

I ate a slice and left the rest sitting there all night for random other people that might wander by, because I'm an incredibly considerate individual. I would love to run into cold pizza if I were to suddenly wake up in the middle of the night.

[Remaining Pie]

Food Testing (Part 3)

Usually when I open up a can of seafood, there's tuna inside, but this time, there was crab. It appeared to have a paper wrapping surrounding it, but it was only around the sides, and when I attempted to pull the crab meat out by it, all the crab fell through back into the can. I was disappointed to say the least. After dumping the meat into a preparation bowl, I ate all of it. It tasted fine, I would eat it again. The crab juice or water was kind of salty though. The cats wouldn't drink this as they would with the water from a can of tuna.

[Crab]

Food Testing (Part 2)

I heard the spam song playing before I was in the store, so I picked up a can of special ham since I've never actually eaten this stuff before in my life. I tried it out plain, and also fried up some of it and put it in a hamburger bun with cheddar cheese. It's really shocking when I took my first bite of it; it's incredibly ridiculously salty. I wasn't able to adjust to the salt level throughout the eating process. It was interesting though, to try it, but I don't think I'll want it again.

[Special Ham]

(note: it turns out I did not actually hear the spam song at all)

Tasty Food

"Rib-eye is a great cut of meat."

I was in the mood for some chomps and found myself heading over to the store. I eyed out the steaks I wanted, then looked for the margarine. I relly need some margarine. It's important. There was none on the refrigerated sections or near the butter, so I went on looking on the other shelves. I couldn't find it near the oils, but I got distracted and started looking for grape seed oil and chocolate marshmallows, neither of which were present either. Thinking about the status of margarine, I recalled that it is a synthetic material constructed out of plastics and has been declared a biohazard, so I took my search further into the aisle with bleach. Still, no sign of it. I called it quits and picked up the steaks with some other stuff and left.

I don't know if you know this about me, but I am a master griller. I am the best at applying heat to steaks through use of grill machinery. After dumping on steak rub and grilling, I let it rest for a few minutes, not because I thought it was a good idea, but because I needed a short break before eating them. Briefly, the idea crossed my mind to heat up some potatoes or maybe broccoli, but I may have just now made up that I thought of it for story and character development purposes.

[Here's the Food]

Sandwich Test

I like combining things like mustard and cheese, so I did that along with chicken and cock sauce on a small tortilla. I was thinking about adding lettuce or a vegetable but then I came to my senses and decided not to make it taste bad on purpose.

[Half-eaten Sandwich]

Idea Sprouts

I've been getting a lot of mail from readers lately, concerned about a lack of food being eaten. The truth is that I have been eating food, but there has been a terrible accident: I was developing my instant film in a darkroom and I messed up, ruining all the pictures. I managed to save one though by throwing my body in front of it.

[Food Picture]

I probably could tell you about some of the food since I don't have pictures, but I can't because revealing my methods and procedures would get me kicked out of the secret cooks organization.

Also, I'm thinking to expand and have more fun internotes, which would include exciting true stories, food experiments, videos of me being cool and playing the guitar, contests with prizes for readers, and supercool hand-drawn pictures. So yeah.

A Meatball Sandwich

I don't have anything to say about this one.

[The Sandwich]

(note: it's smoked mozzarella and sharp cheddar)

Mothers Brownies

Don't worry, everything's gonna be all right. Shush, just look at me. I'll make you some of Mother's Brownies.

I actually baked this bath(sick(sic)) of brownies about a week or so ago, but forgot to internote it. I used Baker's baking chocolate, which has the recipe written on the back of the box. If you look at the front of the box, next to the name, the picture looks like a mother holding a tray of brownies. This image is also imprinted upon each piece of chocolate inside.

1.5 sticks of butter
4 blocks of unsweetened baking chocolate
2 cups normal sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup flour

Melt the butter and chocolate, then combine them and toss in the other stuff in order. When it's together, dump into a 13x9 inch baking pan (I lined it with parchment paper) and bake it at 350F for 30 to 35 minutes. Oh yeah, the oven should probably be preheated first. That's important. When enough time has passed, take the back end of a match and poke a hole in the brownies. If it comes out clean, they should be done, so you can then strike the match as a sign of victory.

[Mother's Brownies]

These things taste pretty great, and you should eat them. Some people say brownies should cool first, but they don't know what they're talking about. Take advantage by putting the still hot brownies on a plate and then a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream next to it.

(note: me calling these Mother's Brownies and the image looking like a mother are completely unrelated)

Troy Chocolate Cake

I got a huge amount of fanmail recently about the Crispy Mister Sandwich in regard to the contest I set up. They were all mostly good attempts at the sandwich, but I think this one stood out as the best. Congratulations to the winner; you will be receiving a package of stickers in the mail along with a jam rock music cd! (note: contest void in canada)

I know I said the previous chocolate cake I made was the chocolate cake that would make all other cakes obsolete, but I like eating cake so I made this cake recipe provided by Anna of CookieMadness: Troy Chocolate Cake.

~A long time ago I made a childhood promise about cakes. Arbitrary childhood promises are the kinds of things that really define your character. For example, the classic “never change”. I however made vowed never to bake a cake again after a horrible tragedy occurred. I had baked a wonderful cake mix cake for some friends, and brought it over to one of their houses so everyone could enjoy. Unfortunately, the four sticks of butter involved in this small cake was too much, instantly killing my best friend upon impact with his mouth. Never again would I allow such a thing to happen.*~

The Troy Chocolate Cake is different in that it doesn’t involve butter in the batter. It is a cake of healing. Instead it has a bunch of mayonnaise, something you may remember from the tuna melt sandwich recipe, so it’s certain to be a success. I began working on the initial steps of mixing things together in bowls. At first, I thought to just use a cereal bowl, but using my keen powers of foresight, I recalled that the ingredients listed would not fit, so I opted for a larger metal bowl. I saw in the corner of my eye some sort of automatic electrical mixing machine, but I decided not to call upon higher powers to assist me just yet. I was getting exhausted at this point; it was time for a break. I indulged in some Breyers ice cream. Mmm, smooth and creamy.

[Mixing Things]

I took out some parchment paper to line the pan and pressed it in to fit, but it popped back up, refusing to give in. I was about to have a mental breakdown here, but I decided to pour the batter in anyway, and it turns out everything worked out fine.

[Ready for Baking]

I put it in the oven at 325 for 35 minutes, then got started on the icing. I spent time sifting the confectioners sugar which I’m sure I completely ruined the point of sifting it in the first place when I just dumped all the ingredients together at the same time and was determined to mix by hand with a spoon. The cake finished as I was about done with the icing.

[Icing]
[Cake and Icing]

The icing was kind of lumpy, but I really don’t mind. The end result is a tasty cake.

[Icinged Cake]

*Exciting True Stories may or may not be exciting or true.

Crispy Mister Sandwich

It was nightlunch time, so I went into the kitchen as normal procedure. Looking through some cabinets, I decided that I would do something with nutella. Spreading it on bread might be good. Maybe if the bread was coated in lard and fried it might be better. Frying bread was an idea I liked, but I couldn’t fit the nutella into it without being a real europoofter so I decided to go into a sandwich route. Cheese and meat is good, so I got some provolone cheese and sliced ham ready. This sandwich was looking like it might be kind of [large fancy colourful ‘L’]ame at this point, mostly because of the bread, so I cracked some eggs (you may remember I am the best at cracking eggs), mixed them with a fork and combined them with two slices.

[Sandwich Preparation]

Luckily there was just enough for all of the eggs to be absorbed fully. I didn’t know how to get this from my eggy bowl to the frying pan, so I thought to put them on a paper towel at first, but then I just brought the pan over to the table with all my cooking organization. I would put the paper towels I got ready to use later. My plan for the sandwich was to have the cheese on the outsides of the ham, so they would get melty better. It is always important to have the meal fully planned out. After layering one slice of egg-soaked bread in the pan with cheese, I put on a bunch of slices of ham.

[Sandwich Construction]

During this, I kept reassuring myself that I’ve had a previous experience with this, and I feel it would be in my best interest to add more meat than I think I need. On top of the ham, another layer of cheese, then the second bread slice. It was time for cooking process, and everything was going fine until I decided it was important that I flip the sandwich over a lot to check how it’s cooking.

[Sandwich Cooking]

The first flip was a disaster; cheese was falling out, one slice of bread slid halfway off from all the contents, and it may have been my imagination, but I thought I tore the bread in half. And while trying to fix it, I managed to burn two of my fingers from direct contact with the pan.

[Sandwich Cooking]

Realizing I forgot about buttering the pan, I snuck in some butter while lifting the sandwich up since butter is a secret ingredient. I let it cook for a while though and it was looking all right again.

[Sandwich Cooking]

When the sandwich was finished, I determined that it was overall a great success! The bread had that great french toast taste to it, the cheese was all melty and delicious, and the ham was meaty. Actually, I think the ham was way too sweet for the sandwich. I would maybe want a meat that’s completely meaty without the overwhelming sweetness for next time.

[Sandwich]

Egg Melt Sandwich

...
"Then imagine opening it and look inside."
Okay. ... left ... though.
"What's in the fridge?"
Greasy sausage gravy ... peppermint sugar syrup.
"Do you want to eat these things?"
... have heartburn ... nine or ten hundred years.
"Eww, that's disgusting."
... I'm closing ... heading right ....
"No way! I'm not taking you there!"
... I know you'll take me there eventually.

Gathering up the ingredients is an essential step for creating a food dish. Usually you’d do this with a shopping list planned out ahead of time with words written on it. I love it when I see words written for me. But I didn’t have one of these. I was gathering up interesting things. Eggs are easy, so I grabbed a few of those. You may not know this about me, but I am a master at cracking eggs. I can crack a hundred baker’s dozen eggs and not even know it. I put those on the counter and sort of wrapped a towel around them so they don’t crack themselves. I took out the cock sauce, since it always adds potential. I needed something tasty, so I headed into the bone cellar for some canned tuna. It’s pretty cold there. I once was carrying a bowl of soup there to eat, since I was sick, and it was spilling all over my hands, burning them. I saw some instant mashed potatoes so I grabbed those as well. Heading back to the kitchen, I realized I still need some odd and ends to put things together. Couldn’t find any bread, so I took out a bag of small tortillas, and the package of swiss cheese that was sitting next to it. Cheese is pretty great, especially when it’s melty. I tossed things into the frying pan for the first attempt, which didn’t turn out well since most parts were added as an afterthought.

[Beginning Cooking]
[Potatoes and First Sandwich]
[Sandwich with Additional]

It tasted good enough to make me want another, and bad enough to make me think I could do better. This time I added everything in during the cooking organization.

[Cooking Sandwich 2]
[Sandwich Formula]
[Final Sandwich]

Underrated Chocolate Cake

My brother recently left on a trip to find some wild cougar that has been reported lately to be hanging around forest preserves. I was pretty excited, so I used this as an excuse to get baking as a celebration and have myself an Eatrian Odyssey. I found a bag of premade cake mix inside a box on a shelf, but when I looked at the instructions, I just wasn’t satisfied. I just had to shape it to my personal taste, so I took out the eggs and vegetable oel. Peanut butter is really great, and I really don’t like chocolate chips, so I tossed in a bunch of those. Also, I added some water, since it doesn’t work without that. You have to be an experienced chef to know these subtle factors that influence the cake. I mixed it up with a fork, and it already was looking good enough for me to eat at this point, but I decided to stick it in the microwave oven just for the heck of it. I set it to two minutes, and took it out when I felt it was right. It turned out great. I am a huge fan of things that taste good. Although I am proud of myself for this, I feel that I want to experiment and further alter the recipe next time and truly make it my own.

Tip: If possible, use Chicago tap water for zebra mussel taste.

to taste – chocolate cake mix
to taste – water
to taste – peanut butter chips

[Ingredients]
[Finished Product]